Customer Reviews

Steppenwolf Gold

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Since "Born to Be Wild" blasted its way up the charts back in '68, I have been a fan of John Kay and Steppenwolf. At one time or another I have owned all of their classic LP's, Reel to Reel tapes, and more recently CD's. The sad fact of the matter is that the first batch of Steppenwolf cd releases sound flat and lifeless and are basically garbage. This unfortunate situation was improved with the Mobile Fidelity release of their first self titled album on their gold cd format.This disc has long been out of print but is usually available on Amazon for a huge premium. The catalogue once again became listenable when the BGO label remastered the first 8 non-compilation albums in 2 disc sets. However, the 2005 release of the double cd set titled Steppenwolf Gold, actually sounds great, much better than anything ever released previously with the possible exception of the lone Mobile Fidelity disc. I have heard nuances in these songs that I have never noticed before and the sound is smooth and non-fatiguing with plenty of air. It goes to show what can be done with careful remastering and just how far the redbook cd format has improved since its infancy. This release is a must have for aging boomers that still love Steppenwolf.

As you can see from this release's dull artwork and naff title, on the outside, this reissue has all the imagination and aesthetic appeal of a cold hamburger on a Monday morning. It's the kind of compilation you'd probably ignore in the rack of your local music emporium. "Gold" for God's sake!! So why review it - and should you give it the time of day? Because of what's contained on the "inside".

I've had various compilations throughout the years in order to have Steppenwolf tracks in my collection - both British and American issues - and some like 'The Beat Goes On' British 2CD set of the first two albums - are excellent. But they are all rendered redundant by this fantastic 2CD anthology. The difference lies in the STUNNING RE-MASTERED SOUND engineered by ERICK LABSON. This is way better than anything else previously issued and the sheer numbers of tracks also make it seriously great value for money. LABSON is one of those great unsung heroes of CD re-issues. Working on the huge and varied Universal catalogue, he has a monumental 800+ credits to his name for Engineering, Mastering, Restoration and Digital Remastering stretching back to the early Nineties. So he knows his way around a master tape or two. His exceptional tape work is behind the following generic titled series you've probably seen across Amazon's vast store (most are from the Universal catalogue):

"20th Century Masters The Millennium Collection"
"Blues Classics Remastered & Revisited"
"Chess 50th Anniversary Collection"
"The Definitive Collection"
"Gold"
"Rock `N' Roll 50th Anniversary Edition"

His mastering/re-mastering ROCK credits include: The Who's "My Generation Deluxe Edition", Neil Diamond's "Play Me: The Complete Uni Studio Recordings", Joni Mitchell's "The Beginning Of Survival", Wishbone Ash's "Argus" and Three Dog Night's "The Complete Hit Singles" - and as anyone who owns these will know, they are all exceptional in their sound quality - and thorough in their presentation.

Back to "Gold". The set covers the first and better part of Steppenwolf's output from 1968 to 1974. For the uninitiated and prospective buyer, the albums are listed below and then after the discography, what track is from what album:

1. Steppenwolf (1968)
2. Steppenwolf The Second (1969)
3. At Your Birthday Party (1969)
4. Monster (1970)
5. Steppenwolf Live (1970)
6. Steppenwolf 7 ((1970)
7. For Ladies Only (1971)
8. Forgotten Songs & Unsung Heroes (John Kay Solo LP, 1972)
9. My Sportin' Life (John Kay Solo LP, 1973)
10. Slow Flux (1974)

DISC 1
1. Born To Be Wild (Steppenwolf)
2. Sookie Sookie (Steppenwolf)
3. Everybody's Next One (Steppenwolf)
4. Your Wall's Too High (Steppenwolf)
5. Desperation (Steppenwolf)
6. The Pusher (Steppenwolf)
7. The Ostrich (Steppenwolf)
8. Take What You Need (Steppenwolf)
9. Magic Carpet Ride (Steppenwolf The Second)
10. Don't Step On The Grass Sam (Steppenwolf The Second)
11. Tighten Up Your Wug (Steppenwolf The Second)
12. It's Never Too Late (Steppenwolf The Second)
13. Jupiter's Child (At Your Birthday Party)
14. Rock Me (At Your Birthday Party)
15. Monster: Suicide/America Medley (Monster)

DISC 2
1. Move Over (Monster)
2. Power Play (Monster)
3. Hey Lawdy Mama (1970 7" single)
4. Snow Blind Friend (Steppenwolf 7)
5. Who Needs Ya (Steppenwolf 7)
6. Renegade (Steppenwolf 7)
7. Foggy Mental Breakdown (Steppenwolf 7)
8. Hippo Stomp (Steppenwolf 7)
9. Screaming Night Hog (1970 7" single)
10. For Ladies Only (For Ladies Only)
11. Tenderness (For Ladies Only)
12. Ride With Me (For Ladies Only)
13. I'm Movin' On (John Kay solo - Forgotten Songs & Unsung Heroes)
14. My Sportin' Life (John Kay solo - My Sportin' Life)
15. Drift Away (John Kay solo - My Sportin' Life)
16. Straight Shooting Woman (Slow Flux)

Fans will note that 8 out of the 11 tracks on their Dunhill 1968 debut LP are on Disc 1, 4 from the 2nd album too and a hunk off of '7' - all great news. The sound quality is glorious. If you can't play them through Media Player, then go to the iTunes Store and click a 25 second listen to "Sookie Sookie" and "Everybody's Next One" and you'll hear what I mean - just stunning! It would be a fan's dream if Labson could get to do "extended versions" of their 1st two classic albums "Steppenwolf" and "Steppenwolf The Second" - both of which deserve to be given as much status as anything that rocked out of the late sixties. I do wish Steppenwolf weren't forever attached to 'that' song - solely - almost as if it's all they ever did!

