I think you also need to think about this album, and the quad mix in the context of the time it was released, which in this case was March, 1968. Now we don't know exactly when this album was mixed for quad exactly, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was in the following year, which is when CBS started doing their first quad mixes.
The reason I say the time and context are important is because the stereo mixes of this era were also extremely directional (and at times nonsensical) because the technology was new, and people wanted material that showed off the directional possibilities it afforded. Take the Beatles for example, probably inarguably the most popular and best-selling act of the 1960s - would the extreme stereo mixes of Revolver and Rubber Soul sound any different from
Eli and the 13th Confession's quad mix if they were extrapolated into 3D?
It's also worth noting that Columbia never put this album in quad when they finally started releasing quad LPs starting in February 1972 - the only reason its existence was known was because it was one of the
Mike Robin reel collection that he
offered for sale to collectors in the late '70s. Columbia did release several of those pre-1972 quad mixes as part of their first batch of SQ LPs in February '72 including Bloomfield/Kooper/Stills
Super Session, Sly & The Family Stone's
Greatest Hits, Santana's
Abraxas and third album, Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge over Troubled Water and others, which leads me to believe that they felt like the Laura Nyro mix maybe wasn't up to snuff given the innovations in mixing in the three-plus years between 1968 and early 1972.
Where does that leave this album? Well, maybe it's not the ideal mixing philosophy for a somewhat sparse album, but it's also a fascinating living relic of an incredibly exciting time in surround history. Imagine early 1968, a year before Woodstock and the moon landing, six months before the Beatles
White Album is out, when lots of people are just experiencing stereo playback for the first time, and you're in a studio mixing an album for twice as many speakers. There's barely a blueprint for effective stereo mixing at this point, and with quad you're in absolutely virgin territory - there's no playbook for this. Mixing is obviously a technical job, but there's also a distinct artistic element, and like so many endeavours (both technical and artistic) you don't know what works - or what doesn't - until you try it. I think this mix has some of both - is having drums and/or bass guitar isolated in a single rear speaker an ideal mixing arrangement? Probably not. But does it illustrate that discrete four-channel mixing can create moments of absolute musical excitement? For me, absolutely. I'm reminded of the quote from Sir Isaac Newton "if I have seen further [than others], it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Early mixes like this one, flaws and all, are the basis for all the great work that came out of CBS (and elsewhere) in the ensuing years, and I'm extremely grateful that we're able to listen to and debate the merits of the actual recording and not just wonder what it might've sounded like based on a news item in an old trade magazine or a quote from an old engineer on a website.
