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I just sent this to JWB...figured some here might find it interesting.

Are there any tracks on this CD that we think are original mixes (albeit pre-processing original mixes that sound far better than any Freak Out! vinyl I've ever heard)?

I ask because someone pointed out something intriguing. Around the two minute mark on "Wowie Zowie," it abruptly switches to something approximating mono (but with a bit of stereo information) for a few bars, before switching back to stereo. The vinyl does this...but the CD does also. It would seem almost totally out of character for Frank to bother replicating this. The CD version of "Wowie Zowie" sounds very clean, but the instrument placing seems to match the LP (as opposed to something like "Hungry Freaks," "Go Cry on Somebody Else's Shoulder" or "Who Are the Brain Police?" which are clearly reworked and have markedly different instrument placing), and it doesn't seem totally out of the question that the CD could just be what the tape sounded like before various sonic indignities.

Other distinct possibilities: "Ain't Got No Heart" and "I'm Not Satisfied." The big problem is that the original mix sounds like shit, compounded by the fact that the original PRESSINGS sound like shit. The Old Masters version is better...kinda, but still has major issues. It seems as if the master for Freak Out had its frequency response severely limited at some stage, giving it that *very* tinny sound, which alters the guitars in particular. If we postulate that there's some stereo mix down stage where that effect HADN'T yet been applied...

I suppose what bothers me is the occasional hyper-faithfulness to the original mixes, something Frank isn't generally known for. "Hungry Freaks" and "Brain Police" sound almost nothing like the original mixes, but "Wowie Zowie" is realllly close, but about 1000x cleaner.

So yes. Thoughts?

I'm not familiar with the original mix of "Freak Out" so I cannot contribute. I have two copies on LP, minty clean, and they both sound disgusting, so I never bothered to memorize the mix differences. I'm perfectly happy with the CD, to be honest with you, but only because the original LP is so repulsive. I would like to hear the mono mix, though. Having "Money" in mono now is very nice, a nice companion to the current CD.

Every Verve LP I've ever tried to transfer to CD...I ended up throwing my hands up and putting it back in storage. Bad, bad, bad. Jeff's "Money" LP is the best I've heard, to be honest, proabaly because it's mono and you can clean up the crosstalk. It was still a bitch to clean up though.

You certainly did a fine job on that mono Money. I do enjoy hearing the LP directly on my turntable, but I don't think I'll play it often, given its value and the fact that I have this very nice CD-R of it now.

I don't have a Freak Out! LP, but my father still has the copy he bought in '66, and I played a bit of it at his house not long ago. I thought it sounded pretty awful, but I keep thinking I should borrow it and make a CD-R, just so I can become familiar with the original mix. So I can't contribute to the discussion of mix differences (or not) either.

JWB wrote:Every Verve LP I've ever tried to transfer to CD...I ended up throwing my hands up and putting it back in storage. Bad, bad, bad.

Funny...my dad has a ton of Verve jazz LPs, and I seem to remember most of them sounding quite good.

lukpac wrote:Funny...my dad has a ton of Verve jazz LPs, and I seem to remember most of them sounding quite good.

This reminds me that I have black-label Verve LPs of Getz/Gilberto and a few Ella Fitzgerald titles, and they sound really fine. It's only the Zappa Verve titles I've heard (apart from the mono Money) that sound bad.

Well, imagine you're cutting for Verve...you're used to the smoooooooth sounds of Getz/Byrd or Getz/Gilberto. Suddenly Tom Wilson comes in and hands you the masters for Freak Out and VU/Nico. I mean, these guys must not have known what the fuck was going on...!

I'm pretty sure at least part of the fault of Freak Out! lies with the original mixdown (or perhaps one generation later) tapes. I have the Old Masters sampler, which is a disarmingly well-pressed piece of vinyl, and the Freak Out! tracks--digitally tweezed or not--still have that infuriatingly scratchy sound.

As for "what the original mix sounds like:" the same in spots, different in spots. "Brain Police" and "Hungry Freaks, Daddy" have a layer of effects absent on the remixed versions (although "Brain Police's" effect was re-created somewhat for the Mothermania remix). "Cry" is clearly more sophisticated in its modern incarnation. But some tracks have what sounds like the exact same instrument placing, only the original mix has crappy tape reverb instead of digital reverb and sounds for all of the world like a 11,025 WAV.

Should I post an MP3 or two?

-D

I'd be curious to hear something.

www.lukpac.org/~handmade/freakout/

Three quick MP3s. It should be glaringly obvious where the versions switch.

-D

Wow. Those guitars really do sound different. But yes ... "Hungry Freaks" is the only one of those three that is *obviously* a completely different remix. Even if the others are as well, they're much closer to the originals.

I think I need to liberate my father's LP from his collection (he is *not* a Zappa fan and I'm sure he has not played the album since he first got it).

Is the Old Masters LP different than the CD? Are ANY Old Masters LP's different from the CD? I don't know anything about Old Masters. I'm tempted to pick them up, but I don't want to if they're just re-hashes of the CD.

Yes, they are. Remember, the Freak Out! mix occured in 1987, while the Old Masters LPs came way before that. The Freak Out! disc in the Old Masters set is apparently a digitally "tweezed" version of the LP mix, whatever that means. It sounds better than any Verve pressings I have (going by the sampler), but still sounds VERY filtered.

Along these lines, I thought I'd finally digitize some Chunga LP droppings for comparison with the current, stock CD.

There are those who claim that while Zappa managed to butcher Sheik Yerbouti and others while remastering them, some of the "less important" 1989-era CDs--Chunga, Weasels--aren't that bad. I submit the following comparison:

http://www.lukpac.org/~handmade/TheClap.mp3
http://www.lukpac.org/~handmade/rudy.mp3

The Clap has one edit between versions, Rudy many. Tell me what you think.