Or The
Future Sound Of The Four Seasons - Re-visited
For fans
and collectors of the Four Seasons Music Library this is not so good a time, as
there is no commercial incentive for any commercial organization to compile the
full library of tracks in high quality sound (as has been done for the Beach Boys
and the Beatles.) There are a number of reasons for this, in the case of the
Seasons.
First:
Unlike record companies the Four Seasons Partnership own their own masters…well
most of them….and with the success of Jersey Boys they have limited interest in
re-mastering these.
Second:
The earning capacity of these tracks has greatly diminished in today’s music
market place.
Neither
the Four Seasons Partnership nor other organizations it seems can see enough
profit in such projects…... And based on the poor sound quality of the ‘Jersey
Beat’ box set we would rather they didn’t bother.
It is
interesting to take a look at ‘Why!’
Of course
the music industry today is very different to the one in which the Four Seasons
first burst on to the scene in 1962 with 3 Number 1 hits. We now tend to call
it the music industry, but for many
generations it was called the Record
Industry, because its products were exclusively gramophone records…..and
making money from gramophone records wasn’t easy for the artists whilst
lucrative for the record companies. Even songs that sold 500,000 as big hits back
in the 60s and selling at 79 cents would only bring the group a reputed 4 cents
a record (one of the best rates of any artist during the 60s) so $20,000
dollars split four ways doesn’t mean big money …….mind you $20,000 back then
was a lot more than it is today….and if you have enough hits you’ll do
well….and touring endlessly was the way to boost earnings and the records gave
you exposure and pulled in the audiences. But then if your manager is a gambler
and avoids tax you are gonna need every penny ….oops….Sorry Tommy!
Today
with CD sales in decline, the Partnership take a share of 99 cents for a download.
And you are not going to get rich today when selling 300,000 downloads would be
a major achievement and not achievable with our group. Seasons CD’s (apart from
the JB cast album…and the ‘Beggin’ type re-mixes) will sell a steady few
thousand a year on the back of the show, particularly given the size of the
collection. But for Bob and Frankie releases of the back catalogue are now a
secondary earner as the Jersey Boys show (and eventually film) rakes in the
millions.
The show
means Bob and Frankie have never earned more, (and have an alternative earner to
their ‘masters’) but other artists, producers
and former record company execs from the sixties might ask ‘Where
Have All The Good Times Gone’ and that is the title of a fascinating
book by Louis Barfe that documents the rise and fall of the record industry.
The book is a "warts and all" look at the origins, growth, glory days
and downfall of the industry. It paints a vivid and compelling picture of the
industry at its height, and ends by calling on them to abandon attempts to put
back the clock and develop into something new. ……
Back when
Frankie Valli was born recorded artists had just moved on from making a living
by playing live music (as artists always had done) and many felt they had
absolutely had no need of this extra new outlet…..the gramophone record!! It is
easy to see how powerless the record companies were in those early days as AlanMusicMan’s review on Amazon.co.uk
captures
“But what gradually happened was
that artists came to see the release of records as an adjunct to their live
performances, reaching far more people than they ever could by endlessly touring
the country or the world. We see how, once the artists were "sold" on
the idea of making records, the boot slowly transferred to the other foot and
the record companies themselves became ever more powerful, with artists
flocking through their doors to commit their talents to shellac or (later)
vinyl. It eventually became possible for record companies to break an artist as
well as make them.
Risque songster George Formby's wife
Beryl was also his business manager. She came to see that allowing George to
make records enabled him to "Make money while he sleeps". For the
biggest recording stars from the 1930s onward the money poured in from sales
percentages, and radio play royalties. Some Victorian music hall stars were
well paid, but none of them could ever have dreamed of making the amount of
money made by the top recording stars of the later 20th century.
In the "glory days" of the
industry the consolidation of the industry into a small number of large
companies enabled these companies to exercise a huge degree of control over
music of all kinds. Because it owned the means of production and distribution
of music, the industry tended to act as a gatekeeper between "the
talent" and the consumer. Intentionally or otherwise this meant that the
industry was self-serving; ruthlessly controlling distribution networks and
promotion outlets, making any competition very hard, except between the
established giants. Breakthroughs by upstart newcomers were quickly stifled or
bought off and any technical innovation was slowed to a crawl because of
entrenched interests. For the best companies the money absolutely poured in.
