Guilty Razors unissued LP reissue : the long road

Hi guys, I'm new here, and I'm CEO of the Seventeen Records label.
I specialise so far in reissues of seventies stuff, and I would like to share with you the long road that took our current project, the unissued Guilty Razors LP / CD from 1978.

I welcome any input, question etc on this one, and I'm posting it to show you all audio restoration work may have their bits of trouble, but you can always overcome them, with time and tenacity.

OK, I imagine the first question all you guys will have is "who are the guilty razors ?"

Let me tell this particular tale to you...

"I don't wanna be a rich !"
THE GUILTY RAZORS PRODUCTION DIARY PART 1

For thousands of fans around the world, The Guilty Razors are probably the best punk rock band that ever existed, the most violent, the most extreme, the most nihilistic, making even the Sex Pistols looks like comedians in comparison.

Just think about it :

- The band was discovered by the only other french anarchist punk band Metal Urbain, and shared most of their gigs with them.

- They probably gave less than 20 gigs in their two years of existence.

- They were more dangerous than Sid Vicious or the most hardened skinheads : they would threaten punters with knifes in front of gigs, in order to steal their wallets, and would smash their way to any party, drinking and eating anything they could find, including the ladies. Stories of stolen motorbikes from their own audience, trashing pop singers at parties etc abound, and are legendary. Some of them are true, other false, but you get the picture...

- They were signed to Polydor, and recorded "I don't wanna be a rich", an ultra-violent, Stooges on amphetamines like 3 tracks vinyl EP, which was pressed, but never distributed. The sleeve says it all. (see below). At the eleventh hour, Polydor got cold feet, because of the violent content, and the band bad behavior. They withdrew the EP from distribution, and pulped all the pressing. Only a few copies sent to journalists for reviews survived, and became instant collector's item, going up in the range of 100-200 $, even to this day.



- Thought the single was impossible to get, pirated audio tapes began to spread the word, and " I don't wanna be a rich" became in instant punk rock classic, bootleged to death and obligatory part of any self-respecting french punk rock comp.

- They were the boy-friends of THE SLITS, who were actually in the studio when they recorded their single. Singer Tristam Nada had a love / hate relationship with young singer Ari Up.

- Nora Foster, Ari Up mother and wife of Johnny Rotten, once bailed them out of prison !

- They were managed by Alexis Quinlin, who had not yet reached legal age, and falsified his ID in order to be able to sign contracts in behalf of the band.

- They disbanded shortly after, not getting anyone else interested in signing them due to their extreme stance, but not before recording nearly all their repertoire, and remixing the single for inclusion in a never to be forthcoming album, in studios in both France and Spain.

- The tapes sat on a shelf in spain for nearly 25 years, while the main band members, Tristam Nada, José & Carlos Perez, went to superstar statut in the eighties, recording crazed dancing hits like "De bonne humeur ce matin" and "Paris Latino".

- Alexis became manager of Taxi Girl (Daniel Darc / Mirwais (Madonna)), and head of Mankin records, arguably the best original french label from the eighties.

- As time went on, the Guilty Razors became more and more known worldwide, and their reputation as one of the greatest unrecorded rock band of the last century grew up to mythical proportions.

...(to be continued)

 

Since 1978, GUILTY!, the unissued Guilty Razors LP, have become a holy grail, a dream for most fans of french punk rock.

The single, of course, became a highly coveted item, and was heavily bootleged in both vinyl and CD, but fans could only dream about what the LP could have been.

The contents of the album had been revealed in an interview in Rock Hebdo, by Patrick Leleux, where the band predicted a fall 1978 release, and a 15 tracker to be expected, including covers from the Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd and The Seeds, to raise the song count.

Of course it never came out, as Punk gave place to New Wave, and most bands of the class of 76 split.

"Wake up, far in a drink !"
THE GUILTY RAZORS PRODUCTION DIARY PART 2

Time went on, and it wasn't until 2001, that my path crossed singer Tristam Nada again.

We both knew each other from the eighties, as we shared a common passion for american comic books. I was working by then in a comic-book store, and Tristam was a frequent, and noticeable customer, always knowledgable on the most obscure items by Alan Moore or Frank Miller, long before they became media darlings and the idols of Hollywood. By then, no content to be a successful recording artist, Tristam also started painting, and his art was already getting valuable coverage in the media.

I stumbled into Tristam at the Arkham comic book shop in late 2001, (great shop, now sadly closed, owned by the great Numa Roda Gil, son of french composer Etienne Roda Gil).

