Pink Floyd - The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes (UPGRADE)

Pink Floyd – The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes

(soniclovenoize “The Man & The Journey” studio reconstruction)

October 2024 Upgrade

Side A:

1.  Daybreak, Pt 1

2.  Work

3.  Afternoon

4.  Doing It!

5.  Sleeping

6.  Nightmare

7.  Daybreak, Pt 2

Side B:

8.  The Beginning

9.  Beset By Creatures of the Deep

10.  The Narrow Way

11.  The Pink Jungle

12.  The Labyrinths of Auximenes

13.  Behold The Temple of Light

14.  The End of The Beginning

After long last, this is an upgrade to a studio reconstruction of the never-recorded experimental performance piece of “The Man and The Journey”, often titled The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes.  This reconstruction attempts to present a version of the performance that would have taken the place of the More soundtrack and Ummagumma album, only utilizing studio recordings and condensing the performance down to two sides of a vinyl album.  This upgrade changes two aspects I thought were missing from my previous versions of this reconstruction: 1) each side is more concise, spanning 20-minutes each, and 2) I have utilized and manipulated vintage-era sound effects from the EMI library to replicate the Azimuth Coordinator from the original The Man and The Journey performances, what I feel is essential for the full listening experience of these theoretical recordings.  I have also used some slightly different song choices to replicate the final fourth of the album.  And finally, this reconstruction is meant to co-exist and complement my previous 1969 Pink Floyd re-imagination, Vantage Point.  

Musical soul-searching was the predominant mindset in 1969 for Pink Floyd.  The previous year had seen the band attempt to mimic their former bandleader’s singles-oriented approach to psyche-pop with their second release A Saucerful of Secrets as well as the single releases “It Would Be So Nice” and “Point Me At the Sky”.  While both singles failed to make any significant chart impact, it was actually the latter’s instrumental b-side “Careful With That Axe Eugene” that garnished some underground FM-radio play, prompting the band to make it a live staple.  Following the cues of their audience’s reaction to the one-off track, Pink Floyd switched gears and focused on what the remaining four members could do the best without Syd Barrett: sprawling, experimental psychedelic jams. 

The perfect opportunity to test these waters came in February 1969, recording the soundtrack for the film More at Pyre Studios in London.  For several months, the band tracked a few songs and a number of musical themes for director Barbet Schroeder that ranged from Pink Floyd’s typical space rock to pastoral ballads, from exotic influences to even proto-metal hard rock.  The soundtrack album was released in June and while not a critical nor commercial success, several of the album’s highlights were added to their current set, including “Green is The Colour” and “Cymbaline”.  But More was not all; by then Pink Floyd had also been working on their own proper follow-up to A Saucerful of Secrets. 

That Spring, each member of Pink Floyd entered Abbey Road studios alone to record solo material, intended to be collected together as the next Pink Floyd album.  Although Nick Mason and Richard Wright’s material was largely instrumental and experimental, Roger Water’s and David Gilmour’s material each featured a song that had already been performed live with the full band, “Grantchester Meadows” and “The Narrow Way”.  Paired with exquisite live recordings from The Mothers Club on April 27th and the Manchester College of Commerce on May 2nd, Ummagumma was released in October and cemented Pink Floyd’s status as a cult band, prepared to push rock’s envelope, even without hit singles.

While both More and Ummagumma tell a story of Pink Floyd’s progress in 1969, it is not the complete story.  With new and original material spread across two separate albums essentially recorded simultaneously, as well as another two albums-worth of material in their back pocket, the band pondered how to present the material in a cohesive live setting beyond the typical rock band performance.  Choosing to cull the highlights from both projects as well as their favorite instrumental jams from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets (as well as the b-side that was the catalyst for it all), Pink Floyd designed a series of performances from April to June, sometimes entitled The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes but usually titled “The Man and The Journey”. 

“The Man & The Journey” was arranged as two 40-minute movements, and utilized the newly-built Azimuth Coordinator, a primitive incarnation of a surround sound system which played pre-recorded samples meant to fit into the performances itself.  The first set—called “The Man”—seemed to follow the events of a typical person throughout his mundane, British, post-Industrial life.  The set included the members of Pink Floyd actually building a table on-stage (to represent ‘Work’) and being served tea (to represent ‘Teatime’).  The concept, as explained by Gilmour, was inspired by graffiti near Paddington Station, which said “Get up, go to work, come home, go to bed, get up, go to work, come home, go to bed, [repeated]... How much longer can you keep this up?  How much longer before you crack?”

