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ICE on My Generation CD's



Thanks to Richard Pachter again for pointing this out.
At ICE Magazine's
site:
http://www.icemagazine.com/stories/178/who.asp

The Who Settle Out

FANS OF THE WHO have been treated to upgraded,
expanded, newly remastered
and bonus-track laden reissues of most of the group's
catalog, with the
glaring exception of their 1965 debut album, The Who
Sings My Generation.
For that album, consumers have had to be content with
a low-budget
first-generation compact disc produced by MCA Records
in the '80s, with
sub-par sound and bare-bones, generic graphics. That's
because the album's
original producer, Shel Talmy, owns the master tapes,
and had never been
able to reach a satisfactory arrangement with MCA, now
the Universal Music
Group.

All of that changed in late November with the
announcement that Talmy and
Universal have, indeed, finally put aside their
differences and will
collaborate on a special, two-CD Deluxe Edition
reissue of The Who Sings My
Generation next spring, probably in May. In addition
to the 12 tracks from
the album, Talmy also possesses the master tapes to
another dozen early Who
sides, many of which appeared on various singles and
EPs back in the '60s.
All 24 selections will be mixed to true stereo for the
first time ever, from
the original three-track master tapes. That should
result in a sonic clarity
that will leave all previous versions in the dust. And
there's more: Talmy's
tapes contain hours of unreleased alternate takes,
which will probably form
the content of the Deluxe Edition's second CD.

The 24 basic tracks that will be heard in true stereo
for the first time
ever: "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere," "Anytime You Want
Me," "Bald Headed
Woman," "Circles," "Daddy Rolling Stone," "Heat Wave"
(covering Martha and
the Vandellas), "I Can't Explain" (their first
charting single in both
England and America), "I Don't Mind," "I'm a Man,"
"Instant Party Mixture,"
"It's Not True," "Leaving Here," "A Legal Matter," "La
La La Lies," "Lubie
(Come Back Home)," "Motor-vating," "Much Too Much,"
"My Generation,"
"Please, Please, Please," "Shout and Shimmy," "The
Good's Gone," "The Kids
Are Alright," "The Ox" and "You're Going to Know Me."

Shel Talmy discovered The Who in England in 1964 and
signed them to a
production contract, produced their first recordings
and then label-shopped
the band, landing a record deal with Decca Records in
the U.S. By the end of
1965 the two had parted ways, but Talmy owned all the
early master tapes and
has guarded them carefully over the ensuing decades,
keeping them in a
temperature-controlled vault.

Although Decca and then MCA could release and
re-release the 24 songs all
they wanted, they only had the original mono mixes
that Talmy delivered to
them, and the "fake stereo" that was innocently
cobbled together in the '60s
(not by Talmy), which is now heavily frowned upon.
Talmy's multi-track
master tapes could easily be mixed to stereo at any
time. if the incentive
was there. So Talmy has always held a strong trump
card, but couldn't do
anything without MCA's cooperation. The impasse grew
into acrimony with the
passage of time. "I've had to fight for my legal
royalties for years," Talmy
told ICE in 1997 (issue #121), "because I was getting
fucked by the record
labels, and you can quote me on that."

So what happened to thaw the iceberg? "It all really
happened because I
finally decided to put up a Web site this year," Talmy
now tells ICE,
referring to www.sheltalmy.com. "From that, everything
just sort of
happened. I started getting contacted by people that I
hadn't heard from in
years, and at one point, [Who leader] Pete Townshend
actually e-mailed me,
and we've been in touch ever since.

"Basically, Pete and I found out that various things
had been told to us
individually that were not exactly the 100% bona fide
truth, and that we
were really far more on the same page than off of it,
so it all sort of
finally came together." Townshend and his personal
engineer Jon Astley will
not be involved in the new mixing or mastering,
although - as a professional
courtesy - the Who members will have some say in what
unreleased material is
used.

Speaking of which, "I have tons of outtakes," Talmy
says, "like maybe 10-11
takes of 'My Generation,' something like that - but
not all of them complete
takes." How much tape, in all? "I don't know. 20
different reels, maybe.

"I've listened to everything [recently], and the tapes
are in fabulous
shape. I used old AGVA tape, which used to wear the
heads out, but the tape
itself is in fabulous condition." Talmy says Who fans
have been imploring
him not to use noise reduction: "I keep getting
e-mails saying, 'Leave the
hiss on the tapes!' So I recently posted to my Web
site, 'Sorry, guys, there
is no hiss on the tapes.' You know the term
'signal-to-noise ratio'? Well,
the more signal there is, the less noise, and I always
cut things as hot as
I could, so there's virtually no hiss. Or distortion,
I should add." Talmy
says that he'll be mixing the multi-track tapes to
analog, "but I'm also
simultaneously going to mix it to DSD (Direct Stream
Digital) for Super
Audio CD (SACD)."

Andy McKaie, Sr. VP of A&R for Universal Music
Enterprises, tells ICE, "I've
been in the studio and listened to the tapes, and it's
all there - alternate
takes, breakdowns, instrumentals, even a cappella."
What about the young
band members clowning around in the studio? "There
aren't any studio
hi-jinks," McKaie says. "It's not A Hard Day's Night.
They were pretty
well-rehearsed. So it's just a matter of picking the
right stuff and putting
it together. Those three-tracks are as smart as can
be, with beautiful
sound, so it's gonna be awesome."

We asked Talmy if Townshend was showing any signs of
wanting to run the show
at this early stage. "No, not at all," he says.
"People don't realize that I
didn't just go in the studio and say, 'Now, what are
we going to do today,
guys?' I knew about 90% of what was going to happen,
because of rehearsals.
If anything wonderful happened apart from that, I'd
leave it in. But I was
paying for it, it was my money, and I didn't have much
of it [laughing]."

The two-disc set's track list probably won't be
determined until early in
2002, but the most likely scenario has the 24 masters
appearing on Disc One
and unreleased material occupying all of the second
CD. Because of the
tracks' short length and the usual costs incurred,
however, collectors
should not get their hopes up for 79 minutes' worth of
outtakes. McKaie, who
's producing the reissue, says, "I hope to have in the
vicinity of 40 tracks
total, so you're talking about maybe 100 minutes of
music. That's very
substantial; Bob Marley's Catch a Fire Deluxe Edition
was only 80-something,
grand total."

ICE will print the complete track list for The Who
Sings My Generation
Deluxe Edition as soon as the repertoire is selected.

(C) 2002 Howard Communcations, Inc.
All rights reserved.

--
-Brian in Atlanta
The Who This Month!
http://www.thewhothismonth.com
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