Re: Noises on Tommy

["Eddie W. Presley Jr" <epresley@iu.net>]

David C. Olstein wrote:
>I  noticed the same noises -- but it sounds like tape wear and/or
>electrical noise and not a mastering defect.  You can hear similar noises
>on the Allman Brother's Eat a Peach CD (in fact, the noises are so
>prominent that someone wrote into ICE complaining that the disc was
>mastered from an LP).   I've been listening to the new Tommy through a
>headphone stereo system and have have noticed quite a few sonic defects. 
>Let's face it, Tommy was a poorly produced album to begin with, and
>remixing can only do so much (especially when they used the LP as a
>reference point).

        I agree with the poorly produced part, at the time it was
groundbreaking, but today, no matter how much I love Tommy, it is still very
thin in some aspects of the production and arrangements. However, the remix
while stunning, cannot go back and do the original 'fix it in the mix'
things Kit and Pete originally did. By that I mean, when you record in a
studio, you sometimes have stray noises, stick clicks (Keith has a few stray
stick clicks in the underture), chatter, squeaky foot pedals and other
studio and electronic stray noises that are fixed later when you mix the
album. I have a feeling that some of these stray bits are present here.
Every now and again you can here things that while are ambient and you
really have to listen for them, are bits of things that may have originally
been covered up, either in mixing or in the hiss of the CD and LP issues of
Tommy. Actually, I thinks its kind of neat... Like hearing Bonham's
squeaking kick pedal on the remastered Zep stuff, or the squeaky piano foot
pedal on Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies. On the Gold remaster of Bat
Out of Hell you can hear stray piano sounds and Meat's heavy breathing
(wheezing?) on some tracks...