Through a Glass Darkly (part 2)

Now, where was I? Oh yes...please don't think for one minute while reading this that I'm a musical perfectionist! I will always want musicians to be heard performing to their potential but sheer, clinical perfection leaves me a little cold.

I recall as a young boy being astonished by how fast a cornet soloist with a band moved his valves up and down, in seemingly perfect synchronisation with his breathing, tongueing and blowing - THAT much inspired me! At the end, when the audience's prolonged applause had died down and the soloist, having politely acknowledged the reception with neither a flushed cheek nor a hair out of place, had returned to his seat - the compere spoke:

"Wow! Didn't he make it look easy?"

My thoughts exactly! The compere meant it as a compliment, of course, yet I wanted to know how much better the performance might have been had the solost given a bit more of himself in the performance! I vowed secretly to myself that, if I were ever in a similar position I would not want to retake my seat unless I were a sweating, drippy heap...and both mentally and emotionally exhausted! Anyone who has seen me play in the 34 years I've now been a euphonium soloist would smile, realising why their applause at the end of my efforts was warmed by their relief I hadn't actually dropped dead in front of them mid-variation!

But, I digress...and realise (even at this early point in my blogging career) that typing my thoughts is going to a like a Ronnie Corbett monologue...we WILL get to the point eventually! What I guess I was trying to say above is that while clinical perfection is something to be aspired to it is rarely attained and, if so, surely at the price of a little 'soul'? Maybe that's why, when I first bought a vinyl copy of the 'Beatles Live in Hamburg' (my bizarre mind reminds me that it was bought in Newcastle with birthday money from Grandad Hedges circa October 1981!) I was intrigued by the liner comment that 'bum notes flew like beer bottles'. They did indeed...and the hissy, imperfect recording - made on a cheap reel-to-reel tape recorder with, no doubt, even cheaper microphone and NEVER intended for commercial release - was hard to listen to at all, to be honest. Yet, buried beneath the vinyl noise, recording imperfections and audience interference it was THE BEATLES - as I'd never heard them before...which made it all worthwhile. The skill, energy and enthusiasm they put into their, surely, routine work showed why the had become the superstars I'd grown to love within a couple of years of the show in a dingy, German nightclub.

All Beatles fans will know the official releases like the backs of our hands. When I would play Beatles to classes full of seemingly uninterested schoolchildren for 20 years they were always surprised how many of the 'sample tunes' I carefully chose they already knew! "Oh, THAT's The Beatles! I know that song...didn't know it was them though!" came back at me class after class, year after year (as I smiled, knowingly, back at them!) I bought the whole lot on vinyl back in the 1980s (plus bootlegs in Portobello Road), made copies onto cassette, assembled my own compilations, got the Red and Blue sets and the Rarities LP (wow, what a thrill it was to have THAT!). I got some official cassettes as well if they were going cheap in a sale or 2nd hand shop...and then, in 1987, 'the Holy Grail'...The Beatles arrived on CD.

I took it as gospel that these were definitive. It was, after all, the 3rd time I'd bought the same songs...but now without surface crackle and scratches or cassette tape hiss (or even worse - the beheaded abomination your ears suffered with a Dolby circuit switched on!!) I had no real reason to question whether what I heard on my decent home hi-fi was as close as one could get to 'what it sounded like in the studio'. The 'industry' had, after all, sold us the concept of 'CD' under that premise! Only in hindsight, and with 22 years of reading, listening and (in recent years) internet fan-groups and mailing-lists, do I know the truth: when dear George Martin made the new masters in 1987 his once pristine ears were not what they once were! Nor could he (or, to be fair, we) have envisaged the advances in remastering techniques that would later evolve during the 1990's and 2000's. As more and more 'classic' albums received the 'digitally remastered' re-release ('Dark Side of the Moon' and 'Pet Sounds' come to mind...HOW MANY TIMES???) I began to wonder if The Beatles oeuvre was being 'left behind'.

Then, I heard on the internet about Dr Ebbett! Here was a Beatles fan, so disturbed by the poor quality perceived to be the group's legacy on CD that he developed his own technique to drop stylus onto pristine vinyl and produce CDs that (it was claimed) sounded much better than the official releases? Of course I was sceptical! If they were that good, why hadn't EMI done something about it...after all they had the original tapes?

So, I still listened to my CDs...even mp3's ripped from them! I used to persuade myself I couldn't hear a difference between the CDs and an mp3...even when ripped as low as 128kbps...then someone demonstrated to me how I was wrong! I still rip mp3's but now never lower than 192kbps (and my favourite music at 320) and it is to my regret that I admit that I only acquired a set of Dr Ebbett's needledrops earlier this year...

Bluntly, I was ASTONISHED by what I heard! I was hearing things I'd never heard before: clarity between instruments - almost a defined 'space' between the musicians and elements of the sound. The bass punched and the high-frequencies rang out without jarring my ears and setting off my tinnitus! I took the set with me into a professional studio when recording keyboard overdubs for a CD and asked the engineer (another Beatles fan) if we could listen to a bit on the studio equipment: half-way through the 2nd song he took my discs into his office and copied the lot before we finished the session!!!

So, when I read recently that Dr Ebbett had 'thrown in the towel' after hearing the new, official Beatles remasters I had to expect great things. He always maintained that he had not worked tirelessly (as he undoubtedly had over the last few years) to make money out of The Beatles but to provide fans with recordings the group's legacy deserved. He now acknowledges that there is no need for him to continue - EMI have done the right thing at last!

When I did an A-B-C test yesterday with my son (and fellow-Beatlemaniac) Lewis between the 1987 CDs, Dr Ebbetts and the new stereo releases the reslults were everything I could have expected...and more! Like I said yesterday it was "as if someone had removed several layers of curtain from in front of my speakers". (The differences between 1987 and 2009 especially I would defy anyone to not hear!) We Beatles fans have entered a new world...and with games and iTunes to follow I guess we'll be picking up a few new members too!

'Through a glass darkly' is, of course, taken from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13. To quote Wikipedia, "the phrase is interpreted to mean that humans have an imperfect perception of reality." In that case, and to continue the allegory, yesterday I met the music "Face to Face".

...And they tell me the 'Monos' are even better...........