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ivan@stellysee.de
| From | Mark London <mrl@psfc.mit.edu> |
| Subject | Clovis Roblaine, the Wigs, and other reissued albums. |
| Date | Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:33:26 -0500 |
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I'm semi-surprised that I didn't see anyone here mention tthat the
Clovis Roblaine album had been finally reissued on CD last year. On the
other hand, after buying the CD, I can somewhat see why. Unlike the
Wigs CD, the sound quality of the Clovis Roblaine CD is not that much
better than my LP transfer. In fact, I prefer my LP transfer, because
it's got a brighter sound. I've found this to be a problem on others
reissues also, such as the Toms LP, and Eddie and the Hot Rods "Life on
the line". The bright guitar sound on many CD reissues ends up being
muted, or overwhelmed by too much compression, that results in a heavy
bass sound, and a lack of dynamics.
I used to have a "hot" LP to CD transfer setup, but unfortunately my
turntable died. Does anyone out there have a nice hot LP ripping setup
that could transfer an LP for me? I'll offer $20 (or more?) if anyone
is willing. I want to get a transfer of the Flys "Waikiki Beach
Refugees" LP. I unfortunately mny years ago, discarded most of the
songs from my LP transfer when I bought a "best of Flys" CD from 1990.
At the time, the songs on the CD sounded better. But now on listening
to the songs, I prefer the sound quality of the songs that I had
transferred myself. Maybe my aging ears have changed. And
unfortunately, I also hate the overly loud full album CD reissue that
came out some years ago. So I tried sending the LP to 3 commercial
sites on the web that do LP transfers, but none of them quite matched
the sound that I'm looking for. It was, however, quite interesting to
note how significantly different the sound was from each of these transfers.
In any event, the Clovis Roblaine CD is further disappointing, due to
the fact that it didn't preserve the original cover. And perhaps even
worse, the last song from the album is significantly speeded up. This
must have been a mistake. It sounds like Mickey Mouse is singing it.
On the other hand, the 3 recently recorded bonus songs, show that Dennis
(aka Clovis Roblaine), still has great vocals, and these songs give us
an idea of how the original album might have sounded, had it been
recorded with better equipment, or mixed better.
As an aside, I did a side-by-side comparison of all the Wigs songs on
the CD and LP, and discovered that all the added instrumentation that
was on the original LP , i.e. organ and sax, is nonexistent on the CD.
I always thought the organ sound on "Mony Mony" sounded pretty cool.
And the versions of the "Popular Girl" song are way different, as the LP
version is heavy produced. So I'm not about to get rid of my LP transfer.
- Mark
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