The concept of the second set is less clearly defined and seemed to be largely instrumental and improvisational.  Called “The Journey”, sketches from the performances’ playbill—and even the songs themselves—seem to suggest the piece follows a pilgrim’s quest.  A member of Pink Floyd’s crew even appeared in a sea creature’s costume, moving through the audience and appearing on-stage near the end of the set.  Is there some greater meaning or metaphor beyond this?  Is this the Man’s own spiritual journey through existence?  Knowing Pink Floyd’s conceptual pretensions, that very well might be the case. But Pink Floyd has never given any hints of what the journey nor its prize was, the task apparently left to the imaginations of the listeners.  My own interpretation is that “The Journey” is the evolution of agricultural mankind into industrial mankind, the quest for knowledge and technology; while there isn’t an actual Greek name Auximines, it could be stemmed from the Latin auxiliāris (to help) and the first pharaoh of Egypt, Menes (whose name translates to “he who endures”), literally a metaphor for the king (of humanity) who is assisted by gadgets (our technology) as he endures (history). 

After two seasons of performances of “The Man & The Journey” which concluded with a final performance in Amsterdam on September 17th professionally recorded by VPRO Radio, Pink Floyd retired the conceptual pieces in time for Ummagumma’s release in October.  Unfortunately, the music assembled as “The Man & The Journey” was never formally recorded in the studio, suggesting that it was simply a way for the band to present the disparaging More and Ummagumma material in a live setting, rather than “The Man & The Journey” being the true genesis of either albums.  But is there a way to construct a studio version of “The Man & The Journey”, to condense and create some sort of conceptual order to Pink Floyd’s 1969 output? 

For my newest iteration of “The Man & The Journey” will have several guidelines:  

1) We will only use 1969-era studio recordings of Pink Floyd.  This will exclude both live material and anything after 1969.  The problem that arises from this rule is that some of these pieces (“Work” and “Behold The Temple of Light”, for example) were never properly recorded by Pink Floyd.  The solution to this is… 

2) We will substitute some unavailable tracks for other similar ones, assuming they are still from this same era.  Likewise we will try to avoid using previously-released tracks (“Pow R Toc H” or any section of “A Saucerful of Secrets”, for example) so that this album reconstruction can fit into any continuity you desire.  Note that this iteration once again uses slightly different songs to replicate the final fourth of the album.  

3) Although my previous iterations had 24-minute side lengths, I have trimmed the sides down to a more concise 20-minutes each.  This keeps the album moving and becomes a much tighter listen, something I enjoyed much more over my previous versions, which sort of dragged.  

4) After a lot of soul-searching, I have decided that the Azimuth Coordinator is an essential part of this album.  Here I have used a lossless rip of some of the actual EMI sound effects library.  This would have been the same recordings actually used by the band to create the relevant sound effects originally heard in 1969, although often heavily manipulated.  

Side A–The Man–begins with my own personal “short” edit of “Grantchester Meadows” as “Daybreak”.  This edit significantly cuts the intro, solo and outro, making the song just over four minutes in length.  This is followed by a train whistle from the EMI sound effects library slowed down to sound like a factory steam whistle–what I am fairly sure Pink Floyd actually did for their performances–then goes to “Work” (since this musical piece was never recorded by Pink Floyd, we will use a similar-sounding track, “Sysyphus Part III” from Ummagumma).  In this iteration, I chose to use a fragment of “The Narrow Way I” (aka “Baby Blue Shuffle in D Major”) to represent “Tea Time”, and acting as an outro to the song.  “Afternoon” follows (“Biding My Time” from Relics), as well as the track “Doing It!” meant to represent sexual intercourse (often a Nick Mason drum solo, Pink Floyd often used either “Up the Khyber”, “Syncopated Pandemonium” or “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party (Entertainment)” for this; here I use the later from Ummagumma).  Next the Man falls asleep (using a new short edit of “Quicksilver” from More) and slips into a “Nightmare” (as represented by “Cymbaline” also from More).  The side concludes with the Man waking from his dream to the next day’s “Daybreak” (a short edit of "Grantchester Meadows") and the sound effect of an alarm clock from the EMI effects library.  

