HiRez Poll Foghat - ENERGIZED [Blu-Ray Audio]

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Rate the BDA of Foghat - ENERGIZED

  • 6

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 5

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 4

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 3

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 2

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 1: Terrible Content, Surround Mix, and Fidelity

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    21

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Please post your thoughts and comments on this new reissue of the classic album "Energized" by Foghat
This new reissue has been released as part of Rhino's ongoing Quadio series, and the Blu-Ray Audio disc features the very first commercial release of the original 1970s Quadraphonic mix!

(y) :) (n)

Foghat_Energized_Quadio.png
 
8
Fine, nothin' fancy, as Lynyrd Skynyrd would say. I'd never heard this album before, nor any of the songs apparently as none sound familiar except for the covers. So this is one of those that had a quad mix prepared yet it was never released, eh? I wonder if the fact that the surroud mix isn't blowing me away had something to do with its non-appearance at the time.

There seems to be not too much that can be done with simple guitar, bass, and drums in terms of the quad experience at times, yet there are obvious exceptions of course. One needs more instruments to float across the room I guess. Perhaps I'm being picky as I'm blasting "Fly by Night" now, and it sounds fine.
 
Wasn’t familiar with this Foghat album. The songs are kind of derivative hard rock. Not A material. The quad mix was a little muddy and congested. Was hoping the Quad mix would excite me, but this is one of the few releases where I could have passed on.
 
The master tapes in the booklet contain an interesting revelation:

1730271047930.png

It appears this quad mix was done by none other than Elliot Scheiner, judging by the 'ELS' notation. I haven't figured out who 'SAM' is - a cursory search of A&R Recording engineers didn't turn up any obvious candidates, but it's probably someone who was a tape operator or junior engineer at the time.

Scheiner worked at A&R from about 1967 or 68 through 1975, so the dates on this line up with this, and further confirmed by the fact that Scheiner engineered another album (What You Feel is How You Grow by Don Cooper) produced by Tom Dawes, who produced Energized, around the same time.

There are no credits on the stereo LP of Energized aside from Dawes production credit, but I have to presume that Scheiner did the stereo mix as well and that's why they went back to him to do the quad mix. The surprising thing is that the stereo mix was done in late 1973 (and released in January 1974) and the dates on these master tapes say March 1975, more than a full year later. By this point Foghat had already released another album (Rock and Roll Outlaws in November 1974) and were about to start work on Fool for the City, so it's kind of surprising that they went that far back to remix an album that barely scraped into the top 40 more than a year earlier. The only thing I can think of is that Bearsville footed the bill for the quad mix, and then Warner (who distributed them) either didn't like the sound of the mix, or knew they were getting out of quad by that point (the last Warner quad was Graham Central Station's Ain't No Bout a Doubt It in July 1975, though Elektra carried on into early 1976) so it got shelved. Rock and Roll Outlaws is on Mark's list of unreleased quads so maybe they intended to remix that one as well, but it was originally done at a non-quad studio (Suntreader Studios in Vermont) by Nick Jameson (who'd end up becoming the band's bass player as well, on Fool for the City) an engineer with no quad experience as far as I can tell.

I think this new information adds some interesting texture to both Scheiner's career (we only knew that he did the quad mix of Enoch Light's Brass Menagerie 1973 album before this, and he mentioned in an interview working on the 21 Trombones album) and also the story of Warner's quad program as well. The fact that they were commissioning quad mixes of year-old albums in 1975 (the Average White Band quad mix was also done in 1975, almost a year after the stereo) suggests that they weren't gradually winding down that year, and that whatever the decision was to get out of quad must've come pretty abruptly and without much notice. Whatever you think of the quality of this mix (maybe it could've used a more sympathetic remastering to alleviate some of the 'congestedness') it's cool that it finally found its way out of the vault, even 50 years late.

