Not Trashing Eric- Honest!!!

[Carl E. Anderson]

> I'm not sure Club Ninja was great, but it was certainly better than
> "Winger"- remember that moron?  He's probably leading the band in a gay
> dinner theatre right now.

        Oohh!  "Winger & the Magi-tones".  Will he have pink upholstered
amps?  The Murf & the Magi-tones scene from _The Blues Brothers_ is
one of my all-time favorite images of the bottom of the heap :)

> Actually- having put the old thing on the turntable and given it another
> listen after this back and forth, it seems to me that what I really hate
> about Club Ninja is not the songs- it's the production!
> Any thoughts on that?

        I would agreed :)

> I worked in a studio as an engineer and I've played
> in bands and I think I can say without serious contradiction that poor
> production can ruin a good song as sure as a poorly placed turd can spoil a
> punchbowl.
> Club Ninja has that goddamn Bob Rock/Rupert Hine way too crisp let's all be
> frigid-digital sound to it.  It's like a dentist's drill in my ears.  This
> is why I like Led Zeppelin and the Smashing Pumpkins, but threw away my
> 80's heavy metal records (actually I gave them away to some High Fivin'
> Mothers)- the production techniques popular in the 80's threw thebaby out
> with the bathwater trying to make everything sound like a CD.

        Yes, CN and RbN are just too slick without enough balls left to
them.  There's a visceral appeal on some of the older albums that makes
them rise above the admitedly crappy production on _them_.  Some of
the mid/late period BOC albums manage to get a good clean sound without
losing the immediacy, the part of the sound that reaches out and gets
you without fading in to the background.  They have no life.

        Mind you I think the sound on _CC_ is less than top-notch
(the delay/reverb on the guitar is often very uneven and unnatural
sounding--listen to the beginning of ETI) the sound, overall, was
MUCH more like what I expect from BOC than is found on RBN and CN.
Is this just an artifact of covering the old songs? Or does this come
out of their live sound.  And will their live sound translate successfuly
to disc when the record new material?  I thought the sound on the
Bad Channels tracks was fine (well, the drums were mixed a little high and
too reverby, but that was the fashion at the time).

        If they can get back to a sound closer to _FoUO_ (ignoring
Al's prominence in the productio on that one for the moment ;) that
would be no bad thing.

Cheers,
Carl

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Carl Edlund Anderson              "So that's Terra.  Oohwee, look out
ASNAC Dept., Cambridge U.          wenchlings, here come the Hawklords."
cea20 at cus.cam.ac.uk                -Lord Lemmy (Hawkwind, _Space Ritual_)
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