Side B—The Journey—begins with the pilgrim leaving the British pastoral countryside (“Green is the Colour” from More) by sea, when they are soon “Beset By Creatures of The Deep” (depicted by “Careful With That Axe Eugene” from Relics).  Using storm sound effects from the EMI sound library–as Pink floyd originally did–as a crossfade between the two, the pilgrim’s ship plows through a 'horrid storm' (as depicted by “The Narrow Way III” from Ummagumma).  They finally arrive on land, moving through a “Pink Jungle” (while Pink Floyd performed “Pow R Toc H” for this piece, here we will substitute a different ‘tribal’ track based around a rolling bass riff: an edit of “Main Theme” from More with the animal vocalizations from “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict”).  Our adventurers next creep through the “Labyrinth of Auximenes” (this piece often featured the bassline to the verses of “Let There Be More Light” juxtaposed with guitar effects and ominous drums; when stripped of the bass line, we are left with a track reminiscent of the first few minutes of “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party II” from Ummagumma, which I used here) and “Behold The Temple of Light” (the chord sequence from “The Narrow Way II” also from Ummagumma).  “The End of The Beginning” is a problematic conclusion to the album, as any use of “Celestial Voices” would be reusing an old track, not to mention an anticlimax if using the subdued studio version that lacks the bombast of how it was performed for “The Man and The Journey”.  Here, we will substitute a different song that features a very similar design of a climaxing organ phrase: “Sysyphus Part IV” from  Ummagumma.  Although I had previously used “Cirrus Minor”, this, I feel, creates a more inspiring and strange ending to a likewise inspiring and strange album.

Sources Used:

Relics (1996 remaster)

Soundtrack to the Film ‘More’ (2011 remaster)

Ummagumma (2011 remaster)

EMI Productions - Sound Effects (1970)

 flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR and Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8

*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

 

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Oasis - Be Here Now (The Mustique Sequence)

Oasis - Be Here Now

(“The Mustique Sequence” by soniclovenoize)

1.  D’You Know What I Mean?

2.  My Big Mouth

3.  My Sister Lover

4.  Stand By Me

5.  I Hope, I Think, I Know

6.  The Girl In The Dirty Shirt

7.  Don’t Go Away

8.  Be Here Now

9.  Fade In-Out

10.  Stay Young

11.  All Around The World

12.  It’s Getting Better (Man!!)

This is a re-imaging of the infamous 1997 Oasis album Be Here Now, intended to more closely follow Noel Gallagher’s original demos for the album.  Initially demo’d in its entirety on holiday in Mustique, Gallagher and producer Owen Morris have since maintained that the final album should have been closer to its more modest demo counterpart, after the album sessions proper had succumbed to rock star vanity and massive amounts of cocaine and booze.  Additionally, I have edited the runtime of nine of the twelve songs to a more reasonable length, preventing the album from becoming unnecessarily long and meandering, intending to reduce the songs to the 4-5 minute mark..  In a sense, this is an unofficial upgrade to my “Be Here Now - Concise Edit” I had made around 15 years ago–although this is slightly different as the tracklist now follows the Mustique demos.  

By 1996, Oasis had quickly become the biggest rock band in the world.  Arising as an indie rock band from the Manchester scene, their embrace of Beatle-esque melodies, anthemic choruses, soaring guitars and a sloppy, ‘you-get-what-you-get’ rhythm section was a refreshing alternative to the contrived pop music at the time.  Their two-punch attack of 1994’s Definitely Maybe and 1995’s (What’s The Story) Morning Glory proved the band as a cultural phenomenon and posterboys for the Britpop movement.  The hype for their eventual third album was elevated during what was considered the apex of their stardom: performing to a quarter of a million fans at Knebworth in August of 1996, deputing a pair of new songs “My Big Mouth” and “It’s Getting Better (Man!!)”.  Ultimately, fans would need to wait an additional full year to hear the finished studio recordings of these songs.  

