If I was going to spend over 300 quid on a Vinyl Box Set (which I am not), I’d like it in a nicer box than this. This looks like one of those cheap CD compilations you find in a motorway services. Rotten photo, tacky typeface, no relevance to the design aesthetic of any of the album artwork and Mick looks like he’s had an allergic reaction to something. I know Stones reissues have a bit of a chequered history so I hope for anyone who is shelling out for this, or the CD edition, that the remastering, pressing, sleeve reproduction are much much better realised than the big box they come in. It will all kick off on SuperDeluxeEdition.com if it’s not – and they’ve been instrumental in getting all sorts of mastering errors and cock-ups corrected in the past – albeit hassling some poor intern at UMG over some oversight to do with Thompson Twins or Nik Kershaw reissues so not sure if they’ll cut any ice with ABKCO (always amazed they still exist as an organisation – do they have a big picture of the Ron Decline on the wall I wonder?)
Box – Set – Nooooo!
It’s almost as horrific as the cover of the new Beatles Holywood Bowl thing.
Really?
Surely the new cover actually rescues it from the drab 1977 version.
It’s a little thing that used to exist in popular culture called….erm….’colour!’
Oh, the original cover was awful but somehow this new one just looks like a dreadful photoshop job. Or worse, like an advert for a film – which is what it is, really. It’s just ugly, IMO.
Think the original had a sort of simplistic charm but this edition will probably do me fine
Yes, that looks like the one they SHOULD have released!
I agree 100%. I love Macca but I’m not sure he has a clue when it comes to re-issues and legacy. He omitted any Flowers in the Dirt material from the Pure McCartney collection on the basis that FitD is the next album of his getting the deluxe re-issue treatment. That’s short-termism at its finest – he brings out a collection that’ll presumably be the only available Macca solo collection, and in five years time, people will wonder why there’s a 1989 shaped hole in it.
Similarly, as a marketing thing, the HB cover works fine in the week or so that the Ron Howard movie is in the cinema. Five years time, assuming you can still buy hard product, it’ll look ridiculous.
Surely this isn’t the actual sleeve is it?!
https://s3.postimg.io/50sz3c1wj/81cr_Es9_MU0_L_SL1200.jpg
I’m afraid so.
Stones fans interested in hearing the The Complete London/Decca Studio Recordings (all in mono) may like to read about an already available set here.
Keith’s paisley muffler looks like something a one-legged newspaper seller might have worn in the 50s
Just a word on this “mono” business. Isn’t this “mono is better” thing just a sales ploy by the rapidly flagging record industry to sell us the same music we already own?
Back in the late 60s when those same record companies killed off mono, we were assured that stereo was the sound of the future cos, like, we had two ears. That was fine. Real stereo sounded great to me. Just as real mono had done before it.
Then they introduced that dreadful “Electronically Reprocessed For Stereo” malarkey which took a mono album and double tracked it with a bit of delay/echo or whatever and tried to pass it off as real stereo. It was appalling.
But now we are told that mono was best after all. When the Fabs’ mono box set appeared we were solemnly told that this was “the Beatles as they were intended to be heard” by the same companies who deleted all those mono LPs in 1969. We’ll probably hear the same sales pitch about this Stones box as they try to squeeze the last drop of cash out of the rapidly aging 60s demographic.
Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?
I don’t know about the Stones but as I understand it The Beatles were never much interested in Stereo early on and so the Mono mixes are their definitive versions that they had some hand in mixing – at least up until ’67. There are some notable differences between the Mono and Stereo Beatles and the earlier album stereo mixes are notoriously awful – often with Bongo hard panned in one ear and guitars/vox in the other- no good for headphone listening. The proper stereo remixes on the ‘One’ box set are fantastic and no doubt there will be ‘proper’ stereo remixes of the earlier albums scheduled in on a strategic wallchart somewhere at Beatles HQ
I know that the Beatles seldom, if ever, attended the stereo mixing sessions of their albums and also that there are noticeable differences between the stereo/mono versions of their albums.
And that mono sounds great for some albums.
And that the stereo panning on those early Fabs LPs is very strange (although it’s great fun to turn the balance control hard left or right and get rid of the vocals or musical backing altogether).
We’ve known this all along. But my beef is that mono is now being sold back to us as the great savior of the music listening experience by the same people who got rid of it in the first place. They told us mono was old technology. That it was finished and that stereo was the way to go.
Perhaps in a few years they’ll be telling us that CDs are the ultimate way to listen to music?
saviour, or savior?
u
Thank U very much
But CD’s are the ultimate way to listen to music
And misplaced apostrophes are the work of the devil
To right.