No wonder then that everyone who had
anything to do with music wanted to be in good with a record company and that
nobody rocked the boat too hard. By the 1960s, many top bands flirted with the
idea of ONLY making records, the traditional idea of playing live music in
front of people was sometimes completely abandoned, it was a hassle that got in
the way of making more records and more money.” That may have been the case for The
Beatles but not The Four Seasons.
“During these glory days, the music
industry was for a great many, a gravy train and a license to print money. In
the 1980s the industry was (in many quarters reluctantly) forced to make the
transition from Vinyl to CD and despite the format change, it seemed as if the
gravy train would continue rolling forever, but on silver rather than black
wheels. “
For many
in those glory years it was generally the case that the record company owned
the masters and milked the consumer……….but in the case of the Four Seasons it
was the group…and eventually The Four Seasons Partnership. Charles Calello tells
how this came about and although Frankie Valli has some right to be aggrieved
at Tommy De Vito’s ‘debt mis-management’ he has a lot to thank him for…. “. The problem
happened with Vee Jay records where they didn’t get paid their royalties so
they took the masters back. And the next deal that they made with Philips, as
they owned the original masters, they wanted to continue to own the masters.
And I don’t think any of them really knew the value of it at that point. Now
when Tommy found out that the Seasons were going to pay for the records and the
record company was going to own it, Tommy, who happened to be a pretty bright
guy, said to the lawyer, and I’m sitting in the meeting, now as Tommy says,
"Now you telling me, after I make this record, they’re gonna take all of
the money that they pay for all these records, all the musicians that we use,
and I’m going to pay for it, and after I pay for it I ain’t gonna own it?"
He says, "In my neighborhood, when somebody wanted to steal from me they
have a gun. Now seeing that they don’t have a gun, they ain’t gonna rob this
from me." That was the simple explanation. It was basic thinking. And what
happened with most artists, they wound up paying for the record, they deducted
it from the royalties, and the record companies owned them. But that never
happened to the 4 Seasons because Tommy figured that out very early. And Tommy
would not sign the contract. I think it was more Tommy’s brainchild than
Frankie’s. He said that they were going to own it if they were going to pay for
it.”
And as for the choice of not touring!!! Well that never happened because
of Tommy’s mis-management and gambling. It became necessary for Frankie to keep
touring to pay off the debt Tommy had incurred if we are to believe what we see
in Jersey Boys
This may
have led to the record company abuse of the Motown Years when the group could not
control their releases with any confidence but the self-owned (VeeJay and
Philips) masters have been the Partnership’s gravy train since the 60’s. After
the lucrative re-issues of the 70s (eg Longines Box Set, Four Seasons Story and
K-Tel Double album) came the glory years of CD when everyone bought their vinyl
again in a more robust format at a prohibitive price compared to cost. This was
the period of such high profits that the companies (by this time merged and
bought into mega corporations) thought this could go on forever. The
Partnership however had other ideas though and found the people to create ‘The
Jersey Boys Phenomena’
Louis
Barfe sums up the changes in the industry……”But
technology gave the initiative back to the ‘abused’ consumer who had been
blatantly ‘ripped-off’ by price fixing (….and the new ‘payola’ scandals of the
1990s). The gravy train was fairly suddenly and unceremoniously derailed by
2000. As home PCs, The Internet and audio compression formats such as MP3 came
into the mainstream, and the industry lost its stranglehold on distribution and
even on the creation of recorded music, it committed almost comical,
Canute-like, efforts to put the genie back in the bottle - a process that has
been going on for almost ten years”. He describes in some detail why those
efforts were, and are doomed. “RIAA
prosecutions of everyday citizens, children and Mom’s has not stopped the
process nor raised a lot of sympathy for record companies ….We see today the
music industry fighting a rearguard action against some very simple truths.
Truth 1: You or I could, if we had
the talent, use the computer we have in front of us now to "make a
record" and promote and distribute it via the Internet. We would not need
a record company, recording studio, or factory to make records, we would not
need fleets of lorries to take copies of our record out to the masses.
Truth 2: If recorded music can be
played it can be pirated - and there's no point in making recorded music that
you can't play, right? The point is, no amount of legislation or prohibition is
going to change these facts. If the ISPs are ever coerced into punishing users
who share files, then people will find other ways to do it - they always have,
and there are far more ways to do it now than there have ever been. That is
crystal clear.