But the truth was that the entirety of the band’s third album–which would eventually be titled Be Here Now–was already mapped out and demo’d by lead guitarist and songwriter Noel Gallagher, along with long-time producer Owen Morris, two months prior!  While vacationing at Mick Jagger’s villa in Mustique at St. Vincent and the Grenadines from May-June 1996 (along with actor Johnny Depp and his then-partner model Kate Moss), Gallagher brought along a digital 8-track recorder and some instruments to record working demos of how he saw Oasis’s third album.  With Morris programming beats on a drum machine, the pair spent the month tracking virtual “full band” demos of fifteen songs– ten of which would appear on the eventual album in 1997.  Each song featured fully fleshed out drums, bass, rhythm and lead guitars, as well as occasional keyboards; one of the songs “Fade In-Out” even featured Depp on a lead slide guitar!  Half of the songs were newly written, with the other half originating from Noel’s original songbook that also contained the first two Oasis albums and many of their b-sides.  

Despite being essentially ready to go, Oasis chose to wait until October to actually record the album at Abbey Road.  Famously, these sessions were unproductive and chaotic, led by five or six young lads who were more interested in the stereotype rock-star lifestyle than focusing on the craft of making a great-sounding album.  Cocaine, alcohol, brotherly rows and days upon days of literally just trying to reproduce the precise drumsound of The Beatles’ “Rain” guaranteed a weak start to an album that should have secured the band’s longevity as the greatest rock band in the world.  But lead singer Liam Gallagher’s apparent ambivalence, Noel’s desire to create a massive, muddy wall of guitar overdubs on every song, the ineffectiveness of bassist Guigsy and drummer Whitey and the lack of the entire project management from producer Morris drug the sessions into early 1997.  

When the album was finally finished in April 1997, the resultant 72-minute album was filled with rock star access, with songs almost arbitrary reaching six minutes in length, refusing to end; the mix was cluttered, filled with superfluous guitar and orchestral overdubs; every song had been designed to be a stadium anthem, whether it was justified or not; and a number of critics felt the songwriting was just simply unimpressive.  What was worse–Oasis themselves didn’t seem to care!  Although the band’s persona was to be cocky rockstars who didn’t give a fuck about critics, many saw the album as simply going too far with this ethos and that Be Here Now was the beginning of the end of Britpop as a phenomenon.  Both Morris and Noel Gallagher would later regret how the album came out and ruminated that Be Here Now should have sounded more like the Mustique Demos.  Could that be possible?

Approximately 15 years ago, I picked up the gauntlet to trim Be Here Now into a more concise length, using a not-as-hot vinyl rip of the album as a source.  This “Concise Version” was never an official reconstruction for my blog and has since been under the radar beyond Oasis fandom trading circles.  Feeling it was time to revisit the project, I thought to take it one step further: could I also redesign the album to follow the alternate tracklist as presented on The Mustique Demos?  Aside from the slightly re-sequenced second half of the album, the core differences are the addition of the superb b-side “Stay Young”, and that “Magic Pie” was swapped out for the b-side “My Sister Lover.”  Interestingly, these little swaps make the album a bit less faux-epic and more intended to be wall-to-wall bangers as Definitely Maybe–especially when the song lengths have been reduced to keep the album moving.  Although we can’t specifically “de-produce” the album, I have reduced the headroom and used Izotope Ozone 10 to gently make the drum track more focused, which in effect gives the illusion of more headroom.  

My cut of The Mustique Sequence begins with a quick edit of the intro from NG’s 2016 remix of “D’You Know What I Mean” that removes the elongated intro to the album itself.  Crossfad into the original CD mix of the song, I have reduced the length of the choruses by repeating the refrain only twice, rather than three times.  Additionally, I have trimmed the outro down by approximately half.  Those five edits actually cut the song down to 6:32 from its original 7:42.  This is followed by “My Big Mouth”, which features no additional editing.  Next, as heard in Noel’s Mustique Demos, is “My Sister Lover”, using the noise outro from “I Got The Fever” as the crossfade between the two.  As in the first track, I have reduced each chorus to two refrains to keep the song moving along, as well as cutting the outro to half of what it was, slicing the song down to 4:54 from its original 5:59.  Although I admit this is not the strongest song of the batch, its placement here as track three gives the album a forward propulsion that was completely lost with “Magic Pie”.  Now we are actually interested to keep listening.  

