The Rolling Stones On Air In The Sixties Book and Album

Or when people get personal in their comments and are made aware of it, but still do it!

JG

 

This post should be a sticky!!

 

Or just, you know, fixed it themselves?

 

Obviously that was too much work of they would have done it.

 

No way! This release brings you CLOSER to the AUTHENTIC sound of the ORIGINAL tape, complete with TRUE-TO-LIFE transferring glitches!

 

Jagger talks about this in the new Mojo. The project seems to have been led by the BBC with the Stones endorsement rather than their involvement. Jagger evinces little interest in it or anything else from the early 60s. I don’t think he has much awareness of what an archival approach might be.

 

I'm a bit late getting to The Rolling Stones On Air but I've skipped through some of the comments here before finally grabbing a copy.

I was not going to let others colour my enjoyment in advance and you know what, I'm thoroughly enjoying this in the full knowledge that we do not have pristine multi-tracks here but what remains from a BBC archive that was never really treated as an archive. I'm only half way through disc 1 as I write but what is there not to enjoy here. Youthful Stones being youthful Stones and thrashing their was through the music they love. Yes, there are variations in sound quality but I'm listening to music not graphs and computer analysis. And so far I'm more than happy. I don't really hear anything that offends my ear which certainly could have been the case with some of the techniques used.

I'm not really sure what all the nonsense in comparing with bootlegs is all about. I think I may have a BBC disc or two somewhere and I certainly have not done any comparison although I may look later to find out what has been left out. The origins of a lot of these unofficial releases probably come from transcription discs that have escaped or radio broadcasts that have been recorded domestically so we are not talking about anyone who has some magical access to better tapes. I'm sure that there are a few cases where perhaps something is missing from the BBC archives that has been issued elsewhere and to be fair if the BBC have stolen these back then what is the problem.

How all of us perceive recordings is very individual and we tune in to what we want to tune into. I'm sure that sound engineers and studio technicians only hear defects (hiss, EQ etc.) but most people who buy music hear, well, music. Yes we can tell a really well produced record from a DIY recording (and that is not to say these are any less valid - some of my favourite recording were recorded for £100 in a tiny studio and they are great) but ultimately enjoyment of music centres upon how it moves you emotionally not how it looks analysed on some screen. This music is R&B from a great period in time and it sounds great - it why I started buying music and continue to do so.

So if you are sitting there on the fence, just buy it. It is £12.99 for 32 slices of our musical heritage. I've just put on disc 2 and I Wanna Be You Man is probably the worst sounding track I have heard yet and you know what, it is fantastic. I'm right back to those days when you had a transistor radio under your pillow listening to these great records when you should have been asleep! And what a great guitar solo.

 

I think you make some good points but at the same time I would like to take issue with some.
It is worth starting off by saying that if you are not really familiar with these recordings then this new set is a delight.

For me, this is a historical/archive release and -
step 1 -
should have been to establish what the band played at their BBC sessions.
This was not done - the author/team of the On Air book (which appears to have served as a template and accompaniment for this release) did not look at the BBC programme logs for the shows the Stones appeared on even when he/they was researching/writing a book on the subject. This is a fact - I have seen the programme logs myself.
Let's say they did -

step 2 -
is to go to the BBC, you kiss and hold her tightly (or is that step 3?) and ask for copies of their tapes and transcription discs or arrange to borrow said items and make fresh transfers. This appears to have been done, at best, partially, in some cases not at all.
The copyright notices on this release are for Universal, Promotone and ABKCO iirc. The only mention of the BBC is in terms of the sleeve notes talking about the BBC shows and the claim that "where possible" BBC tapes/transcription discs were used unless I've missed something.
The BBC have the relevant transcription discs for the Stones shows as seen by their BBC Worldwide catalogue. There is also a US company that claims to have tape copies of these from the 60s as I was reminded recently. They were not approached I assume. Page 2 of a google search, barely digging deep into the world of research - Top of the Pops Radio Show

I don't see anything like the BBC stealing these back as you put it though I agree that would be fine. In fact the BBC gets very little from this looking at the copyright notices unless I missed something. It would be interesting to know why they are not prominently featured in the copyright doo-dah in the booklet/sleeve.

Step 3 -
take a look at a couple of the better fan sites, even contact someone (like Felix Aeppli / Nico Zentgraf for example) and find out what are reckoned to be the better bootlegs in terms of 1. Completeness 2. audio quality and then audition some of them for the off airs in the set or ask (Nico/Felix/whoever) if they know of anyone who has good knowledge in this area.

