Tag: vinyl

Mothers of Invention on Vinyl – Are You Experienced?

When I came across these posts on YouTube, I could not help but share them here at KUR. Not because of the individual tracks themselves (which have been digitalized) – “Aybe Sea” (above) which closes side one of Burnt Weenie Sandwich and Uncle Meat‘s “Nine Types of Industrial Pollution” (below) – but because as these videos illustrate so well, a way of experiencing music which newer technologies have so hurriedly bypassed. I’m speaking of the whole tactile experience of listening to the vinyl record, itself: from how you held it in your hands, set the vinyl on the turntable, adjusted the amplifier and equalizer, then sitting before your stereo system, examined the album cover in your hands while the music filled the room.
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Cruising With Ruben & The Jets — Vinyl Revisited

Cruising With Ruben & The Jets is a Mothers of Invention album released in 1968, and controversially reissued in an alternate mix with newly recorded bass and percussion in 1984 by Frank Zappa (all post-1984 reissues of the album have featured this remix).

The following three clips from the 1968 vinyl version of the album (“Anything“, “Love of My Life“, and “I’m Not Satisfied“), with original bass and drum parts, which has not been officially rereleased on CD, is a real treat for those who have only known the 1984 remix, and never heard the original release:

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Hot Rats: 200 Gram Vinyl Edition

For you completists out there…

Mastered and cut directly from the original analog master tape by Bernie Grundman under the supervision of Gail Zappa. This LP features Classic’s proprietary ultra quiet vinyl formula and our 200g Super Vinyl Profile II pressed on specially outfitted semi automatic presses for maximum sonic fidelity.

Hands up who’s going to buy this!

Huge Collection Of 78 RPM Records

… and when I say huge, I mean huge:

The following is a list of over 3600 titles recorded from my collection of 78 rpm records. Many of them are linked to MP3 files and will play what was recorded. No sound enhancement, just what was recorded. Right now, there are over 2,450 titles on this page linked to mp3’s.

You’ll find recordings from such diverse musicians as Spike Jones, Hank Williams, Ella Fitzgerald, Jelly Roll Morton, Les Paul, Gene Krupa — oh, just have a look yourself. (via MeFi)

Live Albums — Dead or Alive?

I was tagging songs on my Last.fm account the other day (I like to listen to an eclectic mix of music while I work) when I noticed the sheer number of live albums which were being scrobbled from my music library. In no particular order or ranking (they are all equally excellent listening):

Perhaps it was the advent of the music video, MTV, the videotape recorder/player and the eventual evolution of the DVD player along with the rest of the technological wonders of the last twenty years or so that led to the gradual demise of the great live albums. Has any recent band and/or musician released a live album that measures up to the great live albums like those listed above? Where is the impetus for bands/musicians today to record great live albums if a video or a DVD will suffice? I don’t know. There’s something about a really well recorded live album that sticks with you long after you have heard it. It’s like an artifact of an other time. As much as a video or a DVD may attempt to (and in certain ways it may surpass a live recording) it doesn’t capture this aspect of the live album experience. Perhaps this is why field recordings are still so popular.

Let me ask, if and when a Zappa “Roxy DVD” is released, will it take away any of the mystique from the original vinyl recording?