Pickwick discussion

[Mike Blakesley]

For some reason I've never read any info on, all subsequent vinyl pressings of the album after the original release ditched the original cover and used an alternate cover that's horribly cartoonish-looking and almost looks like something Pickwick would do

I'd guess they also ditched the elaborate booklet insert the original cover had ... it was like a libretto, with a "rice paper" front and back leaf, and several regular pages in between. Very classy and expensive especially for a first album by an unknown act.

I've got all the CD versions of the album. I remember hearing the remaster with the 1987 "updates" and thinking, wow, that's really an improvement! (It was mostly a few guitar additions and they changed the drum sound to the more boomy '80s style.) But now, I prefer the original mixes. The updates make '87 version sound dated now. The coolest part of the remaster was, they added in some voice work by Orson Welles that was left off of the original, and they segued Side 1 and Side 2 together. I wish they would make a version that preserves the 1976 original mixes, but adds the segueing and the Orson Welles parts that were on the remaster.

It's kind of opposite of my experience with Carpenters records...I've always preferred the original mixes of those.

 

[Dave]

I recently picked up the 5th Dimension's Living Together, Growing Together, which has got a really hideous album cover itself and certainly couldn't have helped the group's waning popularity at the time, but even that one doesn't come close to approaching the sheer grotesqueness - and, might I add, scariness - of that Pickwick Ye-Me-Le cover.

Well, what does The 5th Dimension's Living Together, Growing Together cover on Pickwick look like? I've only seen the original issue on Bell!

Any difference (or deletion) in tracks?


-- Dave

 

[jfiedler17]

Whoops, sorry! Didn't mean to confuse you guys! That original issue on Bell (with the rag dolls gathered around the rocking chair) was what I was referring to; not nearly as bad an album cover as the Pickwick reissue of Ye-Me-Le, of course, but it's still pretty bad. Certainly the worst 5th Dimension album cover I've ever run across.

Mike, I had the same experience with the Parsons album. The first time I heard the '87 update, I was really impressed (and I agree that the Welles narration really adds a lot to it and is missed when going back to listen to the original), but for anyone who's listened to a lot of '70s and '80s music, it's so obvious from the remixed, more '80s-styled drum sound that you're not listening to the original mixes that it can be a bit distracting. If not for the drums, I don't think listeners might have minded the changes nearly as much.

 

[A&Mguyfromwayback]

What other A&M albums came out on Pickwick?

 

[Rudy]

Jeez, that looks like a Peter Gabriel-era Genesis album! "A flower??"

 

[dostros]

The terrible news about Linda Ronstadt has got me going through my old albums of hers, and my Pickwick version of the Stone Poneys album fits in well with the "ugly Pickwick covers" thread here.

I was also wondering whether anyone had heard the original Stone Poneys (Different Drum) album because the version of Stoney End has just an awful mix on the Pickwick version. Something definitely wrong there...

 

[Dave]

So, so far it's Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 and Linda Ronstadt who have gotten the "ugly NEW-not-so-IMPROVED cover treatments" and at least one song deleted from the Sergio-set...!

(And the 5th Dimension's Living/Growing Together on Bell (no Pickwick reissue--as the correction states) natively had a bad cover in that group's then-waning career...)

It shouldn't surprise me that sound quality on at least one song on these cheap-o Pickwick sets should be diminished; just simply a short-cut, or two, taken in the Manufacturing/Mastering Process...


-- Dave

 

[Dave]

It shouldn't surprise me that sound quality on at least one song on these cheap-o Pickwick sets should be diminished; just simply a short-cut, or two, taken in the Manufacturing/Mastering Process...


-- Dave

Did I say "SONG"? I may have meant "SIDE"!

Of which my Pat Boone Old Rugged Cross even still-sealed can't match my used, but mint Canadian copy of Hymns We Love, which it's a reissue of...

But then, maybe it just couldn't withstand the shelf-life demanded of it...


-- Dave

 

[Dave]

As we've just celebrated an A&M Great's Jimmie Rodgers' 80th Birthday, I just thought of his S/T LP, Jimmie Rodgers Roulette Records ‎– R-25020, which I thought Pickwick reissued w/ a wooded-over cover & had a track, or two substituted; not sure really whether it was a Pickwick or simply a later Roulette reissue...

The Hues Corporation's Freedom For The Stallion (featuring their one big hit "Rock The Boat") got issued in a Pickwick'd fashion w/ a holograph sort of cover, then reissued as Rock The Boat...


-- Dave

 

[Dave]

Well, there's three people pictured. "Ye" must be the clown-figure, "Me" is the guy with the mustache, and "Le" is the blonde lady. Yeah, that's it...

Harry

I'd just thought of it making a good Halloween costume! (Maybe next year...)

The guy w/ the mustache looks much like my brother-in-law (expression-and-all!) and my daughter could pose in there, as well...

('Couse, then, it would be a Le-Me-Yea!!!!)


-- Dave

 

[JeffM]

Newsflash to those who hold the Originals, most sacred--this just in:

Ray Stevens' 1,837-Seconds of Humor, reissued as Rock 'N' Roll Show omits two songs, "The Rockin' Boppin' Waltz" and "Further More"...!

Just a note for those playing Ray at your next social gathering, in case your guests are wondering why they didn't hear those tracks, when you put that one on... (So don't show them the cover, either...!)


-- Dave

Any social gathering where they'd play Ray Stevens records is one I think I'd avoid...

 

[Actorman]

Any social gathering where they'd play Ray Stevens records is one I think I'd avoid...

"Don't look, Ethel!"

 

[Dave]

Are we gonna miss the missing tracks on Frankie Laine's You Gave Me A Mountain--or any OTHER Frankie Laine for that matter?

Here we are: ABC..., Pickwick...! Pickwick..., ABC!

ABC:

Side 1

1You Gave Me A Mountain 3:58
2 Born To Be With You 2:52
3 The Secret Of Happiness 2:06
4 Sing An Italian Song 2:25
5 A Place In The Shade 2:50

Side 2

B1 The Story Of My Life 3:10
B2 Walk Out Of My Mind 3:00
B3 Fresh Out Of Tears 2:15
B4 Allegra 2:50
B5 Don't Make Promises


Pickwick:

Side 1

1 You Gave Me A Mountain
2 The Story Of My Life
3 Allegra
4 Don't Make Promises
5 Sing An Italian Song

Side 2

1 Born To Be With You
2 The Secret Of Happiness
3 A Place In The Shade
4 Fresh Out Of Tears



-- Dave

 

[Dave]

Are we gonna miss the missing tracks on--any OTHER Frankie Laine for that matter?

Well, here's a collection of Laine's best-known tracks, of which I don't know its origin:

It's entitled That Lucky Old Sun (Pickwick 3526)...

Side 1

1. That Lucky Old Sun
2. September In The Rain
3. Mule Train
4. Music Maestro Please

Side 2

1. Shine
2. Mam'selle
3. On The Sunny Side Of The Street
4. The Cry Of The Wild Goose
5. All Of Me



-- Dave

 

[Harry]

I recently went on a trip down Memory Lane to revisit an old Frankie Laine album, HELL BENT FOR LEATHER. It was an album that one of my sisters owned and we used to play the heck out of it.



Wanted Man
High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me)
Gunfight At O.K. Corral
Bowie Knife
Along The Navajo Trail
The Cry Of The Wild Goose
Raw Hide
City Boy
Cool Water
The 3:10 To Yuma
The Hanging Tree
Mule Train

Our particular favorite track was "Cool Water", but the entire album was played over and over. So one day, when I was looking at a DVD of HIGH NOON, I was reminded of the Frankie Laine hit version and went to see if it was available on CD. I found a cheap copy and ordered it.

When it arrived, I was dismayed that it didn't sound very good and that it was in mono. It turns out that it was on the Hallmark label in the UK, a subsidiary of the Pickwick Group. I listened to it a couple of times, but wasn't satisfied. Even though our old Columbia LP was mono, scratched up and played on wonky record players, my memory was that the album had an "oomph" that just wasn't there on this Pickwick CD.

So I found an LP in decent shape on eBay on the old Columbia label, in stereo this time, cleaned it up, and made myself a nice CD-R of the album that now sounds the way I wanted it to.

Leave it to Pickwick to screw up an album...

Harry

 

[JeffM]

How'd this turn into a thread about Frankie Laine?? For what it's worth, his last chart single (around 1969) which grazed the lower quarter of the "Hot 100," was a bizarre semi-gospel number titled "Dammit Isn't God's Last Name!" It was for the ABC label. Easy listening stations, his main audience by then, wouldn't play it because of the title, and it wasn't really "hip" enough for rock radio. Not bad record though...

 

[Dave]

Well, you see, this is a PICKWICK thread at A&M Corner, and where Pickwick is about Deleting songs, A&M Corner discussing Pickwick should be about ADDING irrelevancies!

And, that is, at least if we're discussing a certain artist's deletion of tracks from his/her albums, why not get a little off-topic, then and discuss the artist, in general!

(Yeh, that's it!!!!)


-- Dave

 

[Harry]

Since it's a Pickwick Discussion, "I Believe" Frankie Laine is relevant!

Harry

 

[Dave]

Ooops, sorry--bad choice of words...


-- Dave

 

[JeffM]

I recently went on a trip down Memory Lane to revisit an old Frankie Laine album, HELL BENT FOR LEATHER. It was an album that one of my sisters owned and we used to play the heck out of it.

I've got that album too (and admit it...) The "Johnny Williams" on the label is, as you probably know, today's John Williams, movie composer de luxe. He also arranged some LPS in the 50's under the name "John Towner" (his first and middle.)

Steering back to Pickwick, the post by dostros at the top of this page reminded me just how bad their "art direction" could be; that Linda Ronstadt cover is downright scabrous looking. Here's one that doesn't look so much bad as unfinished...

 

[Dave]

Saw a Chet Atkins record very recently that, although was an RCA, (Obviously a comp--it contained a very randomly selected assortment of songs!) was, with the 'Distributed By Pickwick' credit, on the back, really an RCA/Pickwick joint-venture... And I'm sure that this is not the only one of its kind that was made...!


-- Dave

 

[TonyCurrie]

Saw a Chet Atkins record very recently that, although was an RCA, (Obviously a comp--it contained a very randomly selected assortment of songs!) was, with the 'Distributed By Pickwick' credit, on the back, really an RCA/Pickwick joint-venture... And I'm sure that this is not the only one of its kind that was made...!


-- Dave

Here in the UK, Pickwick pressed and distributed RCA Camden, which was the budget reissue label. A plethora of RCA material appeared on it.

 

[Rudy]

When it arrived, I was dismayed that it didn't sound very good and that it was in mono. It turns out that it was on the Hallmark label in the UK, a subsidiary of the Pickwick Group. I listened to it a couple of times, but wasn't satisfied. Even though our old Columbia LP was mono, scratched up and played on wonky record players, my memory was that the album had an "oomph" that just wasn't there on this Pickwick CD.

It's possible they might have done a needle drop and put it through heavy noise reduction. And if the copyright had expired in the UK, it's a dead simple and lazy way to reissue stuff on CD. It's a shame so many "cheap" labels like this put out such substandard product. I am tempted to find some old Pickwick vinyl and do a shootout with the original albums. Their quality is probably as bad as record club LPs were back in the day.

Some of those old Columbia LPs sound fantastic! Especially the six-eye titles, which were tube cut. I found an old Buffalo Bills LP (in stereo) to replace the beaten mono copy I'd grown up with. I'm hoping to find a Johnny Horton LP I've been seeking in a six-eye version as well. Gotta hear me some "Cherokee Boogie".

 

[Harry]

The LP of the Frankie Laine album was indeed a six-eye label. After a bit of click removal, it sounds amazing.

Harry

 

[Rudy]

The saddest part is trying to find clean six-eye LPs out there. Some titles like the Miles Davis Kind Of Blue (especially the mono version) or Brubeck's Time Out fetch a high price these days.