Round G: Release vs. Dirty Frank vs. Hail Hail

[tragabigzanda]

I think part of the problem with Release is that it really soars as a live opener, but the recording is comparatively underwhelming.

Hail, Hail is the opposite, and we all have this same frame of reference that we all agree sounds fantastic.

[LoathedVermin72]

"Release" sounds pretty fucking stellar on the record, dude.

[darth_vedder]

"Release" sounds pretty fucking stellar on the record, dude.

I actually like it on the Ten redux / bob mix. I don't always listen to Release, but when I do, it's the 10 redux version.

[tragabigzanda]

"Release" sounds pretty fucking stellar on the record, dude.

You think? I think it sounds dated, and it lacks the rawness and anticipation of the live counterpart.

[darth_vedder]

"Release" sounds pretty fucking stellar on the record, dude.

You think? I think it sounds dated, and it lacks the rawness and anticipation of the live counterpart.

That's why I like the redux version. It has more of a live feel to it.

[LoathedVermin72]

"Release" sounds pretty fucking stellar on the record, dude.

You think? I think it sounds dated, and it lacks the rawness and anticipation of the live counterpart.

I don't think "dated" means anything, and I don't generally care for audience anticipation.

[stip]

"Release" sounds pretty fucking stellar on the record, dude.

You think? I think it sounds dated, and it lacks the rawness and anticipation of the live counterpart.

It's still great on the record. Did you ever hear the rough mix?

[tragabigzanda]

"Release" sounds pretty fucking stellar on the record, dude.

You think? I think it sounds dated, and it lacks the rawness and anticipation of the live counterpart.

That's why I like the redux version. It has more of a live feel to it.

I've listened to the redux once all the way through, and then the odd song played on the radio here and there

[tragabigzanda]

"Release" sounds pretty fucking stellar on the record, dude.

You think? I think it sounds dated, and it lacks the rawness and anticipation of the live counterpart.

I don't think "dated" means anything

You are one cool nihilist, LV.

I don't generally care for audience anticipation.

Don't care for it, or actively dislike it?

[LoathedVermin72]

"Release" sounds pretty fucking stellar on the record, dude.

You think? I think it sounds dated, and it lacks the rawness and anticipation of the live counterpart.

I don't think "dated" means anything

You are one cool nihilist, LV.

I don't generally care for audience anticipation.

Don't care for it, or actively dislike it?

Huh? All I mean is that I don't think that's really a criticism. How is it bad for something to reflect the era in which it was made? That's how art works.

Just don't care for it or about it either way. I don't listen to much live music in general. I'm a little bit obsessed with good production so live music usually just kinda bugs me if I'm listening to a recording.

[tragabigzanda]

"Release" sounds pretty fucking stellar on the record, dude.

You think? I think it sounds dated, and it lacks the rawness and anticipation of the live counterpart.

I don't think "dated" means anything

You are one cool nihilist, LV.

I don't generally care for audience anticipation.

Don't care for it, or actively dislike it?

Huh? All I mean is that I don't think that's really a criticism. How is it bad for something to reflect the era in which it was made? That's how art works.

Just don't care for it or about it either way. I don't listen to much live music in general. I'm a little bit obsessed with good production so live music usually just kinda bugs me if I'm listening to a recording.

Sorry, I wasn't referring to live recordings, I meant the energy a lot of us associate with being present at a show when they open with Release.

To me, "dated" means that it's overwhelmingly apparent what creative technologies were popular at the time something was made.
Ten has that reverb.
Peter Gabriel has that snare drum.
N*Sync's entire sound is dated.

But then some works are able to transcend any obvious dating, because their creators chose to use an aesthetic that was more timeless, or evocative of a time and place apart from when and where it was actually made. Katrina and the Waves "Walking on Sunshine" is a perfect example of a song with a production style that ensures that it will be loved without hesitation by many people for years to come. There's nothing about the song that screams "1985!". It exists apart from the popular technologies that were abundant in its era.

[LoathedVermin72]

"Release" sounds pretty fucking stellar on the record, dude.

You think? I think it sounds dated, and it lacks the rawness and anticipation of the live counterpart.

I don't think "dated" means anything

You are one cool nihilist, LV.

I don't generally care for audience anticipation.

Don't care for it, or actively dislike it?

Huh? All I mean is that I don't think that's really a criticism. How is it bad for something to reflect the era in which it was made? That's how art works.

Just don't care for it or about it either way. I don't listen to much live music in general. I'm a little bit obsessed with good production so live music usually just kinda bugs me if I'm listening to a recording.

Sorry, I wasn't referring to live recordings, I meant the energy a lot of us associate with being present at a show when they open with Release.

To me, "dated" means that it's overwhelmingly apparent what creative technologies were popular at the time something was made.
Ten has that reverb.
Peter Gabriel has that snare drum.
N*Sync's entire sound is dated.

But then some works are able to transcend any obvious dating, because their creators chose to use an aesthetic that was more timeless, or evocative of a time and place apart from when and where it was actually made. Katrina and the Waves "Walking on Sunshine" is a perfect example of a song with a production style that ensures that it will be loved without hesitation by many people for years to come. There's nothing about the song that screams "1985!". It exists apart from the popular technologies that were abundant in its era.

I understand that that's how you were using it, but again, I don't think art being "dated" is any way negative. Some music will sound more "timeless" than other music (Born to Run sounds like it could have been recorded in the '90s as easily as the '70s), but that doesn't make it better than something that sounds distinctly of its era.

[tragabigzanda]

"Release" sounds pretty fucking stellar on the record, dude.