Their really badd
Are these all new masterings ?
I have a 58 track “Singles Collection: The London Years” which are all in mono. I know that these are the complete albums, but are they from the same original masters or is this a complete new clean up as per the Beatles mono releases ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singles_Collection:_The_London_Years
It’s an ugly photo, but luckily at CD size it won’t be be too off-putting. Btw I got Big Hits (HTAGG) at the car boot today. As well as 28 other records. Argh.
Did you spot Brian with a plaster cast on his broken arm?
Oh yes, so he does! Only on the cover photo; it’s not there on the poster or the gatefold pics.
When you say ‘poster’ do you mean the stapled booklet inside the gatefold? Those are great quality for 1966 and the one of the first of their kind in rock/pop
Ah yes, it probably used to be a booklet! Three panels.
Ah no, I.don’t think it’s a booklet after all, but a poster. Looks like this one: https://www.discogs.com/Rolling-Stones-Big-Hits-High-Tide-And-Green-Grass/release/3986879
If it looks like this it’s a 6 page stapled booklet which has probably come loose.
Note the US version of High Tide & Green Grass has the cover reversed (sort of)
http://i.imgur.com/b3HW3aD.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/5V2NgLZ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/z9XRjnA.jpg
Each one of those “Big Hits” covers would have made a great cover for the Decca Mono Box.
Nope, no staple holes, JC, or any other signs of fixing or binding. Just a three-panelled thing, folded. If you follow the link I posted above for the “date unknown” version, it mentions a poster. Possibly an 80s reissue perhaps?
Also: jeez, you have four copies? 🙂
Here you go (hope the images aren’t too big):
http://i1350.photobucket.com/albums/p773/minibreakfast/DSCN0164_zpsd6f04c9d.jpg
Other side:
http://i1350.photobucket.com/albums/p773/minibreakfast/DSCN0165_zpsc3lc7iw2.jpg
Thanks. According to the RC Price Guide, it had a stapled booklet in the 60s, then during the 70s the booklet was changed into a foldout insert. So that’s what you have there I think.
Yes, five copies actually (one US copy is framed). The US copies are under the UK ones in the photo.
You can never be too greedy with great records.
*counts number of Don Estelle’s Sings Songs For Christmas LPs*
Jeebus. Nine!
Of course you have another, framed. I should have guessed 🙂
Wanna see it? And look, there’s Bob off in the distance
http://i.imgur.com/RNChCO3.jpg
Ooh is that The Stone Roses?
Eh? Who’s that then?
Were you at the Isle Of Wight?
….Are you into music, then?
Milk and six sugars, mate. Got any Hob Nobs?
How about I pay cash and we forget about the VAT?
I think it’s OK and it’s what’s inside that counts .
Macca recently said in an interview that he’d like to release the complete session tapes of the Beatles so we can hear all the fluffs, BANTZ and how the songs come together.
Of course bootleggers and fans have already beaten him to the punch with such collections but you can’t imagine Mick letting anything like that happen. Maybe they don’t have the archive in one place like the Fabs but his aversion to any unaltered outtakes seeing the light of day is maddening.
I’m passing on this as I already have a lot of early mono albums on vinyl but will pick up Beggars Banquet (true mono or fold down -wevs) as it does sound more direct and crunchy to my ears.
I have a mono ‘Bleed’ that I got from a car boot for 4 quid when everyone was getting rid of their old Beatles vinyl when the CD remasters came out. I know it’s not a true mono but the differences are pretty minimal.
And yes, surely they could have used a better picture than that one. It seems a particularly bad one of Mick just to wind him up but don’t think contents would be any different if The Stones were actually involved
Bongo believes likewisethat everything should be released.
What even the ‘Bantz’ that went down during the Get Back/LIB sessions?
They’ll release it how you want them to release it or they won’t release it at all. Whatever way it will please you, that’s how they’ll do it
Look lads – the bantz, you know – shall we try it like this maybe?
Are they copying the style of blues reissue label Document Records?
The cover is alright. Didn’t they make a virtue of their ugliness in 1965?
Who were the ugliest band of the era? Gotta be the Animals, surely?
The Pretty Things, funnily enough, took the dog biscuit.
Oh I don’t know – Phil May looked pretty cool in clips I’ve seen. I mean, not an Adonis but he had the moves. How about the Animals? Or Freddie & The Dreamers? They couldn’t have made it onto too many teenage bedroom walls, surely?