Vinyl Me Please Classics

MikeH said:
It’s been the case for a lot of this year’s classics albums. Sahara is cool but Errol, Patrice, King and BarKays were all just really cheap albums that didn’t need the remaster treatment IMO. I know people liked all/some of those but...
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I either wasn't subscribed for any of these or swapped them faster than I could say swap.
Agreed that this year's selections have been sub par at best but that's also what is making not re-subscribing so easy.
 
I feel like the Albert King was a homer and Money Talks was a swing and a miss as far as their "gem" albums they put out in between bigger name titles like Call Me, Aretha Now, Immortal Otis, Sahara, etc. I can dig the doing an underrated, lesser known album by a big name artist like that now and then as long as they are legit. Go For Your Guns got a lot of grief last year when it was announced, but SQ-wise that is arguably the best sounding record VMP has released. That was a great reissue.
 
Getting a AAA Monk reissue is a big sigh of relief after thinking we were gonna get Al Jarreau. Even if it's Monk's Blues (which really is a really good album, just different than this bigger name stuff), that is a really good pick IMO.
 
keylime_5 said:
Getting a AAA Monk reissue is a big sigh of relief after thinking we were gonna get Al Jarreau. Even if it's Monk's Blues (which really is a really good album, just different than this bigger name stuff), that is a really good pick IMO.
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Could be Ray Charles too!
 
Yeah. I don't know if he had any jazz records that were ignored to his public dismay. I feel like Monk had more than one of those.
 
keylime_5 said:
I feel like the Albert King was a homer and Money Talks was a swing and a miss as far as their "gem" albums they put out in between bigger name titles like Call Me, Aretha Now, Immortal Otis, Sahara, etc. I can dig the doing an underrated, lesser known album by a big name artist like that now and then as long as they are legit. Go For Your Guns got a lot of grief last year when it was announced, but SQ-wise that is arguably the best sounding record VMP has released. That was a great reissue.
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I got the Albert King and it’s a bit of a crowd-pleaser but there are probably 4 or 5 other King records I would have preferred. For a $23 add-on I’m okay with some lesser known albums sometimes. But at $33, it’s just too steep for a lot of these titles for me. I don’t care if something is an AAA reissue if the album has 1 good track on it like BarKays...
 
keylime_5 said:
Yeah. I don't know if he had any jazz records that were ignored to his public dismay. I feel like Monk had more than one of those.
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Monk also was kind of forced to make some albums he didn’t want to make or release. There’s also one of the live releases that he hated the recording of and it was only released after he died...
 
MikeH said:
I got the Albert King and it’s a bit of a crowd-pleaser but there are probably 4 or 5 other King records I would have preferred. For a $23 add-on I’m okay with some lesser known albums sometimes. But at $33, it’s just too steep for a lot of these titles for me. I don’t care if something is an AAA reissue if the album has 1 good track on it like BarKays...
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Did they at least put the 8:30 version of Holy Ghost on there? That would have been neat. I'm sorta tempted to consider buying the Holy Ghost 12", but that's about all that album did for me.
 
jamieanderson1968 said:
People should stop thinking of Classics and RHH as add-ons (at either $23 or $33) and should be judging each release as a stand alone. Yes King might be worth for $23 but can it stand alone as a $40+ record. I think over the last year (36 releases) very few can do this.
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I mean, I pay about $25 per record with an annual subscription. I compare their releases to the past releases they've put out. I feel like this "is this album worth $40?" is an entirely different conversation.

If you pay $40 for a record, it better be a tip-on gatefold, all analog cut by a big name mastering engineer, pressed at QRP....AND be a premier album. You're not gonna get that here, you'd be better off at spending your $40 a month on Analogue Productions or Blue Note Tone Poet albums....or get some Rhino albums from the past 10-15 years that are all analog Kevin Gray or Chris Bellman cuts.
 
Hogues said:
Thanks!

www.analogplanet.com

Verve Label Group/UMe Announces Chad Kassem-Supervised All-Analog Classic Jazz Reissue Series

June 11, 2020—Verve Label Group and UMe announced today the July 31st launch of a new “audiophile grade”, all-analog reissue series supervised by Acoustic Sounds CEO Chad Kassem, featuring iconic titles from the Verve, Impulse!, Philips, EmArcy and Decca catalogs.
www.analogplanet.com www.analogplanet.com
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Pretty into this. Hope they release more of the weirder stuff from the Impulse catalogue as well
 
