Category: Music

Beatles Rotator

I recently played my big sister’s original American copy of the 1966 Beatles album Revolver.* It’s in mono, and I was surprised by how good it sounds, considering the damage it endured. Here’s ‘Good Day Sunshine’.

Monitoring the playback with Audacity, I was impressed with how dynamic the sound is. There’s no compression going on here.

For comparison, here is the official online copy of the song.

Looking at the peaks, some loudness compression was apparently added to the recording. The 2009 mono Beatles set reportedly was transferred from the master tapes with dynamic range left intact, so perhaps this is a YouTube effect.

Okay, so let’s find out. What about ‘Good Day Sunshine’ when played from the Beatles 2009 CD mono box set? No loudness compression is confirmed.

* A 60-year-old record on a 50-year-old turntable, with a 30-year-old cartridge and a relatively new stylus.

Where Were You in ’16?

Let’s wash out the bad taste of failed L.A. mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt with the ‘Happy Days’ theme song, performed by Truett Pratt and Jerry McClain.

The success of American Graffiti — “Where were you in ’62?” — motivated ABC-TV to pick up Happy Days as a series. ‘Graffiti’ celebrates a bygone era that was only ten years gone by. In between, the Sixties changed everything.

Ten years ago, Donald Trump was running for president. Today is Donald’s 80th birthday, and we’re stuck in the Trump doom loop.

This ‘n’ That

Before Denro and I attended last weekend’s Albany Comic Con, we caught a fun show with Peter Noone and Herman’s Hermits.

My ‘Last Show with Stephen Colbert’ t-shirt arrived today. I shall wear it proudly.

Shall I watch the 3-hour film, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles? I’ll save it for later, after watching Thor and Hercules pummel each other, Kirby-style.

Original Cast vs. Copy Cast

Multiple versions of a song competing on the record charts at the same time used to be fairly routine. Saturday’s American Top 40 with Casey Kasem on SiriusXM was from 1971. At the time, there were two versions the song ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him’ on the Billboard chart.

Helen Reddy’s recording peaked at #13. To me it sounds rather rote, almost like she was doing a run-through to check the mic levels.

Yvonne Elliman was an original cast member of Jesus Christ Superstar. In my opinion, this is the vastly superior performance. Yet it only reached #28 on Billboard.

Hearing those records brought to mind another example of two recordings of the same song that were competing on the charts. It’s from the time when I was starting to work as a radio DJ.

Pat Boone’s daughter Debby had a #1 smash hit with ‘You Light Up My Life’. I must have played this single a thousand times.

The original version of the song, for the movie You Light Up My Life, was sung by Kvitka “Kasey” Cisyk. It outshines Debbie’s performance, yet it topped-out at a lowly #80.