Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: The Mellotron Group

Trouble is, Fripp justifies his endless cycles ofre-releases- for-the-gullible by saying that he is not holding a gun toanyone's head and making them go out and buy the new versions. Ofcourse he is right in a literal sense, but he also has said that KingCrimson was always a work in progress and if something happens now tomake something made in (say) 1969 'sound better' then it will happen, Iwonder if he thought the same thing in 1969?

Oddly, Fritz came up with exactly the same example I had in mind re'Pet Sounds'. The stereo remaster/remix is actually not bad to listento, but it isn't the album I grew up with and know inside and out,backside and forwards. I'm sure that the demand for a stereo versiondidn't come from Brian Wilson (as if - he hasn't heard in stereo sincehe was about eight) but the way they went about that one was completelyat odds with any attempt to preserve the musicality of the original. Inthat instance there were plenty of cases where the original eighttracks didn't survive and so other takes were used that wereinferior. (Try listening to 'Sloop John B'; they use a guitar takewhere the sessionist makes a train wreck of the first accompanimentthen trips up over the next few bars. There is even a place where, toget a stereo effect on the vocals they combine takes where they aresinging different words)

And please let's not even think about what happened to the re-releaseof 'We're Only In It For The Money/Lumpy Gravy'. Fans of Alvinand the Chipmunks would be delighted.

I know that Fripp won't suffer from the same issues as the PS debacleas he has all the takes (we assume), but this form of musicalrevisionism does bother me, particularly when it is combined with whatcan only be his he-doth-protest- too-much wish to shore up hisbank balance. If it's going to sound as good as the vinyl then why arewe buying it again? If it sounds different then great, but it's not thesame thing. I admit I was pleasantly surprised by the 30th Anniversaryversion but that is because I had lived with previous botched attemptsfor so long. I also realise that the vinyl means and medium just aren'taround any more, so a decent CD is what is needed. We have one. Do weneed another? The previous CD abominations had his name on themalong with Arnold's, so one assumes he sanctioned that release withoutproblem. Is Fripp one of those rare creatures whose hearing is improvingwith age? Or is he putting his name to something again without hisown involvement?

Unfortunately for The Frippster he keeps a rather obsessive diaryonline and I don't see much about him sweating over a mixing desk fordays and days at a time. There are, however, numerous instances overthe years of him turning up for a day and 'approving' what he hears.Not the same thing. Not the same thing at all.

When I was running Elephant Talk I had an amusing e-mail from a guy inJapan - no great surprise there - who was obsessively trying to compileevery single issue and reissue of the first KC album that there hasever been. Yashoko was 42 and had been doing this since he was 34. Hehad filled one notebook and was planning on filling another. He wasthereafter going to turn it into a Pete Frame-like web site tocatalogue his obsession and give more information on one album than theworld probably ever needs. To date, there is no web site. EitherYashoko has chucked the towel in or he is still working on it. Eitherway, it implies a mess of a situation. His findings didhowever reveal a myriad vinyl re-releases, not all of which wereexactly up to the mark either. Anyone remember what Polydor did in the1980s? I think they were one of the few record companies who maderecords whose vinyl you could perhaps use as a substitute for tracingpaper.

Incidentally Tom, what makes the Tron on ItCotCK sound so great is thatthey recorded it on microphones through a pile of guitar amps andspeakers playing at shattering volume. I'm not sure anyone hasattempted that trick since.

Mike

Mark Pring wrote: