A&M Classics

[Harry]

For someone as gung-ho A&M as I, I did rather poorly in collecting the 25h Anniversary CLASSICS CDs, although I did get most of my favorite artists versions. The ones I managed to get are:

Vol 1 - TJB
Vol 2 - Carpenters
Vol 6 - Mangione
Vol 18 - Mendes
Vol 19 - Lani Hall
Vol 20 - Alpert (solo)
Vol 24 - Cat Stevens

Once it was too late, I decided I wanted the Bacharach disc too, but have been unable to snag one. They show up on eBay occasionally, but often sell rather high.

It's been awhile, but I used to still see the Carpenters set in stores that seem to have a lot of older stock. But since the re-release of YESTERDAY ONCE MORE, they've pretty much disappeared.

FYI, some of the CLASSICS set must've been issued on cassette as well, since I recall seeing Lani's on eBay, and saved the unfolded artwork that was scanned in. Perhaps not all were though, since the album is titled LANI CLASSICS without a volume number.

My biggest problem with the CLASSICS set was the overall sound quality. In many cases (TJB, Mendes, in particular), the audio has a bit of a muffled quality to it -- not quite the shining, bright digital remasters we were promised on the package. Comparre the sound of the TJB or Mendes discs with the bright-sounding GREATEST HITS discs. The CARPENTERS set sounds fine, as it's a straight repressing of the YESTERDAY ONCE MORE audio, and I don't really have much in the way of other CDs to compare the Mangione or Hall discs to. The Stevens disc sounds OK as well.

I do agree with you that the set was ambitious and a mostly great representation of an entire label. I wish more of the 60s core artists had been represented though.

Good luck in your search, and let me know if you run across a Bacharach Classics.

[UPDATE: I just went to Gemm.com, and found a copy of the Bacharach disc. By the way, the Lofgren is listed rather reasonably while the Carpenters is rather pricey.]

Harry
NP: early morning silence

 

[Rudy]

I found two Carpenters sets at half.com, both sealed and a bit below list price.

Also found several of the Pablo Cruise at half.com, and those are a bargain.

No go on Nils Lofgren, although I'd probably put in a "wish list" request and get an e-mail when somebody lists one.

I have the Mangione and Bacharach sets--soundwise, again, you're not missing much. The only semi-rarity on the Bacharach is "New York Lady," which is an edit of the album version. I probably bought both of these used, a year or two after they came out. The Mangione has a decent mix of tracks from his A&M albums.

The TJB, naturally, was the first one I bought, and also bought the Supertramp the same day. (I recall stopping at the local record shop before a long drive that day.) Bought the Styx later on, and got the solo Herb a few months later.

There are still a lot of copies of the more popular titles floating around--you can often get a Brothers Johnson or Gino Vannelli disc really cheap on half.com (under $5). I may start picking these up when the $$$ situation improves.

These would have made a great, but expensive, box set in their day!

-= N =-

 

[Tim Neely]

Interestingly, one of the companies offering the Pablo Cruise CD is a firm I've bought from in the recent past. And the CD is even cheaper on his website than on half.com. This will give me an excuse to place another order from him.

I tend to agree that many of the CDs have sub-par sound quality. For one thing, the "art" of remastering an analog tape for a digital medium was still in its infancy in 1987. Some early CDs sounded great (Buddy Holly's From the Original Master Tapes on MCA comes to mind), but not everyone took the same care to find the first-generation masters to make their CDs. Many times, the EQ'd tapes used to make the vinyl masters were used, and that can sound muffled on CD. Had there been a 30th anniversary set in 1992, they probably would have sounded better.

Sometimes, when I record individual tracks from the A&M Classics on my CD recorder, I have to record them in analog so I can make the volume match newer tracks.

I started picking up A&M Classics volumes in the early 1990s. The BMG record club used to have these "Buy 1 get 3 free" sales (actually, it still does sometimes), and seeing as they had around half the volumes in their catalog, I decided it would be a fun set to collect. Some volumes never were offered by BMG, so over time I started to get the rest in stores.

I tried to guess which A&M artists would have "Classics" CDs before I looked up the series in a Phonolog. I guessed right in some cases, wrong in others. I would have thought there would be a Baja Marimba Band CD, possibly a Claudine Longet CD, certainly a Police CD, maybe a George Benson CD, perhaps a Lee Michaels CD, and I thought that there could be a "singles" CD by artists not covered elsewhere (Chris Montez, Falco, Miguel Rios, Sister Janet Mead, Ali Thomson, The Parade, "Nadia's Theme" et al.).

 

[Rudy]

I tend to agree that many of the CDs have sub-par sound quality. For one thing, the "art" of remastering an analog tape for a digital medium was still in its infancy in 1987. Some early CDs sounded great (Buddy Holly's From the Original Master Tapes on MCA comes to mind), but not everyone took the same care to find the first-generation masters to make their CDs. Many times, the EQ'd tapes used to make the vinyl masters were used, and that can sound muffled on CD.

That was my complaint about the original TJB (and any 80's-era A&M reissue for that matter) CDs. In fact, The Beat of The Brass still has the dropouts on "Monday, Monday" that appeared on the original vinyl (and which I never really noticed until I got the CD...and went back and listened).

What's funny about the Classics series is the claim that these are from original tapes...but if that were true, would everything sound so washed out, and would the Supertramp CD have some terrible editing? (Listen to "Goodbye Stranger"; it's obviously some kind of single or radio edit, and yet it's not the same version I remember from my 45RPM single. Talk about sloppy editing on the CD! And the beginning of "Logical Song" is clipped off to boot.)

