Which Disco Records Are Long Overdue For Release On Cd?

[ashley]

.. hello thommy2458 .. the original 6 minute extended promotional 12" mix of "Spanish hustle" by the Fatback Band is available on a British CD compilation called 12" Disco Classics .. check out the following links:
Amazon.com: 12 Disco Classics: Music: Various Artists

Amazon.co.uk: 12" Disco Classics: Music: Various

[QUINNY]

Brainstorm can be found on this CD.
Mastermix Classic Cuts 008 (Disco)

Sound quality is pretty good.

[ashley]

.. hello Quinny .. Ive never heard of "Mastermix classic cuts 008" .. it's not available on Amazon or Discogs or E-Bay .. or anywhere .. it's more rare than the original Brainstorm 12" .. have you just made it up?

[BrunoRepublic]

Originally Posted by ashley

.. do you really believe the CD is about to disappear forever?

As a mainstream item, I think it already has. The CD may continue to exist as a niche item (like the LP) but the masses have already abandoned it. I know a lot of people who've stopped buying them altogether, particularly younger people, who traditionally have been the bulk of the music market. Online CD retailers have not made up for the lost sales at the brick-and-mortar stores. CDs may cost only pennies to produce, but that's still a loss if there's nobody to sell them and nobody willing to pay anything for them. There's less and less stuff being put out on CD these days, and labels are cutting their losses and deleting huge numbers of titles. The CD today is at the point that the LP was in 1990: if you see something you want, grab it now, because you may not get another chance outside of eBay. Like it or not, the future of the music market (if there is one) is downloading.

I'd rather buy from a real shop than an online retailer, but that's quickly becoming impossible for anything but new releases or top-selling back catalog items. Almost all of the music stores in my city have vanished in the space of the past 5 years, and those that are still around have switched their focus to other areas. I live a block away from the biggest HMV store in the country, and they have practically nothing these days. More than half of the store is now dedicated to DVDs and video games. There are a few trendy hipster stores around, but they aren't selling much of what I'm interested in, and while they may appear to be thriving, the dozen copies of a title that they sell do not make up for the thousands that a regular music store would've moved.

iTunes doesn't have many dance classics for the same reasons record stores (pre-download) did not: lack of demand. Add the difficulty in licensing long-forgotten tunes for which the master tapes have long been lost, and it's a wonder that there's anything to be had at all.

[ashley]

.. well Graham, if you are correct, any new disco CD release should get our full support .. if there is a niche market for the compact disc, it's here in the world of dance music .. most club djs now mix using CDs ( .. has the i-pod mix console been invented yet? ) .. and here in the U.K. there is a big market for uptempo danceable soul music from the 60s & 70s .. producing a constant stream of northern (rare 60s) & modern (rare 70s) soul CD releases on this side of the Atlantic .. U.K. collectors pay big money for rare vinyl from the early disco period .. which in turn generates interest amongst the record companies, who will then trace & license these previously forgotten classics for issue on CD .. I'm hoping a forum like this will help engender further curiosity around our music .. after all, great music is worth preserving ..

[Salsoul1975]

Adding to Graham's sentiment, we had a Tower Records in the Bergen County (New Jersey) area which closed nearly a year ago. Nothing has replaced it yet. Back in the late '90s-early 00's their CD collection was wonderful and vast, and their disco compilation stock was second to none. Music downloading changed everything. Your best bet is Ebay if you want to find deleted CD's, or even Amazon.com.

[ashley]

.. ok ok .. you are probably right .. but I think downloads will generally be for new music .. I still think there's a future for specialist music like ours on CD .. people who enjoy disco music will generally be older, like ourselves, with a preference for a physical material purchase ( who would give a download as a birthday gift? ) .. the attraction of downloading, of course, is the satisfaction of having the product immediately .. if all the Costandinos albums were available to instantly download, I would use this facility immediately .. But how would the copyright owner advertise such a venture? .. possibly with a limited edition CD release? .. I think that for the immediate future the 2 formats will co-exist .. The 1 big difference being that we urban city dwellers will no longer shop for CDs in town .. forget HMV & Tower Records .. in future we will purchase our limited edition disco CDs on-line directly from the publisher .. or on E-Bay .. maybe I should have titled the thread "what disco tracks would you most like to see available to download?"

[ashley]

.. incidentally, I already own the 12" version of "I'm an indian too" / "Deputy of love" by Don Armando .. but would love to have these extended versions in a crisp & clear digital format .. I could find no CDs to feature both these tunes in their extended form .. but i-tunes have the shortened album mixes (3 mins & 5 mins respectively) .. so I paid my money & settled for these edited versions instead .. which is most unsatisfactory .. I've purchased these tunes twice in all .. and still remain unsatisfied ..

[BrunoRepublic]

Originally Posted by ashley

.. most club djs now mix using CDs ( .. has the i-pod mix console been invented yet? )

Yes. In fact, I think there are several out on the market. Most MP3 DJs use a laptop + software for mixing though; I don't think there's any way to get iPods to do pitch adjustment or precise cueing.

