HW: Hawkwind Onward

Fri Jul 6 12:55:55 EDT 2012

I've read that Ian Anderson regrets using a drum machine in place of Doane Perry on the mid 
80's Tull album, Underwraps, and has expressed a desire to re-record it with live drums. It'll 
never happen, but it's a nice thought. 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Edlund Anderson" <cea at CARLAZ.COM> 
To: BOC-L at LISTSERV.ISPNETINC.NET 
Sent: Wednesday, June 6, 2012 12:21:03 PM 
Subject: Re: HW: Hawkwind Onward 

On 15 May 2012, at 04:55 , Mike Holmes wrote: 
>> The Scorpions just released a "new" CD that was all covers, many of which were remakes of their own songs, mostly the 80s stuff that all 
>> sounded like crap because of horrible 80s production. Miserable gated drums again. So I can understand why a band would do such a thing, 
>> esp. a band that is now effectively retired and won't have the chance to 'repair' that material again. HW could do that with Black Sword 
>> (which I think sounds fucking terrible in 2012) - same with Xenon Codex. 
> 
> Yes, I'd love to hear "The War I survived", "Lost Chronicles" and "Sword of The East" with Richard doing non-eighties drums. As I've mentioned before, transferring the "Space is Their Palestine" insert from Hassan to Sword of The East would go very well. Dunno about redoing Black Sword, though I agree the robot drums make it fairly hard to listen to these days. Elric The Enchanter is possibly the one I'd choose to try a do-over. 

There seems to have been being a trend for re-doing classic albums, often from the 80s, in their entirety. Girlschool, for example, just recently re-did "Hit & Run" .... Pretty credibly, actually; the first track, "C'mon Let's Go" starts off with the sounds of snoring rather than the revving motorcycle engine of the original. ;) That little trick had me onboard for the rest of the show. :) 

'80s production does seem to get singled out for special venom -- of course, it's hard to imagine a lot of '80s pop without those gated drums. I mean, would we remix "In the Air Tonight" to _not_ include them? And would it make sense to re-do stuff by Bon Jovi or Def Leppard without the '80s vibe? :) I mean, that stuff 

On the other hand, it's probably true that a heavy production hand back them did not do wonders for many rock bands -- Hawkwind among them (and, among other things, '80s production approaches did the Sabbath recordings of that era little good, either). I don't know that one would need to re-record COTBS or XC (well, OK, perhaps Danny Thompson's drumming is not gonna win any awards ... but we don-t wanna get accused of pulling a "Sharon" and stripping the original performances/performers off the record ... do we?) but a very serious re-mix might be in order. Depends, I guess, on whether or how much was recorded "wet". Steve Wilson's recent re-mix of Tull's Aqualung stays very true to the original design of the mix -- just basically getting it all a bit clearer and detailed -- but that would probably not the the approach I'd take with CoTBS or XC .... :) 

Listening again ... mmm, yeah, re-mixing the drums to make them a bit more organic (they could hardly be _less_ organic!) would do a lot to help COTBS even if nothing else was done. But, mmm, mere remastering, despite what can be done by a skilled mastering engineer, would probably be insufficient! 

Cheers, 
Carl 

-- 
Carl Edlund Anderson 
http://www.carlaz.com/ 