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  • 1 month later...
Posted (edited)

I have been playing the classic " Rock and Roll Animal" a lot lately- well, point of fact, I have never stopped playing it. I played it last night, with a different set of speakers to normal, and a very quiet mains. Something struck me, that I had never noted before.

Anyone with any knowledge of quality rock knows the extraordinary intro by the dueling guitars of Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter.

Each musician on that stage sounds as if they are being recorded D.I., bypassing the stage P.A .

After the dubbed audience applause, as the band slide into the chugging riff of " Sweet Jane", you hear Lou intone the opening lines,

" Standing on the corner, suitcase in my hand".

It suddenly dawned on me that the entire vocal for this track is ' dubbed'. Compare it to every other track on the album, and the contrast is stark. On the rest of the album, Lou's voice is front and centre- every bit a part of the live performance, integrated and 'there'.

This vocal sounds like it floats in from a whole different place.

This is my guess as to what has happened. A bit of post production that is only now revealed by the level of transparency achievable on today's gear.

I suspect the original performance was;

A/ Not recorded, for a multitude of reasons ( Lou forgot to pick up a mike, someone forgot to record the mike).

Or

B/ The vocal was accidentally erased , or just substandard.

If you listen closely, his vocal is recorded in the same acoustic space, but that space is empty. This acoustic space and vocal is dubbed onto the live band tracks.

I suspect they have gone back after the performance and recorded a solo vocal take. By the amount of 'flubbed lines' Lou produces, he sounds tired and wasted, compared to the focus and clear diction of the rest of the set.

For all we know, it may be from another performance entirely.

Does it matter, or reduce my passion for this album? Not in the least. I just find it interesting to listen with ' forensic ears' occassionally.

Don't get me started on the Electric Flag album track, " Another Country". Curious and curiouser.

ZM.

Edited by Zen Mister
Posted

Interesting ZM. R+RA is one of my all time favs and the year it came out (I think) was the year I saw LR live at Festival Hall Melb. He was awful on stage, his voice was crap, he was off his face and spent most of the night abusing the audience but the band...wow! Were they on fie or were they on fire, the guitarists and the little black guy who was drummer was fantastic but yeah, like i said LR was rubbish and he copped some boos for his efforts.

 

So maybe they did dub another voice track over that track.

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