Squeeze: UK Squeeze

A first pressing of a record released in 1978 on limited edition red vinyl!?  Must be a collectible worth tons of $ right?  Not so much.  These can be had on Amazon for $6.79.  I hope I can get that deposit back on the lake house...

Judging a book by its cover I forever believed that the music on here would be reminiscent of the Sex Pistols only not as good (I swear my "Never Mind the Bullocks" album is the same color, same style without the guy about to explode).   This is an American release by the band Squeeze.  How can you tell it's American?  They had to put 'U.K" on the cover as there was apparently some legal trouble with releasing an album in the US by a band called "Squeeze" when there was already a band in the U.S. called "Tight Squeeze".  I don't see what the big deal was.  But that's neither here nor there.  I've been dragging this album around for 30 years from school to apartment to house to house.  So today I decided that, after 30 years, I would actually pull this out in order to figure out what was on here.  I was in for a complete surprise.

I'm actually eating Chinese food right now so I'm going to make this quick.  There are some great songs on here.  There is some bluesy stuff with some tasty musicianship.  There's even a pretty cool instrumental on here.  It spans the gamut from new wave and punk to R&B.  Not at ALL what I thought would be on here.  I can't give track names because I wasn't paying attention and just like when I watch movies I'm going to have to give this another listen before I can really remember anything in depth.  I was mostly left with a feeling of "this is cool, I need to hear it again".

As far as the red vinyl though, it sounds like crap.  It's noisy, the mastering is really terrible, squashed and thin.  I have this album also on normal vinyl and swapped it out when I flipped the record over. It was less noisy, not as badly mastered but not great.   When I go to put this on again (most likely next week in order to wash the sound of Shrek the Musical out of my brain) I'll be putting on the black vinyl.  A little research online found quite a following for the Squeeze with many other releases I didn't even know existed.  I'll have to check out a "Best of" to figure out what they really sound like and how they've changed over the years but that's for another day.

the Beatles: Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

For a number of years I've owned a copy of Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band that I found at a used record store.  Most of my Beatles records came to me in this way and were more than a little noisy, inked up, marked up, abused and smelly.  So when I heard that they were re-releasing the whole Beatles catalog on vinyl I couldn't resist, I had to replace my Sgt Peppers album.  I was of course worried about all the detractors of the new pressings.  Some said they were noisy, some said they were sonically inferior but all I knew was that if I wanted to hear a pristine, vinyl copy of Sgt Peppers I would either have to spend hundreds of dollars on an untouched original or I could spend $25-30 on this remaster.  I'm so cheap the choice was easy, it would have cost me money not to buy this! 

I was a little nervous about dropping the needle down on the new vinyl.  First things first, the packaging is beautiful.  The vinyl is heavy, the record label is an exact reproduction of the original Parlophone label, the gatefold, inner record sleeve, everything reproduced beautifully and faithfully.  These weren't my main interests though, my original copy came with everything it was supposed to except for a clean copy of the vinyl inside.  My fears were quickly alleviated; I dropped the needle on the outer edge and was met with... silence. 

I hate it when I read reviews on records and people talk about the mastering and compression and analog digitality blah, blah, blah.  Some people can hear that kind of stuff.  I can't. Even as a musician a lot of that seems to be lost on me.  What I can tell you is that when I sat in front of my sound system and listened to this album I felt like I was inside the sound.  I felt like it was happening around me rather than in front of me.  If I closed my eyes I could imagine being surrounded by the musicians (which is pretty cool considering that the musicians were the freakin' Beatles).  

This is one of my favorite Beatles albums and being able to listen to it in this manner was like re-discovering it all over again.  Most who know me know that I'm not a huge Beatles fan, I came into them only recently upon reading the book by Geoff Emerick on his days recording the group. The only reason I had the original album to begin with was for the fact that I couldn't really call myself a record collector without having any albums by the Fab Four.  This is one of those albums where most people in the world know just about all the songs on here.  Same held true to me before I first heard it.  The tracks on here that left me wanting would probably be She's Leaving Home and Mr. Kite, while the un-precedented classics would be the title track (of course), Little Help, Lucy in the Sky, Getting Better and, most poignantly as I age, When I'm 64.  

Needless to say, I'm after the rest of this collection.  People hoot and holler about the Mono release. Someday I should get these out of morbid curiosity, but I'm a stereo guy.  I don't like my music, movies or pictures in "flat".  I love music that surrounds you, I love ViewMaster slides and 3D movies.  I can't wait to hear the rest of the new releases... Beatles on pristine vinyl?  Yes please.  But that will have to wait for another day.