Customer Reviews

A Double Blast of Super Soul

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I remember Stereo Revue magazine, a popular monthly publication that I used to read during the 70's & 80's. It would revue and give an evaluation of the latest stereo equipment as well as phonograph record releases for stereo audio and general sonic musical quality. If they had evaluated these two 1960's Atlantic Records (remastered for cd) recordings of various r&b artists live at the Apollo & Uptown theaters, they would have given the cd a thumbs down due to sonic imperfections, 1 star at the most. People who buy and listen to mp3's probably won't notice any imperfections at all but we old folks from the Hi Fi era hear it all. I applaud the effort of Pacific Records to make "Saturday Night At The Uptown" available again and on cd. The "Apollo Saturday Night" has been available on cd for years. Hearing the Drifters, Coasters, Falcons, Vibrations, Wilson Pickett, etc in their element is a timeless experience. Having both albums on 1 cd was a marvelous idea too, but the surface noise of the phonograph needle tracking, clicking and popping inside the groove of the record marred this remastering effort. The phono scratching in the high end and rumble in the low end are hard to bear. Maybe if the producers of this cd had used a high quality computerized program to clean up some of the tracking errors, this cd could have been more acceptable. The packaging itself has all the trappings of a bootleg. No liner notes, thin paper inserts. I own these two records in phonograph form and I know for a fact that they are recorded exceptionally well for live recordings and captured the real soul of this r&b history in the making. Here's hoping the Uptown recordings will be re-issued again someday in a more sonically suitable package. It is doubtful we will get another re-issue since the cd itself is slowly becoming extinct. 5 stars for the music, 3 stars for the remastered product effort on cd.