And anybody know what happened with Sanctuary/Castle Records? They were slated to drop the nearly-completist Lee Moses comp about half a year ago, and then, *poof!* Nothing.
WORST REISSUE LABEL EVER: Funky Delicacies (since we're on the fuchs subject)
truly the worst. terrible cheap packaging awful design zero information or mis-informed information new orleans funk comps w/ non louisiana bands wrong years listed. bad track selection/oganization all around. poor royalties to the artists.
And anybody know what happened with Sanctuary/Castle Records? They were slated to drop the nearly-completist Lee Moses comp about half a year ago, and then, *poof!* Nothing.
I just heard recently that the Sanctuary offices here closed last year
i dont think my copy of lyman woodward sounds too hot
Thats a Scorpio
I don't have hard knowledge that all their output is bootleg (keep in mind they sell a lot of stuff they don't manufacture, too) but I do know for sure that some of it is...
WORST REISSUE LABEL EVER: Funky Delicacies (since we're on the fuchs subject)
truly the worst. terrible cheap packaging awful design zero information or mis-informed information new orleans funk comps w/ non louisiana bands wrong years listed. bad track selection/oganization all around. poor royalties to the artists.
escrow = escargot???
YES
Extremely painful considering the amazing music he owns the rights to... Tuff City gets the gasface for real
And anybody know what happened with Sanctuary/Castle Records? They were slated to drop the nearly-completist Lee Moses comp about half a year ago, and then, *poof!* Nothing.
I just heard recently that the Sanctuary offices here closed last year
Sorry if i'm getting off topic, but buying reissues such as "Layers" just seems so strange to me. I mean, what's the market value on that record, 10 bucks? Don't reissues sell for like 12-13 bucks? Even if you live in a country where it's not as common as it is in the U.S., the original still goes for like 5-10 bucks on the bay, no? Why not just get the original?
That one claims its remastered, and has new liners (ugh)
4MWB certainly package well, heavy sleeves and heavy wax (even heavy inners)
The two that I've heard were both well used so I can't say if it reflects their pressings or not, but they both played pretty poorly
I don't know, even the heavy pressings of today seems to have pretty shallow grooves which don't hold up well (or give you that huge sound)...
Said earlier that the Susan Christie on Finders Keepers was off masters. Read the notes and my interpretation indicate a mix of masters/non-master sources. A few tracks sounding muddled seems to confirm this. That's that.
It seems 4 Men With Beards is a pretty obvious choice for some quality reissues
I picked up a couple cheaply at a Virgin going out of business sale, and was not impressed.
Making gatefolds with content-lacking interiors out of single-pocket records is kinda corny, and the sound was OK but no improvement over the OG ... one of them was Television Marquee Moon and even the flimsy 70's OG press sounded as good or better. The other was Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads (which I have yet to find a clean, affordable non-electric stereo OG of) and sounds nice but was not a great pressing, just thick vinyl but no real warmth or depth to the sound. And their labels, instead of replicating the original label, have just an ugly, amateurish 4MwB logo on them. Ugh.
I just don't see the point of an $18 reissue of a $10 record like Layers - I mean, it was a 1974 Atlantic pressing ... no upgrade needed!
On the props tip, I'll shout out Warner/Atlantic (SONY?) for their vinyl reissues, I have a couple of comps of "nuggets form the WEA libraries" or whatever that have great liners, packaging, and sound, strainght from the masters.
The vinyl release of this set is well worth having:
matter of fact, i generally stick to reissues that a gear to audiophiles. i'm not one myself, but their standards are high and that's cool. on the flip side, they have terrible taste in titles, so 75% of the shit is boring.
Interesting stuff in the thread on the art/science of reissues/remastered LPs..
What do you think some of the best and worst reissue labels are (current, or past)
It seems 4 Men With Beards is a pretty obvious choice for some quality reissues - I have Les McCann - Layers and a few others - they sound great.
Sorry if i'm getting off topic, but buying reissues such as "Layers" just seems so strange to me. I mean, what's the market value on that record, 10 bucks? Don't reissues sell for like 12-13 bucks? Even if you live in a country where it's not as common as it is in the U.S., the original still goes for like 5-10 bucks on the bay, no? Why not just get the original?
