An early Who "My Generation" (New Stereo Deluxe Edition) Review

Well, in reading this long quote:
----------------------------------------------------------------
"I have spent the last 3 days listening to the new My Generation, and I'm so depressed that I can hardly type. As most of you know, we already have 6 of these tracks in stereo on Who's Missing (Leaving Here, and Lubie [Come Back Home]) and Two's Missing (I'm A Man, Daddy Rolling Stone, Heat Wave [Original Version], and Motoring). All the cuts are highly separated with guitar & bass far left, drums & piano far right and vocals centered (typical for 1965 rock mixing). All tracks sound excellent & finally gave a real feel for what was laid down in the studio.
Now, I put the new CD in & instead of the nice clean mixes we previously had, we now have a Shel Talmy overproduced mess. NO wide separation, instead we get an extremely narrow mix with, generally, everything in the center, the guitar SLIGHTLY to the left, and NOTHING out of the right, mucho limiting, out of phase BG vocals, fake left-right split lead guitar (the single guitar in the left on the Two's I'm A Man has mutated into a delayed, double-tracked mess coming from the left & the right). The ONLY track on the whole mess that sounds like it could have POSSIBLY been mixed in 1965 is I Can't Explain, which has all instruments dead center & the vocals & handclaps separated left & right (like on Run, Run, Run), and sounds wonderful. EVERYTHING else sounds kind of like Talmy's mixes of Something Else By The Kinks or Face To Face---in other words, barely stereo but using many more studio processing tricks that were not in use back then. I know this is sacrilege, but even John Astley would have done a better job with this!
I have waited over 30 years to hear a good copy of this record, & now any chance of that is ruined for good!
BTW---the packaging is gorgeous, only the actual MIXES suck eggs!"

---------------------------------------------------------------

I feel this guy's pain, but I'm not surprised. When I mastered the above-mentioned tracks for "Who's Missing", I purposely left them in nice wide stereo. To do anything else would have been "history tampering".

But in the real world of big deal CD reissues, I couldn't see a new mix made from the three-tracks be anything but "modern" and passing muster with the Who or Universal. After all, the last time a rhythm track was mixed to only the left channel was probably when the first Doors album was being mixed!

Now, of course, I've done lots of retro mixes that have hard left, center and right channels and I have no problem with it. In fact, I LOVE IT! But imagine paying "Mr. Who Engineer" all that money and having him turn in a retro wide stereo mix? NEVER WOULD HAPPEN. Besides, he didn't record the three channels like that for stereo mixing capability, that's just the way he worked; rhythm channel, lead instrument channel and vocal channel. For "powerhouse" MONO mixing only.

So, I'm not surprised that the new mixes are practically mono, but still, to have been paid all of that dough just to create another mono mix??? Someone is laughing all the way to the bank I guess!

 

Shel HATES stereo, always did!

Ironic, ain't it?

Besides, the remix of "Miles" is just mimicing an established stereo mix. With this new stuff, there really is no excepted guide, and Shel refused to believe that some of this stuff even appeared in wide stereo anyway (on "Who's Missing"). Tee hee...

 

Narrow stereo was kind of what I was hoping for, but depending on how severe the panning and decorrelation wonkiness gets, I may still be disappointed. Anyone want to bet I will be in line to purchase it in two weeks anyway? I am such a sheep. My 1980 MCA LP in the 2-pack with Magic Bus sounds pretty crappy anyway, so how much worse can it get?

Addendum: To be more specific, my LP sounds like the kind of imaginative fake stereo mix that makes one question whether they have blown a tweeter on their right speaker. It's either very bad fake stereo or a very bad pressing.

Regards,

 

Magic Mike, don't get me wrong, I love a wide stereo mix. Seems pointless to mix to stereo any other way as long as there is something solid in the middle to latch on to. I doubt one other engineer in the entire world feels the same way anymore...

 

I kinda read Steve's posts as: If you must do a stereo mix from three tracks that were apportioned with mono in mind, you might as well make it wide stereo. If you mix it to narrow stereo, you might as well mix it to mono.

The Chuck Berry second thoughts were more along the lines of disappointment that his wide stereo mix did not have the "magic" of the original mono than regrets that he did not mix it in narrow stereo.

Am I in the ballpark?

Regards,

 

Home run, Ken!

Yes. Either a wide stereo remix, or a straight mono remix. Nothing else makes sense. What's the point of teasing?

And yes, my old remix attempts were clean but lack (in retrospect) any "feel" of the good old days, which I feel is crucial to a good remix of classic material. Of course, to get that "magic" is VERY VERY HARD, but I have figured out how to do it. I just don't have much call to put that knowledge into use...

 

I think Luke's point was that if it was "only about the music", all releases would be to audiophile standards, and we would not need a forum to complain about them.

Regards,