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Category: Music
My musical studies have led me to near-weekly visits to the book/music store where I browse the DVD, CD, and book sections looking for music-related treasures. I just finished Ray Davies' "unauthorized auto-biography" (entitled X-Ray) which is a strange blend of fiction, non-fiction, and groupie porn (lol). I hadn't realized that he was one of the many successful artists who had been screwed out of a fortune by a youthful mistake in the form of a bad publishing contract.
As mentioned in another thread, my recent work with a friend resulted in a vinyl L.P., and having borrowed a turntable to listen to the test pressing I was inspired to get out some old albums and have my first listen in many years (15 or more). My favorites were albums by Scruffy the Cat and Treat Her Right. This got me reminiscing about my days as a bar manager and band member in Boston (mid-'80s) when I saw those band frequently and knew them.
Mark Sandman and Billy Conway from Treat Her Right went on to form the band Morphine, and I had remained ignorant of their work. It has been nearly 10 years since Mark very sadly died onstage during a gig in Italy, and upon listening to Treat Her Right I had all those bittersweet feelings that come from thinking about "the old days" and from pondering the life and death of an acquaintance. Mark was the first musician I had seen perform live upon moving to Boston - and that first night out holds a special place in my memory because I moved to Boston after college to pursue music, taking whatever unpleasant day job was necessary to pay rent to support "the habit" of making the tunes. A couple years later I was bar manager of a club called Jack's. I worked about 70 hours a week for mot much more than minimum wage and was ALSO in a band (lol, insane I tell you)...one night I was with my own band, literally with my guitar around my neck at a club around the corner (T.T. The Bear's) when a band friend came in and said Jack's was burning down. Treat Her Right was the headliner that night, and they lost a lot of gear in the fire. I lost my job, was never paid for the last week or so of work, and it was the beginning of the end of my live music adventure - I was literally and figuratively burned out. So in a way Mark was an indirect part of the beginning and end of my Boston musical life.
I figured I'd better check out Morphine, so on my most recent trip the music store I got a Morphine album. I enjoyed it for its unique qualities, largely derived from the minimal lineup (bass, drums, baritone sax and vocals) and Mark's quirky writing, playing, and singing style. I must confess though that the lowness of the sound does in fact bring me down, so it's an album I'll undoubtedly enjoy on fairly rare occasions.
On the same trip I was intrigued by something I saw, especially as it may wind up applying to my faves, the Beatles. I had the idea that my young children would enjoy The Monkees so I was browsing through their CDs. Now of course, the Monkees are a topic unto themselves (and a debatable one at that given this venue), but I noticed that at least a couple of their albums are being sold in one package including mono AND stereo mixes on CD. I wound up just buying a greatest hits compilation (which the wee ones are enjoying dancing too, thank you very much) but I got to thinking how the Beatle folks always say that the mono mixes were the ones that got all the attention in the studio, and that the stereo mixes were hastily thrown together with not a second thought. Having studied the Beatle recordings as deeply as I have, and not having access to the mono mixes, it occurred to me that it seems reasonable to guess that we may have such a package from them at a later date. "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" is said in one source to have featured a lot more vocal effect on John's lead vocal, so it's not just that the relative levels of tracks and their stereo placement differ, but that there are other sonic differences as well.
Hope everyone's having a good summer.
Rock on,
H
3:03 PM
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