HW: Voiceprint, and How do you like your Hawkwind sir?

[Doug Pearson]

Hi Jon,

let's see if I can make it through this (and cut down a wee bit on the
size) ...

On Thu, 8 Aug 2002 22:48:39 +0100, Jonathan Jarrett
<jjarrett at CHIARK.GREENEND.ORG.UK> wrote:
>On Thu, Jul 11, 2002 at 03:21:21PM -0400, Doug Pearson typed out:
>> ... [Oz-It] who just (finally!) released Captain Beefheart's 'Bat
>> Chain Puller' sessions on CD, so you will NOT hear me complain one
>> word about that label!
>
>        Mmm. I heard dubious things about that release. Thanks to Google
>Groups I can repost them, too. You will find in alt.fan.capt-beefheart, or
>you would if it hadn't long expired, this message:

Most interesting ... thanks for digging these up ... I'll have to check the
full threads sometime ...

[forwarded usenet messages snipped]

>        Here he refers to _I'm Gonna Do What I'm Gonna Do: live at My
>Father's Place 1978_ on Rhino Handmade which is quite fun; I got it
>along with _St Cecilia_. The trombone is a bit loud but it's clear
>enough. And the encore comes on a separate 3" mini-CD so you have to
>love that. But I digress...

I haven't heard the Rhino version.  But for the price, it had better sound
three times better than the OzIT version!

>        So, in summary, they've used tapes worse than the most
>available bootleg, filled it up with live stuff of which two tracks
>actually justify the hype, but the rest is already legitimately out
>there bar one, and all sounding terrible, the mastering's sloppy, the
>sound is bad, and the liner notes downright wrong. Sounds like an
>Oz-IT:Morpheus job to me, sorry to say. Okay this critic's a purist
>fan, most probably, but you can safely say that had Oz-IT just procured
>themselves a copy of one of the bootlegs of _Bat Chain Puller_ and
>pressed that they'd have had a better product. Now the chances of Gial
>Zappa ever releasing the real thing are even further reduced because
>there's already a `legit' version out there. Hmph.

While I don't deny a fundamental truth to that, in that OzIT definitely
could have done a better job on those, it does seem like this JWB person is
overreacting a bit, and represents something of an extreme viewpoint (he
even says, "Why am I the only person here who seems to think this?").  I
have the 'Bat Chain Puller'/'Safe As Milk (mono)' bootleg he refers to, and
yes, there's less hiss (and I haven't been able to hear artifacts of
digital hiss-removal processing, which can sometimes add crunchiness that's
worse than the hiss itself), but the sound quality doesn't seem *that* much
better than the OzIT version to my ears.  And I wouldn't hold my breath for
any Beefheart material coming out of the Zappa estate, if only because they
have so much Zappa stuff to deal with already!

>> > ... but on the other hand they get the stuff out
>> >there. They are essentially a distributor so maybe that's why, but
>> >incomplete tracklists, botched credits, substandard artwork, no
>> >post-production, you can say all this about so many of their products,
>>
>> This is true for a lot (but not all!) of the Hawkwind stuff, but, for
>> instance, the Man and Fall reissues are *very well* done IMHO ...
>> ....  And "find-the-mistakes-in-the-credits" has
>> been a fun game for Hawkwind fans since long before they started
>> releasing stuff through Voiceprint (hello, Doug Buckley!).
>
>        Ho yus indeed. But when it was EBS doing it it was just typoes
>and imaginative additions of credits for new synth backings. Not the
>wrong tracklist.

The tracklisting and indexing didn't quite match on 'Distant Horizons'
(although, technically the tracklist was "correct", and not nearly as bad
as on 'In Your Area').

>        What Man issues have they handled? I thought all Man stuff was
>coming out on BGO? Lots of it does seem to be...

They have a 'Point' imprint through Voiceprint (just as Dave has the 'Hawk
Records' imprint).  As you can see, they've reissued the crucial UA studio
and live albums:
http://www.voiceprint.co.uk/point/

>        EBS didn't actually issue anything after that, so you could say
>they never got the chance. _Distant Horizons_ wasn't ready but it
>doesn't sound bad, it just sounds unfinished to me.

Yes, either a rough mix, or a non-mastered final mix.  And it was a major
disappointment to see that cover art after stuff like the 'Love In Space'
double-CD cardboard sleeve.

>And I'd rather have
>it that way, with proper mixing, than _Yule Ritual_'s Dave-up
>Jerry-down post-production, and I agree with you about the bass.

The bass sounds exactly right on the TotalRock broadcast version of the
show, but of course, that was only 1/3 of the songs.

>I do
>think it's the best thing Voiceprint have issued under the HW name in
>terms of the label's input but it still leaves something to be desired
>as a release.

The recent 'Nottingham 90' release is quite excellent.  It doesn't sound to
me like there was any significant post-processing, and it sounds like it
doesn't need it (even if the quality of one of the two source tapes is
slightly better than the other).

>> I believe that Voiceprint have made a replacement booklet available for
>> free (has anyone gotten one?).

hmmm ... I guess not.

