The other day, I had the intro to “Back In Black” by AC/DC ringing in my head. When I heard it for the first time on vinyl through my parents' stereo system, the moment where Angus Young's killer riff kicks in felt like being kicked across the room. While I was daydreaming about all of this, I remembered a recent post by Bob Lefsetz titled “Sound Quality” where he states:
…..if you’re listening to hard rock or acoustic music on earbuds, anything but Top Forty dreck, you’re gonna be predisposed to think it sucks. Because you’ve got to feel the music. And almost nobody has enough power to generate that kind of oomph, only distortion.
One of the points he makes is that today's music is being produced to be played on computer speakers and tiny earbud headphones. To me, most of what passes for popular music these days sounds scrunched down and flat to me. I guess this is what happens when music is made on computers to be played on computers. While I've expressed my appreciation of what the digital age has done to facilitate the creation of music, much of the output is missing the warmth that used to come off a record. I refuse to listen to any digital version of The Rolling Stones' “Get Yer Ya Ya's Out” even though the digital versions I own are easier to get to than my record. To me, latter-day Springsteen music is an entirely different animal than his classic records because the new sounds lacks the dynamic of “The River” where the songs feel like they were all done live with the guys standing around a big room. In fact, one thing that is sorely lacking from today's music is the sound of “the room”. Any decent producer can tell you that the room used in a recording is another instrument in the band. The reason that John Bonham's drum beat in “When The Levee Breaks” stands out over 40 years later is that the drums were placed at the bottom of a stairwell and mic'ed from above. In the documentary “The Promise: The Making Of Darkness On The Edge Of Town”, there is a great scene that shows Bruce obsessively searching for the perfect drum sound. He has Max Weinberg pounding a snare over and over and shouts out “Stick!” every time Max's drumstick makes a sound that detracts from what he wants. I wonder if that level of obsessive detail over acoustics is happening today. (I'm not saying it isn't- I'm just wondering).
Though many are losing hope that today's music has forever lost the warmth that comes with live recording, my faith was restored somewhat when a friend's Spotify feed informed me that he had just listened to “Go To Hell” from Raphael Saadiq 2011 album “Stone Rollin'”. The 70s soul groove on this record is reminiscent of old Stevie Wonder. When you listen to it, you can picture a big room full of musicians reading off of charts and recording together like you see in so many movies about music as it was made in the good old days. “Stone Rollin'” is one of a small handful of records released last year that has restored my faith that there are musicians out there that are able to make music that feels intimate instead of electronic. (Another example that jumps out at me is “Helplessness Blues” by Fleet Foxes.) If you keep the faith, true believers, you can still get knocked off your socks if you're willing to hang in there.
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