GG: Recent Threads

["John P. Hill" <jphill%frank@ogandalf.rutgers.edu>]

Greetings to the collective...

Re:  Kazdin and his book
I found the book to be interesting reading in that it was written by the 
guy who worked with GG in rather close quarters over a *long* period of 
time.  Any recording relationship that solid is more than just business.  
Clearly, though, Kazdin was/is very embittered.  I met him at an AES 
convention out in Anaheim some years ago and presented him with my copy 
of the Marienleben album hoping to have him sign it for me.  He didn't.  
When I presented it to him, he gazed at the cover picture of GG and 
Roslak and commented (as closely as I can remember):
"Well....what can I tell you about this.....he's dead, she's not..."
Kinda cold, eh?  I would agree with MJ that he presents himself in a 
rather saintly light in the book.  It's still required reading though,
IMHO.

Re:  Remastering & Aesthetics
Eric rasied some interesting points regarding the "sanitization"
of early GG recordings in remastering.  There is so much technology
now available for this process, but not much in the way of ethical
or aesthetic guidelines for how this work is approached.  Gould is a good 
case in point.  He sang at the piano.  His chair made noise.  318 
developed various burps and ticks as a result of drastic adjustments to 
its action and sound mechanism.  These sounds are part of the performance 
that is documented on the original recordings.  For that matter, the old 
Columbia studio on 30th St. (a renovated church) is now gone.  All of 
those great recordings (including Miles & Ellington, etc.) are a sonic 
document to what those musicians did in that room at that time.  They 
will not happen again.  Is it wrong to try to remove the sonic elements 
listed above in remastering?  I think I would say: yes.  Another example 
that comes to mind is the gold, super-bitmap version reissue of Miles' 
KIND OF BLUE.  Clearly a remix, some of the timbres (upright bass) sound 
much better than any of the previous release versions.  But some of the 
funky, 50s-style mix techniques (like cross-panned reverbs) have been 
removed ("sanitized") or replaced by very polite, unobtrusive and "nice" 
sounding 90s digital reverb.  Hmmmmm, let's see....we can make the Mona 
Lisa even *better*....

On the other hand, there are some remasters that really *are* a big step 
up from the originals.  If there are any other MOSE ALLISON fans on this 
list, check out the new box set called "Hi-Jinx", which contains three 
albums from the early 60s.  The remastering points out how really good 
the original recordings were and I'm quite sure they *never* sounded this 
impressive in the original release formats.

Happy listening!


John Hill
Dept. of Recording Industry
Middle Tennessee State University