My twin sister commented in the Stones Sell Out post that she hadn’t heard “Tell Me” in 40 years. So I’ll play the piece of plastic she listened to 40 years ago, “Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass).”
The record belonged to our sister Liz, and it somehow — ahem! — ended up in my collection. But that’s good! Because I sealed it in an LP bag and that hasn’t been opened in 25 years. Until now. The scan above was made from the interior booklet of pictures, but it isn’t completely original, as I cut in the photo of Brian Jones. A third shot of Keith was just too redundantly redundant.
The LP is in mono, and that’s also a good thing, because when the song appeared on the “More Hot Rocks (Big Hits & Phased Cookies)” LP collection, it was in (boo!) re-channeled mono, aka fake stereo.
I’ll give you “Tell Me” two times, to take advantage of a nifty feature of the embedded audio player. If you open one, the other pauses. This will make it possible to click back and forth for instant comparison.
The first transfer was made with the LP just as it was, coming out of the long-sealed bag.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/TellMeTake1.mp3]This second transfer was done after I had cleaned the record using a Nitty Gritty machine.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/TellMeTake2.mp3]Hear any difference? Perhaps not. It depends on your speakers. The machine can’t repair groove damage, of which there’s plenty, but I bet it got out the residue left behind from the cigarettes that Liz was puffing her room! 😉
Edit: I tried a little equalization on this. The spectrum analyzer says this looks better. Let’s see if it sounds better.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/JAN07/TellMe.mp3]
“Sticky Fingers,” with the zipper? That’s probably the one.
You described exactly how I would characterize the differences after the Nitty Gritty cleaning machine did its thing.
One of the effects I learned from years hanging out at audio stores is that once you hear the better playback you can go back to the lesser one and hear what wasn’t immediately obvious.
Even on my chintzy speakers, you can clearly hear the difference! Mick’s voice and the tambourine are a lot sharper. Also, you can hear the reverb, which you can’t too well in the original “smoked-out” version. Speaking of the Stones, remember the one with the infamous jacket cover? Liz got that one for Christmas in Acton one year and Dad thought it was hysterical! Naturally, I’ve forgotten if it’s a compilation album or not, but I’m sure it includes “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Brown Sugar.”