Didn't mean to single you out, Zach, i'm just speaking generally here. Carry on...
Lemme think back to why I bought that... I went to this medium/high end audio store here in Austin (whetstone) to have the linn axis that I bought off ebay dialed in. It was kind of a rough packing job so I wanted to make sure it was OK and I didn't have a stylus force gauge or a protractor. Dude there had a good amount of the $15-$30 audiophile type stuff for sale and since I had disposable income at the time I thought I'd pick something up to see how it sounded on the new table. A while later I found about 5 McCann LPs at reckless recs in Chicago for $8-$10.
In general, why would people buy them though over an original??
I suppose rich audiophile guys might prefer to drop $15-$20 in a store on something rather than try and track it down or buy it sight-unseen from ebay. And not all people who buy records are diggers.. some are in it more for the sound and less for the thrill of the hunt.
I do have an original of Marquee Moon and I have access to the 4MWB pressing so maybe I could do a listen between those and see which I felt was better. I don't know that my hi-fi is good enough though to really reveal the differences though which might be another reason something like 4MWB might sound pretty good to me but someone else might not think so. Also we have different ears.
It seems like in summary so far there was not any real endorsement of the SOUND QUALITY of any reissue labels except maybe the high end audiophile ones (which as mentioned, seem to release some really terrible/unexciting titles)
I was checking out speakers corner records and found this. Probably been posted at some point but they detail (with video) the pressing of vinyl from master tapes and what not:
Can't believe no one has mentioned Dust To Digital...
Re: Sanctuary
They may have shuttered their US office, but they're still going strong. They just issued a 12 disc Joe Meeks box set, a retarded GBH live record, and let's not get started on Trojan shit.
_____
I think we can all agree that Tuff City is worse than any other outfit going. Packaging, sound quality, cut selection, artist relations, customer appreciation, mastering, film work, copy editing, liner notes, font selection, vinyl quality, dead wax scribbles... I could go on for paragraphs.
We need to have one of those Beatle bonfires for Tuff City. A cleansing of the collective collection so to speak. I mean, who the fuck needs a shitty sounding Saxi Karl LP anyway?
I think their out fo business but Strut record did a lot of nice reissues, especially of African stuff. In addition to Blood and Fire, the label Pressure Sounds has never failed me with reggae reissues. In fact, the first half of this decade seems like it might have been a golden era for Jamaican reissues, so much quality and rare stuff got the deluxe treatment.
What do y'all think of Shadoks? Pricey, but they're collectables in themselves and the presentation is top notch. They certainly rank high on obscurity level too.
at times the best reissue label for Reggae, but some of the stuff they released soundin like a rip from jamaican press with the hole in the middle about an inch off-centre makes them the worst.
i was going to start a thread today about the Numero group
The Local Customs[/b] CD/DVD combo is incredible, especially the DVD as they dip into the archives by featuring tracks that weren't used for the CD, along with reel box scans. Their liner notes and photos... it's put together very well. It would be great to work with them on a project, to me they are what Rhino Records was for a lot of people in the late 80's/early 90's.
I'd put Mississippi on the "best" list, for their recent blues and gospel reissues
although only about 10% of their stuff is legit/licensed...pirate label.
let me derail this discussion for one second...a illegal copy of an record is actually referred to as a "Pirate"(Scorpio, etc), a "bootleg" is an unauthorized recording that is released without permission(a Trademark of Quality live Zeppelin LP)...not a big deal, but a matter of semantics that drives me up the wall, a pet peeve. I know no one will change their ways, but I just wanted to put that out there...it is not a "bootleg" of Mulatu, its a pirated copy. Actual old school bootleggers were some industrious cats...recording a Pink Floyd concert back in the 70s and having that shit on a double LP in stores across the country a few days after the concert is some true hustlin'....
I'd put Mississippi on the "best" list, for their recent blues and gospel reissues
although only about 10% of their stuff is legit/licensed...pirate label.
The owner (or one of the owners?) of Mississippi is a regular on another e-group where the subject of his label came up...he seems to be pretty upfront about the labels' business practices, which is much more than I can say for whoever runs (to name a shady example) Collectables.
Not saying anybody is right or wrong, just saying.
