I know I said I was going to buy the 50th anniversary edition of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band just to spite Salon’s Amanda Marcotte for her -– to my mind -– overreaching indictment of the album and the band’s unwitting impact on the music and culture that followed in said creative milestone’s wake, but that was initially just bluster on my part. I did end up actually picking it up this week not just out of my continuing objections to Marcotte’s article (do not get me started again on that front), but after a conversation with a new colleague.
Evan is my team’s new director of online development, but he’s relatively fresh from a stint as a recording engineer. While it’s all well and good for music geeks to wax authoritative about the minutia of bands both canonical and obscure, it’s that rare breed of nerd that can actually bring some credible technical knowledge to the table. I can assuredly hold my own in any music discussion based around pertinent personnel, legend and lore, but Evan is able to speak, parse and expound on recording-studio vernacular that is largely lost on the layperson. As such, his insights into why certain music sounds the way it sounds lends a refreshing new dynamic to the dialogue, although why he cares so much about weedy piffle like Smashing Pumpkins is something I’ll never know. Must be a generational thing.
In any case, Evan and I were recently ruminating on the dependable allure and (usually) accompanying let-down of re-released albums. Too often, lushly re-packaged, commemorative editions of certain lauded albums are reissued with the desperate rock-dad market in mind, usually emboldened with the tantalizing promise of a revelatory listening experience. It’s a bait I’ve gamely taken more times than I can count. But, more often than not, the only genuinely discernible differences one can glean from the reissues – especially for one such as I, whose hearing is already compromised from years of blithely irresponsible exposure to noise -- is simply an uptick in volume. There have been the odd exceptions to that rule, most notably the 1997 remixing of Raw Power by Iggy & the Stooges, which noticeably restored much of the band’s original heft to David Bowie’s comparatively anemic original job. One suspects there may have been pharmaceuticals in the studio, the first time around. Just a hunch.
The crucial difference, Evan helpfully pointed out, is the distinction between re-mastering and re-mixing. Maybe that’s obvious to you -- and perhaps it should be -- but I can’t say I really knew the granular distinctions between the two. As I understand it, any sonic nuances freshly revealed from a proper remastering will, generally, really only be evident to the ears of die-hard superfans, studio professionals and/or those with exceedingly detailed playback systems. But on a pair of shitty ear-buds – which, let’s face it, is currently the manner seemingly most people routinely enjoy their music – the added nuance will likelly go unnoticed by the average listener. Unless you’re a consummate audiophile with the hardware to deliver the best results, you probably won’t be able to tell the difference. I should point out, at this stage, that I mean no offense to the mastering engineers of the world. It’s not their fault that their finely detailed work goes largely unsung. Sadly, it should also be acknowledged that, by and large, the general public doesn’t really care about the finer points of fidelity. To paraphrase Sir Andrew of Eldritch, I don’t know why they gotta be so undemanding.
Meanwhile, remixing is a much more invasive procedure than remastering, as it involves delving back into each individual track (not track as in song, but track as in recording channel) and re-assembling those diverse parts into a new sonic configuration. As such, the end results of a proper remixing very much can deliver a relatively brand new listening experience.
Anyway, with all the above in mind, when I learned that the anniversary edition of the Beatles’ arguable masterpiece (some believe Revolver trumps it) was remixed and not remastered, and on the back of a surprise project with a neck-snapping deadline at work that I managed to excute stealthily and accrue kudos over, I decided to treat m’self and buy a copy. So, that’s what I did. Last night, I went home and ripped it to my iTunes (along with my equally anticipated copy of Deliquescence, the latest live document from SWANS, pictured above).
This morning on my way to work, after sampling a bit of the latter (notably a feral reading of the title track to The Glowing Man), I dialed up the new Sgt. Pepper’s, kicking off right as I was entering Courtlandt Alley at Canal Street.
True to the hype, I did indeed feel that I was hearing this album in a brand new way. Like countless peers, I postively grew up with Sgt. Pepper’s. I don’t know who brought it into our house first, but there was always a copy of it in our home and its songs are verily the soundtrack to my childhood. To hear such genuinly fresh, new depth and dynamic in these inherently familiar songs --- crackling with new distinctions –- is legitimately amazing. From the shimmering opening chords of “It’s Getting Better” to the soaring harmonies in “With a Little Help From My Friends,” the album overflows with details that had been formerly blurred in the original mix. And it rocks harder, with an expansive bottom end that adds a muscular swagger to proceedings. Even tracks I’d have once skipped over -– like, sorry, “Within You, Without You” -– now bloom with fresh, multidimensional facets.
And, sorry, Amanda, as much as I genuinely love the Human League, it's fucking WAY BETTER than Dare.
Bottom line: If you grew up loving this album, go get the anniversary edition. It’s worth the expenditure.
...although not the six-CD super-duper deluxe edition. That's just silly.
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