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ivan@stellysee.de
| From | Mark London <mrl@PSFC.MIT.EDU> |
| Subject | The missing Flys (UK) songs. |
| Date | Wed, 19 Mar 2003 16:12:44 -0500 |
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The 2 Flys (UK) CD reissues on Captain Oi are pretty good. Unfortunately, it
is not a complete discography. Missing are 3 songs from their first 7" "Bunch
of Five", including the great punk anthem "Me and my Buddies" (much better
than what the the title might indicate), and a scorching earlier version of
"Saturday Sunrise". And the 3rd song, "Just for your Sex", is no slouch
either. My guess as to why they were not included is that they were issued on
an independent label, and perhaps there were legal issues involved. The other
2 songs from that 7" were later reissued on EMI, so that's why they probably
exist on the CD. As an aside, these missing songs also don't exist on the
1991 Flys compilation CD that was issued on a French label (this CD, while
being a real hodge podge of songs, does have some very nice lines notes).
I had previously transferred all the Flys songs to CDR, and cleaned them up,
but a few defects remained on the missing songs that I had trouble removing.
So I've been waiting a few years to find a mint copy of the 7". One recently
appeared on ebay, but before bidding on it, I decided to try again to clean up
the songs, and surprisingly I fixed every defect I could hear. So for all
you Flys fans, here's a link to the MP3s:
http://web.mit.edu/london/www/flys
And FWIW, I recently finally bought the first Captain Oi CD and compared it to
my vinyl transfer. And although I'm not a super vinyl sound lover, I
definitely prefer the vinyl versions. To my ears, confirmed by comparing the
spectrums, the LP versions have less of a high frequency roll off, giving the
LP versions a crunchier sound. I don't know if this is due the different mix,
or whether there was some sort of noise suppression algorithm applied that
caused this. It's not a huge difference, but it's noticable when listening
with headphones. Otherwise, the vinyl and CD mix is pretty much identical.
Almost too similar. I would expected a brighter sound, assuming they had access
to the master tapes. And I'm guessing they did use the actual master tapes,
because on the song "Beverley", the LP version intro is different than the
CD, as after 20 seconds on the LP, the vocals temporarily move to the left
channel. And if anyone happens to have done their own CDR transfer of this
LP, I would like to get your transfer of this song, because my version has a
couple of impossible to remove defects from that area of the song. And since
the stereo is mix is different on the CD, I can't cut and paste it from the
CD. Thanks! - Mark
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