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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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In Reply to: Why Is Phil Spector's "WALL OF SOUND" Held In Such High Esteem? posted by TheRecordCollector on November 25, 2000 at 10:25:10:
de gustibus non disputandum est.Nevertheless, let me try.
To my knowledge, Phil Spector was the first guy who really conceived of the recording as a "performance" in its own right, rather than just a memorialization of live performance.
A Phil Spector "performance" does not exist outside of the recording. The only way to experience the performance is to play the recording. If you had been there in the studio when the recording was being made, you would not have heard it. It is not like putting five musicians in the studio in front of mics, turning on the power and rolling the tape.
Secondly, audiophile gripes about Spector's recordings are beside the point. They were designed to be played through popular equipment of the day -- monaural car radios; inferior console stereos with maybe 6 db of channel separation and an effective frequency response of 80-12,000 Hz +/- 6dB. These were not capable of any of the audiophile tricks of today's equipment.
Finally, I have preserved a little tidbit of Phil Spector that's kind of interesting. In 1969, WOR-FM New York City kicked off their pioneering "oldies" format with a week-long "history of Rock and Roll." This was a wonderfully-produced product that traced all of the roots and branches of rock. It was not just an intelligently organized playlist, however. The producers had interviewed every major figure in rock and roll who was alive at the time and got them to talk about their music. I have about ten 7-inch reels of tape I made of the broadcast off the air.
One of the great interviews was with Phil Spector, and one of the really cool things they did was to play a recording, not produced by Spector -- The Skyliners' "Since I fell for You" -- and have him comment on it. He liked the record a lot, and it was pretty interesting to hear him pick apart the components of the arrangement and what he liked about them.
I think the Righteous Brothers' recordings were probably the highest development of Spector's art.
But, like anything else, you either like it or you don't.
RBB --
"Q-tips (tm) work great!"
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