Step 1 would take a couple of hours, step 2 maybe a few weeks, step 3 a few weeks. Not a killer amount of time.

I would argue that on those 3 steps (to heaven) alone we have seen an epic fail before we've even looked at graphs and computer screens !
The idea that it's nonsense to compare with bootlegs is nonsense in itself because in some cases they are the only surviving or accessible source for some of these tracks but some bootlegs are better than others as noted - some are more complete, some sound better, some sound awful.
Now some of the tracks, there is very little you can do, they are what they are sound quality wise. I don't have a particular problem with the stereo effect but...
The glitch in The Last Time should not be there. It's not on the transcription disc is it ?
I Just Wanna Make Love To You, Walking The Dog, Hi-Heel Sneakers and Ain't That Loving You Baby are credited to the wrong shows, the first 3 despite the presence of an audience (therefore not Saturday Club but from The Joe Loss Pop Show) in the case of the 4th track because they didn't look at the BBC programme logs to start with. Digital repairs could have been made on Come On's intro in a minute or two though I am under the impression (rightly or wrongly) that the BBC's tape has the intro intact.
I haven't even looked at a graph yet.
I'm not sure any of this constitutes whingy whining. I'm just disappointed that the 2nd best British band of the sixties accepted 10th best work input into a historical archive release such as this which should have seen release decades ago. I know many Stones fans delight in the sloppy but it should end with the music and not spill over into the compiling of an archival release. I love the early Stones and BBC radio sessions. There is some great music here. That much we can certainly agree on but as pointed out elsewhere, if the recent 50th anniversary release of Satanic Majesties had just used needle drops of the fold down mono with occasional clipped intros and outros and a track skip I imagine you'd be a bit pissed off about it. For better or for worse, I think that's exactly what a lot of people here are pointing out with this set's shortcomings. Mind you, it did better in the bonus department than Satanic Majesties and it's a bleep of a lot cheaper.

 

I don’t understand why Jagger has no interest in anything from the Brian Jones era. What is he 74 or 75? The Stones aren’t a trendy band anymore. Why not go back and issue some of that material. The fanbase would eat it up.

 

I don't see any evidence that this project was led by the BBC. They'd have consulted their own documents and used their own tapes where possible.

 

I agree about fixing some of the intros, especially since the tracks were demixed. Why not go all the way.

 

Thank you.

 

I think you're referring back to my comment above. Maybe I drew the wrong conclusion but here's what Jagger says in the new issue of Mojo (Feb 2018) in answer to a question about why it has taken then so long to venture into their 60s archive: 'It's something the BBC wanted to do. They probably could have done it anyway but they wanted to do it with everyone's permission and blessing. I'm perfectly happy with it.' Later he's asked why it wasn't sequenced chronologically and he answers, 'I wasn't really involved with that. If it was a regular album, I'd be very involved. But who cares about running orders?' I take this to mean that the BBC took the initiative and that the Stones had minimal involvement. Clearly there was an approval process of some kind but it doesn't seem that the Stones or their management were very interested in the product.

 

I will get back to this a little later if that is OK. There is a lot to take in and I do not at present have the book to refer to your comments regarding that.

All I can say without referring to other versions of the tracks issues elsewhere is that I have paid my money for this version and had a great time listening to it. I'm sure that we could all perm our own versions of most archive compilations but I think that somewhat misses the point. This is aimed at the mass market and as such I think it does as good a job as most of the BBC session compilations. In most cases we are very lucky to have these recordings at all and as such I'm very grateful.

More later when I have had more time to digest both your comments and the material.

 

Hang on. Mojo February 2018. You got a time machine ? It's only December 2017. Can you go back and tape these BBC Radio Shows in Hi Rez ?
On a more serious note, I think that demonstrates how little Sir Michael cares about these things which begs the question how come ABKCO haven't made more of their Stones archive ?
I would very much like to know what the BBC's involvement in this set was. It doesn't appear to be as much as Mick thinks. If they were you'd imagine they'd be blowing their own trumpet a bit more in the sleeve notes.

 

The thing is you don't work for Abkco or the Rolling Stones.

I have learned in life that other people usually do not know what they are talking about unless they have actually done what they are talking about.
The people who put this cd out know about the Last Time glitch. They may have had to make a decision to leave it in because its exclusion may have caused a problem somewhere else in the project. You were not there. Perhaps the engineers were directed by higher authority not to use certain sources. Who knows.