Next is “Stand By Me” that also features edited choruses to include only two refrains of the lyric, effectively reducing the song to 5:25 from its original 5:55.  “I Hope, I Think, I Know” follows, untouched from the original CD mix.  Although “The Girl In The Dirty Shirt” is a personal favorite of mine, it seems like the song never ends; I have edited the outro from seven to two measures long, reducing the runtime to 4:51 from its original 5:49.  The same applies to “Don’t Go Away”, reducing the outro from three to one measure long, clocking in at 4:22 from its original 4:49.  

For the title track, one singular bar was edited out of the intro to make it an even four and the never-ending outro was reduced from eight to four measures, taking the runtime down to 4:34 from its original 5:13, making it a mid-album bop rather than a never-ending jam sesh.  Likewise, “Fade In-Out” received lots of edits in the outro, enough to reduce the runtime from 6:51 to 6:15– keeping it epic while not overstaying its welcome.  This is followed by the new highlight of the album, “Stay Young”, which is untouched from the original mix.  Although “The Fame” and “Angel Baby” were next in the Mustique Demos, we are excluding them here to limit this album to twelve solid songs.  Thus, “Stay Young” now crossfades perfectly into “All Around The World” but what may very well be a disappointment to many Oasis fans, the song’s notorious length is reduced from 9:20 to 7:48!  Although it is no longer the longest song in Oasis canon, it does remain the longest song on this album, at least.  The album closes with another personal favorite, “It’s Getting Better (Man!!), reducing the never-ending-outro from eight to four measures, and thus editing the runtime from 7:03 down to 5:48!  Like the demo version of the album, “All Around The World (Reprise)” is absent and thus “It’s Getting Better (Man!!)” is the album’s big finish.  

Sources:

• Be Here Now (original 1997 CD master)

• Be Here Now (2017 remaster)

• Stand By Me (1997 CD single)

• D’You Know What I Mean? (1997 CD single)

   

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Bob Dylan - Songs For Dwarf Music (Stereo Mix) UPGRADE

 

Bob Dylan - Songs For Dwarf Music

(soniclovenoize stereo Basement Tapes reconstruction)

JUNE 2024 UPGRADE

Side A:

1.  Million Dollar Bash

2.  Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread

3.  Please Mrs. Henry

4.  Crash on The Levee

5.  Lo and Behold!

6.  Tiny Montgomery

7.  This Wheels On Fire

Side B:

8.  You Ain't Going Nowhere

9.  I Shall Be Released

10.  Too Much of Nothing

11.  Tears of Rage

12.  Quinn The Eskimo

13.  Open The Door, Homer

14.  Nothing Was Delivered

This upgrade is an explicitly stereo reconstruction of the 14-song acetate compiled in January 1968 of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes recordings for his music publishing company, Dwarf Music.  Intended for distribution to recording industry insiders in order to shop the songs around for other artists to cover, it was this acetate that was used to create the very first bootleg album, Great White Wonder.  Many believe this specific collection is the closest official word to a vintage, proper Dylan album compiled from the 1967 Basement Tapes recordings.  While the pristine mono master of Garth Hudson’s original fourteen-song acetate was released as a vinyl-only RSD exclusive in 2015, this reconstruction attempts to make an exclusively stereo version of Hudson’s master.  Sourced from the bootlegged two-track masters leaked on several bootlegs and mixed with modern techniques, we are able to make a centralized stereo mix with Dylan’s vocal centered, the bass panned to the right and the keyboards and backing vocals panned left.  

Infamously concluding his electric, amphetamine-fueled 1966 World Tour with a “debilitating” motorcycle accident, Bob Dylan was left to retire from the public eye and become the family-man he allegedly always wanted to be.  But his old desire to make music eventually crept in, which amounted to Dylan placing phone calls systematically to the members of The Hawks, his backing band for his previous tour.  Being on retainer, Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel—whom themselves were thinking about regrouping and renaming their own outfit into The Band—arrived to Dylan’s Woodstock home in the summer of 1967 and began simply jamming to old country, gospel and traditional standards while the world around them snacked on psychedelic pop.  Hudson recorded the highlights of the proceedings for posterity to two-track tape and the quintet quickly amassed a pile of reels, unsure exactly what to do with them.  The Basement Tapes were born.