Rekindling with Tristam was as if no day had gone since last time we spoke. As I told him about my idea of starting a reissue label, in order to get out great stuff that Major companies ignored, Tristam eyes started to gleam.

- "You have to get the Guilty Razors single reissued, on CD and vinyl again ! "

When met up the next year in a pub, we starting talking about the project. "You know what : you should also finally issue the LP. It should have come out end of 1978, with a remixed version of the single, which was impossible to get anyway. We didn't like the single mix, so we did another one later on that was far better.The only problem is, we don't know where the tapes are. We misled them over the years. But José should know !".

By then, half the band had sadly passed away (RIP Jano Homicid & Carlos Perez), and only José Perez, the bass player, who was at the time out of France, may have and idea where to look.

In this pub, we made a pact to try to get that album out, even thirty years after the fact. Better late than never.

And then we realised, as the beautiful waitress gave us mats to put our beers on, that the pub was called "La Guillotine". (As some of you may know by then a Guillotine (french instrument of death) is featured on the banned Guilty Razors single).



- "That's an omen !" screamed Tristam in his usual expansive way, spillin his beer on the table in the process.

- "Let's do it !".

We had no idea that it was gonna be such a long journey...

...(to be continued)

 

The next stop was trying to hook up with José Perez, mighty school bench friend of Tristam, and co-funder of the Guilty Razors, as well as bass player extraordinaire.


"Hurts and noises !"
THE GUILTY RAZORS PRODUCTION DIARY PART 3

It took us nearly two years of scrambled plannings until we could settle on a meeting. We finally hooked up one early sunny summer 2004 afternoon in a café near St Michel in Paris.

It was the first time I met José, and the man who was sitting in front of me was at crossroads in his life. Having become a solo artist under the alias of JoanJo, José Perez had found most, if not all the doors of Show Biz closed in front of him, having, presumably, been regarded as passé, as the hit Paris Latino by Bandolero was a long time ago.

Of course, it all changed when the TV program Star Academy made their discoveries record a single, covering "Paris Latino" that sold by over the million mark. José suddenly found himself welcomed and wanted by the very people who would not answers his calls before !

The punk had become rich, so to speak. In that café (yes, parisians love pubs and cafés), we finally learned from José where the tapes might be.

His brother, Guilty Razors guitar player Carlos Perez, had archived them all in one of his houses in spain during the nineties, right before his untimely death.

-"I need to go to spain, and search it all", told us José "it might take time, because Carlos had 3 houses !".

Over the next year, José would go three times in spain, trying to sort out the hundred of tapes and multitracks tapes his brother and himself had recorded over the years. It was like raising hell, with many tracks in very bad shape (and us being unable to listen to many of them due to not having the time or the gear to play them on).

Some tracks, recorded 79-80, were bridging the change from the Guilty Razors demise to Bandolero, and José had to sort out by memory and detective work if they were genuine Guilty Razors, or just him and his brother demoing future songs.

Jump to 2005, when we finally stuck gold : José found in a box both a couple of tapes, and a safety digital transfert on a hard drive, made by Carlos some time in the late nineties, of 11 Guilty Razors tracks. We were 110 % sure it was the GR : Tristam unmistakeable voice was on all of them (plus it's written on the tape box) !



The tracks were :

1. I don't wanna be a rich
2. Provocate
3. Hurts and noise

The three original single tracks, but remixed for the better, sounding way superior to the vinyl version (where, presumably the original tapes are lost).

4. Wake Up
5. Terrorist Bad Heart
6. Lucifer Sam (Syd Barret cover)

Recorded in Paris a short time after the band had been fired from Polydor, these tracks were available on inferior audio tape owned by the Guilty Razors for years, here they were, in their original superior glory.

7. Guilty!
8. Happy ?!
9. Stupido
10. I feel down
11. Caroline says (Lou Reed cover)

The remains of the album, recorded in 1978 in Spain with Tristam singing before he left the band. There were supposed to be more tracks, including a Mr Farmer (The Seeds) cover, but they were not in that lot.

Pulled together by Carlos, on both tape and digital files for safety purposes, surely this was the album that would have been issued in 1978. We figured out anything missing might have been Carlos being not satisfied with the results, hence tracks discarded.

We thought that was it, but we were not finished yet.

José had just told the good news. As we feasted on the found treasure with beer, beer and more beer, he finally broke down to me the bad news.

-"You know, I'm happy we found those. There's only one problem : the tapes have deteriorated beyond repair. And the digital safeties seems to have been transfered without Dolby A, which means we can't use them either. So I have one question : how are you going to issue that album out ?".

Luckily, I had an ace up my sleeve...