>> If that's true, they deserve a lot of
>> credit for it (just as they do for properly repressing 'Spacebrock').
>
>        I believe they said they would do it but no-one has one. And I
>also believe they repressed _Spacebrock_ because they hadn't done a
>full run yet and Dave rang them up and gave them hell. It's up to Dave
>whether or not they can release after all.

Yes, I'm sure of that.

>I'm sure they'd have carried
>on if he hadn't protested. And using the wrong tape is not a thing you
>want a label to be doing haphazardly. It's not like this is an amateur
>concern, they're turning over thousands of units.

We don't know whether or not they had the "right" tape at the time, or if
they had any other reason to know that the tape they had was the wrong one.

>> Well, there's only so much you can do to clean up a lo-fi live recording.
>> The problems with 'Glastonbury 90' are especially troublesome; filtering
>> out wind noises and audience speech are next to impossible...
>
>        Does it strike you that anyone tried?

My point is, that for this particular tape, there's nothing that you can
really do until you invent a time machine, go back, and shoot the dog.
Something like 'Atomhenge 76' sounds more like the kind of recording that
could have been improved a bit, but it's not that bad, and may even have
been cleaned up for the release, I'm not sure.

>Rob Ayling posted here
>saying, more or less, that he just took the tape Dave gave him and
>pressed it. Again not great business practice IMO.
> ...
>        Oh no. I agree with you, I'm being realistic, I just don't
>think effort has been made to get them `as good as they'll get', or to
>indicate how good they aren't.

This comes down to a question of whose responsibility it is to put in the
effort to make them "as good as they'll get".  If a label is ONLY handling
manufacturing/distribution, it's not their responsibility to do the
mastering and other post-processing; it's only their responsibility to
deliver the master tape to the replicator.  On the other hand, if the label
has actually *signed* the band, then it *is* their responsibility.

>        I think the slew of Voiceprint material may have something to
>do with the drop in price of the jewel-case remasters.

I would suspect that it has more to do with switching from very expensive
custom packaging to standardized jewel cases.  I seriously doubt that EMI
would feel the least bit threatened by any Voiceprint release (they seemed
to have no problem getting Weird 106 pulled for containing EMI-era
material, which I strongly suspect is the reason for its deletion [I can
think of only one other plausible explanation]).

>On the other
>hand lots of EMI's remasters seem to be going cheap at the moment
>too: HMV haven't caught up with it yet but I can find the Deep Purple
>Mk II remasters for less than a tenner now, even the 2CDs. They were
>overpriced, however. I can see EMI bringing the price down to make sure
>it's their stuff that gets picked in that situation, all the same.

Yeah, I've noticed this too.  I've picked up some good EMI UK reissues
recently at surprisingly reasonable prices (the first 3 Pink Floyd singles
on one CD in a gatefold cardboard sleeve ... YUM!).

>        You do also appear to be right about the Voiceprint royalties,
>as I say, so that does explain a lot. And of course we know how they
>can afford to pay those royalties, right, because they aren't exactly
>running a high-cost quality operation here.

Yes, that definitely uncovers part of the mystery.  I guess you get to pick
two items out of three when you select your reissue label:
1) Reasonably priced CD's
2) Good royalties paid
3) Quality product

>        I do like _Text of Festival_ even if there's a reason that
>second LP has never made it to CD (cor dear it's ropey, and not just
>for dropouts and fading... ),

... but I still love it, warts and all, since it presents a fully-jamming
side of Hawkwind that no other official release (except the Watchfield
Festival snippet on Anthology/Acid Daze) comes close to.

>but _Yuri Gagarin_ is unparalleledly awful

No disagreement there!

>and it annoys me a great deal that I have to have it just so I
>can occasionally play `Wage War' and `In The Egg', because nothing else
>on there is audible enough to be worth the candle.

I'm afraid I rarely even listen to those two.  Fortunately, there's sort of
an alternate version of "Wage War" in the middle of the Hawklords (Weird
104) version of "Urban Guerilla" ... the words are almost the same.

>And again, "what it
>is" is not stated on the sleeve. I have a copy which does say inside,
>"The quality is sometimes raw...", which must be Dave Anderson's
>biggest ever understatement and has boring grey artwork but it was
>going at full album price when I first saw it (I got it at half
>eventually) and the numerous subsequent issues have shiny artwork and
>no such indication that what you're about to listen might be awful. So,
>yes, that is where we disagree, quite strongly too, though obviously
>amicably as all get out :-)

I *think* we agree on this part?  I'm all for the packaging accurately
representing the contents.  Do we differ in that the endless reissuing of
the same material over-and-over annoys me much more than the sound quality?

>        Well, we know from _This is Hawkwind Do Not Panic_ what the
>sound *should* be like... now if they take it from an off-speed fifth-
>generation audience tape with glass-swallowing dog on it I might be
>less enthusiastic...

Can't argue with that!  (And hey, shouldn't we be arguing "Dave vs. Nik"
this week instead of "Voiceprint sorta sux vs. Voiceprint sorta roolez"?)

    -Doug
     jasret at mindspring.com