The Who - Search for Lost Recordings

If you read the whole thing, you will see where the squealing issue, where the sound becomes part of the digital file so as to be not removable in post-production, is referred to:

http://www.richardhess.com/tape/history/HESS_Tape_Degradation_ARSC_Journal_39-2.pdf

Other sources online confirm this.

 

So the Who will be giving away these new 50th Anniversary CDs with bonus fan-sourced content for free, I take it?

 

I'd rather it exist and circulate than not exist.

Especially with bands that were sloppy about documenting themselves - all they had to do was bring a tape deck and spend $10 per show, but they didn't and now they have to pay those that did tape the show - without or without permission.

 

No b

No but how many will they sell realistically?

 

Baking does not cause the squeal, the breakdown of the tape does. In many cases baking will *eliminate* the squeal, at least temporarily.

No, who claimed they would?

If you have something that would be of interest to the greater community, what good does sitting on it do?

 

Who knows? But they're not giving them away. If I had a high quality live recording that they wanted me to give them to sell, I wouldn't give it to them for free, just as I'm assuming a remastering engineer wouldn't remaster the album for free, a rock critic wouldn't write new liner notes for free, the pressing plant wouldn't press the CDs for free, etc.

 

And what high quality live recordings do collectors have that are worth any significant amount of money?

 

All sorts of stuff of interest to the greater community has already been given away for free on torrent sites and on YouTube: the amount of rare Who video that is on YouTube, but not on any official Who DVD, is astonishing.

But expecting collectors with master-quality unreleased material to just hand it over to the Who in exchange for a "thank you" in a CD booklet strikes me as a bit naïve. According to what I read on the forum yesterday, Sony/Columbia paid the private collector who had bought the Dylan Basement Tapes reels from Garth Hudson for the right to use those reels to produce the new Basement Tapes bootleg series album. I'm sure they would have preferred to pay him nothing, and if they could have persuaded him to do that, more power to them. Again, they're certainly not giving away the final product for free.

 

Is there stuff that's *interesting*? Yes. Is there stuff that's of very high quality? That's debatable.

Again: what kind of "master-quality unreleased material" are we talking about? What's out there for The Who that approaches something like the Basement Tapes?

 

I don't know. That's up to the collectors and whatever corporation owns the Who now to haggle out. Unless their "give us the tapes and we'll thank you in the liner notes" strategy proves to be sufficient inducement to the collectors.

 

In some cases Lucpac, baking will dry out the oil (it depends on how much there is and what kind) and make the squealing worse. Baking also does other kinds of potential damage to a tape, as the tape baking entry in Wikipedia confirms. Where "incubation" is not successful, as the article discusses, I suspect the baking made the tapes worse in some cases.

 

Who knows? I'm not a super Who collector. Apparently the band and their record company believe that there's stuff out there that's releasable that's not in their own vaults, otherwise they wouldn't have issued this call for unreleased material in the first place.

 

No, quite simply, that is wrong.

Ask Richard Hess if you don't believe me.

Ah, but "releasable" may be something quite different from "master-quality unreleased material".

 

Whatever word games you want to play, have fun playing them. The fact remains that they put out this call to fans and collectors for unreleased material. Which compels me to assume that they believe that fans and collectors have releasable-quality material that they don't have.

 

If collectors have hung onto valuable recordings without circulating them all this time, it's clear that they're hanging onto them until they can get a price on it - in 2014, the question is: what is the market price?

Given that we're in a situation where multi-disc boxsets are still being produced, albeit primarily expensively in the 10s of thousands for the wealthy but declining boomer (and their kids) market, the sad but vital truth that the hoarders need to grasp is that they either let their collections die with them, never to be heard, or they negotiate a price which allows the bands to release them at a price that will make a return.

NB. It needs to be said that the current owners may well have parted with a significant amount of money to be the exclusive listeners of some of this stuff (and they may even have accrued some costs in safe storage too), but there's a choice to be made.

Sadly, if the sort of price that the owners of the Doors' Dallas soundboard from 11th December 1970 allegedly wanted remains the banchmark for negotiations, we may eventually have to accept that a heck of a lot of some of the tastiest gems we've never heard will merely end up as landfill in a few years' time.

