Rush “Permanent Waves” 40th box set (No Surround this time...)

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Time for a new one. Im trying to stay out of politics.
My cat likes weed.
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Trident Studios changed hands and subsequently went out of business. No matter how commonplace it may have been to leave multitrack masters in the custody of the studio, it was not smart. There is plenty of blame to go around, but the record company is surely at the front of the queue unless Rush were on an unusual contract. I recently was given a first-hand account by a guy who discovered a cult 1970s artist's multis whilst gutting an old studio: happily the guy doing the gutting was a veteran musician and recording engineer, who both recognised what he had and troubled to contact the artist who travelled overseas immediately in person to collect the tapes. I'd bet on things not turning out that well nine times out of ten.
 
Trident Studios changed hands and subsequently went out of business. No matter how commonplace it may have been to leave multitrack masters in the custody of the studio, it was not smart. There is plenty of blame to go around, but the record company is surely at the front of the queue unless Rush were on an unusual contract. I recently was given a first-hand account by a guy who discovered a cult 1970s artist's multis whilst gutting an old studio: happily the guy doing the gutting was a veteran musician and recording engineer, who both recognised what he had and troubled to contact the artist who travelled overseas immediately in person to collect the tapes. I'd bet on things not turning out that well nine times out of ten.

Interesting information, thanks.
I always assumed (wrongly) the artists management would own a clone of the multi-masters for obvious reasons.
Maybe in the digital age we live in now its a lot easier but i still can't believe it.
I just hope one day they might turn up in a lock up somewhere in London.
It seems counter intuitive somebody didn't keep hold of them?
I cried and cried:cry::cry:
 
Copyright is a tangled subject, but the physical recording would typically be the property of the record company, who would of course expect a mixed master via A&R or the album producer, but would typically have legal ownership of the multi and commonly take custody of it. Safety copies would be made of masters but not, to my knowledge, of multis. Some canny artists & management ensured ownership of such tapes either immediately or subsequently. My understanding is that rights in masters & multis can revert to artists once outside contract, but I think that’s essentially a matter of retrospectively untangling legalities that were given little thought at the time (thinking 10, 20, 30 years ahead has tended not to be a strong point for musicians or record companies).
It is astonishing that the multis of what has come to be seen as such a classic album were treated so cavalierly, but given the triangulation between artists, management and record companies it is not hard to imagine assumptions and staff changes leading to things falling between the cracks and the problem only being discovered long after the fact. In the case of Trident there were rumours of things being looted rather than binned: I'd be interested to know whether the interested parties have tried dropping a few grand on a private investigator.
 
Copyright is a tangled subject, but the physical recording would typically be the property of the record company, who would of course expect a mixed master via A&R or the album producer, but would typically have legal ownership of the multi and commonly take custody of it. Safety copies would be made of masters but not, to my knowledge, of multis. Some canny artists & management ensured ownership of such tapes either immediately or subsequently. My understanding is that rights in masters & multis can revert to artists once outside contract, but I think that’s essentially a matter of retrospectively untangling legalities that were given little thought at the time (thinking 10, 20, 30 years ahead has tended not to be a strong point for musicians or record companies).
It is astonishing that the multis of what has come to be seen as such a classic album were treated so cavalierly, but given the triangulation between artists, management and record companies it is not hard to imagine assumptions and staff changes leading to things falling between the cracks and the problem only being discovered long after the fact. In the case of Trident there were rumours of things being looted rather than binned: I'd be interested to know whether the interested parties have tried dropping a few grand on a private investigator.
Maybe the lost tapes will turn up on an episode of "Storage Wars" or "Pawn Stars"
 
There's no easy answer here unfortunately.
The tapes are fragile and require special handling and storage. And the technology is STILL fragile and requires expertise to handle without destroying!

If an artist were to keep their tapes and leave them in an attic or basement with no climate control... they would have been just as lost. Except the physical remains would be sitting in front of you mocking you now.

