Guys, you know, I must have sounded like quite the one-eyed fan earlier going on the way I did about Dave Grohl, so with your blessing, I'd like to throw in a caveat as to why I mentioned the album I did, and as to the context in which it is placed.
Obviously, like you guys, I am a true fan of classic music - albums such as "Dark Side of The Moon", "Aja", "Physical Graffiti", "Abbey Road", "Gaucho", and "Love Over Gold" are just wonderful absolute benchmarks in the history of recorded music - no question about it.
And recently, I was making a piece of music which was quite "Floyd" like in it's nature and I actually went back to "DSOTM" to see how close I was getting to the sound, and it surprised me just how good that album sounds after all these years - as in just what an exemplary mix it was.
The only thing about the album I could possibly fault is that the drums sounded a dash weak - in particular, the toms had thud but not much else in terms of aural presence. I'm the first to concede this is as much to do with the technology of Abbey Road studios in 1973 as much as anything else, but other than that, "DSOTM" is still a masterpiece - as are all the albums mentioned above.
But here's the thing - very few of us nowadays can get our hands on the equipment which was used by those guys back then. I'm told that 48 track reel to reel master tapes are scarce as hen's teeth these days, and as such, the vast majority of us will most likely perform our recording's digitally.
And this, in particular, is what makes Mr Grohl so fascinating. Because he too, just like us, is a huge fan of classics as mentioned above, and because he too is widely regarded as being one of the few drummers around nowadays who can come close to people like John Bonham, he was really keen on building his own recording studio underneath his rambling forest home in Virginia - and this is where it gets interesting. He actually made a point of buying genuine 1970's recording gear to make his album on. He couldn't get the gear new, but he hunted down and bought the very same reel to reel that Fleetwood Mac recorded "Rumours" on. And I'm told he was very, very proud of this purchase. He bought all the mixing desks and auxiliary equipment from the same period too.
He then set about recording the Grammy winning album mentioned in my earlier post underneath his house! Just like most of us tend to do! Then, and this is where people like us should show a lot of interest, he took the master tapes to Los Angeles and had them mastered on the latest greatest gear that money could buy.
Accordingly, we have a record which was made by a true purist on top flight analog gear which was then mastered with the greatest in modern technology, and THAT is why the album is worth listening to as reference CD methinks.
I appreciate that musical tastes are all over the place and that one man's food is another man's poison - so I mentioned the classic albums I did earlier to demonstrate that I too have my finger on the pulse on regarding lovely classic sounds - but there can be no denying that it's very rare to hear such a mixture of the best of both the analog and digital worlds.
I for one, find the story quite interesting.