 

That is a fair point. I don't work for the Stones or ABKCO and I wasn't there.
In my defence I am currently working on another band's project (from the same era) and have been for some time (several years at this point) so I have some idea what this involves in relation to tape acquisition and discovery both official and unofficial, TV and film archives, record companies, radio station archives both written and audio (domestic and foreign), private tape owners, musicians (living and dead) and their family members and friends, contracts, licences, artwork, photographic copyright, interested parties, transferring tapes, restoration etc... and for the last few years I have been researching a history of BBC pop music radio sessions 1958 to 67 at the BBC Written Archive. So in some respects, Mr Hendrix, yes I am experienced. I've also done radio sessions as a musician myself a long time ago in a galaxy far away.
I can actually think of a glitch in a foreign broadcaster owned track that will need fixing in said project before it is released, hopefully by Summer 2018 if all goes well. I am looking forward to the complaints here about sleeve notes, EQ, mastering, compression and tape sources etc. when it is released.
I would be very curious to know how if they were working with the full permission of the BBC, sorting out a glitch on a licensed track could have caused problems in that case or elsewhere. It's not impossible but strikes me as very unlikely.
They used bootlegs, they used some official sources. Unless Keith said he liked the glitch I'm not sure what reason there could be. The copyright in that recording is/was surely owned by the BBC. It's in the BBC Worldwide Catalogue and included on one of the BBC Top Of The Pops Transcription discs, number 19 which also includes Everybody Needs Somebody To Love and Down The Road Apiece. If they had their full permission to use those tracks and play stereo plug in with them at Abbey Road I am struggling why anyone would command "them" to "keep the glitch". In fact the chaps at BBC Archives are grateful to receive upgrades of high quality material as far as I know so that would effectively be a bonus if they truly have no glitch-free copy, something that is disputed here. I cannot think of a reason be it a good one or a bad one. In light of other factors to do with this project it might not be surprising that I take a dim view of it.

 

Well, I am not in a time warp - my subscription copy arrived a couple of days ago - no doubt it will be in the shops now. But yes, their pub dates are a bit weird.

Jagger also comments on the difficulty the band has in working with ABKO, but he demonstrates absolutely no interest in releasing more 60s material beyond the control of ABKO, for example the Luxembourg concert. It may be that as ABKO reach an end of major projects based on the core Decca/London album releases they will turn to looking more seriously at the archives.

It strikes me that between the lack of interest from Jagger and the band and what might be the inclination of the BBC to defer to the Stones, it is possible that no-one took proper responsibility for this (in the way you describe for your project) and it fell between stools with a lack of diligent archive work being completed.

 

The bootleggers mostly have access to the same exact sources as the BBC does, and in some cases the BBC has better sources, but didn't use them. The bootleggers did far better transfers of the transcription LP's, and they didn't use extra reverb or fake stereo effects. That's why the bootlegs are preferred. It isn't "nonsense". Paying $25 for a crappy official release is nonsense.

 

Some people over at IORR who have analyzed the bootlegs are saying the new fan made A**blaster download uses the same sources as the Dog And Cat bootleg Beat Beat Beat at the Beep DAC-130 but the songs are reordered.

 

That is true for most of the second disc and a few tracks on the first disc. But the transcription disc transfers are all new, and a few other tracks are upgrades to the DAC.

Funny enough, the DAC itself is stolen from an old fan-made torrent, but has been speed corrected.

 

From IORR

That's the problem indeed. There is no such thing as the "best compilation" that uses the best possible source of each and every track. Some newer ones are pretty good, like the latest DAC or Godfather (both seem to derive from the same torrent of a fan-made BBC compilation), then you find that the odd track here and there sounds much better on an almost forgotten bootleg CD from 30 years ago that also includes a lot of **** in nowadays terms, and therefore may have escaped the attention of "modern" compilers in general. And there you go! The recent "complete" grey market triple CD caught my attention because it seems to be pretty good in general, but I have still a lot of tracks to compare in more detail. For example, it *seems* to have the best & most natural sounding version of "Ain't That Loving You Baby" which I like much better than the heavily processed-sounding "On Air"-release. Then again, the Ass Blaster version also sounds very nice, but starts "cold" with Mick's vocals, thereby missing the instrumental fade-in. It's difficult!

 

Well, the bright side to this is that there is an upgrade of the AB set in production right now. Supposedly, the first disc will be entirely upgraded from new pre-fm sources and there will be 3 additional tracks. The relative failure of the official release has turned over all kinds of, uh, stones.

 

Amen.