Teenbeat: The return of Off The Wall

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

There are Super Audio cd versions available but having heard the sacd of Off The Wall I would say the vinyl mastering is better overall.

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.

End of month Internet update

 

Well unlike the 2000's  at least my internet isn't dial up and isn't dropping in and out like a round of guests at CatMas although computing is less desk top with separate keyboard, mouse, display and base unit  and more Chromebook which is more me outside of more speciality uses.

More turn on, instant boot up and on with the job.

It's much faster even over Wifi with download speeds of just a smidgen under 52mbps depending on how good your devices wifi set up is and rather less flaky although not using the providers DNS server (BT/EE) and switching to Googles works better which was something I had to do to the new machine as with CatMas rush I forgot that and finding some sites weren't loading quite right.

Don't however try phoning as unless you ring my cellphone as while I can ring you, should I fail and you try ringing back you won't get through as all the protocol stuff since this switchover for the phone hasn't been completed in sixteen days and all you get is messages on the cellphone to say there's still more work to be finalized.

Well, I ain't daft, I already know that.

Thus for when I go away I have enter a number for a unofficial phone (cough cough) that plugs via a socket to modem of its own as I can't be assured this will be fixed in time.

Things that do help

We are here this week although at some point last weeks entry will get posted having been written to go.

Thoughts it had to be said had been elsewhere of late not least with the internet business but something to go in the bag not before time is this Goebel.

It's a very attractive double compact mirror that opens upon pressing on the button at the bottom and pulling up.

As my previous mirror was  single hello Kitty one this really is an improvement on that and came with a soft cloth for keeping the surfaces clean.

Teenbeat: January 2025 round up

 Well it is Internet Free Saturday.

A mess up being polite by the people responsible means we have no internet or much else today so today we are going to look a couple of things one being Now Yearbook, who having given us the main 1977 volume which we brought the three Lp version last year have released the Extra on three cds.

An annoyance with the otherwise excellent series is we don’t get at the time vinyl editions of the Extras, just as with the 1980-84 portion two boxes of one set of extras that are close but not identical to the corresponding cd issues.

The cd features some sixty-two songs taking in Queen’s Good Old-fashioned Lover Boy from the Queen EP, the last Rubettes single to trouble the charts Baby I Know and it’s era mates the Bay City Rollers with It’s A Game with a good helping of the New wave from the Stranglers, Jam and Boomtown Rats plus Disco from Shalamar, Diana Ross, Tavares and many of the supremely talent Philadelphia International acts like Billy Paul.

Pop was well served by The Brotherhood of Man, classic rock as we call it today by Thin Lizzy and Status Quo and an ever present Donna Summer.

I do hope much of this makes its way lp in due course.

The other thing has been rediscovering my Mariah Carey albums mainly from the 90’s which I’d bought on compact disc and minidisc and original dvd of Glitter, the much maligned film based on the story of a young female singer that caused issues for her and put something of a cloud over her then unassailable career.

Teenbeat: More stereo explosions from the past

What was billed as a major snow storm was really rather a damp squid here at the weekend so all the preparation was really rather wasted with a centimetre of snow at the most but something it did do was give me the opportunity to listen to the latest in a series of special cds for collectors.

The stereo explosion series of cds was a new series started a few years ago by the enterprising Eric Records company in Oshawa, On., Canada who specialize in finding and re-issuing original hit recordings that in an era where albums are more coveted the single version which is often different is hard to find new.

There was a period in the United States especially where such records were tossed out as singles especially mono single mixes were seen as "old hat" and not worth spending money on storing.

A lot of research and time finding them even if sometimes a clean original record may be the only available option would be undertaken and they'd issue compilations of them for collectors and presenters of vintage chart shows.

The Stereo Explosion series follows the same concept they would try to find the stereo single and using modern techniques of using artificial intelligence in audio extract individual elements within a recording that wasn't issued in stereo and remix that to stereo.

We had got up to Volume 10 in 2023 and just before CatMas, Volumes 11 and 12 were issued.

Volume 11 is more the mid 1950's to early 1963 period covering rock and roll as shown by the Elvis Presley selections, early R&B/Soul from Sam Cooke, Gladys Knight and classic pop fromthe Crystals and Chiffons.