But without a new Dylan album or tour on the horizon, manager Albert Grossman needed new product.  Thus the gears eventually shifted and the daily basement jams evolved into demo sessions for new Dylan compositions, intended to be sold to other artists.  Even though Dylan tailor-wrote each serious original for a specific artist, his originals were very different during this period, informed by the structure of the folk standards the quintet had jammed on during the previous months.  Dylan’s lyrics were paired down from the verbose poetics of Blonde on Blonde to be concise, with every singular line being important and justified; many songs became structurally and even thematically similar to sea shanties and drinking songs.  But the most notable characteristics are the full band arrangements, which often included: Dylan’s 12-string acoustic guitar and idiosyncratic voice; Rick Danko’s electric bass keeping the rhythm in Levon Helm's absence, reminiscent of Sun Records' drumless recordings; Richard Manuel’s piano keeping the backbone with Dylan’s acoustic; only Robbie Robertson’s tasteful electric lead guitar and Garth Hudson’s celestial electric organ remained from the previous year’s 'wild mercury sound’.  Remarkably, some of Bob Dylan’s most cherished songs spawned from these sessions and the Basement Tapes set the standard for Dylan’s concise songwriting method and style for his following albums, from John Wesley Harding up to Planet Waves. 

The first collection of demos was compiled by Hudson (who was acting as impromptu producer) in October 1967, a set of ten songs from Reels 8 & 9, sequenced in the order they were recorded (although “Tiny Montgomery” from Reel 4 was stuck in-between): Million Dollar Bash / Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread / Please Mrs. Henry / Crash on the Levee / Lo and Behold! / Tiny Montgomery / This Wheel’s On Fire / You Ain’t Going Nowhere / I Shall Be Released / Too Much of Nothing.  It was this original tape that secured the initial covers of the Basement Tapes material, including Flatt & Scruggs take on “Crash on the Levee”, Brian Auger & The Trinity’s take on “This Wheel’s On Fire”, The Byrds take on “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” and Peter, Paul & Mary’s take on “Too Much of Nothing.”

With The Byrds and Peter, Paul & Mary charting with Dylan originals, Albert Grossman asked for more songs.  A second, five-song tape was compiled in January 1968 with the best songs from Reels 10 & 13 that included: Tears of Rage / Quinn The Eskimo / Open The Door, Homer / Nothing Was Delivered / Get Your Rocks Off.  Eventually the final song was dropped, and the remaining four songs were tagged onto the end of the previous 10-song reel, creating the final 14-song acetate that lead to Manfred Mann’s take on “Quinn The Eskimo” charting as well as The Byrds take on “Nothing Was Delivered”.  It was this 14-song configuration that made the most rounds in the inner circles, arriving not only in the hands of both music industry professionals and curious musicians, but in the hands of Jann Wenner who famously published an article about the great unreleased Bob Dylan album in Rolling Stone.   It also arrived in the hands of Ken and Dub who pressed their own  vinyl run of the material (coupled with recordings from 1961) and sold their wares under-the-counter to drooling Dylan fans starving for the originals of his currently-charting originals otherwise were unavailable to the general public.  Eventually dubbed The Great White Wonder, this was the first bootleg record. 

