Beats me. Ask someone who'd know. Like Dave Clark. Maybe HE could tell you. Good question, I've always wondered about that too, though the Glen Campbell medley isn't really live but mimed to a pre-recorded backing track. (And apparently heavily edited to create the"medley" judging by the very awkward edits I hear in it.) The singing is live, though. I had the same question the first time I heard the audio from the Japanese concert from 1968. "This couldn't be Davy!" playing on "Salesman," "D.W. Washburn," and a few others. Nope, I was convinced it had to be someone else. Then Monkees Live Almanac posts pictures from those shows and there's Davy with a bass while Peter is at the organ.... And there he is playing bass on songs they never played live during the "Circle Sky" filming, and acquitting himself very nicely! Geez, he's even playing riffs! lol People talk about the improvement in Micky's drumming from the "Live 1967" CD to recordings from late 1968, but Davy seemingly improved just as much if not more as a bass player/occasional keyboard player in the same time frame. His playing during 1968 isn't just better than his playing as documented on the Live 1967 CD, it's also a lot more aggressive. So, that's more than likely him on the Glen Campbell audio. Good job, Mr. Jones! It's not you, but they always sounded like that. Not surprising, IMO. Who knows what tapes were used to assemble the episode back in 1967? Things were really rushed and there was a lot of stuff finished at the last second. A lot of the music was taken from tapes that weren't even fully approved yet (which is why there are so many mix and edit differences in those early episodes.) When you have six different people demanding tapes NOW for various reasons, rejected mixes or poor sounding dubs were bound to slip through. Especially when everyone involved knew in the end it was all going to come out of a single three-inch TV speaker anyway.
It's almost definitely Davy. This picture has been floating around forever and it was taken during the rehearsals for the Campbell show. I find it highly unlikely that he would rehearse with Michael and Micky if he were just miming. Given that they're sitting down, it's almost like they're working out the arrangement of the medley. I would agree that the instruments were pre-recorded, but I can't recall if Andrew had nailed down a recording session date in his book. (I want to say he did not.) Plus, we know that Davy covered bass on "You Told Me" during the filming of "Circle Sky" and was very estimable in his performance. Peter has been quoted on multiple occasions how Davy was a natural musician and took to whatever role he was tasked with very well. He could actually do a little bit of everything: guitar, bass, keys, drums, and percussion. For me, it's akin to finding out that Nez played the piano on "Writing Wrongs" - which is pretty tour de force for a rhythm guitarist.
Podcast discussion about the box (including content and quality, so don't worry). SamePageCast 09 | The Monkees Complete Series on BluRay »
This is perfect! Great job! The monster swinging to the riff is the best thing ever! You should post this on the Facebook pages (Zilch, etc.), they would love this!
Good god can things guys not just get to the point. What a ramble this is.Airheads! Jeez! Peace and love✌
The mag tracks sound really good, overall. Much better than what most of us are used to in reruns. There are little issues that tend to stand out when they happen.. This Just Doesn't Seem to be My Day, in the first episode, is marred by speed fluctuations and flutter (So I walked her to the door/what could I say)- as if the mag track was stretched/warped, or suffered slippage due to sprocket hole damage. I'd bet the latter. Most of the flutter is not on the old dvd version (or, the multi-track fan edit posted previously), but the speed changes are always prevalent. edit/sidenote: A couple of episodes of I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched on dvd are plagued with a similar wobbly effect, but it runs the whole length of the program. Like a software/telecine problem? Kinda off topic, but it further illustrates that stuff like that happens. Dialogue for some episodes is often plagued with sibilance, likely due to vintage mixing and recording methods. Listen to Micky in Monstrous Monkee Mash (This isn't my kinda house). Overall very pleased with the video and audio quality. I did buy the set for the series, primarily, even though I have the old vhs tapes and the dvd's and shows off of tv and laserdiscs and.. it was still worth it. Very pleasing, overall!
Enjoyed it (and other Pods and Sods episodes, for that matter). I thought you two offered a very even-handed summation of the highs and lows of the set. I think if you go back to the train performance clips, you can make out Nez singing lines from "She's So Far Out She's In," too. If the horribly edited re-run versions of "Shades of Gray" from "Success Story" or the "long version" of "Forget That Girl" from "One Man Shy" are discovered on Megan's video tapes, count me in as a curious party!