The Styx volume of the Classics series is pretty weak, especially when you consider the more recent Greatest Hits sounds far better.

MCA's From The Original Master Tapes was an excellent series. I bought the Bill Haley & His Comets installment right when it came out--incredible how clean those old mono tapes sound!

I tried to guess which A&M artists would have "Classics" CDs before I looked up the series in a Phonolog. I guessed right in some cases, wrong in others. I would have thought there would be a Baja Marimba Band CD, possibly a Claudine Longet CD, certainly a Police CD, maybe a George Benson CD, perhaps a Lee Michaels CD, and I thought that there could be a "singles" CD by artists not covered elsewhere (Chris Montez, Falco, Miguel Rios, Sister Janet Mead, Ali Thomson, The Parade, "Nadia's Theme" et al.).

It was almost a thumb-up at the original A&M--no Sandpipers, Montez, Longet, Baja Marimba Band...it's as though the marketing department figured nobody knew who these artists were and they'd never sell. Looking at most of the titles, though, it's apparent that these were considered to be good selling artists. Maybe they thought Police were too "hot" to be considered worthy of a Classics disc, but they were already disbanded at this point. Contractual issue, perhaps?

I was also waiting for those other artists to make an appearance in the series. Good thing I didn't hold my breath.

And overseas, they certainly felt the older artists were good enough for a Gold Series compilation! In fact, if we were to repackage those, we could make our own additions to the series!

-= N =-

 

[jimac51]

Just an aside about tape availability-though I have no original catalogs to reference,I suspect all of the Classics series were available on cassette. When the store existed,I distinctly remember catching hell from my boss for an order where the wrong format came in and it was usually my fault. That purple "Classics" spine is very vivid in my memory. We usually stocked tape on virtually every stocked item if it was available. Tape always had a better profit margin in it and if a customer wanted tape,who were we to argue. It would not be until the early '90s that even the major manufacturers caught on that tape was a dying format and,beginning with classical, gradually dried up. It's demise today is accelerating. Mac

 

[Mr Bill]

As I recall in the marketing launch, the CLASSICS series was originally intended to be CD-Only. It wasn't until a couple years later I started noticing that some titles started appearing in cassette form. But I suspect that many more titles were in cassette form from the "record clubs" only -- and probably sooner than the few commercial cassette titles...

I'm with you and Neil in the selection of artists given CLASSICS. Joe Jackson should've had one (his peer group Squeeze got one), as should both OMDs (Ozark Mountain Daredevils & Orchestral Manouevres in the Dark). And it was odd to see that Lani (never a big seller), Gino Vannelli and Pablo Cruise got the CLASSIC treatment...

--Mr B

 

[Rudy]

For that matter, why no Oingo Boingo Classics?

Pablo Cruise I don't know about (did they have any type of popularity?), but Gino Vannelli did sell a fair number of albums and was very popular with his charting hits back in his A&M days. No surprise there. I'm more surprised by the omissions from the Classics series than anything else. Yes, Joe Jackson is another omission...although I wonder if, again, it was a contractual issue.

Just occured to me: did Quincy Jones have a Classics CD himself?

I was just thinking that it would have been neat to really expand this Classics series. Maybe add a Composer Series, a Brazilian series (a compilation or two with various Brazilian artists like Nascimento, Lobo, Tamba 4, etc.), a Jazz Series (compilations of tracks from either CTi or Horizon albums) or like Tim mentioned, a couple of "hits" collections for famous A&M singles artists who never made much of a dent in the album department. Similar to what Verve did with their classic Compact Jazz series, which featured individual artists as well as different genres or styles on their label.

But I feel that any artist who had any decent catalog of A&M albums (at least three) and wasn't an obscurity would have been fair game for a Classics installment. Just seems a glaring oversight that the earliest artists, who had at least five albums each, were virtually ignored.

-= N =-

 

[Mr Bill]

Just occured to me: did Quincy Jones have a Classics CD himself?

Yes, he did.

It's interesting that artists from the first 50 or so A&Mers were represented by only Alpert and Mendes (and Montgomery, if you count the 3000 series).

So we didn't get BMB, Longet, Liza Minelli, Sandpipers, Montez, Ochs, Lee Michaels, Oingo Boingo, Joe Jackson, Police, Split Enz, Hoyt Axton, George Benson or Peter Allen... Any other blatant missing artists who deserved a CLASSICS?

--Mr B

 

[Rudy]

Of all the additional ones you've mentioned, you'd think George Benson would have rated a Classics. Wes Montgomery had one, and he only had three albums for A&M (plus a handful of extra tracks). And while A&M didn't issue a Classics for Benson, they never hesitate to put his CTi recordings back into print if they feel his current album (at whatever label) is going to be a "big one."

-= N =-
...who thinks A&M's A&R just didn't "get it"...

 

[Tim Neely]

Any other blatant missing artists who deserved a CLASSICS?

Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, perhaps.

How about Billy Preston? I was sure he had to have his own CLASSICS volume until I saw the list.

The same with The Captain and Tennille! I remember being really surprised they didn't have a CLASSICS CD.

Some other interesting candidates:
The Tubes; Tim Weisberg; Head East; Rick Wakeman; Free; Shawn Phillips; Spooky Tooth; The Flying Burrito Brothers; Paul Williams; Chris DeBurgh; Bryan Adams; 38 Special; Human League