My body keeps changing my mind

[newvillefan]

That was the Universal vault.

Ed

Iron Mountain is in Pennsylvania, the Universal storage facility was in LA. I had thought the tapes were transferred from their permanent home in Iron Mountain for digital transfer and remastering and should then have been sent back there but ended up stored at Universals Studio. Maybe I’m mistaken but I know for sure some Carpenters stuff is up there in storage in Pennsylvania because Richard has mentioned it. That’s where all the original Black Sabbath masters are stored.

 

[tomswift2002]

That was the Universal vault.

Ed

The Universal vault where the fire occurred was at the Universal theme park.

 

[tomswift2002]

Iron Mountain is in Pennsylvania, the Universal storage facility was in LA. I had thought the tapes were transferred from their permanent home in Iron Mountain for digital transfer and remastering and should then have been sent back there but ended up stored at Universals Studio. Maybe I’m mistaken but I know for sure some Carpenters stuff is up there in storage in Pennsylvania because Richard has mentioned it. That’s where all the original Black Sabbath masters are stored.

From what I understand from Iron Mountain’s website, Iron Mountain makes a digital transfer and backup of all the analog tapes the handle before shipping them out, so that if anything happens to the original master, there is a high-quality digital copy back in Pennsylvania that is a near-perfect copy of the original tapes.

However,

 

[tomswift2002]

Iron Mountain is in Pennsylvania, the Universal storage facility was in LA. I had thought the tapes were transferred from their permanent home in Iron Mountain for digital transfer and remastering and should then have been sent back there but ended up stored at Universals Studio. Maybe I’m mistaken but I know for sure some Carpenters stuff is up there in storage in Pennsylvania because Richard has mentioned it. That’s where all the original Black Sabbath masters are stored.

From what I understand from Iron Mountain’s website, Iron Mountain makes a digital transfer and backup of all the analog tapes the handle before shipping them out, so that if anything happens to the original master, there is a high-quality digital copy back in Pennsylvania that is a near-perfect copy of the original tapes.

However,

 

[AM Matt]

There is also Iron Mountain, Michigan in the upper part!!

 

[newvillefan]

From what I understand from Iron Mountain’s website, Iron Mountain makes a digital transfer and backup of all the analog tapes the handle before shipping them out

So that’s what I meant. The Carpenters’ masters were all originally stored in the climate-controlled environment in Iron Mountain and some of them ended up at the Universal lot by mistake due to an error with their return shipping after Richard had used them for a recent project. In other words, the Universal lot was not their permanent home. I’m absolutely sure I read that Richard had no idea the masters had not even been returned to Iron Mountain. This is backed up by Richard himself three years earlier on the “Fans Ask” section of the official site Carpenters website, in response to a fan’s question about "Thank You For The Music”:

“It's an outtake, never completed and in storage with the rest of the stuff in Pennsylvania”.

Carpenters Fans Ask- Richard Answers, May 2005

 

[Vinylalbumcovers]

So that’s what I meant. The Carpenters’ masters were all originally stored in the climate-controlled environment in Iron Mountain and some of them ended up at the Universal lot by mistake due to an error with their return shipping after Richard had used them for a recent project. In other words, the Universal lot was not their permanent home. I’m absolutely sure I read that Richard had no idea the masters had not even been returned to Iron Mountain. This is backed up by Richard himself three years earlier on the “Fans Ask” section of the official site Carpenters website, in response to a fan’s question about "Thank You For The Music”:

“It's an outtake, never completed and in storage with the rest of the stuff in Pennsylvania”.

Carpenters Fans Ask- Richard Answers, May 2005

This was also three years before the fire. I hope he was right but...

Ed

 

[tomswift2002]

This was also three years before the fire. I hope he was right but...

Ed

In 2005, as far as Richard was aware, the analog masters had been shipped back east. I remember there was an interview with him where he said he didn’t know that they were destroyed until he showed up at the studio one day in late-2008 to work on remixing some tracks (which I don’t recall there being any new remixes since 2004, aside from RPO, but maybe he was going to include some on 40/40) and the tapes he had requested days earlier were not there and apparently if took quite a while on different phones to cut through Universal’s “red tape” to finally find out that they had been destroyed and only the digital backups in Pennsylvania still existed.

 

[newvillefan]

In 2005, as far as Richard was aware, the analog masters had been shipped back east. I remember there was an interview with him where he said he didn’t know that they were destroyed until he showed up at the studio one day in late-2008 to work on remixing some tracks (which I don’t recall there being any new remixes since 2004, aside from RPO, but maybe he was going to include some on 40/40) and the tapes he had requested days earlier were not there and apparently if took quite a while on different phones to cut through Universal’s “red tape” to finally find out that they had been destroyed and only the digital backups in Pennsylvania still existed.

