HW: EMI Reissues

[Jon Jarrett]

On Tue, 29 Apr 2003, Captain Bl at ck wrote:

[replying to me, about _Warrior_]

> >         Come to that I can't really find Powell on this album either. Is
> > it just that he played round King so well I can't separate the kits, or is
> > he just not given enough space in the studio miking, or (heresy) was he
> > just not a very distinctive drummer? Yours,
> >                                             Jon
>
> Jon,
>
> What exactly are you using for a hi-fi system?
>
> Alan Powell was a suberb drummer - he played along side King on Assualt &
> Battery, Opa Loka, Magnu, Dying Seas, Kings Of Speed, Reefer Madness,
> Steppenwolf, Kerb Crawler, Aubergine....
>
> Spiral Galaxy is all Alan Powell, as are City of Lagoons and Chronoglide
> Skyway.
>
> The guy's sense of timing was just awesome, man.

        It's actually been this long since I played _Warrior_ again, not
sure what was wrong there, but I gave it a more careful ear this time. I
malign Powell, I admit. `Spiral Galaxy' is very nicely drummed, made by it
in some places. And there's one trademark fill that turns up in `Kings of
Speed' and `Assault and Battery' which I can identify as his because it's
not right for King somehow. And there's some weirdness in `Opa Loka' which
makes two kits sound plausible and I can as I said actually hear them on
`Magnu', so the rest is actually only one kit or spoken word, fine... I
guess the answer I was after was `played round King so well' then, but I
still have this impression that there should be loads of drum sound
because there are two drummers and they just don't seem to have made the
most of that. I was wondering if a remaster would bring out stuff I can't
hear.

        Stuff I can't hear, for what it's worth, on an Aiwa XC-333 playing
through a Sansui A-500 (with the maddest mixed-up outputs I ever saw but
as far I can tell now correctly rigged) into and out of a pair of Phillips
9340 DRC Mk IIs, which are admittedly connected to the amp with network
cable not speaker cable because it was free and to hand and the speakers
are on loan, but still. Will it pass, or should I wait to relisten to
_Return To Earth_ on something better before I finally give an
opinion? Since you asked... :-) Yours,
                                        Jon

ObCD: Michael Moorcock and the Deep Fix - _The New Worlds Fair_
--
          "If you are rich, throw away your documents.
        If you are poor, do so also." (Egyptian proverb)
               Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College