A tidal wave swept the American charts from the end of December 1963 wiping out much of what had gone before and it was British and this selection from  mainly 1964 and 5 captures many of these sounds although the likes of the Beatles aren't covered.

There's no problem finding anything by them on cds!

Singles in the UK often weren't on albums, were often only mixed into mono for playing on Radio Luxembourg and inexpensive portable record players and so seldom have a true stereo mix...until now.

This just imagine my delight to hear the seriously brilliant Yardbirds perform For Your Love, Bits And Pieces by the DC5, Please Don't Go by Them and I Can't Explain by the Who in very credible clean sounding stereo.

Recordings that influenced the next wave of American acts and actually Berry Gordy of Motown really rated the production and beat of those early DC5 songs.

Also included are the awesome Animals, Manchester's Hermans Hermits and those Swinging Blue Jeans with the infectious Hippy Hippy Shake.

The out of this world Telstar produced by the amazing Joe Meek appears sounding really fresh with the second mix a generation higher than the one used for the single sounding clearer than ever.

For those of us who love pop hits of the 50's and 60's these discs are just great for the songs, memories now in stereo sound.

Review and Xmas 2024

 

Twenty Twenty Four,eh? 

Does anyone know where it really went and indeed where as we go through the outro into Twenty Twenty Five where we'll end up?

This blog has being going, like ages sometimes going more down one set of interests and then the other  but one thing was we achieved some 2,000 posts, all original, made over a variety of different computers from the legend that was "Treacle, the slowest thing out there in the west to the death of the old Windows laptop to the adoption of using Chromebooks to do most things including blog posts on.

One arrival late last year was this Asus Chromebook Plus which had better processors and more ram for dealing with social media and BIG photo galleries apart from online in browser games which has helped matters somewhat not least for having backlight keys.

Some sad trends continued such as the declined usage of GT, sad cos I struggle with few very long continuous threads rather than themed threads on a layer of sub forums and some Tumblrs dropping off as trying to find tumblrs that are around littles fashion, age regression and really SFW can be hard going. 

I'm working through developing looks that I feel comfortable in a variety of settings as some which may be fine for others just don't it for me or are unpractical when it comes to either putting on, fastening  or being carried in the case across railway platforms before taking lifts.

Some of my older ankle socks were showing some signs of wear and tear so I did have for CatMas three of these of cotton calf length socks that will work with most things apart from just below the knee with patterns for a more sophisticated look while being close to the appeal of pelerine school type socks.

Music has always played a part in my life and 2024 did see a few more records being added, some from the The Original Source series of Classical re-issues cut from the original four and eight track tapes directly rather than copies and selected reissues from people like Analogue Productions.

I did get a good number of the mono reissues of the Beatles American albums from 1964 and some books about them for CatMas.

The Now Yearbook series kept going although generally on record I haven't bothered with the post 1982 issues but we did continue with the 1970's issues with 1977 and I expect as we get into the the New Year there will be issues from 1970-72 and 1975-76 which I will be buying.

Part of is tactile and nostalgia based, handling and lowering the stylus brings back the memories of playing the compilations of the day the is the music itself which I love listening to.

We did get away rather more than the previous year sometimes for a weekend, other times for a good few days for clean non kink connected fun just being your younger self, playing games, going out places and given we look after our food connected needs, helping out.

Plans are afoot to go away for the first quarter of the year and tentative ideas are being mooted for weekends too which should be fun.

Comics play a part too from the Beano to modern offerings such the Phoenix with more modern characters as do colouring books when the hands are up to it, getting absorbed in something relaxing either at home or away.

Christmas edition

 By the time you read this I should be back from being away for a pre christmas get together playing games, competitions such as a version of the hit BBC show Pointless and a meal together,

Things have been hotting up here with visits, errands with CatMas cards, last minute organizing and so on but I did dig out a few favourite records to play in the gaps apart from cds of Carols from Kings as well I love a carol or two.

There will be a pause until at least after Boxing Day this year although I'm not quite show this year what the next post will be here.

All that remains is to wish you all a Happy Christmas and all the best for 2025.