How do you remaster a two track master? I could see running it through some kind of filter, or digitizing it and using some weird electronics or computer programs to “clean” it. Maybe there’s something I don’t know about mastering and remastering CDs.
I’m babbling because I went CD shopping last night, and one of my picks was the new version of Hendrix – Electric Ladyland. No complaints about the mastering at all – and its cool that it all fits on one CD without any problems. The new artwork is cool, especially the hand-written letters inside. I like it because I had this album on vinyl, an old copy from the sixties that had warps and skips and problems, but I listened to it anyway. I still have a tape that I practically memorized, along with the skips and problems. Today was the first time I heard Little Miss Strange without a giant gap in the guitar solo, where my needle would always go airborne and jump past a good 20 seconds of the album.
This is the kind of album I like. It’s got lots of different types of music, and it is LONG. You can put it in and sit back or work on a book or some cleaning or whatever, and it plays out for a while. One of my biggest pet peeves about the death metal scene was that all of the albums were like 28 minutes long. By the time you put it in the player and sit down in your chair, its halfway over. Ladyland is an awesome album to put in on a rainy day when you don’t want to get out of bed. Actually, the song Rainy Day, Dream Away is the perfect Seattle song to play when you’re pissed off about the weather. It lets you chill out, and then from that, you go right into 1983… and everything is cool.
My other purchase was The Beatles (aka the white album). As a long two-disc, this is similar to the above. But the white album reminds me of a different period of time – I think I talked about this before – but about five years ago, I knew nothing about the Beatles, and just decided I had to own all of their albums. So I started buying stuff and reading books, and worshipping the Beatles. Because of this, all of my friendships and memories and problems and stories from 1992 are somehow set to a Beatles soundtrack. All of my Beatles stuff went when I sold most of my CD collection in 1995 (which was stupid). Listening to the CDs now is like some kind of time machine, which is both good and bad.
I’ve been thinking about only buying CDs that are older than me for the rest of the year. Of course, that isn’t too long – 3 paychecks, I think. I’d like to start collecting James Brown stuff, but that’s a lot of stuff…
I wanted to write today, but I spent my time doing, well not much. I should try to belt out a few words before lunch is over…