Do the 1965 demos run fast?

[Mark]

I was listening to disc 1 of PS&S recently and something struck me - is it actually mastered slightly fast?

The more recently released demos on Lou Reed: Words & Music sound very natural (albeit lo-fi), whereas on the recordings on PS&S have a slightly thin, strained quality, extending even to Lou's voice, which I'd always put down to him just being a bit younger - but the Words & Music, recorded 2 months earlier, don't have this quality.

It's hard to ascertain based on the pitch of the guitars because they were always screwing around with tunings. However it should be possible to ascertain whether the tape is playing back at the speed it was recorded from the audible mains hum, which should be at exactly 60hz (with harmonics at 120hz, 240hz etc). Unfortunately I'm not immediately set up to check this - is anyone else able to?

[falconwhit]

Non-scientific opinion (i.e. I didn't analyze the hum), but Waiting For The Man is at least one semitone sharp (E flat), if not more.
Heroin and the John Cale tracks seem to be in the right key.

[Mark]

Well - I've had a go at analysing the hum and it seems I was wrong, as far as I can tell. Loading each of the 6 tracks into Adobe Audition and using the 60hz + harmonics notch filter, it seems that's where the hum is. I'm not the most knowledgeable about this stuff, so if anyone knows better, please speak up!

It does highlight that these tracks would benefit from a remaster in any case - there's a lot of hum and hiss that could be better tackled now than it could in 1995. Plus it's always annoyed me that the takes aren't separated into individual tracks on the CD.

One thing I noticed on pulling the PS&S CD out for the first time in a few years - on that 1965 tape box, there's a note (presumably from Cale) enigmatically saying "No. 11." Where the hell are nos. 1 to 10?!

[rnranimal]

The CD actually utilizes indexes within the tracks if your player happens to recognize those. I had a player in the 90s that could but haven't tried it since. Those index each take. EAC shows these in the CUE so I took that and edited the CUE so that these indexes are actual track breaks, if anyone is interested in that CUE file.

[Mark]

I did not know that was a thing!

In fairness, at some point in the past 30 years I could probably have ripped the CD and done my own trackmarked version to listen to. One of these days....

[ggriffin]

re: no. 11 - I had though maybe that they recorded (at least) eleven tapes to distribute as demos. A home tape duplication setup was probably way out of reach for a penniless band in 1965. Easier to just sit down in front of the mike for an afternoon and bang out a pile of tapes?

[Mark]

Surely if they were recording songs repeatedly to give out to people, they wouldn't have left all the multiple takes and false starts in?

(PS Hi Geoff!)

[simonm]

The number 11 could have been added at any point, I don't think we can assume Cale numbered it (it looks very neat for one thing), and there's no reason to assume they were numbered in chronological order either. If it was Tony Conrad's machine they used there were probably several people using it too. Isn't the story that he gave a box of tapes to Cale at some point? My guess would be Conrad numbered them when they were in his posession, the box could have included the Cale solo tapes released by ToE as well as some VU and maybe Maclise stuff etc also.

[TJeffriesUK]

Maybe the numbering allowed them to track variations in performance like solos, vocal intonations, lyric changes?

Sent from my Pixel 7a using Tapatalk

[iaredatsun]

The number 11 could have been added at any point, I don't think we can assume Cale numbered it (it looks very neat for one thing), and there's no reason to assume they were numbered in chronological order either. If it was Tony Conrad's machine they used there were probably several people using it too. Isn't the story that he gave a box of tapes to Cale at some point? My guess would be Conrad numbered them when they were in his posession, the box could have included the Cale solo tapes released by ToE as well as some VU and maybe Maclise stuff etc also.

I seem to remember Conrad saying that when Cale gave him the tapes for the New York in the 60s TOE releases, that the box of tapes he was given contained VU recordings by that he did not digitise them. Not sure how true that statement was, But I think it was in the Conrad bio book(???). Conrad almost gave a student some of the tapes, until Cale stopped him, citing Lou Reed’s potential displeasure. At that point he gave the tapes back to Cale.

Ive always assumed the demo reel was given to UMG to digitise, and if so, we know that it was not the reel he planned to give them.