You guys make me feel young lol. This is what did it for me when I heard it for the first time... definitely a product of the late 70s to 80s.
Checks CD collection to be sure I am adequate to address this topic...
YES! I can do this.
I am not sure that AJA exactly floated my boat. Far preferred FM (No Static at all), Haitian Divorce ( A sense of Irony about the state of marriage), and Do it Again which is just plain Funky. 🙂
But for sure, you were born with a sense or ability to pick up the Universal Broadcasting Station which we know as Radio Free Albemuth!
I encourage your efforts. Very few people know what is going on. But we do. 😀
YES! I can do this.
I am not sure that AJA exactly floated my boat. Far preferred FM (No Static at all), Haitian Divorce ( A sense of Irony about the state of marriage), and Do it Again which is just plain Funky. 🙂
But for sure, you were born with a sense or ability to pick up the Universal Broadcasting Station which we know as Radio Free Albemuth!
I encourage your efforts. Very few people know what is going on. But we do. 😀
Aja had alot of the major session players in it. Wayne Shorter, Stan Getz, Bernard Perdie, Anthony Jackson, Chuck Rainey, Steve Gadd, Michael McDonald, etc etc etc. I'm a bassist, keys, flute, horn player. This album has a crapload of talent on it. Sure, you can hear all the edits on it, the eq is a bit wonky, but the talent vs SQ is the best that time had to offer. Of course Gaucho was great too. I call it perfect imperfection. Yeah, Haitian Divorce is a killer track with such a beautiful vox box guitar part on it. Bass is spectacular on it too, likely some of the best sounding electric bass of that era.
And let's not forget this little gem...
Likely the best rock record from the late 70s. If you want to test rhe dynamic range and FR of your system, this will do it and make you want more every time you play it, especially this bit here...
Its likely overall the best analog rock recording ever made and still keeps up with any analog multi-track recording I know of. Yes, its mixed bass heavy and mastered with some smiley face eq, but it just sounds great. The helicopter is recorded exceptionally on this, as well as all the acostic mic trickery, etc. Its just a fantastic album, along with Dark Side of the Moon of course.
Likely the best rock record from the late 70s. If you want to test rhe dynamic range and FR of your system, this will do it and make you want more every time you play it, especially this bit here...
Its likely overall the best analog rock recording ever made and still keeps up with any analog multi-track recording I know of. Yes, its mixed bass heavy and mastered with some smiley face eq, but it just sounds great. The helicopter is recorded exceptionally on this, as well as all the acostic mic trickery, etc. Its just a fantastic album, along with Dark Side of the Moon of course.
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The one to get is the original version with the paper sleeves. I took mine to a record shop many years ago now and traded it for the second pressing (not being aware) released just a few years later because I literally wore mine out. Very dissappointed as the dynamic range was gone. After some investigation I found out they had toned it down because it was wreaking havoc with peoples' speakers and there were some law suits by unsuspecting customers.
Alot of these Floyd records were over played to death and it wore people out. Honestly, its sad that alot of audiophiles have liestened to this stuff mainly for its audio prowess instead of the music itself.
Its like they say, audiophiles listen to their equipment and music lovers listen to the music.
Its like they say, audiophiles listen to their equipment and music lovers listen to the music.
Yeah, there was some dumbing down done to it in the 90s when alot of people didn't care about dynamics, so they just compressed it to death. Thats a shame because many people discover this music for the first time and don't know how good it can sound. Then again, most people started listening to MP3s on their phones with cheap, crispy, nasty ear buds.
Most of these reissues on vinyl are done from digital masters and also compressed to death. They just ruined the music that way. 9 times out of 10 the older original vinyl versions were better in almost every way. They did it with CDs too and made it harder to find good examples of the older 70s / 80s music. Its sort of like Phil Spector coming back to haunt us, putting the wall of sound back on everything and anything. These new engineers and producers are enamored by this pegged, "bloated" and overly "warm" sound. I absolutely hate it becusse it only caters to the new hip crowd that passively listens to music in the background as distraction and fodder blending in with the other noise.
First time I heard The Wall was at a high end shop called Comfort and Sound in Calgary in 1979. They demoed the new B&W 801s with it for me. Ancillary gear was a pair of Boothroyd Stuart 105 monos/101 pre, and and an LP12 with an Asak cart. I was on the hunt for a new system. I ended up buying a pair of Kef 105/2 and the very first Oracle tt produced after the proto type next door at the competition. However I did get the 105 monos and pre at Comfort and Sound. Anyway, just want to confirm it really was about the music back then, the catalyst that drove the industry. Then, audiophiles were absolutely concerned about sq but the music was awesome. It was later that it became more of a prestigious acquisition. You may remember acquiring a stereo, any stereo, was first on most peoples' agenda at renting their first pad. It was a different world when everything was coming to fruition.
