I have had it up to here waiting for the Beatles catalogue to be remastered

see, that's more credit I've got to give to JPM. Dude never slapped.

“Rain” (Take 5, Actual Speed)

omgggg this sounds awesome!

do I want taxman to slap?

brad I was actually just talking about physical formats because i like to complain lol, the full sgt peppers super deluxe set with the mono mix is on Spotify so this probably will be too.

revolver remixed by droop-e

yeah lol the main thing i care about is that the primary medium through which ppl will newly encounter these records (streaming) has versions of these records that don't sound split down the middle like the cds i had to deal with as a kid

psyched to hear whatever kind of wall-painting giles did with "tomorrow never knows"

the main thing i care about is that the primary medium through which ppl will newly encounter these records (streaming) has versions of these records

q: are we close to a point where perceptive listeners who want to make informed decisions about what they put in their ears are going to be anything other than reflexively skeptical of streaming? i have trouble believing that what most of what is being presented to me is actually what it says it is (often it's not), so the idea of relying on these streaming companies to effectively manage multiple versions or mixes of the same catalogue doesn't exactly fill me with optimism

I'd say your first question should've been: " are we close to a point where perceptive listeners who want to make informed decisions about what they put in their ears will have to make their peace with streaming?"

weirdly the most pointless beatles stereo remix so far is the one i like the most (abbey road)

i prefer it to the original for being less hard-panned! the original isn't anywhere near as bad as the earlier stereo mixes of course but it's still a noticeable improvement there, and there was never a mono mix to prefer.

still don't get why they haven't made the mono mixes the canonical versions in general though

the only people i'm aware of who are reflexively distrustful of streaming live on this website

It's not my preferred way of listening, but I can't say I dislike having it. For those who didn't have easy access to a record store, remember what it was like NOT to be able to hear something right away? For some records, I went YEARS without knowing how they sounded even though I knew about them and wanted to hear them. I had dial-up growing up so downloads and Napster wasn't much of an option.

I didn't JUST realize this, so it's not really a candidate for "puns you had missed," but.

I was pretty old when I realized that "Revolver" was a pretty good name for a vinyl object that you purchase that goes around and around and around

so the idea of relying on these streaming companies to effectively manage multiple versions or mixes of the same catalogue doesn't exactly fill me with optimism

it's not the streaming services that are the problem here, it's the labels doing a poor job of managing their catalogues

'making informed decisions about what you put in your ears' requires like, trawling the hoffman forums to figure out which are the best-received issues for anything pre-CD era & then actually tracking those down in whatever way, legal or not, is usually a pain. i do miss what.cd for having pretty much every version of everything readily available

otm

xp

This is an incredibly niche challenge to have

yeah it's very dedicated music nerd stuff & my point is it's not exactly easy to be on top of even then

trawling the hoffman forums

i rarely take things this far, and in my own way have made peace with streaming: basically, it's good enough in most instances.

and the labels do mismanage (and misrepresent) their catalogues, but to me that's a separate thing from, e.g., cueing something up in spotify only to find it's actually a live version, or a vinyl rip, or some weird alt mix, which happens to me a lot.

if the point was that the average streamer searching for "revolver" in 2022 is going to get a markedly better experience (mix) than from the CD i bought at best buy in 2002, then yeah that's good.

it's just interesting to me that you could take a niche concern like beatles remixes (this thread) and explore it on spotify, since my experience has largely been that you just have to accept what's there.

basically, it's good enough in most instances.

yeah i agree. it can be worthwhile to chase down the best-sounding version of something (usually too much effort though) but it's rare that the one available on streaming is particularly bad - old beatles stereo mixes are an example of this, another is minnie ripperton's come to my garden where all digital releases are sourced from pretty bad vinyl rips due to the master tapes being lost

cueing something up in spotify only to find it's actually a live version, or a vinyl rip, or some weird alt mix, which happens to me a lot.

i'm not exactly sure what you're getting at, do you mean that just the first search result for a track will sometimes not be the canonical version but from a live album or something? that's not much of a problem, just check that it's from the album you want? or do you mean it does that in its auto-generated playlists which would just be annoying? vinyl rips being on streaming definitely falls under labels mismanaging their catalogue in one way or another though

i mean stuff that purports to be what it is not. not sure how else to phrase it. you click on a studio recording but it plays a bootleg instead.