 

It's sound guys and venue employees that squirrelled things away. Maybe TV people made their own copies of things that got erased or chucked. Studio reels that were chucked out.

I think there's a France 1972 Who video that is being held hostage. Not sure if the WHO ever acquired the Houston 1971 video or the full Pontiac video.

 

As with most other things for sale in the market, the market will determine that.

 

One sad truth is that private collectors(without sharing) frequently offer more than the acts/labels offer tape holders. Also keep in mind there is value is the fact a tape is uncirculated and wasn't sold to a b00tleg cd company 15-20 years ago for a couple grand. Offering these guys $1,500 or a pair of free tickets and a "thank you" ain't going to cut it. Put the tape up for auction and let fans fight it out with the act.

 

There are some very informational posts on this topic in this thread too...
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...ntly-being-released-surprise-surprise.368710/
The topic in this thread took over that previous thread.
Pages and pages of it actually.
Fwiw, I like the idea of a thread dedicated to the topic, but there is a lot of pertinent info in the other thread too.

 

The point is, they aren't word games. "Releasable-quality material that they don't have" doesn't necessarily mean anything that will be a significant draw to a new release. Something like the 1971 Record Plant sessions? That *might* be a decent draw (although less so as the years pass). But a lot of stuff likely falls into the "we could release this, but it likely won't be a huge draw" category.

 

As I said above, a lot of this stuff is out there for free already (or "has been shared with the community," as you put it). The whole Tanglewood concert is on YouTube in higher quality than the Tommy material appended to the official Kilburn DVD:



Under the theory that "this all belongs to the band anyway, it's all been stolen from them," I guess the Who's record company could rip this video for YouTube and sell it as bonus material on the next Super Duper Deluxe Edition of Tommy or Who's Next. Or maybe they can persuade whoever has physical possession of the video or film masters to give them to them for free in exchange for a "thank you" in the official DVD that they release. Good luck with that.

 

Good points there, imo. And yes, Maria Koleva supposedly has the film of the Paris '72 concert. Apparently, I mean I have heard it said by a few people as well as seen it written in her own words, she, in other words, has no intention or interest in The Who or that footage but refuses to part with it. Supposedly, some of Daltrey's apolitical or anti-political comments from the interview on the day of the concert did not ingratiate himself to her with regards to the concept or 'reason behind' the concert itself. Other people know more about all that than anything I do, re: Paris '72.

It is a pretty interesting story how the Houston '75 video was recorded that night and that it would surface more than 30 years later. It's a good video, imo. I only wish they would have used more of the 'center stage level' video when they were doing the video that night. The Who do not have any Houston '71 video, afaik which is not that much.

Fwiw, I would imagine that there probably are at least a few real concert audio or video gems that are rumored to exist and possibly a few that do exist without any further adieu, and that for the time 1964-78, which would be the most significant material, I assume there's got to be some good stuff out there.

I think a heavyweight collector, which I am not, might have some interest in dealing with Pete, Roger, or perhaps their inner circle directly, yet may not have virtually any interest in dealing directly with Universal. That is just speculation and conjecture on my part.

I thought Roger paid $10,000 for the Railway footage? Anybody?

 

The Wolfgang's Vault organization owns the Tanglewood video. What does that have to do with collectors?

 

I understand exactly what you are both saying (honestly) - in a healthy music market, this is what we'd see and collectors might see themselves be recompensed appropriately for their outlay/custodianship (although that is potentially a moot point, depending upon which side of the collector/artist divivde you sit on!)

HOWEVER...

My point was that, in 2014, there is already a diminished value to those tapes being hoarded - they simply won't fetch in open market what they may have fetched 5 or 10 years ago. The releasable market for them has shrunk somewhat and will shrink further over the next 5 to 10 years too.

Collectors need to decide (and I'm not necessarily making a judgement here): do they take the money now (assuming cash is offered, of course), or accept that the cash they paid was the tip-top premium and hang onto them, maybe forever?

 

Are they the ones who put it up on YouTube for free?

Maybe the Who can persuade Wolfgang's Vault to give away the video masters for free. Again, good luck with that.