Red Mosquito

stip wrote:with the HUGE caveats that BoB probably isn't comfortable being the first person to talk about the songs and not wanting to denigrate earlier work (why he got tripped up with depth, for instance--probably), he talks about music the same way the band does. For a bunch of extremely talented professionals they are not good about talking shop and craft.

nomorecrackpipes wrote:
Point being: I kind of thought PJ's records would sound better on record than CD and was always kind of disappointed. They didn't really sound much better, I realized they simply had an affinity for the medium, not the sound. The only albums that sounded markedly better on vinyl were Mirrorball and Binaural (I haven't spun Riot Act enough to know one way or another). Mirrorball sounds PHENOMENAL on vinyl, far better than the CD (which muddied up the sound).

"Hey, Neil's going on tour and he wants you to come play keyboards and sing, because Eddie's not going. It's the rest of the guys, and Eddie's the only who could play all of the keyboards parts and sing the background."

Lament wrote:

"Hey, Neil's going on tour and he wants you to come play keyboards and sing, because Eddie's not going. It's the rest of the guys, and Eddie's the only who could play all of the keyboards parts and sing the background."

I had no idea Ed had that kind of proficiency on the keyboard..

nomorecrackpipes wrote:I generally believe the remasters are simply increased volume (I can say Vs sounder brighter, but that's it).

If you guys read books and like music, I heartily recommend Perfecting Sound Forever, it's quite fascinating (it should be at a library near you). It really gave me reasons why some things sound the way they do: why Albini sounds so good (answer: presence), why CDs from the 80's sounded shitty, why you can't hear bass unless you turn the volume up, why some 128k mp3s sound better than others, etc. The entire idea of "presence" makes a ton of sense for an audiophile and makes you want to seek out the really good sounding records.

For the thread at hand, the book has a chapter "The Loudness War" and it explains a lot of people's thoughts here: it's an arms race to be heard over the din of radio and it's degrading the sound, and the author even makes the case that it's hurting bands' careers because of the listening fatigue of the solid brick. The example he gives is Oasis, and I was in love with "What's the Story" but one day I just couldn't listen to it anymore. All of Oasis' albums are incredibly loud and grating and I knew this subconsciously because finding out what the heck was going on. Avocado sounds like the first trio of Oasis albums, which is one of the reasons I can't listen to it much (also: I can't find it).

I was a radio DJ from 97-00 and saw first hand what RHCP did to the meters whenever I played Scar Tissue: most of the time you didn't have to adjust the volume to keep the song from peaking. RHCP would jump all the way and you'd have to pot it down, same thing with Lenny Kravitz's "Fly Away," then countless others.

Point being: I kind of thought PJ's records would sound better on record than CD and was always kind of disappointed. They didn't really sound much better, I realized they simply had an affinity for the medium, not the sound. The only albums that sounded markedly better on vinyl were Mirrorball and Binaural (I haven't spun Riot Act enough to know one way or another). Mirrorball sounds PHENOMENAL on vinyl, far better than the CD (which muddied up the sound). Could a 1995 album produced by Brendan O'Brien have the same problem compression issues commonplace today? I checked the record it credits a separate "vinyl master," so that has to be some factor (combined with how it was recorded and who the artist is - Neil Young has always had great sounding records). Binaural sounds good because it was probably the way it was recorded (with the binaural mics, I think BoB came in at the last minute and mixed some stuff for that one). Didn't look to see if it was a separate vinyl master.

However, it does seem like PJ are learning:



Ukelele Songs is too spartan to really spot a difference, but Backspacer does sound better. When I listen, I want the vocals and music to sound as if they're in the room with me (the aforementioned presence), and at points Backspacer succeeds (the quiet songs).

TL;DR: BoB isn't the cause of shitty sounding records, society is.

harmless wrote:

Lament wrote:

"Hey, Neil's going on tour and he wants you to come play keyboards and sing, because Eddie's not going. It's the rest of the guys, and Eddie's the only who could play all of the keyboards parts and sing the background."

I had no idea Ed had that kind of proficiency on the keyboard..

And yet he's never played keyboard on a single album!

Farmer John wrote:

harmless wrote:

Lament wrote:

"Hey, Neil's going on tour and he wants you to come play keyboards and sing, because Eddie's not going. It's the rest of the guys, and Eddie's the only who could play all of the keyboards parts and sing the background."

I had no idea Ed had that kind of proficiency on the keyboard..

And yet he's never played keyboard on a single album!

He's playing the keys on Strangest Tribe I think. Rival too?

bodysnatcher wrote:

Farmer John wrote:

harmless wrote:

Lament wrote:

"Hey, Neil's going on tour and he wants you to come play keyboards and sing, because Eddie's not going. It's the rest of the guys, and Eddie's the only who could play all of the keyboards parts and sing the background."

I had no idea Ed had that kind of proficiency on the keyboard..

And yet he's never played keyboard on a single album!

He's playing the keys on Strangest Tribe I think. Rival too?

Yeah, pretty sure there's a shot of video of him playing the keys to Rival in their practice space

digster wrote:However, anyone who knows Neil Young knows that proficiency is not really a requirement on some of his albums/tours.

Lament wrote:

digster wrote:However, anyone who knows Neil Young knows that proficiency is not really a requirement on some of his albums/tours.

That's a really good point.

zatara wrote:It is really strange when a music producer in a long interview doesn't discuss music (sound) at all ,especially with a new album on the road. Stories about procedures, time or band dynamics are ok, but I wonder if is just what he is allowed to talk about or he is yet another superficial vacuous ignorant amongst the many that PJ have chosen to cooperate with.
I like Adam Kasper. In my opinion the way ST was produced, was a band's decision with commercial purpose, we all remember the characterizations as the Pearl Jam come back etc, so in that case Adam Kasper served this purpose, the same way he served the Riot Act purpose. Also he did Soundgarden's King Animal which I find very good.

harmless wrote:Again, I refer you to the LO2L 'Go' performance. It's so aggressive. The song isn't even aggressive anymore. They even play 'Animal' and 'Blood' with clean guitars...

VinylGuy wrote:

harmless wrote:Again, I refer you to the LO2L 'Go' performance. It's so aggressive. The song isn't even aggressive anymore. They even play 'Animal' and 'Blood' with clean guitars...

listen to the chile version from this year. Its pretty aggressive.

zatara wrote:It is really strange when a music producer in a long interview doesn't discuss music (sound) at all ,especially with a new album on the road. Stories about procedures, time or band dynamics are ok, but I wonder if is just what he is allowed to talk about or he is yet another superficial vacuous ignorant amongst the many that PJ have chosen to cooperate with.
I like Adam Kasper. In my opinion the way ST was produced, was a band's decision with commercial purpose, we all remember the characterizations as the Pearl Jam come back etc, so in that case Adam Kasper served this purpose, the same way he served the Riot Act purpose. Also he did Soundgarden's King Animal which I find very good.