There WERE safety copies made of multitracks actually. SOP in fact. Some remixes WERE made from said safety copies down the road because of trouble with the original. Some original mixes too in fact, following minor and not so minor studio disasters. Like Fleetwood Mac Rumors. (You might have heard of it. Imagine the universe where that recording was never released because it was destroyed before they could mix it!)
And with analog recordings there are no clones. You can only make a generational copy with the best equipment and expertise available and keep the loss to a minimum. There's no way known to clone an original analog recording. Digital recordings can be cloned. That's one of the things we like about digital! :)

And none of this has anything to do with why the band is treating surround like a novelty and all these past releases save Kings have insulting amateur hour 5.1 mixes!
 
Trident Studios changed hands and subsequently went out of business. No matter how commonplace it may have been to leave multitrack masters in the custody of the studio, it was not smart. There is plenty of blame to go around, but the record company is surely at the front of the queue unless Rush were on an unusual contract. I recently was given a first-hand account by a guy who discovered a cult 1970s artist's multis whilst gutting an old studio: happily the guy doing the gutting was a veteran musician and recording engineer, who both recognised what he had and troubled to contact the artist who travelled overseas immediately in person to collect the tapes. I'd bet on things not turning out that well nine times out of ten.
Looks like this was your 1st post on the QQ forum.
Welcome robdean
 
I've heard from a reliable source that the live tracks we're getting with the PeW 40th set were recently mixed by Terry Brown.
a) I think that means they aren't bootlegs. b) I wish somebody could have convinced him to use those multis to create a Steven Wilson/Elliot Schiener type of live high-res 5.1 mix. But, alas, he's not even interested in any of the existing Rush in 5.1.
 
I have seen quite a few losses:

- Quite a few Warner Brothers cartoons were lost because all of the existing copies were locked in a vault to be syndicated years in the future. When the vault was opened, the film had disintegrated. One of them was resurrected because someone had made a bootleg copy. The others are gone forever.

- NASA almost threw out some recordings of the original moon landing because they were labeled wrong. And the original audio tapes of them were recorded over with new recordings because the tape was no longer manufactured and the machine was the only one that worked with their moon shot receiver.

- A flood destroyed a studio in my area. All of the recordings stored in the building are gone.

- I lost 6 master tapes when someone carried a subwoofer past the tape rack.

- The master tape of my original quadraphonic sound effect run was owned by the group that did the play. They kept all copies to re-use the tape.

It is possible that someone owned the multitrack and took it.

It is also possible that the tape was labeled wrong (or put in a box that was labeled wrong) and was then degaussed and reused.
 
That's a crushing blow to hear the multis are gone and this box set becomes essentially a novelty. If the live show rocks and has been mixed into decent shape that would be a bonus, but far from enough to carry this.

Could not agree more that a full Steven Wilson set of surround mixes would be brilliant. The difference in immersion & breadth btwn AFtK & any of the rest is stunning. The other records deserve better.
 
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My main fear for remixes of some of the records is how they were recorded. The 2112 surround mix sounds very wall of sound compressed. Yes it is spread to all the speakers, but the wall itself is not as big or bold as the music deserves.

Obviously they have the multis which they used for the current mix. But does anyone know if they were recorded with compression in the signal chain as opposed to in post? They still sound very compressed even in 5.1. If that is in the multis, it won't be possible to fix even in a full remix.

I hope this is not the case and we can get SW on the board to release the full power of the Overture
 
For those that are interested I have listened in the car to CD Disc 1 and Disc 2 and they both sound great.
Disc 2 the previously unreleased live concert is super good. I am not a Rush expert and have a couple live discs and this may be the best, great concert.
Sometimes I wonder about CD's sounding good in the car as the player is not as advanced as the home rig which pulls out all the little artifacts good and bad?
CD's are pretty much always good sounding in the car.
 
For those that are interested I have listened in the car to CD Disc 1 and Disc 2 and they both sound great.
Disc 2 the previously unreleased live concert is super good. I am not a Rush expert and have a couple live discs and this may be the best, great concert.
Sometimes I wonder about CD's sounding good in the car as the player is not as advanced as the home rig which pulls out all the little artifacts good and bad?
CD's are pretty much always good sounding in the car.
For sure. I'd wait to endorse the CD's till you can hear them on your system at home. :)
 
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