Supreme Commander of the Allied Surround Forces (Northeastern Theater) @sjcorne has reached out to Sgt. Scheiner to see if he remembers anything about doing this mix, so hopefully we should have some kind of confirmation (or denial) in due course.
 
Anyone notice the track order on the back of the case and the back of the booklet don’t match the actual order the songs play from the disc? However the disc and the second page of the booklet do have the tracks in the correct order.
A solid rock album for me. I have always liked Foghat but I am not familiar with this album nor have I ever heard it before. Not a lot going on in the rear channels most of the time but the album does have its discrete moments. I particularly liked the drums in rears on the last track “Nothin’ I Won’t Do”.
I would give this quad album a solid 8 for the music and mix especially if you are a fan of straight up rock and Foghat.
 
For those interested in doing a deeper dive into the recording of this album, I found this article written by Mike Mettler a couple years ago, who apparently is the “official Foghat historian” although interestingly, given his enthusiasm for all things surround, makes no mention of the quad mix. A couple of interesting items that are discussed include the obvious homage to Train Kept a Rolliin’ in Honey Hush, as well as bringing in the legendary Bernard Purdy as a 2nd drummer in 2 tracks (Wild Cherry and Nothin’ I Won’t Do). The quad mix does a good job of giving each drummer his own space in the mix.

https://foghat.com/foghatstory/energized-turns-48/
 
For those interested in doing a deeper dive into the recording of this album, I found this article written by Mike Mettler a couple years ago, who apparently is the “official Foghat historian” although interestingly, given his enthusiasm for all things surround, makes no mention of the quad mix. A couple of interesting items that are discussed include the obvious homage to Train Kept a Rolliin’ in Honey Hush, as well as bringing in the legendary Bernard Purdy as a 2nd drummer in 2 tracks (Wild Cherry and Nothin’ I Won’t Do). The quad mix does a good job of giving each drummer his own space in the mix.

https://foghat.com/foghatstory/energized-turns-48/
as it wasn't released until last week he probably didn't know the Quad mix even existed when he wrote that article in 2022, let's face it we didn't! 😅😜
 
This is easily my favourite from the latest bunch. It rocks hard and I love the mix. A 10 for me.
yes it's my favourite of the latest bundle as well 😻

i find it a solid (if unspectacular 🤔 ) album, with some interesting arrangements, decent playing and a kooky Quad mix (never previously released donchya know!! way-hay!! 🥳🙏😋 ) that has a few neat tricks up it's sleeve including some nifty round the room pans etc., it's a "9" for now 👍
 
I voted 10.
I absolutely love this. Great 4.0 surround, so many moving parts, back and forth, drums coming out all 4 speakers at once, I could go on.
Sonic quality is good enough for me.
Ripped Blu Ray-MKV>MMH FLAC file. 24bit/192Khz DTS HD MSTR. DR's are 11, 12's, 13's.
I have listened to many Quadio's of course and don't write reviews for all, but this one has all cylinders burning to my personal tastes. Love it.
Please keep poll threads pure, to your listening experience only.
Foghat_Energized_Quadio.jpg
 
Here's a QUADIO with the previously unreleased 1970 quadraphonic mix. I appreciate Rhino for giving me an opportunity to give it a listen. I enjoyed: Honey Hush (reminds me of Aerosmith's A Train Kept A Rollin), That'll Be The Day and Nothin I Won't Do. 9 from me.
SURROUND MIX - 3
AUDIO FIDELITY - 2
CONTENT - 3
OVERALL PACKAGE - 1
 
This Quadio is the first time I heard this album.

I like song 2, I have put it on repeat play.

Music Content: 7

4.0 Surround Mix: 8 (4.1 basement system [see "About"])

Fidelity: 9

(average 8)


Kirk Bayne
 
If some of this review sounds familiar, it's because some of it is copied verbatim from my J Geils Bloodshot review.

