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Re: QUAD/TOMMY/MSG



At 11:04 13/07/96 -0400, you wrote:
>SK:
>
>>Like most others, I'm not impressed with the Quad re-issue.
>
>I believe that is an incorrect statement; it appears to me that the "love
>it's" are running way ahead of the "a waste's." But perhaps we should take a
>poll now that the first flush is over.
>
>>On both though there's an awful lot of echo, seems they relied alot on that 
>>techneque, but what worked for Tommy didnt for Quad.
>
>You notice after a while that Astley does the same sort of repairs to all of
>the remixes. He isolates the vocals and adds reberb, deadens other things,
>and so on.
>But listening to WHO'S NEXT last night makes me wonder why he didn't do to
>the drums and bass what he did to those on the other remixes. I think it
>would have been better, and certainly more dramatic.
>
>
>
>                   Cheers                   ML
>
>"I think you should keep on playing Rock as long as you have an axe to grind
>and then if you haven't got an axe to grind you should go into cabaret."
>                                                                 Pete Townshend
>
>
>I don't know, Mark, sometimes over-accentuating some of the musical
elements obscures others and fundamentally changes the nature of the song.
Seemingly little changes can mean a lot, and make the difference between a
great and ordinary song. On WN the songs are mainly guitar-driven and could
lose their character as such if too much is changed. For example, while I
like the new Tommy overall, the acoustic guitar and the bass and drums on
Pinball Wizard and I'm Free were boosted or brought forward but the famous
electric power chords were not and to me seem diminished in power as a
result. Yet the power chords were a hallmark of these songs, at least to
me...  On Tommy the bass is now boosted too high IMO giving the songs a
"rubber-band" quality but at least one can use the bass control to fix this.
However on Quad I think Astley was right to accentuate the rythym section
because PT didn't want Quad's songs, with a couple of (partial) exceptions,
to be guitar-driven. But virtuoso bass and drums WERE evidently a key part
of Quad from the beginning, so JA's approach was in synch. I've just
concluded a long drive in a car equipped with a good Bose system with the
express purpose of playing Quad from beginning to end and I did so at least
three times. I think the remix job, at least as it came out on the Canadian
pressing, is outstanding. Everything is sharp, clear and as live-sounding as
possible. Standouts for me are TPMTG, Sea and Sand, The Real Me and
especially the Rock. I think I've now detected some vocal flat spots but I
remember the original record sounding the same in all these places - I think
these are anomalies in the original tapes. Eg. Keith's falsetto goes in and
out at the end of Bellboy (or it may be continued by a synth) but the
original record had this too -  something that always struck me as a
failing, but it would be wrong to change it now. Daltrey sounds very good on
this Quad, powerful and "live". Probably he never wanted to exhibit the
relative smoothness he shows on earlier Who records although on a studio
album vocal roughness can sound unsettling. Also, his voice is now produced
high up in the mix except on The Real Me. I find this is a problem in the
sense that if I want to play the tracks really loud to hear the various
backing tracks as hard rock I can't because Daltrey's voice wells in my head
as the volume goes up and blocks everything else out. Ditto PT's voice on
I'm The One, as some listers have noted. But overall I can't see that Astley
could have done much more than he did to Quad without changing the
fundamentally "progressive" sound that I think PT wanted from day one.
Perhaps in the future law and technology will evolve to the point where each
of us can make our own mix of a record. Eg. on The Real Me I'd get rid of
those clumsy over-loud horns, lower the bass and turn up the Les Paul up to
the stratosphere. In fact I'd do that to ALL the Who's records except LAL
(which doesn't need it) and to most of PT's solo songs, eg. Slit Skirts and
Rough Boys.....Gary M.