With regard to the "Gold" series in general: each title usually consists of 2CDs, each is digitally remastered from the original tapes and each is a comprehensive anthology with many titles properly remastered for the first time anywhere. Some of the labels covered are ABC/Brunswick/Cadet/Checker/Chess/Coral/Duke/Dunhill/MCA/Mercury/Verve/Vogue - and many more besides under the Universal umbrella. They began to appear in 2004 and are on-going into 2007. There are huge numbers of artists in the series right across the musical spectrum - here's some of interest: Aerosmith, The Allman Brothers, Joan Armatrading, Louis Armstrong, Asia, Burt Bacharach & Friends, Chuck Berry, James Brown, The Carpenters, Cinderella, Cream, Neil Diamond, Ella Fitzgerald, Connie Francis, Marvin Gaye, Buddy Holly, Etta James, Tom Jones, B.B. King, Kiss, Patti LaBelle, The Mamas & Papas, Bob Marley & The Wailers, The Moody Blues, The Neville Brothers, Olivia Newton-John, The Oak Ridge Boys, Parliament, Poco, The Righteous Brothers, Rush, Scorpions, Squeeze, The Statler Brothers, Cat Stevens, Rod Stewart, Sublime, Supremes, Tears For Fears, Traffic, Velvet Underground and Whitesnake.

On the down side, because of commercial limitations and a crowded marketplace, for some artists here, the "gold" series is probably all we music lovers are going to get in terms of their work presented to us in top sound quality. The naff artwork and unimaginative presentation in general, hasn't and doesn't help. This series seems to have come out and gone away - ignored by a public awash with such titled compilations. Which is a damn shame, because the quality of the material, the huge number of tracks on each - and above all, the simply brilliant sound-quality, means that they're all languishing unloved, unnoticed and unused in digital purgatory somewhere near you.

For a few dollars/handful of pound coins, you can acquire this great Steppenwolf 2CD set - and be like me - start searching second-hand vinyl stores again for good copies of their original LPs - because you've just rediscovered how bloody good they were and still are!

I can't recommended this 2CD retro enough. Buy with the utmost confidence and enjoy!!

A 2-CD,31 track compilation release of Steppenwolf's work.Don't believe I've ever seen this one in the stores.Ideal if you've had to(in the past)get rid of all your Steppenwolf to pay the bills,move,etc.You know how it is.All the better known material is here,like "Sookie Sookie","Magic Carpet Ride","Hey Lawdy Mama","Monster" and "Rock Me".Not to mention some of the 'deep album cuts' that I,personally don't remember such as "Your Wall's Too High","Take What You Need","Screaming Night Hog" and "Drift Away".Good music to play in your car CD player,while traveling a bit.Simply good all American late '60's album rock.A should-have.

STEPPENWOLF GOLD is a better collection than the 1990 retrospective BORN TO BE WILD because it focuses only on the 1968-1974 period, omitting weaker songs from the late 70s and 80s. In fact, it is the equal of the single-disc ALL-TIME GREATEST HITS, expanding that anthology by 13 songs so that nothing important is missed. Almost everything here was written or co-written by the group's legally-blind lead singer, John Kay, proving that disabilites can be overcome. Moreover, Kay's advocacy of sanctions against Indonesia in retaliation for that country's trumped-up drug-smuggling conviction in May 2005 of a young Australian tourist makes this anthology an essential purchase for both your ears AND your conscience.

Wow who ever was in charge of producing and mastering this 2 cd set should be fired. They pulled a Metallica Death Magnetic on it.

The setlist is great it has the longer versions of "America" and "It's never to late" on it but boy did they mess up the sound quality.

In laymens terms the volume on these cd's is so high it causes audible clipping and distortion at very normal volumes. It doesn't matter how good a sound system you have these cd's will sound harsh and be distorted and will clip.

I had to manually fix each song on this set, I had to de-amplify each song by 1.4% and run a clip restoration plug in to fix the clipped off .wav files.

Basically every song is pushed WAY beyond the point of clipping if you look at the songs wav form in an audio editing program.

Audio should NEVER be this loud, it really messes with the sound quality.

The Producers obviously mastered these cd's without actually looking at what they were doing.

I know it's the IN thing right now to master cd's so loud that you barely have to touch the volume knob but doing this completely robs the music of dynamic range and creates a harsh fatiguing cd to listen to.

Your ears will be tired after this 2 cd set for dealing with all the distortion and clipping.