Sounds like the glory days of Audiogalaxy.

does this happen to you all the time or

also all of these problems existed in the cd era :)

i mean i def agree that streaming is a much less reliable and more mutable archive than any physical media that came before it, and you're at the mercy of what a record company has provided and what catalogs said streaming service are subscribed to. if you're queuing something up on spotify and it's a surprise vinyl rip, that is the fault of the label for mismanaging or poorly archiving their catalog lol

or it's the label's fault for mismanaging their metadata, god metadata is such a fucking mess

I'll tell you what's a worthwhile Revolver mix to hear: the one of Got to Get You into My Life from early 70s Apple issue in the US, as played by Robert Rodriguez at the end of the Something About the Beatles episode 241. Press play then scrub forward to 1:06:56 here. As he says, the drum fills not being smothered in horns makes it really work better.

sound quality doesn’t matter, nobody can tell the difference and If they say they can they’re lying

didn’t mean to sound all mean there lol

I'd love to conduct a blind test to see how many people can actually detect the differences between vinyl, streaming, CD, etc.

I'll tell you what's a worthwhile Revolver mix to hear: the one of Got to Get You into My Life from early 70s Apple issue in the US
Wow, that's the copy I bought for $5 in the mid-90s and I never knew it sounded any different. I just played it compared to whatever's on Spotify now and he's right.

I’ve always been a bit 50/50 on that song but I think it’s tipped me over

This is kinda cool too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VE5P7hMkGI

streaming is a much less reliable and more mutable archive than any physical media that came before it, and you're at the mercy of what a record company has provided and what catalogs said streaming service are subscribed to.

right, and my point was that, given these circumstances, when will it become feasible to be the kind of listener who scrutinizes competing remasters while engaging primarily with streaming? i mean, it sounds like it's already happening. i was just sort of noting that this is a shift and that it hadn't occurred to me to engage with streaming in this way.

i should really be specifying spotify, though, since there are many labels on bandcamp that offer releases for streaming with great liner notes that encourage you to engage with *this particular* transfer / remaster / version of a recording. i do think there's something about spotify's interface that discourages that kind of engagement, on purpose, which is why i wouldn't recommend it for somebody who needs to hear, like, the mono mixes of whatever record.

well you can sometimes, it just depends on what the label has available on streaming, which usually isn't exhaustive. a lot of the 60s canon does have mono mixes available on streaming, the beatles have just taken a particularly baffling approach having never made their mono mixes available for digital download or streaming, except for sgt. pepper's which was included on the super deluxe a few years back

idk that i've ever encountered the problem you have where you run into something purporting to be what you want but it's actually a bootleg or something, brad otm about all that

the only people i'm aware of who are reflexively distrustful of streaming live on this website

― flamenco drop (BradNelson)

wait, you can stream live on this website? shit, i didn't know you could livestream on ilx!

(kidding, that was a joke, i was deliberately misreading what you said for the sake of a joke)

New mix of take 1 of Tomorrow Never Knows now streaming. Haven’t A-B listened to it with the Anthology one but it does sound pretty monumental.

sounds a little more centred but barely any meaningful difference

The central crashing tape loop sounds much more prominent to me.

Just misread that as "central casting."

yeah this is not appreciably different on first listen.

Love this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVyRGThtTzA

Yeah, a very different song hidden in there all these years

a+

never thought abt it but makes sense the verse is John and chorus is Paul

crazy hearing the Paperback Writer riff recycled in Got To Get You Into My Life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr10YnGM6Gs

Love this version. Man oh man.

Ray Davies reviews "Revolver" in Disc & Music Echo, July 30, 1966. pic.twitter.com/wsJQsBFRhG

— The Paul McCartney Project (@mccartneyproj) October 23, 2022

I love stuff from the time like this, especially if it's from someone like Ray Davies.

Of course he likes I'm Only Sleeping and Good Day Sunshine - they both sound like songs he might have written himself. Funny how wrong he gets George Martin in the Tomorrow Never Knows bit. And when he said he didn't think the fans liked the "newer electronic stuff" what do you think he's referring to? Interested what "electronic" meant to someone like him in July 1966.

Ray was never particularly interested in "electronic stuff," nor seemingly the least bit curious about it. While McCartney was digging Stockhausen, and while Townshend was giving lectures at art colleges about tape manipulation (a young Brian Eno attended one and decided, "That's just crazy enough to work!"), Davies really couldn't be bothered. The backwards piano at the end of "Autumn Almanac" (a year after Revolver) and the sped-up voices on "Wonderboy" (supposedly a favorite of Lennon's) and "Phenomenal Cat" are the extent of anything remotely approaching any kind of sonic experimentation or risk-taking of that sort in the Kinks' katalog.

But what do you think the Beatles’ “electronic stuff” was for him at this stage?

Tomorrow Never Knows iirc

And the backwards tapes on "Rain" and "I'm Only Sleeping," and bits like the vaguely musique-concrete intro to "Taxman."

Also, Davies owns the "Carnival of Light" acetate.

What is going on in the Kinks’ “Lazy Old Sun”? Something feels “electronic” about that.