Thank you! I didn’t think I was going mad. This helped me go back and find the source of the story: The New York Times. As far as I know the original masters should never have been at the Universal lot after they were used on a previous occasion; he expected them to have been shipped back to their original home at Iron Mountain for secure storage.

“One of the only musicians who has said publicly that he was informed about the destruction of his masters is Richard Carpenter of the Carpenters, the star ’70s pop duo. But Carpenter says the admission — by a staff member at UMG’s catalog division, Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) — came only after multiple inquiries and because UMG was forced into it: Carpenter had booked time at a mastering studio to work on a reissue for the label, and the tapes he requested for the session hadn’t shown up. “They didn’t let me know,” he told me last week. “They really didn’t want to get me on the phone to give me this news.” In a deposition given in a negligence suit brought by UMG against NBCUniversal, its landlord at the backlot vault, a former executive for the record company testified that Carpenter’s persistence and “concern” about his masters in the aftermath of the fire had been a subject of consternation among UMG officials”.

Here Are Hundreds More Artists Whose Tapes Were Destroyed in the UMG Fire

 

[GaryAlan]

^^Thanks for bringing that article to the fore !
Somehow Mr. Guder makes sense to me now.....

"You're everything a robot lives for
Walk in at nine and roll out the door at five
You reflect the company image
You maintain their rules to live by..."

UMG personified.

 

[Jarred]

^^Thanks for bringing that article to the fore !
Somehow Mr. Guder makes sense to me now.....

"You're everything a robot lives for
Walk in at nine and roll out the door at five
You reflect the company image
You maintain their rules to live by..."

UMG personified.

A lot of things in their lives personified, sadly. The ending really underscores the sadness in the song.

 

[tomswift2002]

So the solo albums should still have their original analog masters, as those were never used for the SACD, and the 2006 “Japanese Single Box” only included singles up to 1986 (“Honolulu City Lights/When It’s Gone” is the last single—-no idea why “If I Had You/Lovelines” from 1989 wasn’t included, unless it was deemed a Karen solo single, so it was left off just like Richard’s 1987 “Who Do You Love” & “Something In Your Eyes” singles and the later issued Karen-solo “Make Believe” from 1996).

But that also means that for the recently issued RPO, Richard was using digital masters for his source for a number of tracks, and doing clean up on digital recordings (such as removing the squeaky door or A/C), and those digital masters would present the sound at the same quality as the original analog masters, since they would be considered the same generation as the analog, and not a second or third analog generation away.

 

[Actorman]

Moderators, please delete this if it's in the wrong place and I know the topic of the solo is testy, but now that I think of it....why did she have to use her own money in the first place? Shouldn't A & M have paid for it, if she was still signed with them? I guess b/c she was signed as the Carps but why did she need their approval if she paid for it herself? I guess that's where her angst came from. I know this is music biz 101 and it's probably well documented in one of the books, but maybe I missed that info. Thanks. (and thanks for all the interest in my post).

Unfortunately, that's how a typical record contract works. The artist pays for the album, not the label. The label will advance the artist the funds to record the album. Once the record is released, that money is then paid back to the label from the artist's share of the royalties before the artist receives anything. This is called recoupment. In the case of Karen's solo album, there was no revenue to be generated from it (since it wasn't going to be released) so A&M had to recoup its money from her future (Carpenters) royalties. This was probably because her solo album was likely done as an extension of her Carpenters contract (and therefore, cross-collateralized with all of their other output) and not done under a separate solo contract.

That is a very simplified explanation of how things normally work (contract terms are always negotiable), but bottom line is that Karen having to pay for the costs of the solo album is nothing out of the ordinary. It's standard practice. Of course, given the tens of millions of dollars she had made for A&M over the previous 8 or 9 years, they probably could have just written it off as a loss, but "business is business" as they say.

 

[newvillefan]

Of course, given the tens of millions of dollars she had made for A&M over the previous 8 or 9 years, they probably could have just written it off as a loss, but "business is business" as they say.

What this tells me is that the duo’s loyalty to the label was not reciprocal. Whatever their affection for Herb, the “business” of A&M came first. Richard and Karen probably should have considered changing labels mid way through their career, after a string of disastrous marketing and album cover campaigns. Right up to Made In America, A&M did an abominable job (with the one exception of Horizon).

 

[GaryAlan]

I respectfully disagree with that blanket statement. Passage album was marketed by A & M quite respectfully.
The A & M: promo poster, promo shirts, plastic mugs, the official press-kit (I have all).
Three excellent singles: AYGFLIALS, Sweet Sweet Smile, Calling Occupants.
The in-store "foreplay" album. The special dj-only l EP "Carpenters Collection."
Billboard and Cashbox advertisements, too.
What more could A & M do to market Passage album ?