Larry Geller
Supporting Actor
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2002
- Messages
- 608
I have spent the last 3 days listening to the new My Generation, and I'm so depressed that I can hardly type. As most of you know, we already have 6 of these tracks in stereo on Who's Missing (Leaving Here, and Lubie [Come Back Home]) and Two's Missing (I'm A Man, Daddy Rolling Stone, Heat Wave [Original Version], and Motoring). All the cuts are highly separated with guitar & bass far left, drums & piano far right and vocals centered (typical for 1965 rock mixing). All tracks sound excellent & finally gave a real feel for what was laid down in the studio.
Now, I put the new CD in & instead of the nice clean mixes we previously had, we now have a Shel Talmy overproduced mess. NO wide separation, instead we get an extremely narrow mix with, generally, everything in the center, the guitar SLIGHTLY to the left, and NOTHING out of the right, mucho limiting, out of phase BG vocals, fake left-right split lead guitar (the single guitar in the left on the Two's I'm A Man has mutated into a delayed, double-tracked mess coming from the left & the right). The ONLY track on the whole mess that sounds like it could have POSSIBLY been mixed in 1965 is I Can't Explain, which has all instruments dead center & the vocals & handclaps separated left & right (like on Run, Run, Run), and sounds wonderful. EVERYTHING else sounds kind of like Talmy's mixes of Something Else By The Kinks or Face To Face---in other words, barely stereo but using many more studio processing tricks that were not in use back then. I know this is sacrilege, but even John Astley would have done a better job with this!
I have waited over 30 years to hear a good copy of this record, & now any chance of that is ruined for good!
BTW---the packaging is gorgeous, only the actual MIXES suck eggs!
Now, I put the new CD in & instead of the nice clean mixes we previously had, we now have a Shel Talmy overproduced mess. NO wide separation, instead we get an extremely narrow mix with, generally, everything in the center, the guitar SLIGHTLY to the left, and NOTHING out of the right, mucho limiting, out of phase BG vocals, fake left-right split lead guitar (the single guitar in the left on the Two's I'm A Man has mutated into a delayed, double-tracked mess coming from the left & the right). The ONLY track on the whole mess that sounds like it could have POSSIBLY been mixed in 1965 is I Can't Explain, which has all instruments dead center & the vocals & handclaps separated left & right (like on Run, Run, Run), and sounds wonderful. EVERYTHING else sounds kind of like Talmy's mixes of Something Else By The Kinks or Face To Face---in other words, barely stereo but using many more studio processing tricks that were not in use back then. I know this is sacrilege, but even John Astley would have done a better job with this!
I have waited over 30 years to hear a good copy of this record, & now any chance of that is ruined for good!
BTW---the packaging is gorgeous, only the actual MIXES suck eggs!