Yea well it's like , it's like a typo and that's kind of a bummer and maybe it's not for you , you know but Yep it's kinda strange and I don't wanna dis people who are ok with it but , for me it's a bummer and .............. Peace and love✌
Many thanks. I'll be keeping an eye out for "So Far Out"! And we will be going through this stash of tapes sooner than later. Just hoping they're watchable, because I tried to transfer mine a few years back and they were just in horrible shape.
Last night I transferred the audio from the new outtakes of 33 1/3 so I could put them on the iPod with everything else, and I was immediately struck at how much better they sound. There's an incredible difference even without headphones on "Goldilocks Sometime" especially. I also fired up the laserdisc player today and am going to do my own transfers of the four episodes from the Japanese box set that have rerun audio we didn't get in the box. The one Blu Ray omission that puzzles me the most is the inclusion of "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" from the 5/15/67 repeat of 'Your Friendly Neighborhood Kidnappers', but the absence of "The Girl I Knew Somewhere", which was also dubbed into that episode.
This is what happens when a full coat mag track starts to go "vinegar" and shrink. The same thing happens to acetate base tapes too, but it's more noticeable on full coat and three channel mag tracks because of sprocket hole deformation as you say, and that the audio is spread over so much real estate per track that the audio is no longer "lined up" with itself over the width of each individual track. And the wider the width of a track, the worse that wobble is going to be which is why full track 35mm mag tracks can be the most problematic. At least with audio tape you have some "cheats" you can perform to get a good transfer from tape that has gone vinegar or is really warped from bad storage. (best trick: play back using a head format much narrower than what is on the media. i.e.: play back a full track mono tape on a 4-track stereo machine using only one channel to pull the audio from.) I don't think you have this ability when dealing with 35mm mag tracks.
I was always puzzled by the beginning of "Listen to the Band" because it always sounded like Michael changed pickups during the intro yet I could never see him touch the switch as he strummed the opening chords. Then I see the "outtake" and realize it was wonky audio processing that had to have happened during the final edit of the special. Ouch!
The question is, was the audio for these episodes mastered from 35mm Mag or optical film from the finished master? I would doubt they kept the 35 Mag elements but I could be wrong.
I know little about film but wasn't Andrew able to get the TV mono mixes for the debut deluxe by going to the mags? I believe that was around when this process started.
I was hoping in the alternate take that the clavinet wouldn't overpower the guitar so much but it still did. It was nice to hear some of the extra bits of Micky's drumming, though, particularly before Clive Thacker starts imitating Buddy Rich badly.
Those were kept. Just by listening it's obvious. The audio is way more wideband than even the best optical track could ever hope to be.
I knew somebody once that insisted that the jam had to have been recorded on multi-track, only because "why wouldn't you?" I was never convinced though I was hopeful since there was internal NBC paperwork I saw once in the late 1980's about the special that mentioned Wally Heider's name in connection with the audio for the show, though where his involvement was, if true, wasn't specified. (I think Andrew's liner notes for the Instant Replay box note backing tracks used in the special recorded at his studios, which would explain everything.) It'd be nice if his truck was part of the technical side of the special and was capturing everything on at least four-track but I really doubt it. The way levels are so wonky throughout the whole special says to me it was mixed on the fly straight to mono videotape.
I'm almost finished with season one and am very impressed with the audio in every respect. The video of course is outstanding but the TV mixes of the romp titles far exceeded my expectations
For a long time it seemed like a really messed-up situation as far as the music and visual archive goes for the special. For the most part, they haven't been able to do any kind of proper remaster for the show when there were only 2 pieces of tape to choose from, and one of them had an incorrect running order of sequences, but one of them did have a better audio source (BTW, which one is the correct one? The one that starts with "Wind-Up Man" or the one that starts with "I'm a Believer"? I was never sure). There was never a soundtrack LP officially released, and I'm guessing if the label was planning to do one, they didn't think it would matter since we were already in the winter of the Monkees' discontent and with Peter Tork gone it would seem awkward. It's possible there was never a plan to make a soundtrack LP. On top of this, it was awkward enough when the show debuted on TV 5 months after it was taped and the psychedelia thing was already going away. So whatever tapes there were probably either were disposed of, or were put somewhere where they didn't get the proper treatment. Although now there has been some multitrack tape found of the backing tracks for a few of the numbers featured on the Instant Replay handmade box (California Here It Comes is on the Head one, why, I'm not sure). I did hear a bootleg of Naked Persimmon with the Nesmith vocal that was already done to correspond with his live vocal, but I think it was missing the second half of the song after the pause. It would be great if a proper soundtrack were to be put together and they didn't have to take all or most of it from the video sources. But I'd probably still get it.