I came of age in Connecticut in the late 1970s. This band was meat and potatoes for local rock radio. I did see them live once in May of 1978. They are what this is - good adolescent male rock and roll party music. Not particularly fancy - no prog rock time signatures - just simple rock and roll.

This quad mix is typical 70s quad discrete, which I love. I am pleased it has surfaced and been preserved. The fidelity is clear and clean.

I am giving this a 8. Musically some of it is redundant. Honey Hush is a retread of Train Kept A Rollin/Stroll On. That'll Be The Day has nothing that other versions don't have, possibly less. There are tracks from this band that I really like, mostly as a function of nostalgia and a snapshot of a time long past, but they are a good bit of fun when the mood is right. I probably won't reach for it frequently, but I'm glad it has seen the light of day! Bring on Fool For The City!
 
While I'm no stranger to Foghat, I'm not familiar with anything previous to "Slow Ride". I enjoyed more songs than I thought I would. Standard board-of-fair mid 70's boogie-rock type of stuff. The mix.... the jury is still out on that in my mind. I'm not a fan of diagonal placement; especially when the drum kit is involved. Once again, I suspect an incorrect channel layout BUT----- hear me out on this one.... I'm not even sure myself. The way it comes does make sense. Kicker in FL and BR, Snare in FR and BL with the hats/overheads front center. This does create a mono-sounding drum kit all up the middle.

But if you swap the right channels.... you get the snare in front center, the kicker in back center and the hats/overheads go diagonal. Not terrible, but this does have the added effect of messing up the vocals. The vocals prior to swapping channels are delayed slightly in the rear. Swapping rights makes them delayed left-to-right in stereo. Obviously.... that doesn't jive. So, back to the drawing board.

I then got the bright idea to swap just the rears left to right, right to left. NOW this sounds MUCH better. Kicker in the right phantom, Snare in the Left phantom, Hats/Overheads front center. What this also does is on songs with backing vocals, it pairs them up nicely for a super-stereo effect. This setup also does not mess with the lead vocals at all. What it DOES mess up is that one song (I think it was "Step Outside"?) has a tambourine that travels around the room. As it comes, the tambourine gets lost a bit as it travels; and even with the backs swapped it still gets lost in the mix. So.... not 100% that's the way it should be, either.

The mixes seem to change song to song as well so.... that doesn't help.

Dunno. I like it; I'm very pleased it has now seen the light of day.... but not thrilled with how the mix has played out.
 
Wow, this is the hardest review to write so far. Energized contains so many elements that I love such as fuzzy guitar, flanger, panning etc., however it seems that all of those elements are taken to excess. I would suggest that this was a very experimental mix but don't get me wrong, I'm not faulting it for that.

On first listen it struck me as if someone had gone amuck with a parametric equaliser. For the guitar that might be a flanger, but even the vocals, especially on but not limited to "Nothin' I Won't Do" have that odd unnatural sound. The fuzz is so extreme throughout that I could swear my speakers were blown.

The guitar panning on "Step Outside" started to make me feel sea sick! The panning was done so quickly that the guitar almost jumped from speaker to speaker. Midi would call it cogging.

The most straight forward track is "Fly By Night", not to be confused with the Rush song of the same name. That particular track to me was reminiscent of "Fool for the City".

So overall I'm voting eight.
 
I would consider myself a Foghat fan but mainly of their hits. I never did a deep dive into their studio albums. In fact, the only studio album I really know from beginning to end is Stone Blue. I bought several of their albums just for the hits on them and rarely listened to the rest of the album.
I had never heard this album at all. Other than the Home In My Hand on the Foghat “Live” album.
It was about what I expected a Foghat album to sound like from that era. Decent, hard driving rock albeit somewhat generic for the times.
I liked the Quad mix and the music is right in my wheelhouse so an easy 9 for me. Just can’t see my way to a 10 because of the generic attributes.

Edit ….
Also interesting to see they had a song titled Fly By Night that predates Rush’s version.
 
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