needing Van Morrison help

I was in the used CD shop today and was looking through the Van Morrison titles. They had two copies of the 1990 Polydor "Best of Van Morrison" disc. One was the U.S. pressing and the other looked like a U.K. or German import. The tracks on both discs were the same.

I am only familiar with Van's big hits so a best-of is all I'm looking into. How's the sound on this one?

The only song missing from this collection that I would want is "Tupelo Honey". Is there a better collection with the usual hits and "Tupelo Honey"? They also have a Warners Bros. disc of the "Tupelo Honey" album. I'm willing to get both if this is my best option. I just have to get that song!

 

Well, any Van fan (like me) will tell you you need them all (well, almost all),
but if you just want the "hits" and Tupelo Honey, then definitely buy the 2 CDs you saw. They are both great.

Make sure you're getting the remastered Tupelo Honey. It sounds better than the first released version.

 

The Best of Van Morrison along with many of his early albums was remastered in the early nineties.I have the remastered Australian edition which has 1 extra track-Days Like This (essential IMO)- got it from Tower for $18 not too bad!

 

I have the first edition of "best of" and the sound is quite good. My only complaint: "Brown Eyed Girl" is in mono. In other words, you don't get the stereo, racy, "making love in the green grass version". Did they stick with the mono version on the remastered edition?

 

"Brown Eyed Girl" is in stereo on the remastered version.

 

BTW, the 1998 remastered version is compressed and has a midrange boost especially on the early tracks. "Warm Love" & "Domino" have solid tape hiss, so at least some tracks have not been NR'd. "Here Comes The Night" hurts my ears, very peaky. Maybe it's the tapes, I have nothing to compare it to, so correct me if I'm speaking out of my a**.

 

Remastered Van is better.
Get:
Best of (remastered)
Moondance (not available remastered)
Tupelo Honey (remastered)

to start. All 3 are a must!

 

Bartels (or anyone), have you compared the original "Best Of" to the remaster? The song selection is brilliant, but I'm not sure about the remastered sound... I haven't heard the original, but miked seems to like it. Is "Here Comes The Night" harsh on the original disc?

 

I've had both and the remastered sounds better IMHO. The older songs sounded "dirtier." Like a 4th generation master of Brown Eyed Girl.

 

Thanks, bartels. Seems like the Led Zeppelin syndrome: Original CD uses inferior tapes, but the remaster is processed.

 

Exactly. This CD isn't processed too bad though.

 

Best Of Vol 2 is quite good too. It's not remastered but I think it's a good comp. Has Sense Of Wonder, his Them hits on there, plus other songs. If you find it used like I did it's worth the purchase.

 

Don't have the older CD's to compare to, but the remastered Best of uses the uncensored (i.e. better) version of Brown-Eyed Girl.

 

On the first version of "best of", "Here Comes The Night" doesn't sound harsh, but I think I know what was implied by it's harsh sound. To my ears, that song has always been a little more "harsh sounding". Compared to "Gloria" and "Baby Please Don't Go", "Here Comes The Night" sounds a little harsh to me because Van seems to be struggling to hit the high notes on the title. I am not informed about it's recording history but maybe there is more to it (meaning the studio used, etc.) I still like the song but it isn't my favorite from his time with "Them".

 

I'm a fan of the WB Cds. On hearing the Polydor of "St Dominic's Preview", I needed pain reliever. It just doesn't sound right, EQ wize. Everything is boosted past 10k. Yeouch.

 

With "harsh" I mean that on the remastered "Here Comes The Night" the background vocals & especially the guitar solo actually hurt my ears.

 

Mind you, that "Tupelo Honey" is not only remastered but remixed. The remix engineers are Donn Landee and Lee Herschberg. I've said this before, I'm not a big fan of remixing, but it works here. Much more detail. IMHO!!

 

Agreed. And unfortunately, I sold my WB Van Morrison CDs off in anticipation of the improved Polygram issues -- a big mistake I won't be repeating any time soon with any other catalog. I even held on to my Rolling Stones CDs despite the trusted names on the SACD project.

There's more detail on Van's Polygram remasters, so I can see why some people like them, but the overall tonal balance was more natural on the original Warner Brothers CDs.

 

I prefer the remasters.

The clipped first chord on Listen To The Lion on the original CD release was inexcusable. I had the German pressing so I don't know if the US version was the same.

However my favourite sounding Van CD is the original (and only) version of His Band And Street Choir, hiss and all!

 

WB CDs best for the albums....

I always felt that the WB CDs of Astral Weeks, Moondance and His Band And Street Choir (not re-issued/re-mastered to date) sounded far more natural than the Polydor re-masters of Van's subsequent albums up to and including It's Too Late To Stop Now.

I was lucky enough to find all the original WB CDs for these later albums recently. Suffice it to say that the Polydor's are no longer in my posession .

The re-masters left me cold emotionally whereas the WB CDs have an engaging quality totally lacking on the Polydor CDs.

(This brings me back to my old argument - digital processing severely harms the emotional content of a music recording )

 

I hate to change the subject of the thread somewhat-but when I changed my cd source from a Rotel DVD-A player to a tubed cd player(Ah! Njoe Tjoeb 4000) with 24/192 upsampling the older non remastered WB Van titles improved in sound quality like I couldn't believe! Also made a huge diffence on the Neil Young WB back catalog which I don't think is going to be remastered anytime soon!

 

That, I think is an original album credit, not a digital remix.

Why it says "remixed" and not "mixed" I can't answer!

 

So I guess the Warner Brothers original issue of the Van Morrison catalog is now an official Steve Hoffman Forum Preferred First Remastering?

 

Interesting, I don't have an original CD to compare it to. It sure sounded remixed to me, but I've been fooled before.

 

I finally made it back to the store with the Van Morrison discs today. The Tupelo Honey disc was the Polydor version and not the Warners so I passed on it. I'll keep an eye out for that Warners disc from now on though.

I did get the Best Of disc. This the original 1990 issue pressed in Germany. It sounded ok through the computer but I'll give it a proper listening in time. I already have the correct version of "Brown Eyed Girl" on other discs so I can live with the stupid censored version here.