For R & B how 'bout Aretha LIVE at Fillmore West. Fredblue, how's the discrete mix? Worthy of release?
I actually mentioned this one as a favourite in a
thread about the best live quad mixes back in 2016 - a the risk of falling in to "only narcissists quote themselves" territory, allow me:
"Aretha Franklin 'Live At Fillmore West' (1971) What I really like about this quad mix is it makes use of all 4 of the stereo soundfields available in a quad mix, ie stuff in stereo across the front and back, but also stuff in stereo across the side walls too. Aretha's in the front (along with drums and bass), horns are along the left wall, backing vocalists along the right wall, and keyboards, guitars etc are dotted around the room, and the crowd is all around you. It's a really immersive mix and King Curtis' band that's backing Aretha is Hot with a capital H, including the great Bernard Purdie on drums, one of my favourite drummers of all time. Because Aretha was playing the Fillmore she was playing a lot of 'crossover' material including Eleanor Rigby, Love The One You're With, Bridge Over Troubled Waters and I Wanna Make It With You in addition to her usual repertoire and she owns it all, but that isn't even the best part - there's a true 'hairs stand up on the back of the neck' moment toward the end where she pulls Ray Charles out of the audience to duet with her on Spirit In The Dark. I guess Rhino didn't have much success with the Quadio disc of Aretha's Greatest Hits, but I'd love to see AF do a SACD of this one - it's a remarkable performance and listening to it in stereo is like watching it on TV while the quad mix makes you feel like you're actually in the crowd."
Just to add to that, I now believe that the "side wall" material I was referring to are actually diagonal pans, ie material panned between front left and rear right, and front right and rear left. This album was mixed for quad in either late 1971 or early 1972 (before WEA had committed to a quad LP format) and was only initially released in quad on Q8 as part of their distribution agreement with Ampex - I think the diagonal pans were for compliance "just in case" they decided to go with a matrix quad format, as Warner Japan had already done some QS releases by that point. It's also interesting to note that these gigs were filmed pretty much in full by the Fillmore West's in-house black and white camera system (and are available on the
Wolfgang's Vault YouTube page) - it's probably out of the scope of the Quadio program (not to mention prohibitively expensive to license the footage) but it would be a cool project to sync the quad with the video, should this album be re-released digitally.
there are two Graham Central Station Warner Brothers Quads Rhino could reissue on Quadio Blu-ray; "Graham Central Station" & "Ain't No Bout A Doubt It", the latter has a really active Surround mix with cool effects and panning
Completely agree,
Ain't No Bout a Doubt It is one of my favourite of all the WEA quads, and at the risk of saying something blasphemous, I think it's a better and more consistent album than any of the studio albums that Sly and the Family Stone put out, though I'll concede it will never be as historically significant. I don't think there's a clunker on the whole album - Your Love is really reminiscent of Hot Fun in the Summertime, and the cover of I Can't Stand the Rain is arguably better than the original, but the real standout is the leadoff track, The Jam, which gives each member of the band a chance to showcase themselves around a killer riff that borrows a bit from Don Nix' Going Down. Prince was a massive fan of this song and performed it regularly with his band when Larry Graham was a member in the late '90s and early '00s.
As fredblue mentions, the surround mix, done by Mallory Earl (who also did the quad mixes for Hot Tuna's
America's Choice and
Yellow Fever) is great and very active featuring lots of swirling around the room pans, something that was becoming something of a rarity in the later era of quad. In fact, this album might've been the very last Warner Bros. quad release (Elektra/Asylum did a few more, Joni's
Hissing in late 1975, and Tony Orlando's
To Be with You in early 1976) at least in terms of chronological catalog number order.