This week as I recover from a few marks from the fire, we are going back very much to two years of entries on this blog, 2010 that had an overview of Michael Jackson's career and later in 2022, when we looked at vinyl and specifically his 1982 album Thriller.
Michael as a solo artist had solo albums before then, his solo career being guided by Motown initially from just over two years of the Jackson Five recording with Got To Be There and concluding with his forgotten Forever, Michael album of the summer of 1975 of which one track, the re-issued in 1981 One day In My Life is a standout track.
The Jacksons sans Jermaine moved from Motown to Epic Records in 1976 looking for greater control over their output and image reactivating their popularity but Michael was coming of age and wished to present himself to market as an adult.
A lot of effort was spent on building up to what would be his grown up solo debut bringing in session musicians, songwriters like Rod Templeton of the UK's Heatwave and the late Quincey Jones to arrange and produce the sessions.
Off The Wall was its title and off the charts was the reaction to it, bringing in a contemporary mix of soul and funk in a slick fusion in 1979.
Like many I had that record, a U.K. first pressing which contained four classic singles, Rock With You, Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough, She's Out Of My Life, a beautiful ballad and the title track, all of which graced the UK charts from September of 1979 through the Summer of 1980.
The album has been out in most formats somewhere around the World, cassette, 8 track cartridge, compact disc, minidisc and in more recent years digital downloads of various file formats.
In January of this year, it came out in very different form, two records in a deluxe packaging cut at 45 rpm, the speed the majority of British 12 inch singles are cut on very high quality vinyl.
You might wonder why you might do that and basically it is it allows for more of the high and especially low notes to be cut as they take up a lot of vinyl space and so are often reduced to fit everything in at the regular 33 1/3rd rpm speed.
Funk music often has a lot of bass but cutting at 45 rpm also improves the clarity of that bass plus it aids high frequencies as we get toward the centre of the disc where they can lose detail or even sound distorted.
Thus for this issue the two original lp sides are split into four and to help the high notes Off The wall is placed on the third disc at the start rather than cramming it at the end of the second side.
All the original lyrics and credits are contained in a booklet.
Having obtained my copy, I find it has better detail, smoother but keeping the attack we all loved on tracks like Burn This Disco Out.
In late 2022 Thriller got a special version which was tied into a promotion by Michael Jackson's estate and Sony Music that I did get.
That and probably wanting to keep the price lower I suspect explains why that was cut at 33 1/3rd on one disc which although I still feel sounds better than any version I'd ever owned having had lp, tape and compact disc, would of benefited from a two disc 45 rpm edition
It is possible other solo albums recorded for Epic/Sony Records such as Bad might be released although that was an all digital recording but as anyone who has heard what Mobile Fidelity has done with Dire Straits Brothers In Arms on both vinyl and sacd would say, even early digital recordings can be made to sound fuller and more realistic.
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