...(to be continued)

 

It's one hell of a gas to find the original tapes of an album every self respecting punk have wanted to hear for 25 years. It's another one when you discover your treasure is nearly unusable, destroyed by the ravages of time, and that the only safety copies, stored on digital, were not properly transfered.

Luckily, I knew the man for the job...

"When I feel down..."
THE GUILTY RAZORS PRODUCTION DIARY PART 4

One of the only remaining alive producers of the Guilty Razors was Michel Zacha, who produced the "Rock d'ici à L'Olympia" album.

I met Zacha in late 2004, while working with Kent on the Starshooter double CD (EMI / Seventeen, ST 002), and was impressed by the man.

His credentials (he might be the only french producer who can claim to have recorded most of france's finest punk bands, including Asphalt Jungle (Poly Magoo single), the Guilty Razors, Starshooter, Electric Callas, Metal Urbain etc...) were of course perfect, but I also was impressed to see that the nearly 60 years old producer knew more about digital mixing, mastering and remastering than myself, which is not uncommon for many old school producers, who rather than stay behind, embrassed the computer technology.

Tristan, José Perez and I quickly decided that Zacha could be the only man for the job of saving this LP from oblivion.

So basically, after trying, in vain, to get new transferts from the totally useless original tapes, we bought Big Zak (as he loves to be called), the safety copies made and saved by Carlos Perez in the nineties.

Big Zak transferred them to his computer, and quickly browsed trough the disaster. As you may recall, these were transferred without Dolby A, probably because the player Carlos used didn't have that. The result was that all the lows were lost, with only mid and treble being heard on the files.

For Zacha, it took just one afternoon to get the files back to their original shape, by recreating on digital the Dolby A equalisation, and applying it to all the files.

Suddenly, the tracks were leaping from the speaker, pounding and pulsing, like they would have been on the day they were recorded. But we were not through yet.

Because when they were transfered by Carlos, they were probably already in bad shape, there were many clicks, pops, cut intros or outros, that needed to be corrected.

Here's the rundown :

- Hurts and noises, Provocate, I don't wanna be a rich

There was no problem with those three tracks, who were the best of the bunch, probably due to having been remixed, and transferred on different tape than the rest. The guitars are way more upfront in this mix, the bass louder, the drums clearer, and in fact it's way superior to the muddy single mix, thought the performance is identical. Some neat effects were added, like the outro work on the stereo, going from left to right at the end of Provocate. Separation is totally better, while the single is mostly a centered mix, here each guitar is placed on one side, like when they played on stage, widening the audio spectre for the better, and being totally organic with the mixes of the next tracks.

- Wake Up, Terrorist Bad Heart, Lucifer Sam

These tracks sounded great, but were transferred too loud, and a bit clipped. It took Big Zak probably a full afternoon to get something sounding good out of them, by working on the equalisation. And that was just to get there, we polished them for a long while, going back week after week and adding some more eq to them.

- Guilty!, Happy ?!, Stupido, I feel down

Big Zak worked on the double on these tracks, which presented many challenges. First, some of the intro were clipped, (probably recording started a nano second after the tape, slow computer perhaps ?), meaning we had work on the intros so that they didn't sound botched, cutting the missing notes elsewhere in the tracks, and putting them back at the beginning where they should have been all along.

Next the music didn't sound exactly like the other tracks, because the Razors didn't use their usual guitars and bass, so more polish had to be made EQ wise, to get them closer in sound to the rest of the album.

Finally, the drums were somewhat down mixed on a couple of tracks. So more effort had to be made to get the kick back where it should be. We did the best we could, taking the time. Anyway, as they were mixed that way, and the multi-tracks are lost (or probably have been erased once the GR left the studio in 1978), they will remain so for eternity. At least, you will now being able to hear them. Better than nothing !

- Caroline Says

This one was a nightmare. The digital transfert was made with the speed going faster and slower during the whole track, making it unusable, as the song was recorded on regular beat. I think the tape may have been already in bad shape when this transfert was made. Or the band was just not on when they recorded it. We had the option to give it to an expert, who said he could get it back on regular beat, by working for a week on it, but we figured the effort wasn't worth it. If it had been a GR original, I would have made everything I can to save it. Because it was a cover of Lou Reed, I didn't really care. We axed the track from the album.

-"We can't issue the album with only 10 tracks, that's too short" I said to José Perez.

-"Let's report the publication date to later, and let's search again" proposed José, "there's bound to be some other track we have forgotten about somewhere !".

It was june 2005. I expected the album out in september, but it was now out of the question. More delay was to come...

...(to be continued)