It's a great shame that Steppenwolf, one of the best American hard rock bands of the late 1960s, is almost unknown today but for its two epochal psychedelic nuggets, "Born to Be Wild" and "Magic Carpet Ride." For as this excellent and quite comprehensive compendium repeatedly demonstrates, the Wolf had a lot more to offer than a pair of radio staples, wonderful as they are.
With time passing and a growing number of classic - and not so classic - rock albums falling out of print on CD just as they did on vinyl some two decades ago, a lot of really outstanding music would appear destined for an obscurity from which it may never return. Radio programmers have long since abandoned anything but the most overplayed, obvious tracks, to the point where one is hard-pressed even to distinguish between playlists and advertisements anymore; and the annual repackaging of identical "Essential", "Best Of", "Greatest Hits" and similarly-titled compilations actually does more to deny than celebrate the legacy of many modern musical giants.
Happily, a few more circumspect anthologies, such as Geffen's GOLD series, are going at least some way toward correcting this considerable problem. To be sure, all the done-to-death classics are here; but so are quite a few less-exposed numbers, both singles and LP cuts, which help to give a fuller aural picture of the artist in question. In Steppenwolf's case this means outstanding pseudo-hits like "It's Never Too Late" and "Snowblind Friend", Philosophically rocking album tracks such as "Renegade", "Tighten Up Your Wig" and the nine-minute opus "Monster/Suicide/America", and oddball bits of flower-power nostalgia like "Don't Step on the Grass, Sam." Also included are several songs from lead singer John Kay's brief solo career, the best of which is probably his moving version of Mentor Williams' "Drift Away."
In short, unless one is a hardcore Steppenwolf junkie (and there's nothing in the world wrong with that), GOLD is probably about as much howling as you'll need. I say probably because it does have one glaring flaw, which has lowered it to four-and-a-half-star level in my book: its inclusion of the three-minute single edit of "For Ladies Only" (one of Steppenwolf's grandest and most intelligent achievements) rather than the glorious nine-minute LP version, which would easily have fit. This may sound like quibbling to some dilettantes, but music is ultimately a matter of taste, and that decision certainly qualifies as a questionable example of it. Aside from that, however, STEPPENWOLF GOLD is a first-class magic carpet ride.
...Sorry; I just couldn't resist.

Loved John Kay and Steppenwolf back in the day and when I heard a song recently, I decided to pick up a CD. This is one group I thought I'd 'outgrown' and thus had not migrated their music from well-loved and battle-scarred vinyl to CD. I wasn't sure what I'd think when I started listening.

I still love the group. John Kay's gritty voice still gives me chills. Oh yes, my favorites: "Pusher", "Don't Step on the Grass, Sam", "Monster", "Snowblind Friend".

The sound's surprisingly good and this is a great big honking collection for a little $$$$.

Rebecca Kyle, July 2008

Startling to listen again to these numbers. I mean, 1969 is not exactly yesterday. But they remain fresh, musically creative and intricate -- as great to listen to now as they ever were. They remind us of what true rock was, how original, and how sad it is that today's pop cannot offer what the great groups of the past -- and Steppenwolf is way up there -- had to give. Too bad that the younger generation has never heard much, if anything at all, of what Steppenwolf put out there. They should try it. What impresses most is how stunningly relevant, vital, and true the burden of so many of their songs remains today. Monster, for example: different time, different facts, but the same message, same issues, same drivers that animate our current political discourse. They sang more than they needed to about drugs (Pusher, though, will tell you how against heavy stuff they were), regretably, but their real point was individual liberty, not something else. A number I miss from this and the other collections of their work is Fag,maybe the greatest purely instrumental rock anyone ever put on disc. To get that, you'll have to go to YouTube or get the Monster CD. Listen once and you'll never forget it. (Did its name make it non-PC? Too bad, if so. Still sheer genius.)

My dad loves this band. He grew up listening to them. he was a million records and wanted them on CD thanks for the good condition and the quick shipping.

There is a reason that the sixties rock group Steppenwolf still sells so strongly some thirty years after their arrival on the sixties rock scenes with a quick succession of powerful heavy rock hits like "Magic Carpet Ride" and "Born To Be Wild". I've always admired lead vocalist John Kay's singing style, songwriting and lyrical talents, and his outspoken personal warnings against the dangers of drug excess with songs like "The Pusher" and "Snowblind Friend". He was anti-drug when it was anything but fashionable to so cautious and careful.

With concept albums like the fabled "Monster" or discursive excursions into the dark side of rock culture with "The Pusher', Kay always had something provocative and thoughtful to say. And Kay also knew his way around a melody, and whether he was making insightful social commentary in a number of songs like "Monster" and "Draft Resister" or just plain old wailing in terrific, edgy songs like "Never Too Late (To Start All Over Again)" or "Twenty Eight", he used the combination of his lovely lyrics, driving melodies, and wild rock improvisation to create a whole rafter of memorable, insightful and very appealing rock songs. Most of them are here, and those that aren't you can find in their other albums. Steppenwolf quickly earned the undying support and admiration of their original fans, and are finding new listeners through terrific greates-hits compilation albums like this must-own collection of their hits. Enjoy!