Yesterday, we had a memorial service for my father-in-law, who passed away in January. He was an interseting person. He was an O.G. sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll guy. Yet, since I've known him, he was a conservative, FOX News junkie. He was a nice guy, though, and was always there to help us or his grand kids. He served in the Navy during Vietnam. He was an electrician and fortunately didn't see combat. At some point, after he divorced my wife's mother, my wife cut off communication with him for several years. When our son was born in 2007, I asked her to call her dad and let him know he had grand kids, because I felt he deserved to know. After some soul searching, she agreed and we had a nice relationship with him for the remainder of his life.
After he passed, we had to take several trips back to Detroit to deal with his affairs and house. In keeping with the premise of the Sound Mind Blog, I brought back all 400-ish of his records. For the past six months, I've been cataloging, cleaning, grading and, most importantly, listening to these records. He was a chain smoker, so the collection was quite dirty and the sleeves and media were in various states. I found old notes and ads and even an old match book in some of the records. There's some great stuff in the collection; The Stones, Pink Floyd, Hendrix and Bowie. There's also things like, London Calling, Meat is Murder, a couple Depeche Mode albums and a Misfits record. I've gone through most of the good stuff and the best sounding record in the collection is Songs From the Big Chair. In fairness, it probably would have been the Robert Ludwig mastering of AC/DC's Back in Black, but it isn't in great condition.
I know most people don't believe there's a difference between vinyl and other formats, but I have heard these Tears For Fears songs hundreds of times on the radio and CD and when I put on this record it was like hearing them for the first time. The production is clean and hot. There is amazing seperation of the instruments. This copy has some hairline marks on it, but it sounds immaculate. It was mastered by the legendary Greg Calbi at Sterling Sound, New York. I was also stunned by how great the whole album is. Back in the day, I never owned the album and only knew their hits. I thought they were ok, but not really my wheelhouse.
The record begins with "Shout". Sounds so powerful on LP. My mind was instantly blown by this pressing. The next track, "The Working Hour" has some great sax on it and sounds quite similar to Duran Duran, especially the vocals. "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" has always been one of my favorite songs of theirs and it sounds tremendous here. Apparently, "Mothers Talk" was a single and had a video, but I don't have any recollection of ever seeing it. The video actually shows them rockin' out like a band. Great track. "I Believe" is dedicated to Robert Wyatt and is quite jazzy, with some beautiful Grand Piano and sax. "Broken" is a fantasic track that teases, then seemlessly leads into the stunning "Head Over Heels". The album closes with "Listen" which is '80's style prog rock/ jazz fusion. Great vocals by Roland Orzabal and Marilyn Davis.
I will probably post about some of the other albums from my father-in-law's collection, as there were many outstanding pieces in his collection. There may also be some additional Mt. Rushmore's and what not. Peace.