There are certain topics guaranteed to generate a debate that makes the average street riot look like a model of decorum. Global warming — fact or fiction. Gun control. Foreign policy.
CD remasters.
Ever since someone at a record company noticed a large element among those who buy CDs are somewhat passionate about sound quality (shameless self-promotion: Mike Roe of the 77s and Lost Dogs has some excellent observations about this in God’s Not Dead (And Neither Are We), coming in 2009 just as soon as yours truly gets his happy self in gear and finishes editing it… but I digress), the notion that re-releasing something already in the marketplace with the justification of the new version being better in some fashion has run rampant. Remastering is the usual modus operandi, this being the fine art of actually finding the album in question’s original recording in lieu of using that eight-track someone in marketing found at a garage sale from which to press the CD. Did that already? Let’s not forget bonus tracks, this being the industry code for someone having dug up one or more of the following:
- Demos recorded on a Panasonic cassette deck with a microphone draped over the chair;
- Live tracks recorded with the same cassette deck smuggled into a show and the microphone held over the crowd;
- Best of all, songs that were actually recorded for the album in question at that the time weren’t good enough to be included yet today are priceless audio artifacts.
Remixing is currently in vogue, preferably with one or more of the artists who created the music in the first place involved so there’s an air of official blessing to the whole thing. Also popular these days is the collectible packaging concept, usually involving a re-creation of the album cover when first released on vinyl lo those many years ago. This is especially entertaining when lyrics were included in the original release, as nothing beats the fine fun time to be had trying to read something released two or more decades ago now shrunk from twelve inches to five with eyes that had already been released a decade or more before the album first saw the light of day. With no remastering available, alas. New life is available through faith in Christ, but He usually leaves installed all the original parts of whatever body houses the new life.
It’s obvious to all with the noticeable exception of a few suits at assorted labels you could simply release something once, get it right the first time, and be done with it. Ah, but where’s the profit… uh, fun in that? Far, far better to devise yet another way to package Dark Side Of The Moon. I’m waiting for the Chu-Bops version. Actually, I’m waiting for Chu-Bops period to make a comeback, for what would be better to plaster Miley Cyrus’ photo on? You want bubblegum, by gum you’ve got it.
If all this seems silly, it must be noted the passionate pondering by aficionados of upper echelon audio makes the above seem positively 4th street… er, normal. Let any album from days of yore hit the market for the thirty-seventh time, and battle lines are immediately drawn between those praising the new version as either sonic paradise or satanic perversion of one or more previously released versions. Wish I had the time to listen to the same album five times in a row on five different CDs so I could pontificate on which version the brush on a snare drum at 3:47 of track two is more clearly articulated. Then again, most of my music listening these days is done either during my morning commute on Mr. iPhone or in the evening at home on a couple of computer speakers. Chances are good to excellent I’m going to miss something somewhere along the line.
It’s not that I don’t want something I shell out money for to sound as good as possible. Having started buying CDs very early on I have my share of horror stories. The first few years of CD issues might as well have been at the supermarket than the local record shop, for sooner rather than later you’d pick up something with sound more akin to an aluminum pie plate being scooted across the floor than music. I still have more than a few discs mastered at a volume level you’d need to borrow Grand Funk Railroad’s sound system from their heyday in order to hear over a butterfly snoring, with sound thinner than a boyfriend’s alibi when he comes stumbling through the door attempting to mask the scent of another woman’s perfume on his clothes with the flowers he picked up at 3 AM from the local twenty-four hour grocery store. The ultimate example of this is the initial release of Aqualung by Jethro Tull, which not only had both the above in abundance but as an added bonus chopped off the intro of the title track and the last half minute of the closing song.
Unfortunately, there is a far less amusing aspect to the above which will be discussed in the next post.
