Quad LP/Tape Poll Mott The Hoople: The Hoople [SQ/Q8]

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Rate 'The Hoople'


  • Total voters
    7
70's glam is A ok in my books

And so says I too - nothing wrong with 70's glam.
Queen nicked the main part of their sound from The Sweet (check out Sweet FA and tracks like Rebel Rouser, Stairway to The Stars etc and right down to the red guitar as well, even Sweet's drummer did the falsetto harmonies. Sound familiar?), and Mott were superb. It will be most interesting to see how their reunion shows go. I shall be there, for certain.

I've got this one as an SQ and Larry is sadly spot on - it's not great. Would love to hear a Q8 of this myself.....
 
I've got the Q8 and I can understand how the SQ LP of this title may not have worked well. I've never heard the SQ, but hearing the leakage going on with the Q8, I bet the encoding process could get seriously fouled up. There's lots of drum leakage from front to back and not a whole heck of a lot of discrete corner placement.
The piano on "Golden Age of R&R" starts out discretely in the front, then moves to the back after the intro, then appears in all four. Not really sure what they were trying to accomplish with that, but I could see that confusing an SQ decoder as well. I'm not familiar with the song "Roll Away the Stone" so I'll give it a listen. I think the neatest thing about this album is that it and Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline are kissing cousins (CAQ 32871 & 32872)

*Additional Information*

So I'm playing "Roll away the Stone" right now. I'd say it's fake Quad if it weren't for the fact there's NO lead vocals in the rears. The rears consist of everything from the front minus lead vocals but with heavy echo and some definite delay on the drums. That much echo and delay would certainly bugger up the SQ process.
 
I spent most of my afternoon today recording in and cleaning up a Q8 of this title, and I have to say I really enjoyed it!

I was only familiar with "All The Young Dudes", which the content of this album stylistically isn't really like at all. At times it almost reminded me of Roxy Music's debut, with lots of piano, sax, and flamboyant vocals. It's quite theatrical and entertaining, if you like that sort of thing ('70s glam).

As pointed out above, the mix is a definitely odd for a Columbia title: elements such as piano, drums, and even vocals often appear simultaneously in all four channels. There is also a heavy echo effect present throughout. Whoever mixed this clearly was not thinking about SQ compatibility...

I agree that "Roll Away The Stone" is a total throwaway surround-wise: perhaps this track is actually some sort of upmix? It stands out from the rest of the album, much like "Sophie" on Jeff Beck's Wired sticks out as faked.

Luckily, all the other songs have plenty of separation and fun panning effects. "Marionette" has the piano and sax isolated in the rears, while the pre-chorus vocals rotate around the room ("I need, you feed...") and the crazy laughing is in the right rear. "Crash Street Kids" has a cool time-delay effect on the vocals in the rear, and the electric guitar is only in the rears. Finally, "Born Late '58" is a standout with that awesome guitar riff blasting out the left rear channel.

It's a 9 from me. A reissue of this might actually be really cool.

"Marionette":
38610

"Born Late '58":
38611
 
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