Best - Honest Jon's, Soul Jazz and Numero. Worst - Whoever did most of the cadet/chess reissues for the past few years (not the verve ones) and whomever did the strata east reissues for the past few years.
isnt the infamous aaron fuchs the one behind tuff city?
yes he is. i understand he has a horrible reputation in terms of paying royalties and buisness ethics. So for that reason alone, the label should be (justifiably) dissed.
But strictly music - the tuff city catalog is pretty deep - always has interesting stuff. It's never going to be "fashionable" (see; soul jazz, honest jons,light in the attic, etc) - but that's appeling to me too.
Careful now. His lawyers know how to use search engines
Add Academy LP's to the good re-ish labels... Just got their first LP, the Ofege re-ish and it's got all the hallmarks of a quality re-ish: Interview with the orig. producer, fantastic sound, great packaging, and well priced. Any label that re-ish's with best intentions is dope.
No one's f*cking with Numero Group. No one. I don't know who has picked up the new Downriver Revival CD and peeped the bonus DVD with the digital vault but it straight up sons the competition.
Add Academy LP's to the good re-ish labels... Just got their first LP, the Ofege re-ish and it's got all the hallmarks of a quality re-ish: Interview with the orig. producer, fantastic sound, great packaging, and well priced. Any label that re-ish's with best intentions is dope.
Let's not get carried away here. One record does not give enough info to go on. Great store, great album, but let's give them a year to prove their merit.
Best in the game for me: Light In The Attic (quality is high, price is right), Jazzman (deep, well researched, licensed), Finders Keepers (consistently amazing), and Ace (hard to compete with people who've been doing it right since 1975).
As for Mississippi? Cool store, even cooler guys (shout to Eric here), but I don't get what the fascination is. Bootlegs of bootlegs, no info, mixed design results... I just wish this stuff had more teeth. If they'd done the Washington Phillips with a booklet it would have been a massive, important document. I know they're trying to keep it cheap, but it's no service to the music. Revenant should have never ended, they'd have cleaned up right now. If you're into old-timey, pre-war, gospel, etc stuff, Dust To Digital is the spot currently.
Numero Group is my absolute favorite reissue and compilation label. No one even comes close to what they have been able to do with their various projects. Every Numero Group release has amazing art work and a lot of care, love and thought is put into each release with a major emphasis on the history of the labels and artists. Who else is really doing that consistently?
For 45s, I keep going back to Now Again. Everything on Now Again is basically my style of music, and there is a lot of time and thought put into the design of their releases.
For Italian music, I like Easy Tempo.
For reissues of obscure regional funk and soul, I think Luv & Haight/Ubiquity have been winning for years, especially with the amazing Bay Area and Detroit compilations. Numero Group just passed them by (in the regional dept), in my opinion, though.
Add Academy LP's to the good re-ish labels... Just got their first LP, the Ofege re-ish and it's got all the hallmarks of a quality re-ish: Interview with the orig. producer, fantastic sound, great packaging, and well priced. Any label that re-ish's with best intentions is dope.
Let's not get carried away here. One record does not give enough info to go on. Great store, great album, but let's give them a year to prove their merit.
Fair enuff, but I'll hang on to this re-ish long after I've frisbeed alot of other ones. They made my day.
As for Mississippi? Cool store, even cooler guys (shout to Eric here), but I don't get what the fascination is. Bootlegs of bootlegs, no info, mixed design results... I just wish this stuff had more teeth. If they'd done the Washington Phillips with a booklet it would have been a massive, important document. I know they're trying to keep it cheap, but it's no service to the music.
Now that's the biggest weak spot about Mississippi - as much as I like the three albums on that label that I own, some of their projects are reissues of reissues that I think are still in print. There is a Washington Phillips CD on Yazoo, which DOES have extensive liner notes.
If you're into old-timey, pre-war, gospel, etc stuff, Dust To Digital is the spot currently.
...not to mention old reliables like Yazoo and County. They may not aim their stuff directly at the indie-rock crowd like Mississippi does, but they don't skimp on liner-note info.
While we're on a tangent, re: old-timey reissues...there was a series that RCA/Bluebird had earlier in the decade, subtitled "When The Sun Goes Down: The Secret History Of Rock & Roll." Even though quite a few of the tracks have circulated for years on other reissues, most of the CD's in that line were highly listenable and intelligently put together.
