A couple of possible Columbia quads that never made it out?

[steelydave]

I was browsing through this site which is a list of all the LP's released under the CBS combined numbering system (including Columbia, Epic, Philadelphia International, Blue Sky, T-Neck, etc) including quadraphonic releases, and I came across a couple of listings for quad albums I don't think were ever released. If you have a look at the page you'll see that it's very extensive in terms of info, but also very accurate...which makes me think it's quite possible these LP's were slated for release and then cancelled.

The two titles I'm referring to are:

Poco 'From The Inside' EQ-30753 (1972)

This album came between Poco's first quad release (Deliverin' 1970) and it's last 3 (Crazy Eyes (1973), Cantamos (1974), and Seven (1974)). It was engineered by Charlie Bragg (who did quad mixes for Lynn Anderson, Jim Nabors, Ray Price and Tammy Wynette in 1972) and Roy Segal (who did the quad mix of Chase's 1st album in 1972 and Sly Stone's 'High On You' in 1975). I don't think this is a particularly well known/well regarded Poco album, maybe the quad release was cancelled on that basis.


Mac Davis 'Forever Lovers' PCQ-34105 (May 1976)

Davis had 4 quad albums before this one (basically one a year starting in 1972) and one of the final quad releases ('Thunder In The Afternoon') the year after this, in 1977. Again it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that they did a quad mix of this at the same time as the stereo mix and then didn't bother putting it out for whatever reason - most likely because quad was in it's death throes by 1976.


Obviously these aren't blockbuster titles or anything, but it's always interesting to find another little piece of the quad puzzle as far as what record company intentions were back then.

 

[fizzywiggs41]

Great find, steelydave,

I often wonder what buried treasures of quad unreleased titles exsist in Columbia's Tape Vault.


We should all recieve an invite to tour those" catacombs", maybe oneday?

 

[Q-Eight]

That's my Go-To site when I need info on Columbia albums! You sunk my battleship!
I wouldn't doubt that these were either attempted/abandoned, or completed as Quad mixes. Mac Davis I would definitely believe just judging by how many Quads he did have, and Poco was also considered one of Columbia's top acts at the time as well.

Take it with a grain of salt, but there once was a discussion on the Steve Hoffman forum about unreleased Quad albums and the man himself mentioned that there are probably just as many unreleased Quad albums as there are released ones. He briefly mentioned that the archives are full of listings for Quad titles but he is more or less contractually obligated to stay quiet about what is in there, and as we've recently found out with the Loggins & Messina catalog, not everything survived the last 40 years.


There was a website out in internetland that I'm sure is long defunct, but it was of an Elvis fans' tour of one of RCA's storage facilities in the early 90's. He managed to get permission to visit one of the archive buildings and the outside resembled an airplane hangar. Once inside, his tour guide lead him through the building and allowed him to take a few pictures. The pictures of the "Sorted" rooms looked like you'd expect. Racks and racks full of labelled white and grey tape boxes. Then, he was lead to the "unsorted" section of the building. The pictures he took of that section would strike fear in the hearts of any music fan. Boxes upon boxes of tape stacked 10-12 feet high. Tape spilling out all over the floor. Unlabelled boxes and reels of tape everywhere.

Hopefully things have been cleaned up in the last 25 years.

 

[steelydave]

It is a great site isn't it? I often wonder how CBS chose catalog numbers because there are so many numbers with no release attached to them. I wonder if it was for scrapped titles, or if they used them for single releases or what.

I'm sure there are lots of unreleased quad mixes but I'd take a lot of what SH has to say with a grain of salt. He loves to propagate a lot of myths, especially when it concerns the priveleged access of his position.

I'd also take the news that the other Loggins and Messina quad tapes are 'gone' with a grain of salt, as evidenced by what you said about the RCA storage facilities - as far as record companies go, an unlabelled tape is basically as lost as a tape that's actually gone. In my professional career, I worked for a couple of TV/Film post-production companies as a tape librarian - these were smaller libraries of 10,000 to 20,000 tapes but the setup was no different from a record label aside from it being videotapes and cans of film in lieu of reels of audiotape. In one of the libraries we re-barcode stickered the entire library and it took two of us nearly three weeks to do. Imagine how many inventory items a label like Sony with 100 years of corporate history has - it must be in the millions, between multitracks, outtakes, session and work tapes, master tapes, safety copies, etc. etc. The thing about barcode/inventory control stickers (like scotch tape or any kind of adhesive product) is that over time they dry out and lose their stickiness, especially in a dry environment. In the places I worked there were barcode stickers less than 10 years old that had already fallen off. Multiply that by decades and take in to account all the stuff that was never labelled, badly/poorly/wrongly labelled and it's a wonder record companies can find anything. So it's my personal opinion that the L&M quad tapes (and whatever other missing ones) are in Sony's vaults somewhere but that the kind of large scale inventory they'd have to take to find them doesn't make any sense for an album they're licensing out that might sell a few thousand copies. Even if Sony was getting (a highly unlikely) $10 a disc in royalties from AF, they're probably only seeing 25 or 30 grand for quad each title they license. It's not worth them spending probably hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to re-inventory their library to find the missing stuff - $25k is literally a drop in the bucket for a company that turned over almost $70 billion in gross revenue last year.

