Re: Who CD News -- It's Official: John Astley's an Idiot

[born2run@pipeline.com]

I'm sorry that this post comes so late in the game.  I wanted to comment on
the upcoming Who releases earlier but didn't have the time. 
 
As for releasing Quadrophenia without bonus tracks, I have to say that
Astley's excuse was rather pathetic.  For those who didn't read ICE, Astley
argued that "By the time you've listened to Quadrophenia all the way
through and you're sort of in this trance-like state, the feeling was that
anything that followed would totally detroy the feeling you've left." 
First of all, how many people out there regularly listen to all 80+ minutes
of Quadrophenia?  And what about the semi-trance you're in halfway through
Quadrophenia?  Is that destroyed by having to get up to put in the second
disc?  Not all of us have CD changers.  And as far as trances go, what
about the one you're in at the end of Won't Get Fooled Again?  Apparently
(and thankfully) that wasn't sufficient reason to leave bonus tracks off of
Who's Next.  This is all so silly -- as long as the original running order
of Quadrophenia was retained and there's a sufficient break (say 15-30
seconds) after the end of Love Reign O'er Me, the addition of bonus tracks
would in no way sully the artistic integrity of the core album. 
 
 If Pete was against adding bonus tracks to Quadrophenia, I'd naturally
disagree with him, but I'd certainly understand it if Astley went along. 
But Pete apparently had no problem with bonus tracks.  Instead, Astley took
it upon himself to preserve the "purity" of an album that was no doubt
compromised by the technological limitations of its day, thus disregarding
Pete's preferences and disappointing thousands of Who fans in the process. 
Astley should be aware that some of us will be purchasing Quadrophenia for
the third or even fourth time on CD.  I'd like to get a little more than 82
minutes of music for all the dough I'll be shelling out. 
 
Some of you might be wondering what all of the fuss is about, since Astley
says the additional material will end up on an "extra-long" Odds and Sods. 
Well, he doesn't say which songs will have to be left off of Odds and Sods
to make room for the Quad outtakes.  If the record labels balked at a 2 CD
Leeds release, I can't imagine they'll be too enthusiastic about a
multidisc collection of what they probably (though incorrectly) consider to
be oddities, rejects and throwaways.  And Astley has studiously avoided
referring to the new Odds and Sods as a multidisc set.  So if we're going
to be stuck with a single disc Odds and Sodds (which would be a travesty,
IMHO), the least Astley could do is cram all the regular reissues with
bonus tracks.   
 
And what happened to the complete Quad remix Astley spoke of in ICE #107? 
For those who don't remember, here are the words used to describe the new
Quadrophenia release: "It's been totally remixed.  Again, Bob Ludwig did a
beatiful job on it, Pete was full of praise, and Roger's beyond the moon,
because he was so buried on the original.  We've changed it quite a lot, in
that Roger's voice is much more up front, and we tried to play down a lot
of  the keyboard parts and bring out the band.  That was the plan; in some
places it works, and in some places we had to return to the original mix,
because that's the only way it would work."  That last phrase is somewhat
ambiguous -- perhaps Astley was saying they used the original mix down for
certain tracks.  But in light of his prior discussion of Tommy, I simply
took this this to mean that the remix was more faithful to the original mix
on some tracks than on others.   
 
Now in ICE #110, Astley reports that only four tracks were remixed for the
new Quadrophenia.  Keep in mind that when Astley spoke to ICE for issue
107, the new Quad was ALREADY FINISHED.  So what the hell is going on? 
Can't Astley get his facts straight just once?  I find it odd that Astley
specifically notes that The Rock and Quadrophenia were remixed "because
Townshend felt the sound quality could be improved by remixing."  Wouldn't
that  justify remixing ALL of the  songs on Quadrophenia, especially if, as
reported in Naked Eye, the original two track master tape was lost?  As
longs as the multitracks were in decent shape, a new remix would sound far
superior to a second generation tape, especially when the album wasn't
mixed very well to begin with. 
 
Unfortunately, that's not the end of it.  No, far from it.  Astley goes on
to say that he just discovered -- surprise!!-- the multitrack tapes for
Magic Bus and  Won't Get Fooled Again.  The latter, miraculously enough,
was discovered in an unmarked box.  You'd think that Astley would have gone
through all of the unmarked boxes before assembling the box set, much less
the Who's Next reissue.  So now everyone who wants to get MB and WGFA in
pristine sound quality has to shell out for an otherwise worthless
"greatest hits" compilation that, once again, contains the same old crappy
sounding Shel Talmy material.  Haven't MCA, Polygram and Talmy ever heard
of binding arbitration?  I can't understand how this dispute has managed to
drag on so long.   
 
What's so frustrating is that I've got to believe that the remaining Who's
Next multitracks (along with God knows what else) are somewhere in Pete's
tape library and could be found if only Astley would look hard enough --
and he obviously hasn't.  What worse, once the reissue project is finished,
there will be absolutely no incentive to take a closer look at Pete's
tapes, so if they aren't discovered now, they never will be.  It would have
made far more sense to delay the reissues until all of Pete's tapes had
been catalogued.  But then it's pretty obvious from Astley's comments that
common sense is one thing he lacks.