MattS said:
Pretty into this. Hope they release more of the weirder stuff from the Impulse catalogue as well
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Sadly it's unlikely they do too much more Impulse! as most of the master tapes were destroyed in the Universal fires and Kassem doesn't want to do titles where they don't have access to really good quality master tapes.
 
jamieanderson1968 said:
People should stop thinking of Classics and RHH as add-ons (at either $23 or $33) and should be judging each release as a stand alone. Yes King might be worth for $23 but can it stand alone as a $40+ record. I think over the last year (36 releases) very few can do this.
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Eh —I think you gotta think of it in terms of what you would have to pay to buy it from VMP. I understand your point though.
 
keylime_5 said:
I mean, I pay about $25 per record with an annual subscription. I compare their releases to the past releases they've put out. I feel like this "is this album worth $40?" is an entirely different conversation.

If you pay $40 for a record, it better be a tip-on gatefold, all analog cut by a big name mastering engineer, pressed at QRP....AND be a premier album. You're not gonna get that here, you'd be better off at spending your $40 a month on Analogue Productions or Blue Note Tone Poet albums....or get some Rhino albums from the past 10-15 years that are all analog Kevin Gray or Chris Bellman cuts.
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I agree 100%. As I've said, I liked that VMP introduced me to artists that I probably would have never considered and the Blue Note box set was a revelation to me. Since then, I've been introduced to forums like this one and I've taken the advice and opinions of other members and bought albums based on that and have rarely been disappointed (which I appreciete, so a big thank you to everyone). I think that my money is now better spent on the stuff mentioned above than VMP.
 
MikeH said:
Sadly it's unlikely they do too much more Impulse! as most of the master tapes were destroyed in the Universal fires and Kassem doesn't want to do titles where they don't have access to really good quality master tapes.
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Would something like Plangent be feasible if they were working with a source that wasn't a master tape?
 
NewsFedora said:
Would something like Plangent be feasible if they were working with a source that wasn't a master tape?
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Could be. But I don’t know that AS does that, or would do that for this series. They seem to be priding themselves on this being an AAA and master tape bunch. Fremer in the comments of one of the press releases said Kassem had plans to do a lot of albums but a bunch got scrapped because he wasn’t happy with the sources they had access to.
 
NewsFedora said:
Would something like Plangent be feasible if they were working with a source that wasn't a master tape?
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I believe you need to have some analog tape to work with to use Plangent Process. PP works great for correcting wow/flutter/etc in tapes that are damaged, but it's not feasible if they only recordings that exist are records, digital, or some analog tape that is in totally horrible shape.
 
MikeH said:
Sadly it's unlikely they do too much more Impulse! as most of the master tapes were destroyed in the Universal fires and Kassem doesn't want to do titles where they don't have access to really good quality master tapes.
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You're right. I just wish it wasn't so. I love all subgenres of jazz, but I found myself leaning much more to the experimental stuff and less to orchestral jazz or Sunday morning smooth stuff. I guess I like the shit that makes me feel as weird as possible.

Either way, I will be picking up most of these that I do not have.
 
MikeH said:
It’s been the case for a lot of this year’s classics albums. Sahara is cool but Errol, Patrice, King and BarKays were all just really cheap albums that didn’t need the remaster treatment IMO. I know people liked all/some of those but...
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Yesterday I received a copy of Erroll's The Magician that I ordered from Discogs for around $8. The music is fine but IMO it is certainly not worth $23 (much less $33!). Patrice was also an easy <$10 grab earlier this year, and I'll probably start looking for used Bar-Kays albums too. I know I repeat myself a lot but: there is no rational justification for needing the best-sounding edition of every album (and, fwiw, my $5 copy of the Isleys album that VMP picked for Classics sounds extremely good!).

I guess my point is that VMP is a fine music recommendation service; all you have to do is check out their picks and then take your money elsewhere.
 
bettim84 said:
Yesterday I received a copy of Erroll's The Magician that I ordered from Discogs for around $8. The music is fine but IMO it is certainly not worth $23 (much less $33!). Patrice was also an easy <$10 grab earlier this year, and I'll probably start looking for used Bar-Kays albums too. I know I repeat myself a lot but: there is no rational justification for needing the best-sounding edition of every album (and, fwiw, my $5 copy of the Isleys album that VMP picked for Classics sounds extremely good!).

I guess my point is that VMP is a fine music recommendation service; all you have to do is check out their picks and then take your money elsewhere.
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Agree with that last part. I have discovered some cool bands and albums from VMP but I no longer need to pay for it. I may dip in if some huge release I wanted gets added otherwise I’m spending that record money at my local and other labels that I can rely on.
 
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