That audition at Comfort and Sound was awesome. I was mesmerized by it. The regular crowd would show up constantly just to listen to the music. I've forgotten the name of that very accommodating shop owner. No, it was Rick, I just remembered. Great guy.
Some albums got mangled or drastically changed even in the 70s. One example is Nektar "A Tab in the Ocean". Only the first pressing on the Belaphon lable is any good. The second pressing was re-recorded too hot. There is some obvious hard clipping in sections. Then when the album was eventually printed in the USA, the album was totally remixed. They mixed the base guitar out almost completely, and spead up the entire recording by about 10 percent. It sounds like a totally different album.
Most, but not all remixes were for the worse though. I actually prefer the 1972 mix of "Days of Future Past" over the original 1967 mix.
The speed issue with older music is certainly a huge issue for me. My ear perceives perfect pitch and it drives me nuts when things weren't exactly on point, especially trying to play along to something, so I could learn the song way before there was YouTube.
Sometimes they did this to be able to notch filter out some 60 hz hum in their gear as the hum landed close to the note low B. Obviously that doesn't work if the recording already has hum noise on it, but often it was done to make the recording sound better psychologically to the ear ie faster is better. Lol
Sometimes they did this to be able to notch filter out some 60 hz hum in their gear as the hum landed close to the note low B. Obviously that doesn't work if the recording already has hum noise on it, but often it was done to make the recording sound better psychologically to the ear ie faster is better. Lol
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Who knows. All I know is The Beatles Unplugged is extremely disappointingly sped up. I played it just once. What a piece of crap!
And a few others with the same treatment that don't come to mind because I'm glad I've forgotten about them.
And a few others with the same treatment that don't come to mind because I'm glad I've forgotten about them.
That is a solid state EP-3 in the video. I have never seen one up close, so I don't know how it works when operated outside of its original intentions as an echo box. Maybe some looping functions are built in, I don't know. My EP-1 used vacuum tubes and had a continuous tape loop on rollers underneath the cover. It is possible to make your own custom length loops using the tape salvaged from an 8 track tape cartridge. It had better lubrication than the tape furnished in the machine which fixed the jamming and screeching sound caused by binding tape. The "delay" slider moved the play head back and forth. The "sound on sound" switch turns off the erase head to allow adding a second layer to the sound after the tape has finished a complete loop. After much tinkering I realized that Jimi must have wired a foot switch into his unit, so I did too. The stock length tape is much too long for "looper pedal" type operation as it took tens of seconds to complete a loop. Sometime after these units were popular there was a tape based looper device, but it never caught on. I played with it at Ace Music back in the early 80's but it was like $500, so nobody ever bought it. My DIY attempt at making something similar with multiple play heads was a mechanical failure.
They were a made for TV pop group with the hit making magic of Don Kirshner behind them. Who didn't watch Don Kirshner's Rock Concert in the 70's? .......If you remember the 70's. The Monkees were the original formula for all the boy bands that came from Disney and others later on.
After faking it for several years they actually learned how to play their instruments and decided to make a record of their own material called "Head." I think it was their commercial undoing though. From what I can remember, you would need to be flying pretty high to listen to it, much less understand what they were trying to say. It seemed to be an attempt at giving the finger to the music making machine that made them. Sometime later in the years when MTV still played music videos (1990's maybe?) I remember seeing a Monkees video from that album.
30 some years later my teenage daughter convinced my wife and I to take her and her friends to an NKOTB concert. Same stuff, different players, much bigger venue, the Miami Dolphins football stadium, far more screaming teenage girls though.
It's hard to tell who was first. Both seem to have come to life in vacuum tube form around 1960. The Copicat came from the UK and the Echoplex from the US, so they were more common here. After looking at some pictures I believe the unit I saw at Ace Music in the 80's was a later vintage Copicat since that store visit is where the multi head idea came from. All the early Echoplexes has a single play head on a sliding track. That mechanism was prone to breakage since some guitar players tended to operate it with their feet.
The Roland Space Echos were definitely more refined than the other tape loop delays. I know it came out later than the others but it was by far a better engineered unit. The space echo is also much more refined sounding and you could get fairly low noise performance in regeneration mode, making it much more transparent sounding for recording. They fetch a pretty penny nowadays, thats for sure.
Pink Floyd did alot of cool tape effects on their albums and treated the effect more seriously than other bands. Early Porcupine Tree has that similar vibe going on and I like their albums just as much as some of the older Floyd stuff.
Pink Floyd did alot of cool tape effects on their albums and treated the effect more seriously than other bands. Early Porcupine Tree has that similar vibe going on and I like their albums just as much as some of the older Floyd stuff.