News

Capitol/UMe Records recently announced an 8 LP "The Band" The Capitol Albums !968-1977".The good news here is that the 9 LP box set containing 8 albums (Rock of Ages is a double LP) was pressed at QRP, on 180g vinyl, features "faithfully replicated album art and packaging" costs $150.00

That is clearly a very good deal. Here's the tricky part: the publicity blurb claims the albums "...have been remastered from their original analogue masters....remastered for vinyl at Capitol Mastering...."

Unless the master for The Band has suddenly and magically appeared after having "gone missing" some years ago, that statement cannot possibly be 100% true.

But more troubling to me is the way it is worded. It's similar to how Rhino worded the Bad Company reissues on the record jacket. Yet there my sources tell me all 1/2 speed mastering at Abbey Road is done from digital files.

Here, the wording is equally ambiguous, which is not to say the cutting wasn't done from tape. I'm going to try to get this wording clarified. For now though, if the packaging is like the Roxy Music box (the rest of that review is in progress), it's a good value for the money but all-analogue cutting would have made it an even better one.

In fact how many would be willing to pay more for analogue cutting?

Of course that's what we got from Mobile Fidelity at a steeper price but there we could buy them individually.

The albums are:

Music From Big Pink
The Band
Stage Fright
Cahoots
Rock of Ages
Moondog Matinee
Northern Lights-Southern Cross
Islands

In the poignant, sad film "Ain't In it For My Health: A Film About Levon Helm", he avers that it was all over after the first two records, though that could be argued by we 'outsiders'.