Author: DOuG pRATt

Not Fakin’ Mono

Mono vs. Stereo is an endlessly interesting aspect of Sixties Pop music.

The rise of FM radio in the late 60’s was, I would conjecture, a reason why “folded mono” became standard for singles after albums were produced in stereo exclusively.

Mono FM receivers collapse stereo broadcasts into mono. So, if that was what people were already hearing, why bother laboring over dedicated mono mixes for singles played on AM stations?

Barnes Newberry opened this week’s “My Back Pages” on WMVY with selections from Simon & Garfunkel’s Bookends album.

“Fakin’ It” from Bookends is an all-time favorite of mine. There’s so much creativity in the production. I love the “Strawberry Fields Forever” fade-out. All it needs is “I buried Paul (Simon).”

The true mono mix for the 45 provides a striking contrast to the album’s stereo mix. Note the running time.

Looking Under the Peel

Robert sees the world through X-Ray Specs

Yesterday, I had an echo cardiogram. It was ordered in preparation for meeting with an Electrophysiologist from Mass General, two weeks from today, about my a-fib.

https://www.massgeneralbrigham.org/en/about/newsroom/articles/what-is-an-electrophysiologist

An echo cardiogram is an ultrasound scan. Very useful for a non-intrusive view of a heart, but not very effective on a banana. An MRI is too effective!

Breaking News! The echo cardiogram results are in, and they’re normal. No valve problems, etc. So the only thing I need to worry about is the a-fib, which is plenty.

Deny, Attack, Repeat

Taken by itself, the fraudulent document case was much ado about nothing. Considered in context, however, it’s the same as Trump’s “perfect phone calls,” where he pressured Zelensky to fabricate a story about Biden, and then asked Raffensberger to “find” votes that didn’t exist. It’s how he operates, and it’s good to see the Roy Cohn playbook of “deny and attack” is no longer working for Trump, at least not in court.

Considered in another context, Trump is a legitimate businessman who only tests the edges of legality. The context of the Ponzi Scheme.

Tom Fooler Me

Towards the end of Tom Hanks’s “Here Comes Summer” show on Boss Radio 66, he played “Time Won’t Let Me” by the Outsiders, a #5 hit from 1966. The record sounded so different from my memory of it, I wondered if it had been remixed.

So let’s compare a mono reissue 45 of the single from the early 80’s, with the mono recording Tom played. See what you have time to do when you’re retired and recuperating from surgery?

Is this the third different, vintage turntable of mine, in regular use, that I’ve featured here in two days? Yes, it is.

This is my single.

This is what Tom Hanks played.

The mixes are very similar, and yet they sound very different. Although Tom apparently played a mono copy of the single, there’s no way a modern remix would be done in mono. At first I thought the effect must have been the result of a clean remastering, but then I remembered something and discounted that idea.

Some of the records heard on “Songs From the Back of the Station Wagon” are in stereo, but played in mono. All of them were given the mono treatment for Tom’s “AM Gold” show a month ago. Here is a Facebook exchange I had with Boss Radio 66’s Debbie Daughtry.

So the most likely explanation is, the two recordings of “Time Won’t Let Me” are indeed different mixes. My copy is an original mono mix, and Tom played the stereo mix of the song in mono.