b0b
From:
Cloverdale, CA, USA
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Posted 9 Dec 2008 3:55 pm |
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I first heard of Chas Smith when I discovered a 10" vinyl record of his at a used record store about 12 years ago. Strange and fascinating noises coming out of a pedal steel guitar - not your usual steel album!
Since then, the Steel Guitar Forum brought us together and I now count him as one of my friends. I even carry one of his CDs in my catalog. Well, today I received a "new release" from Chas in the mail - a CD reissue of that old 10" record plus some other tracks. I emailed to thank him and asked if he used the original master tapes. Here's his reply:
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There are no original master tapes. When I mastered it, at Rainbow, the bill was much more than they had estimated. This was the period after I had gotten blacklisted out of the union and funds were really tight. They held the tapes hostage until I was able to pay of the balance, and when I went to get the tapes, they had thrown them out.
Sooooo, this was done from the cheesezoid pressing, even the "mother" was bad. First, I made the files from vinyl, and since I have the Waves plug-ins as well as Izotope RX, I started the surgery. Six weeks later, I gave up. We then went to Record Tech, in Camarillo and they performed a voodoo of some sort, on the vinyl, put it on the lathe with the microscope transferred it to to 24-bit and between myself and Scott Fraser, we did the restoration.
The whole process was like whack-a-mole. I would "clean-up" a click or some noise area and it would expose another problem underneath. This should have been the easiest one, and it wasn't at all.
What I like about the cd is it spans 20 years. There's the stuff I was doing in 1985 with my ensemble. I performed Hollister at The Anti Club.
The Joaquin piece, 1991, was for a compilation. Originally the piece I was going send was more involved and I had spent a lot of time on it. But it sucked and I had a day to come up with something else and that's what I came up with, in a day and a half.
Ghosts was from last year. There was a production company in France that was doing an "art" film, shot in Brazil, on a bus that spends a number of days going between 2 cities. They went on the bus and "interviewed" the passengers over the period of the trip. They asked me if I would contribute something for the night time, when there was darkness, dust and the ghosts on the windows. The thought of looking at the ghosts on the windows had a strong resonance for me. What I sent them was more subdued, of course, and for the cd, I pulled the background into the foreground, because it has to stand on its own.
Cheers
chas |
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Kevin Macneil Brown
From:
Montpelier, VT, USA
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Posted 17 Dec 2008 2:29 pm
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I am looking forward to hearing this one. Chas makes compelling, engaging, and imaginative music-- and he has a knack for sequencing his pieces on CD to make for a very satisfying listening experience.
Is NAKADAI offically out yet? |
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