Name: Paul Stoddard
From: Boston, MA
Time: 1998-11-15 14:08:36
Comments:
I went to Tower Records last night, somthing that I rarely
do anymore since their prices went up to mall store rip-off
levels. However, they do have frequent budget CD sales and those
prices aren't too bad, plus it gives you an opportunity to
look at things that you've read about, and catch all the fine
print. I did purchase 3 CDs and, after getting them home and
listening to them, I wish I had confined my activities to
just browsing. I'd like to share the reviews with you. First
is the new Spencer Davis Group's Greatest Hits from CEMA
Special Markets. Like most people, I bought this for the one
new stereo track, "I'm A Man". I had previously mastered
this track from a M- stereo copy of the U.K. Greatest Hits
vinyl LP for my own amusement, so I
was curious to hear what a direct-from-master-tape version
would sound like. In a word: terrible! The intro is badly
clipped off, the speed is wrong, the sound is overly
compressed, and the channels are
reversed with respect to the LP. The last complaint is minor
and can be easily rectified. At first, I thought there
might have been an indexing error on the CD and that the
missing part of the intro would be found on the tail end of
the previous track, but no, it's just not there! So, we
have either a damaged master tape, or a sloppy digital
transfer job. Rating: D. The other two items that I bought
were volumes 1 and 2 of "Wolfman Jack's Let's Cruise" on the
Big Ear label. What attracted me to these were a decent song
selection, mostly late 50's and early 60's, and the notation
on the package that they were manufactured and distributed
by DCC. With Steve Hoffman being DCC's principal remastering
engineer, I figured how could I go wrong? Well, after one
listen, it was evident that the master tapes used to make
these CDs and Steve
Hoffman were never in the same city together, let alone the
same studio. In fact, Mr. Hoffman's name doesn't appear
anywhere on the package, inside or out. These CDs are a
disgrace: scratchy disk
dubs of tracks that are available elsewhere from tape; loud
mixing board clicks where the Wolfman Jack sections end and
the songs begin; and LOTS of mono where stereo is easily
available. It looks like these packages were patterned after
the successful DCC "Golden Age Of Underground Radio" discs,
which attempt to reconstruct an actual radio program.
However, these are a very sorry imitation. The Wolfman Jack
segments are not separate tracks, like the dialog segments
on the Underground Radio discs, but, rather, are part of the
same track as the song which they precede. There's no way to
play these CDs
without the Wolfman Jack segments. The overall effect is like
something that a very amateur disk jockey might throw
together with a turntable, a cheap mixing board, and a
cassette full of sound clips. Rating: F-. Stay away!
|