Comments
Funky Delicacies (since we're on the fuchs subject)
truly the worst.
terrible cheap packaging
awful design
zero information or mis-informed information
new orleans funk comps w/ non louisiana bands
wrong years listed. bad track selection/oganization all around.
poor royalties to the artists.
escrow = escargot???
I just heard recently that the Sanctuary offices here closed last year
Thats a Scorpio
I don't have hard knowledge that all their output is bootleg (keep in mind they sell a lot of stuff they don't manufacture, too) but I do know for sure that some of it is...
YES
Extremely painful considering the amazing music he owns the rights to... Tuff City gets the gasface for real
Fuck.
That one claims its remastered, and has new liners (ugh)
4MWB certainly package well, heavy sleeves and heavy wax (even heavy inners)
The two that I've heard were both well used so I can't say if it reflects their pressings or not, but they both played pretty poorly
I don't know, even the heavy pressings of today seems to have pretty shallow grooves which don't hold up well (or give you that huge sound)...
Said earlier that the Susan Christie on Finders Keepers was off masters. Read the notes and my interpretation indicate a mix of masters/non-master sources. A few tracks sounding muddled seems to confirm this. That's that.
I picked up a couple cheaply at a Virgin
going out of business sale, and was not impressed.
Making gatefolds with content-lacking interiors out
of single-pocket records is kinda corny, and the sound
was OK but no improvement over the OG ... one of them
was Television Marquee Moon and even the flimsy
70's OG press sounded as good or better. The other was
Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads (which I have yet to find
a clean, affordable non-electric stereo OG of) and sounds
nice but was not a great pressing, just thick vinyl but
no real warmth or depth to the sound.
And their labels, instead of replicating the original
label, have just an ugly, amateurish 4MwB logo on them. Ugh.
I just don't see the point of an $18 reissue of a
$10 record like Layers - I mean, it was a
1974 Atlantic pressing ... no upgrade needed!
On the props tip, I'll shout out Warner/Atlantic (SONY?)
for their vinyl reissues, I have a couple of comps of
"nuggets form the WEA libraries" or whatever that have
great liners, packaging, and sound, strainght from the masters.
The vinyl release of this set is well worth having:
The Blue Note records I mentioned in the other thread are put out by Classic Records--a great audiophile label. here's one http://store.acousticsounds.com/browse_detail.cfm?Title_ID=37182&sct=music
matter of fact, i generally stick to reissues that a gear to audiophiles. i'm not one myself, but their standards are high and that's cool. on the flip side, they have terrible taste in titles, so 75% of the shit is boring.
Speaker's Corner is good label.
cosign on Earmark.
Lemme think back to why I bought that... I went to this medium/high end audio store here in Austin (whetstone) to have the linn axis that I bought off ebay dialed in. It was kind of a rough packing job so I wanted to make sure it was OK and I didn't have a stylus force gauge or a protractor. Dude there had a good amount of the $15-$30 audiophile type stuff for sale and since I had disposable income at the time I thought I'd pick something up to see how it sounded on the new table. A while later I found about 5 McCann LPs at reckless recs in Chicago for $8-$10.
In general, why would people buy them though over an original??
I suppose rich audiophile guys might prefer to drop $15-$20 in a store on something rather than try and track it down or buy it sight-unseen from ebay.
And not all people who buy records are diggers.. some are in it more for the sound and less for the thrill of the hunt.
I do have an original of Marquee Moon and I have access to the 4MWB pressing so maybe I could do a listen between those and see which I felt was better. I don't know that my hi-fi is good enough though to really reveal the differences though which might be another reason something like 4MWB might sound pretty good to me but someone else might not think so. Also we have different ears.
And thanks for all the information - good stuff.
It seems like in summary so far there was not any real endorsement of the SOUND QUALITY of any reissue labels except maybe the high end audiophile ones (which as mentioned, seem to release some really terrible/unexciting titles)
I was checking out speakers corner records and found this. Probably been posted at some point but they detail (with video) the pressing of vinyl from master tapes and what not:
http://www.speakerscorner.de/Speakerscorner/E/Neues/video.htm
Re: Sanctuary
They may have shuttered their US office, but they're still going strong. They just issued a 12 disc Joe Meeks box set, a retarded GBH live record, and let's not get started on Trojan shit.