Originally Posted by ashley

U.K. collectors pay big money for rare vinyl from the early disco period .. which in turn generates interest amongst the record companies, who will then trace & license these previously forgotten classics for issue on CD...

Just because an item goes for huge money on eBay doesn't mean a reissue will sell though. First of all, a lot of these collectors are just that -- collectors -- and are interested in the collectability of the item more than the music on it. So even if the stores were filled with pristine-sounding reissues of these songs, the collectors wouldn't care: they want an original promo or first pressing. You'll find plenty of examples where a particular pressing of a record goes for a lot of cash, even if the music on it has been widely available for years (I have a friend who paid hundreds of dollars for a hopelessly rare Joy Division record, even though I'm pretty sure that all the material on it has reappeared on countless compilations). Second, if something goes on eBay for a high value, it doesn't mean that there are thousands of people who want to buy it. It only means that there are two people or more who are willing to pay serious money for it. With many of the more obscure titles, there isn't a huge audience for them at all, just a few dozen people who *really* want them, and will pay big bucks.

A label has to hope that a title will generate a given amount of sales in order for it to be viable on the market. Once you factor in the cost of digging up the tapes (if they can be found at all), mastering them, negotiating new deals (since most of the original ones would've expired by now) and all that, the label would lose money if they didn't sell a few thousand units. There simply isn't -- and isn't going to be -- that kind of demand for music that was forgotten by most over 25 years ago.

If it was all that easy and profitable to reissue recordings, we would've seen a lot more of them by now.

[paul]

Originally Posted by Graham_Start

At this point, I think we can forget about CD releases. The bottom is falling out of the CD market, and stores that sell them are vanishing like VHS. The only hope is digital (yes, I know CDs are digital, but when the hip kids say it they mean iTunes or other download shop).

Another problem you'll find is that the masters for many of these recordings have been misplaced, damaged, or discarded. Case in point, Ben Liebrand mentions on his web site that he's been trying to find the master tape to Amii Stewart's "Knock On Wood" for years to include on his "12 inches" compilations, without success... and that's for a record that was a massive hit!

Thjat's sad to read Graham. Now that the cd sound is right (though they still do too much compression), the bottom is falling out huh?
I will never get used to the sound of mp3. It is audibly inferior and is only satisfactory to listen to while working out. But if it's good enough for today's young people, well

Quinny, I gotta look into that Brainstorm cd.

[paul]

Never mind Quinny, I see it's an mp3. I already have that song on an album and cd.

[BrunoRepublic]

Originally Posted by paul

Thjat's sad to read Graham. Now that the cd sound is right (though they still do too much compression), the bottom is falling out huh?

Actually, I'd say that CDs are getting worse with every year, due to the loudness wars. Here's a fun one: remember Duran Duran's Rio album? Soon after it was released, Capitol had the entire first side remixed for the North American market. Despite that version being the one that most people here heard, it has never been released on CD. The CD of the album (both the original and the remaster) has only the original UK tracklisting. So I did my own needle-drop of it. Problem is, it ran about 27 minutes long, and they really had to squash it to fit it all on one side at a decent level. The EQ is horrible and the dynamics are squashed like a bug on a windshield. I could play around with the EQ to tame that a bit, but the dynamics can't be fixed.

I ordered the DD singles box set that came out a few years ago, because it has a couple of those mixes in it. I ripped the tracks and loaded them into an audio editor and... they have even *less* dynamics than the LP! Okay, it's done with a bit more finesse than the single-band limiter used for the LP, but still... the CD has 90dB of range, yet almost everything released in the last 10 years is pushed up to the top 3. Gah!

Originally Posted by paul

I will never get used to the sound of mp3. It is audibly inferior and is only satisfactory to listen to while working out. But if it's good enough for today's young people, well

That's just it though. Fewer and fewer people do dedicated music listening these days. Most people have it on their iPods or car stereos or their computer speakers, for those times and places where they can't have TV on. Audiophile to these people is a 256kbps MP3 run through a Bose system. Unfortunately, they are the vast majority.

[QUINNY]

Originally Posted by ashley

.. hello Quinny .. Ive never heard of "Mastermix classic cuts 008" .. it's not available on Amazon or Discogs or E-Bay .. or anywhere .. it's more rare than the original Brainstorm 12" .. have you just made it up?

Would I make it up??? Remember, I'm an ex-DJ so I go to slightly different sources now and again.

Mastermix Classic Cuts CC 008

So far as I know, they'll sell to anyone and other DJ stores stock the Mastermix CDs.

[ashley]

.. cheers Quinny .. thanks for the link .. I see the Mastermix CD series has been developed for djs .. some of the titles look interesting ..

[SandraDee]

[quote=ashley;133572would you be willing to pay good money for their entire output on CD? .. or would you rather own a CD compilation of greatest hits? .[/quote]


The former definitely because CD 'best of ' compilations rarely include all my favourites & often contain stuff I don't like anyway (& also contain naff remixes & 7" versions as extra tracks - who'd want them?) so I'd really like miniaturised CD versions of the original LPs if possible with the original artwork.