This article which appeared in Billboard magazine in about 1998 (I think) gives a pretty good idea of the disorganised state of the major label vaults back then. I'm sure things have improved some since then, but it's an almost impossible mountain to climb in my opinion.

One thing I found particularly interesting in there was some information that challenges the claim that ABC Dunhill destroyed everything except their stereo masters - it sounds more like they destroyed some or all of their pre-1970's multitracks, which is obviously a massive shame but means that their quad masters could still be out there somewhere.


Edited to add, if any record labels want to hire me for archival work/vault inventory etc. I am interested.

 

[4-earredwonder]

steelydave, I guess Columbia Records, ABC Dunhill, RCA, etc never heard the old expression: Everything OLD is NEW again.....as in the "Quad Revival" we are somewhat experiencing now.

The REAL shame is that those stacks of acetate/Polyester Tapes in a disarray of piled high boxes will also suffer from "print through" ...... if you don't play them every once in awhile, the magnetic signal will bleed through and eventually destroy what's on those tapes.

And I always wondered why Columbia Records NEVER released QUAD Open Reels like Warners and Universal did. I belonged to their Open Reel Club and of course became disenchanted when they started to release in 3 3/4 ips to cut down on tape usuage.

I think we should be VERY indebted to Audio Fidelity for releasing what they already have and will continue to release on QUAD and 5.1 SACD. As you surmise, the majors are NOT interested in satisfying the needs of only a few (Us Quaddies) to put a few dollars in their treasure chests.

Thanks for your illuminating explanation of why we can't always get what we want because of the utter disarray of the Major's cataloging system. It's really a LOSE, LOSE proposition for all of us....in retrospect.

Maybe those lost ABC/Dunhill QUAD masters will oneday mysteriously appear in someone's attic or basement and will "somehow" survive INTACT!

 

[seilerbird]

Everything OLD is NEW again.....

How come I still look and feel old?

 

[4-earredwonder]

How come I still look and feel old?

Perhaps it's because you've NEVER discovered Clinique facial creams for MEN, sellerbird!:yikes

That shit REALLY works.......but......at a PRICE

 

[Q-Eight]

I've heard, in the case of the ABC/Dunhill purge, is that more than we know survived. Rumours abound that an awful lot went to Japanese collectors and I've heard stories that people were collecting up boxes of tape as fast as it was being dumped into the bins. The question is, where is that stuff now? Has it survived or was it recycled and re-sold as bulk erased tape? In the last 15 years, we've seen a startling amount of Quad Duplication Masters show up on eBay, mostly from ABC and a select few from A&M. The thing I don't understand about the ABC purge is that it supposedly took place during the height of the Quad era. Why would they be disposing of all their multitracks which are necessary to create Quad? ABC put out some of the BEST Quad mixes of the time so it still baffles me. The timeline must've been close because most ABC Quads are dated '72, '73 and '74 with the sole 1975 Quad being Three Dog Nights' "Coming down your way".

Now that you mention that it could've only been pre-'70 stuff, that does make a little more sense. Still, that's an awful lot of hard-core stuff to be throwing away. But that would account for the fact that virtually nothing seems to exist for Steppenwolf, Three Dog Night, Mamas & Papas, etc. An awful lot of multitracks for the Grass Roots seem to have survived but again, mostly from the post-'70 era.

I'd also heard the rumour that a Mamas & Papas Quad was in the process of being created when the purge occurred. The only reason a few multitracks survive is because they were off-site being used for that project. However, that rumour is completely unsubstantiated.

 

[4-earredwonder]

I've heard, in the case of the ABC/Dunhill purge, is that more than we know survived. Rumours abound that an awful lot went to Japanese collectors and I've heard stories that people were collecting up boxes of tape as fast as it was being dumped into the bins. The question is, where is that stuff now? Has it survived or was it recycled and re-sold as bulk erased tape? In the last 15 years, we've seen a startling amount of Quad Duplication Masters show up on eBay, mostly from ABC and a select few from A&M. The thing I don't understand about the ABC purge is that it supposedly took place during the height of the Quad era. Why would they be disposing of all their multitracks which are necessary to create Quad? ABC put out some of the BEST Quad mixes of the time so it still baffles me. The timeline must've been close because most ABC Quads are dated '72, '73 and '74 with the sole 1975 Quad being Three Dog Nights' "Coming down your way".

Now that you mention that it could've only been pre-'70 stuff, that does make a little more sense. Still, that's an awful lot of hard-core stuff to be throwing away. But that would account for the fact that virtually nothing seems to exist for Steppenwolf, Three Dog Night, Mamas & Papas, etc. An awful lot of multitracks for the Grass Roots seem to have survived but again, mostly from the post-'70 era.

I'd also heard the rumour that a Mamas & Papas Quad was in the process of being created when the purge occurred. The only reason a few multitracks survive is because they were off-site being used for that project. However, that rumour is completely unsubstantiated.

The MOST we could hope for, at this point, are "needledrops" from ABC's QS Vinyl using the Surround Master and a high quality turntable/arm/cartridge combo.

As I stated....they're probably stashed away in someone's attic or being hoarded by Japanese collectors who may have passed on and their relatives have NO idea what they have in their possession or ultimately destroyed considering it "junk." A REAL shame!

Also, there were quite a few ABC/Impulse Jazz QS Vinyl albums released from Gato Barbieri, Keith Jarrett, Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane, etc that I'd love to see released as QUAD SACDs, as well.