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Review by vonwegen October 3, 2003 (2 of 2 found this review helpful)
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Performance: Sonics: |
This release is kind of an up and down affair. One the one hand, the SACD layer gives this compilation a warmth all earlier CD releases lacked, but on the other hand, the sound quality is patchy, especially "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby", which is sadly in need of a remix--if you wear headphones, you cannot hear any drums at all until--get this--you take the headphones off and & set them aside while letting the track play!
Bootlegs of rough mixes of HYSYMBSITS show that the drum & bass were VERY well recorded, so that makes the lack of a remix here quite inexecusable--especially since "Satisfaction" was remixed in stereo for Hot Rocks and High Tides & Green Grass.
Added to that, "Mother's Little Helper" is cruddy-sounding mono, despite a fine stereo mix being available on the original Mobile Fidelity-mixed Hot Rocks 1 CD issued in Germany in the mid-1980s.
All the other tracks are in stereo and sound warm, but with a fair amount of tape hiss. "Ruby Tuesday", "Lady Jane", "Backstreet Girl" and "Sittin' On A Fence" benefit the most from the added SACD resolution, methinks, mainly because of the predominance of acoustic instruments.
Still, one wishes ABCKO would track down the original multi-track masters and put these fine songs in the 5.1 surround mode they deserve. And how about a few liner notes, folks? I'm sure David Fricke would be glad to pen a few for these classic Stones releases... (hell, I'd do it myself if I could get access to a few of the sound engineers like Glyn Johns and George Chkiantz for anecdotes).
vonwegen
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