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| Grateful Dead | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Oct 7 2013, 10:46 AM (183 Views) | |
| voxish | Oct 7 2013, 10:46 AM Post #1 |
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Are there any Grateful Dead fans on here? I just got the Rhino Records limited edition (allegedly 5000...pfft) quadruple-LP of the 'Springfield Creamery Benefit concert Veneta 27 Aug 1972. First impressions are that it's a superbly presented quad-LP. The construction of the cover is extremely solid - I think this is how LPs may have evolved if CDs had never been invented! The music is excellent - with a couple of reservations. The opening intro track is embarrassing and unnecessary - the faux-humorous tone of the announcer introduces the band is jarring. Times have changed I suppose but I wouldn't have included it - or at least I'd have cut it to 10 seconds rather than over 4 minutes of guff! The set-list is pretty much as the Europe '72 triple album give or take - not surprising since the band recorded this shortly after returning from their European tour. The main difference is that there's an excellent Dark Star - which brings me on to my other gripe. Of necessity it's been split over two sides (it's about 10 mins longer than the seminal performance on Live Dead) which I don't have a problem with but the two sides are 6 and 7 which means that you have to change records rather than flip it over. It doesn't sound much of a problem and if truth be told it isn't the end of the world but why do it like that? The recording quality is what you'd expect from an early 70's live album - it's clearly been remastered but not to the detriment of the music. I suspect there has been sound-equalisation in some tracks though. One of the features of early LPs is they have quiet bits and loud bits - this recording is pretty much uniform hence my suspicions. As I said, it's not too detrimental - and I'm really no expert so it's probably not fair to criticise. (As an aside (for a bit of history) US double albums invariably had sides 1/4 on one record and 2/3 on the other as opposed to the European standard of 1/2 then 3/4. The US logic being that on an autochanger (or a twin-deck system) you could just flip them over and there would be continuous play. Autochangers went out with the ark so why do they persist with this stupid arrangement? To be fair, I'm not sure this is a mistake as much as they didn't want to take too many liberties with the playing order. But just my 2c nonetheless. Anyway, (mild) rant over, the last matter is that the quality control isn't brilliant. There were a few marks and smudges which I'm guessing are down to human error loading the LPs in the pressing plant but even so there are still a few unwanted ticks and crackles, surprising for a heavyweight audiophile product. I've concentrated too much on the faults - which are relatively minor - this is a really nicely made LP, great music and a lovely cover. |
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7:32 PM Jul 11