First recording mistake you noticed

On a Fats Domino thread someone mentioned that the tape drag at one point in Blueberry Hill was the first recording problem he noticed. I thought it might be interesting (at least to the likes of us) to find out what the first problem others noticed was.

I think for me it was the end of "Bird Dog" by the Everly Bros., on my U.K. London 45, where the tape machine suddenly grinds to a halt before the music has quite faded out.

 

A couple of things on With The Beatles. The first was the edit about a minute into It Won't Be Long, where the guitar and hi-hat all drop out for a moment. The second was the end of Not A Second Time when John blows the double tracking by singing different vocals. I do find these things endearing though.

 

Aha! I'm going to check both of those out right now. (With the Beatles and Alley Cat).

I never really realized that A.C. was played by "Mr." Bent Fabric! I thought Bent Fabric was the name of the musical group, but the label says "Bent Fabric and His Piano". Don't suppose that's a real name, do you?

 

John Denver- Rocky Mountain High

There's a hideous vocal punch on the first line of verse 2 at 1:34. It's on the word "climbed".

 

Closer To Home/I'm Your Captain

My former assistant band director (Mr. Gile, you are the man) "got me into active listening." After our first session, I went home abd listened to Closer To Home/I'm Your Captain and hear this "Alright" spoken in the first verse as the verse is being sung. It seems, to this day out of place. It infact may not be a mistake, but sure sounds like it.

Thoughts?

 

The dropout in the right channel after the guitar solo in "Day Tripper"

Pretty glaring; it's amazing that EMI would allow such a mistake to be released.

 

What about the edited tag on "Roll Over Beethoven" by the Beatles where it goes from reverb to totally dry.

 

as posted by MATRIXMAN:
The dropout in the right channel after the guitar solo in "Day Tripper"

You must mean the tambourine that drops out. It's only recently been fixed. I couldn't listen to that without waiting for the dropout. Huge distraction from enjoying a terrific song.

 

Yes, the tambourine and lead guitar overdub drop out.

What's interesting is this really isn't a "tape defect". Bootlegs of the session tape reveal there was a "sffft" noise at that point (don't know why, exactly, as I'm pretty sure those machines couldn't punch-in), and rather than let it be, they tried to mute it. All three mixes (mono, 1965 stereo, 1966 stereo) mute that point to differing degrees. I believe the mono actually mutes it the longest, but because of the timing, it doesn't sound as jarring as on the stereo mixes. They basically took a small glitch and made it a large glitch.

Note some/all of the mixes also try to mute out John's stray "yeah" at the fade out.

For "1", both of these were fixed (1966 mix). For the first spot, anyway, they probably just edited in a small section from earlier in the song - I've done it myself and it is pretty seamless. Don't know why they didn't do that back in 1965, though.

Let's see...I remember hearing the static in the intro of 19th Nervous Breakdown and thinking my record was scratched or something. I'm sure there were others I heard before that, but...

 

I've examined this myself, Luke.

I personally think that it's an "accidental erase" sound.

Someone hit record, went "oh ****", and then stopped.

The guitar and tambourine disappear as if someone hit record on that track...you hear a "tape running past the head fast as it enters record mode" sound, a backwards kind-of "sffft"...and then the guitar and tambourine are back.

This might have happened by accidentally recording onto the wrong track while doing vocal overdubs?

I wonder if this is something that only the engineers were aware of? (At first.)

 

I'm pretty sure they could. For a horrible example of a punch in try right before the harmonica solo on Little Child. It's not really so noticeable in mono because the kick drum disguises it, but on the stereo (or "two track", if you like) it's really bad.

As to why they didn't fix this stuff, George Martin has said that they "really didn't think anyone was listening". I guess they just put their effort into the mono.

I think the second recording-type thing that I noticed, that annoyed me, was when songs were fading out and then suddenly cut off before they got properly faded. (I guess that's related to the first thing, the Everly Bros. thing.) It started with the Monkees 1st LP, then I started hearing it everywhere, and it drove me crazy. So was that the start of this audiophilia disease?

 

The Beach Boy's "WENDY". There's whispering during the instrumental break. Similiar thing with "HERE TODAY".

 

My Industry Influence

I actually wrote Razor & Tie to complain about the remastering on their reissue of Little Steven & The Disciples of Soul's MEN WITHOUT WOMEN, which I had been eagerly awaiting on CD. I don't have golden ears: even my roommates asked if I was playing a dashboard-baked cassette when I popped that CD in.

I got a very nice personal reply from Razor & Tie's founder/president, and shortly thereafter they started hiring Mr. Hoffman for their projects. Coincidence? Not when I'm telling the story!

 

No, that's simply an edit of two different takes, not a punch-in. I don't even think those twin-track machines had sel-sync, much less the ability to punch-in.

Well, they *did* try to "fix" it, they just didn't do a good job. The "dropout" *is* the fix in this case.

 

The first one I ever remember noticing, not including mistakes by the musicians (the bum piano chord in "Let It Be" was the first I noticed there), was the dragging at the end of "19th Nervous Breakdown" by the Rolling Stones. The first time I played that 45, I checked to make sure the record hadn't somehow wandered off center...

 

All these mostly techical glitches - well, OK, fair game. But what about vocals, as in "What did he say?"

The year is 1962; the group is the Duprees. They croon as follows:

See the pyramids across the Nile
Watch the sunrise on a tropic isle,
Just remember darling, all the while
You belong to me.

Nice song... But then:

See the marketplace in old Algiers,
Send me photographs and silvernirs...

What the hell is a silvernir? Something like a keepsake, maybe? There's another word for that.

 

Same language as "sawr", as in "..but I never sawr them winging"?

 

One that always got me was the tape drag in "Working on the Road" by Ten Years After on the Cricklewood Green LP. It'a after the second verse and on every recording I've ever heard.

Joe

 

These were intentional.
For me it was on I Saw Her Again by The Mamas & The Papas, where he accidentally says "I saw her" early, after the break (at least I THINK it was a mistake).

 

Or the language that gave us the saga of "Brender 'n' Eddie."

 

Or like in "I Want To Hold Your Hand", where you can hear Paul sing "shay that shomthing"; seems like Macca liked to drawl in the Beatles' early recording career.

As for the dropout in "Day Tripper", I have a radio-only sampler from 1989 where the dropout is fixed. The company did it themselves, and EMI was not involved. It also has a nice true stereo version of "And I Love Her", available years before the Red Album on CD.

 

Is that the TM Century disc?

 

Yes, man(pun there!)

 

I guess it was the wow on the guitar intros on "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and "Street Fighting Man".

First obvious anomaly was "Star Star" on Goats Head Soup. I learned later on that they had dubbed the "that's what I call obscene" line over top of the naughty line to try and "cover it up". This was on my original US Atlantic LP. Later reissues left the line as it was, "uncensored".

In a Stones book I was reading, they maintain that it was the line with "John Wayne" that got covered up but it was not as obvious.

Also, all kinds of "phantom" vocals and voices on "Angie".