_____
I think we can all agree that Tuff City is worse than any other outfit going. Packaging, sound quality, cut selection, artist relations, customer appreciation, mastering, film work, copy editing, liner notes, font selection, vinyl quality, dead wax scribbles... I could go on for paragraphs.
We need to have one of those Beatle bonfires for Tuff City. A cleansing of the collective collection so to speak. I mean, who the fuck needs a shitty sounding Saxi Karl LP anyway?
at times the best reissue label for Reggae, but some of the stuff they released soundin like a rip from jamaican press with the hole in the middle about an inch off-centre makes them the worst.
The Local Customs[/b] CD/DVD combo is incredible, especially the DVD as they dip into the archives by featuring tracks that weren't used for the CD, along with reel box scans. Their liner notes and photos... it's put together very well. It would be great to work with them on a project, to me they are what Rhino Records was for a lot of people in the late 80's/early 90's.
although only about 10% of their stuff is legit/licensed...pirate label.
let me derail this discussion for one second...a illegal copy of an record is actually referred to as a "Pirate"(Scorpio, etc), a "bootleg" is an unauthorized recording that is released without permission(a Trademark of Quality live Zeppelin LP)...not a big deal, but a matter of semantics that drives me up the wall, a pet peeve. I know no one will change their ways, but I just wanted to put that out there...it is not a "bootleg" of Mulatu, its a pirated copy. Actual old school bootleggers were some industrious cats...recording a Pink Floyd concert back in the 70s and having that shit on a double LP in stores across the country a few days after the concert is some true hustlin'....
The owner (or one of the owners?) of Mississippi is a regular on another e-group where the subject of his label came up...he seems to be pretty upfront about the labels' business practices, which is much more than I can say for whoever runs (to name a shady example) Collectables.
Not saying anybody is right or wrong, just saying.
Worst - Whoever did most of the cadet/chess reissues for the past few years (not the verve ones) and whomever did the strata east reissues for the past few years.
Careful now. His lawyers know how to use search engines
Let's not get carried away here. One record does not give enough info to go on. Great store, great album, but let's give them a year to prove their merit.
Best in the game for me: Light In The Attic (quality is high, price is right), Jazzman (deep, well researched, licensed), Finders Keepers (consistently amazing), and Ace (hard to compete with people who've been doing it right since 1975).
As for Mississippi? Cool store, even cooler guys (shout to Eric here), but I don't get what the fascination is. Bootlegs of bootlegs, no info, mixed design results... I just wish this stuff had more teeth. If they'd done the Washington Phillips with a booklet it would have been a massive, important document. I know they're trying to keep it cheap, but it's no service to the music. Revenant should have never ended, they'd have cleaned up right now. If you're into old-timey, pre-war, gospel, etc stuff, Dust To Digital is the spot currently.
For 45s, I keep going back to Now Again. Everything on Now Again is basically my style of music, and there is a lot of time and thought put into the design of their releases.
For Italian music, I like Easy Tempo.
For reissues of obscure regional funk and soul, I think Luv & Haight/Ubiquity have been winning for years, especially with the amazing Bay Area and Detroit compilations. Numero Group just passed them by (in the regional dept), in my opinion, though.
For reggae and dub, Blood and Fire and Trojan.
Fair enuff, but I'll hang on to this re-ish long after I've frisbeed alot of other ones. They made my day.
Now that's the biggest weak spot about Mississippi - as much as I like the three albums on that label that I own, some of their projects are reissues of reissues that I think are still in print. There is a Washington Phillips CD on Yazoo, which DOES have extensive liner notes.
...not to mention old reliables like Yazoo and County. They may not aim their stuff directly at the indie-rock crowd like Mississippi does, but they don't skimp on liner-note info.
While we're on a tangent, re: old-timey reissues...there was a series that RCA/Bluebird had earlier in the decade, subtitled "When The Sun Goes Down: The Secret History Of Rock & Roll." Even though quite a few of the tracks have circulated for years on other reissues, most of the CD's in that line were highly listenable and intelligently put together.