The mythology of The Basement Tapes grew throughout the 60s and 70s, largely due to the notoriety of those specific Dylan songs he never released, Wenner’s Rolling Stone article and the emergence of bootleg recordings.  Meeting the demands for an official document of the Basement Tapes recordings, Robbie Robertson with Levon Helm (who did not appear in the Basement Tapes sessions until the 14-song acetate was completed) compiled and then overdubbed a double album of the recordings in 1975.  While a great listen, the inherent faults of the album (anachronistic overdubs, poor sound quality of some source material, inclusions of unrelated Band material, exclusion of “I Shall Be Released” and “Quinn the Eskimo”) did not quench many Dylan fans’ thirst for the vintage Basement Tapes recordings.  Since then, a number of bootlegs including A Tree With Roots and The Genuine Basement Tapes offered a more vintage anthology of the available material.  Both sets were finally trumped by the official 6-CD box set The Bootleg Series vol 11: The Basement Tapes Complete, remastered (mostly) from the master reels, presented as a rather limited stereophonic mix with the vocal track panned at two-o-clock and the remaining track panned at eighto-clock.  The epic box set was everything a Basement Tapes aficionado would desire, but it lacked one thing: a remastered reproduction of that original fourteen-song acetate for Dwarf Music, the recording that started it all, what many Dylan fans believe is the true missing Dylan album from 1967. 

While I originally made a mono reconstruction of Hudson’s 14-song master for my blog in March of 2015–a facsimile based upon John Peel’s own copy as reference–I was soon trumped by the man himself, who released Hudson’s original mono master in all it’s analog glory, as an exclusive vinyl-only release for Record Store Day a month later!  For the last nine years, that released version had been my go-to cut of the material; but I wondered, although it was clearly meant to be in mono, was it possible to make a more modern stereo mix of this exact historical compilation?  It was a cumbersome task, as all of the tapes were tracked live to two-track tape, with Dylan’s acoustic and vocal in one track and all of the remaining instruments in the other track!  That end result, if mixed to stereo directly, is a difficult listen akin to the awkward mixes of early Beatles albums in which the vocals are trapped in one channel and instruments in the other.  

Regardless, I set out to make a more blanched stereo mix utilizing some more modern mixing techniques.  First and foremost, we will take the “utility” track that contains everything but the vocals, and split the bass frequencies into its own track.  Panning that to the right and the remaining frequencies to the left, we are able to make a stereo soundstage which could allow the vocals to be centered; but more importantly, in separating the bass frequencies and rebalancing the track, we are able to reveal and appreciate some of the intricacies that were otherwise overshadowed by Danko’s bass.  Particularly, Manuel’s piano now jumps out and Hudson’s magical organ becomes a near duet with Dylan’s vocal–not unlike his “Electric Trilogy” of albums!  An effect of the way I have created this soundstage is that the recordings are no longer bass-driven, as Danko’s bass is now balanced appropriately with either Manuel’s piano or Hudson’s organ.  This becomes a new way to listen to this album.  

Additionally, we are able to not only center Dylan’s vocal, but here we use a reverb plugin that uses an AI algorithm to sample and emulate specific room interiors, to replicate the unique reverb featured on Dylan’s vocals throughout the session (most likely the spring reverb on their PA).  Thus we are able to create a stereo spread of this reverb, giving these mixes more space and atmosphere, as well as more treble information to be coupled with the bass for the right channel.  

What songs should be included?  Luckily there is a lot of documentation that clarifies which takes were used and in what order, and we will follow that template (for better or for worse).  Side A of my reconstruction begins with take 2 of “Million Dollar Bash”, followed by take 2 of “Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread”, “Please Mrs. Henry”, take 2 of “Crash on the Levee”, take 2 of “Lo and Behold!”, “Tiny Montgomery” and “This Wheel’s On Fire”.  Side B begins with take 2 of “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” followed by take 2 of “I Shall Be Released”.  Take 1 of “Too Much of Nothing” was used on the acetate (as opposed to take 2 featured and overdubbed on the 1975 Basement Tapes album) and Peter, Paul and Mary’s cover version logically reflects that arrangement.  Likewise, take 1 of “Tears of Rage” (as opposed to take 3 on the 1975 Basement Tapes album) and take 1 of “Quinn The Eskimo” (as opposed to the superior take 2 on Biograph and The Essential Bob Dylan) were both featured on the original acetate.  This reconstruction concludes with takes 1 of “Open The Door, Homer” and (regrettably) take 1 of “Nothing Was Delivered”.  While I don’t totally agree on these take selections (notably for “Nothing Was Delivered” and “Quinn The Eskimo”) we will concede to present an accurate artifact. 

Sources used:

A Tree With Roots

The Genuine Basement Tapes

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR and Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8

* md5 files, track notes and artwork included

 

LISTEN FOR FREE AT MY PATREON