"Rough Mix" Should Be Renamed "Crap Mix"!
Jon Astley assisted Glyn Johns on the exceptional sounding original production and decides 46 years later to ruin it!
Where to start here? They still can't spell the late Doug Sax's name correctly so let's start there. It's not "Sachs". They made a mistach on the original, understood. If they repeated it to preserve the jacket's "authenticity", then why add the additional credits? But more to the point, why take a wonderful, magical recording, with depth, space, transparency, transient purity, shimmer, delicacy, three-dimensionality and the sense that you are right there at Olympic Studios while Pete, Ronnie, Charlie Watts, Gallagher and Lyle, Eric Clapton and the others produce musical magic—arguably the first "unplugged" record—and turn it into a flat, compressed, bass-shy, mid bass heavy, bloated piece of dry boombox-like sonic shit?
Come to think of it, why insult shit? All the space is gone, the bass is gone, the transparency is gone, the transient purity is gone! It's all midrange cloud. On "April Fool" on the original Clapton's Dobro has a delicacy and transient purity that thrills every play. He taps his foot and it's as if he's doing it in your room. On the reissue it's thick and blunt and the tap is "so what"?
The shimmer to the guitars, the air and space in the room and all of the other qualities that make you believe you are "there" are gone! In their place is a shitty sounding artificial, mediocre undistinguished recording.
Yes, Jon Astley gives it a new "spin" so if you are well-familiar with this classic, you'll hear it in a different way, and some instruments and vocal parts will deliver a new perspective, but for what purpose? The original Glyn Johns recording was near-perfect. It's a stand the hairs up on your arms perfect. It's they are right there in my room perfect. Now it's "wow I have a transistor radio in my room" kind of terrible.
Play it softly and you'll be bored. Turn it up and your ears will bleed. The amazing part of this is that Jon Astley, who is responsible for this crap of a remaster, was the assistant engineer on the original, not to mention Pete Townshend's ex-brother in law! He's not credited for a remix, just "mastered by" at Close to the Edge. I won't make the obvious joke. But surely this is a remix. If not it's been so heavily compressed and re-eq'd as to be unrecognizable.
The original's meaning is gone. The grandeur of the "stops time" original has been turned into an "it passes you by and who cares" trifle.The finale, "Till the Rivers All Run Dry" is Townshend's tribute to his spiritual guru at the time, Meher Baba. It was his favorite song. The original gets me weepy every play. Johns' miking of Townshend's voice is absolutely spectacular, intimate and "right there". The kick drum is solid, powerful and timbrally "right there". Each hit is an event. When it fades out, you're left in a state of suspended animation. Here? It's a big nothing.
Maybe Pete likes this? I couldn't care less. It's garbage.
Worse, Jon Astey's father and Pete's ex father-in-law Edwin Astley did the spectacular string orchestration on "Street in the City". The strings on the original sound real. They have weight and texture, growl and rosin. Here they sound real as well: real harsh, real fake, real unpleasant.
I'll give Miles Showell a pass here. He was given a bum file and he cut it 1/2 speed, but honestly I had a pretty well known writer over the other week and he wanted to hear what I was complaining about when I wrote about Miles's 1/2 speed mastered cut of Paul McCartney's self produced and engineered first solo album. Miles had the tape! But digitized it to cut 1/2 speed. It took a minute for this writer to hear that the original was "Woah! Paul sounds right there!" And the 1/2 speed master was coarse and snooze inducing.
Gloves off, I'm just tired of this and I don't care who I offend. This offends me. Instead of spending $39 for this mierda, get yourself an original MCA cut by Doug "Sachs", or better yet get the U.K. Polydor cut by Doug "Sachs", the only difference being plating and pressing but what a big difference! Or get the Classic Records reissue cut by Burnie Gruntmon. That's the one with the unpeelable "Last" sticker on the back because they borrowed my original to scan and no one noticed the sticker! That's about the only bit of levity here. I should add that the GZ Media pressing is outstanding.
I am truly offended by this reissue and $39? Can Glyn Johns possibly not be? His original is a sonic work of art.
