New single from Herb, "All I Want For Christmas"

[martin]

Herb launched a new single today. It is a cover of Mariah Carey's huge Christmas hit "All I Want For Christmas". The arrangement is loose and stripped down. It's just 2:27 and the middle part is a bit "dixieland" inspired with a clarinet on top of Herb's trumpet, and what sounds like a bass trombone in the low register. A nice surprise...

- greetings from the north -
Martin

 

[Mike Blakesley]

Herb's got the modern music thing pretty dialed in.

- Keep the content coming; put out new music pretty frequently (singles)
- Release albums for the fan base
- Have a good website and social presence
- Keep up with the touring

It's pretty amazing that out of all the "classic" A&M artists from the '60s and '70s, he's the most active in 2022! Followed closely by Sergio Mendes, although Sergio doesn't put out as much music as Herb does these days.

 

[Harry]

 

[AM Matt]

NOT the Vince Vance & The Valiants 1992 song!!

 

[bob knack]

I'm glad it's not the Spike Jones version!! I'm not thrilled with Herb's recent output but this one strikes a chord. Love the Dixie insert. He could have stretched the whole thing out a bit. He should have used a real clarinet and Bone...both sound synthesized.

 

[martin]

The horns are real. The clarinet is played by Tom Ranier and the bass trombone by Ivan Malespin. It's Bill Cantos on the keyboards.

- greetings from the north -
Martin

 

[bob knack]

The horns are real. The clarinet is played by Tom Ranier and the bass trombone by Ivan Malespin. It's Bill Cantos on the keyboards.

- greetings from the north -
Martin

Glad to hear that. They still sound synthesized. I stand corrected.

 

[Rudy]

Glad to hear that. They still sound synthesized. I stand corrected.

Modern recording techniques leave a lot to be desired, IMHO. Give me the good old sound of analog tape, which isn't so antiseptic and music still sounded like music. I think ProTools has ruined the professional music industry...

 

[martin]

Modern recording techniques leave a lot to be desired, IMHO. Give me the good old sound of analog tape, which isn't so antiseptic and music still sounded like music. I think ProTools has ruined the professional music industry...

Having been the arranger/producer for more than 60 albums over the years since the mid 80's until present day, I would say that it is not really the digital studio programs like Pro Tools or Logic that represent the problems. It really has to do with "who turns the knobs". On a few productions I was honoured to work with the late, great Norwegian sound engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug in his Rainbow studio in Oslo, where he recorded a lot of wonderful acoustic productions for the ECM company amongst others. The last time I worked with him he showed that he had truly become a master of Pro Tools and everything he did still sounded absolutely great.

- greetings from the north -
Martin

 

[David S]

Well, I guess I’ll just be Scrooge and say this recording did nothing for me.

 

[DAN BOLTON]

Well, I guess I’ll just be Scrooge and say this recording did nothing for me.

May your MaxDots be filled with #9 anthracite this Xmas!

 

[thetijuanataxi]

Does this mean he's making another Christmas Album?

 

[martin]

Does this mean he's making another Christmas Album?

I would doubt that. The album format in these days seems less important than earlier. It is to some degree being replaced by playlists on the digital platforms like Spotify, Tidal and so on. It is very important for an artist to get on to some of those playlists, and record companies use a lot of resources to make that happen. And the fans, like us, can make our own playlists e.g with all of Herb's Christmas material.

- greetings from the north -
Martin

 

[Mike Blakesley]

I like this song. I cannot stand Mariah Carey (well, except do enjoy looking at pictures of her, not gonna lie) but this sounds like it would have been right at home during Herb's "Coney Island" album era. I do like the Dixie-style interlude.

I do hate to see the album format go away. I think when the current generation of artists are all gone, that format will go with them. It's sad.

 

[Rudy]

Many still do release albums, especially since vinyl has been growing steadily for many years now. And if vinyl sticks around (as I'm sure it will), the album format will remain for quite a way into the future.

Yet on the digital side, the casual listener who tends to make impulse purchases is the one who will randomly pick tracks from an album, and I think the major labels are probably the worst of the culprits in pushing sales of anything, even if it means the demise of the album format. And other than artists who top the charts and/or fill stadiums, the rest are all trying to make a living of creating music. The record companies pay them a pittance at best for their work, so they're glad to sell anything, even if it is a track or two from an album.

It's certainly not the environment we grew up in!

But in a sense, too, the industry is almost reverting to how it started. 78 RPM records were, in essence, "singles," and they were occasionally compiled into albums in the truest sense of the word--the records were in sleeve "pages" bound into a heavy book. I wish I could find out how common these albums were back in the day. If I had to guess, they were probably more prevalent in classical releases, which used 12-inch 78 RPM discs with about five minutes per side, so a symphony would be four or five discs in an album.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

I know my grandparents had a number of those book style albums but not that many. The hi-fi era had begun by the time they were into music, I guess -- the LP was taking over.

My dad's parents had a decent mono sound system in their basement, which was sort of a rec-room area with a fireplace and small bar. I think my uncle brought the equipment home with him after his Navy service. There was a Garrard turntable, I remember that, but I'm not sure what kind of amp...and a speaker in a cabinet that doubled as record storage. I used to spend a lot of time down there listening to tunes, just whatever random stuff was there. They had a few albums by Guy Lombardo, Lawrence Welk, and Martin Denny -- that's where I first heard "Quiet Village." My parents got married in 1954 and they were more into "cocktail dancing" kind of music, so they had records by Lester Lanin, the Three Suns, that kind of thing. Occasionally I'll think of an old album I used to play back in the day, and almost without fail it's available on Amazon, or if it's not there, it's on Youtube. (Some of that music has NOT aged all that well!)

 

[Harry]

My parents were from the big band/swing era, but I think they preferred live music as they never really had any records around that they listened to. I think they were content with radio. Nevertheless, I developed a fascination for records from a very early age. They tell me that I'd peel the labels off of whatever records I could and could then still identify which record was which by looking at the grooves.

Somewhere along the line, my dad came home with a bunch of 78 RPM albums, one of which was Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" symphony. I think it was contained on about ten or twelve sides of the 78 records. At least I did develop a love for that particular symphony.

 

[Rudy]

Somewhere along the line, my dad came home with a bunch of 78 RPM albums, one of which was Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" symphony. I think it was contained on about ten or twelve sides of the 78 records. At least I did develop a love for that particular symphony.

My grandmother had dozens of those classical 78 RPM albums. I remember them well, mostly because I'm the one that sold and boxed all of them up. 😁

The goal in designing the Compact Disc was to fit Beethoven's Ninth onto a single disc small enough to fit into a player in an automobile's dashboard. I guess they thought it was easier than loading up all those 78s and trying to flip sides every five minutes.

BTW, can you imagine being in an orchestra, recording a symphony in five-minute bites? 😁

 

[Harry]

The problem with listening to ANY symphony or classical pieces in a car is the road noise overrunning the softer passages. I sometimes wish there were real-time audio compressors in cars to level out the volume like a typical radio station does. In any random listening of pop stuff, the levels are all over the place too.

 

[Rudy]

The problem with listening to ANY symphony or classical pieces in a car is the road noise overrunning the softer passages. I sometimes wish there were real-time audio compressors in cars to level out the volume like a typical radio station does. In any random listening of pop stuff, the levels are all over the place too.

I used to use a dbx 118 in my system. It was an expander/compressor which I would use for compression (set to "above threshold" mode) to level out the volume of quieter passages late at night. That kind of thing could be done digitally these days, but I have yet to see any car audio manufacturer put it into a system, either factory or aftermarket.