New Shadows CD

[GoldenStreet]

Jim,

To my 61 year-old ears, I have to say Apache (CD1, track 5) sounds like the good old original MONO mix, albeit a superbly "clean" version - I don't think there is much mock stereo about this track! Pity about FBI, though. You could well be right about the SA live tracks, as it is a few years since I last heard the EP itself, admittedly.

Bill

[malcolmc7]

Re. Jim's query about the provenance of Apache (post #149). Les Woosey and I are agreed that it's an untidily doctored version of what we classify as "Mix 2" in the CD Guide and describe as "enhanced mono". This reprocessing and others like it go back to a time when stereo versions of Shadows numbers were either hard to come by or (as in this case) not available at all. It surfaced on a French LP from 1967, and on a different one in 1976. Three French CDs picked it up, two from 1989 and the other from 1991. Some differences in the soundstage (what there is of it) are detectable amongst this little lot, but they are slight.

On the Smith & Co issue some effort has been made to clean up the dire sound of the resultant mix, but in the process the left and right channels have been reversed. Why anybody thought it necessary or desirable to mess about with this of all tracks is anybody's guess.

Malcolm C.

[JimN]

Thanks, Malcolm.

I knew I hadn't imagined it, and your opinion on these things is highly valued.

JN

[GoldenStreet]

Malcolm,

I appreciate your clarification of the technical aspects (I readily concede my total ignorance here) of this version of Apache. Perhaps "enhanced mono" is a more apt description of the "openness" that, admittedly, is clearly audible and which I should have detected previously in the context of the discussion.

I suppose as Apache is the iconic track (it started the whole revolution, as it were) the temptation is always there to fiddle with it in a misguided attempt to further "improve" it in some way in this digital age! Is it clear which other tracks may have been reprocessed in this way?

Bill

[malcolmc7]

Hello Bill

Thanks for this. I appreciate the point you make about the advent of the digital age which has left the way open for even more intensive mindless vandalism of this kind. In this case though it really is hard to fathom how what has been done could ever have been regarded even by the most extreme eccentric as effecting any sort of improvement.

I'm not sure what you mean by other tracks. I've only listened once to the other singles on the set but they did strike me as a bit lacking in punch, certainly nothing special. It would be possible I dare say to track down where they have been lifted from but I can't see that it would be worth the bother.

If you mean other manipulations of the kind we have been discussing, this same 1967 French LP ( and the LP/CDs that followed on) also reprocessed F.B.I., The Frightened City and Kon-Tiki, with equally grim results. There are other, different alternative (in the sense of interfered with) versions scattered about in CDs from France from early on in the history of the medium.

Best wishes
Malcolm

[Fenderman]

I was visiting my mum's recently and she was playing something like 'Air Guitar Anthems' and FBI was on it. The version was slower that the original, it was as if the tape was being played slow. Why someone felt the need to do that i don't know but it ruined the whole feel of the track.

[malcolmc7]

Roy
What you heard was the track as presented on early copies of The Best Air Guitar Album In The World (Virgin 2002). An incorrect transfer from DAT to master resulted in a change of key. The error was soon spotted and the product swiftly withdrawn and replaced with an amended version.
Malcolm C.

[iefje]

I have a copy of the "Just About As Good As It Gets!" double CD. My question still is: are the nine recordings from the Paris Olympia legally released on this compilation?

[Mark Daniels]

worth another read