Context: This was the second unused article that I had written for the now
defunct website that was mentioned last week. When it was written, a
few years ago, I had decided not to name the name of the band that
this involves. I have since had a change of heart. Below is a link
to the Bandcamp page where the completed remastering of this project
now lives as a free download. If you want to take the Pepsi
challenge and A/B this mastering against the old, I'm sure you'll be
able to find the old mastering on the internet somewhere. There will be a fade out or two that were not present on the original CD. Those needed to be added to close out the sides of the LP. Be sure to use headphones or a proper stereo set up. Laptop/phone speakers don't do the low end justice.
Have
you ever thought to yourself, “Wow, that record has been out of
print for years. I wish someone would go through the time, effort
and expense of putting together a reissue.”? I had that idea one
day about a record put out by a band I used to work for. The album
only came out on CD in the late 90s so I figured I could put together
a vinyl reissue.
I
called in a few favors for remastering and artwork. I reached out to
pressing plants for estimates. Then I contacted the member of the band who was deemed keeper of the tapes when the band broke up.
I was
given the okay to proceed but was informed that there were no longer
any master tapes to work from. The remastering would have to come
from the CD which was sonically lacking to begin with. I ignored
this red flag and soldiered on with the project.
The
original recording and mixing was done on a very low budget so there
was not much to work with using the CD as source material. It took
hundreds of man-hours and three attempts to restore the audio to the
point where it would be appropriate for pressing to vinyl.
While
the unexplainable buzzes, peaks and pops were being dealt with I was
going all about town to different record stores to see what their
consignment policies were. Promotional flyers and album artwork were
being laid out. And I was also drafting press releases and putting
together a list of media outlets and contacts to send the release to.
During
this time countless emails were being sent to my point
of contact in the band. None of which were being replied to. Yet
another red flag that I chose to ignore.
After
four months, everything was ready to go. A Bandcamp page was set up
and the pre-order was up and running. For 24 hours.
I gave
the Google servers a day to update. Then I typed in a search for the
band and album title to see how far up in the search results the
pre-order page would be. Oddly enough it was fourth on the list.
Even
stranger was the second search result which was a Facebook post from
two weeks earlier by my point of contact in the band saying that he
has made the album available for a free download on some other site. Thus making any attempt to raise funds for a vinyl pressing rather
pointless. I contacted the other people that were working on the
reissue to see how they would like to proceed. We decided to pull
the plug.
Of all
the things that could have killed the project, I did not think that
would be one of them. Knowing full well that there was a reissue
coming down the line, he felt compelled to give away the inferior
sounding product. I never got a response when I asked him why people
would buy something when he was giving it away for free.
After
the whole thing fell apart it took weeks before I wanted to listen to
music again. So much wasted time and effort was extremely deflating. My lesson had been learned and I have joined the ranks of people
that have an unusable master getting dusty on a shelf.
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