You think? I think it sounds dated, and it lacks the rawness and anticipation of the live counterpart.

I don't think "dated" means anything

You are one cool nihilist, LV.

I don't generally care for audience anticipation.

Don't care for it, or actively dislike it?

Huh? All I mean is that I don't think that's really a criticism. How is it bad for something to reflect the era in which it was made? That's how art works.

Just don't care for it or about it either way. I don't listen to much live music in general. I'm a little bit obsessed with good production so live music usually just kinda bugs me if I'm listening to a recording.

Sorry, I wasn't referring to live recordings, I meant the energy a lot of us associate with being present at a show when they open with Release.

To me, "dated" means that it's overwhelmingly apparent what creative technologies were popular at the time something was made.
Ten has that reverb.
Peter Gabriel has that snare drum.
N*Sync's entire sound is dated.

But then some works are able to transcend any obvious dating, because their creators chose to use an aesthetic that was more timeless, or evocative of a time and place apart from when and where it was actually made. Katrina and the Waves "Walking on Sunshine" is a perfect example of a song with a production style that ensures that it will be loved without hesitation by many people for years to come. There's nothing about the song that screams "1985!". It exists apart from the popular technologies that were abundant in its era.

I understand that that's how you were using it, but again, I don't think art being "dated" is any way negative. Some music will sound more "timeless" than other music (Born to Run sounds like it could have been recorded in the '90s as easily as the '70s), but that doesn't make it better than something that sounds distinctly of its era.

Not better, just different. The studio cut of release has a studio production that is so heavy handed that I can't fully call up the joy I get of hearing that song live. It's like a veil that cloaks the song from it's potential energy. It's the live experience that is better; the studio cut is not bad, it's just housed in an impenetrable package.

[LoathedVermin72]

"Release" sounds pretty fucking stellar on the record, dude.

You think? I think it sounds dated, and it lacks the rawness and anticipation of the live counterpart.

I don't think "dated" means anything

You are one cool nihilist, LV.

I don't generally care for audience anticipation.

Don't care for it, or actively dislike it?

Huh? All I mean is that I don't think that's really a criticism. How is it bad for something to reflect the era in which it was made? That's how art works.

Just don't care for it or about it either way. I don't listen to much live music in general. I'm a little bit obsessed with good production so live music usually just kinda bugs me if I'm listening to a recording.

Sorry, I wasn't referring to live recordings, I meant the energy a lot of us associate with being present at a show when they open with Release.

To me, "dated" means that it's overwhelmingly apparent what creative technologies were popular at the time something was made.
Ten has that reverb.
Peter Gabriel has that snare drum.
N*Sync's entire sound is dated.

But then some works are able to transcend any obvious dating, because their creators chose to use an aesthetic that was more timeless, or evocative of a time and place apart from when and where it was actually made. Katrina and the Waves "Walking on Sunshine" is a perfect example of a song with a production style that ensures that it will be loved without hesitation by many people for years to come. There's nothing about the song that screams "1985!". It exists apart from the popular technologies that were abundant in its era.

I understand that that's how you were using it, but again, I don't think art being "dated" is any way negative. Some music will sound more "timeless" than other music (Born to Run sounds like it could have been recorded in the '90s as easily as the '70s), but that doesn't make it better than something that sounds distinctly of its era.

Not better, just different. The studio cut of release has a studio production that is so heavy handed that I can't fully call up the joy I get of hearing that song live. It's like a veil that cloaks the song from it's potential energy. It's the live experience that is better; the studio cut is not bad, it's just housed in an impenetrable package.

While I love the reverb-laden sound of Ten, I can see why you would feel that way.

[Kevin Davis]

"Release" sounds pretty fucking stellar on the record, dude.

You think? I think it sounds dated, and it lacks the rawness and anticipation of the live counterpart.

I don't think "dated" means anything

I have definitely come around to this line of thinking as well, though it took a long time. I wrote this in the Bruce Springsteen thread last year when someone was talking about the snare on "Born in the USA," and I stand by it:

Every decade has its weird production trends -- the synths and canned snare sounds on "Born in the USA" are different only in specificity from the flowery string arrangements on "Songs of Leonard Cohen," or the complete channel-panning on certain Beatles records. The '80's production style probably stands out to a lot of people around here a) because, in a lot of ways, this was the era where computer technology really became a widely accessible tool for popular artists, and we look back on their fledgling attempts to grapple with it similarly to how we look back on Atari and Apple IIe computers, and b) because a lot of our members are old enough to remember music from the '80's, but had their principal love affair with music at a time when the prevalent artists of the day sought to rid the world of that perceived artificiality -- this was certainly the case for me for many years.

There is definitely a stigma that it is better to sound "timeless" than "dated," and to a degree, I understand this. But as I live through more decades, I begin to appreciate how unfortunate it would be if every record had nothing but an indistinct "timelessness" to it, owing no debt at all to the time and circumstances which birthed it. As time goes on, one comes to understand that era-specific production trends are just another way for records to sound different from each other. Plus I'm almost always a songs-first guy anyway.

That said, I generally prefer live versions of "Release" too, and voted for "Hail Hail" with precisely zero remorse.

[Leatherhead]

Man. Hail, Hail destroys this matchup.

[William Bloke]

I genuinely love all 3 of these tunes, but Dirty Frank isn't in the same league as the other 2. Release has been a favourite PJ tune of mine for a long time, and there's no song I'd wish to hear live more.

But still I gotta go with Hail Hail here. Love everything about it and I think its just the better song. And there's no way I would have said that probably even a year ago.

[Strat]

Hail hail all day long son, ALL DAY LONG