Whether this new state of affairs is
legal, fair or represents natural justice is not really the point, it IS the
state of affairs. One could suggest that the old state of affairs was unfair
too. For example, one day in 1963, four guys from Liverpool went into a studio
in London for
about 12 hours and recorded 12 songs. Now, over 45 years later, two of those
four guys are dead; the cost of the recording session has been recouped
hundreds of thousands of times over and the participants rewarded many many
thousand fold. Somewhere north of 3 million copies of the tracks they recorded
that day have been sold worldwide. They've been sold at premium prices for over
45+ years, yet, the "Please Please Me" album is STILL retailing at
around 8 quid (or almost 17 for the new mono remaster!). Precious little
natural justice there really, and not something that could ever have happened
pre-recording industry. “
The same
can obviously be said about ‘Sherry and
11 others’. …only in not so great a volume. So as a Four Seasons fans today,
have you asked yourself who owns the music in your record collection? Just take
for example one song ‘Rag Doll’. How
many copies of this song have you bought over the years. In my case it is 6 on
vinyl/cassette tape and 4 on CD . (and those are only the ‘bought’ versions not
including the ‘gifts’ I’ve received!!!!)
And I can listen to it on Spotify any time I want without using the I-pod
version or the CD. I can even digitally record it via PC from the stream…….
So can a
fan legally do what he wants with the music today? Apparantly not according to
some…….. but that hasn’t stopped fans since the 1970s originally with cassettes
…….and it wont in the future. If the track isn’t available in a good sounding digital
version…someone somewhere will have it and provide it and if the sound isn’t
right they’ll correct it. And it is
happening today as this review of The Very Best of The Four Seasons CD shows…”Rating 4 stars out of 5……Since I clearly love the material, why only four
stars? Well, it's technically a lazy release. Many of the 1960s tracks feature
full separation between vocals and backing and are mainly better played in
Mono, since their technical presentation here detracts from the power of these
great classics. Given what can be done in sound restoration these days with
just a PC, it's hard to see why the record company would not have blended these
tracks better. It took me 30 minutes on Cool Edit to produce reduced width
versions of these which sound a whole lot better (especially in the car) than
the odd sound of Frankie singing acapalla on the right and the band playing up
a storm on the left. So, one star removed for lazy repackaging.
AlanMusicMan
A proper
‘Sound Archive’ would give us all the corrected stereo mixes.
And which is the definitive version…the ‘true’ master? Maybe there are two
with the stereo image adjusted to get an alternative ‘presence’ from the mix. It is certainly time for us to decide. As
Travis Elborough says…”What is interesting
today, is that we stand at a point when neither musicians nor their audiences
need to accept any of the limitations that evolved simply because of the
format…….I suppose, what I am trying to say is, at the moment everyone is still
really processing, digesting even, the fall-out from the internet music
revolution.” : The Long LP Good-bye
So surely
the Partnership could provide The Four
Seasons Sound Archive. The discovery last year of ‘The ‘DS’ Re-mixes’ which captures the efforts of European Sound
Engineers creation of unique versions of classic tracks in stereo for the first
time shows what can be done. And our aim would be to access the Four Seasons
catalogue, like Linn are starting to do with classic music…..
as they explain here.
But if the
Partnership wont do it surely some avid fans might. In the case of the rest of
the Seasons body of work, there are both vinyl and CD masters - just check out
the CD Discography of what we have collected. …and mint versions exist in our/your own private collection. But is this
legal, you might ask.? Well nothing prevents
us from re-mastering the music we have bought .Technology today enables this.
It would not involve trading on someone else’s copyright. So if The Partnership
are not providing the masters in high quality audio then can fans do it.? It is
possible today to digitize your vinyl at 24bit depth and 192 khz sampling rate
which when ‘cleaned’ creates a digital signal virtually as good as the original
master. And it is possible on home PC’s to re-master these to give us the sound
we want. Totally legally, and at a fairly modest cost.
And in the
future you can be sure someone will discover a way ‘to capture everything’ like never before and we will have Bob
Crewe’s productions in all their glory. ’Wave-field
sythesis’ is described as the
future way to hear music like never before. The true spatial relationship of
the performers will be retained wherever in the room you are….. just like those
‘frozen object’ videos on TV when the object is fixed and the camera moves
around it. So while we are waiting for our new
flat speakers for each wall we’ll have to make the most of ‘streaming’…..and the re-mastered
digitized vinyl and CD masters that we have accumulated over the last 40 years
Chameleon
PS Maybe I’ll move on to
another gem about customer abuse and the music industry….Dirty
Little Secrets of the Record Business: Why So Much Music You HEAR Sucks
In Part 3 we’ll get the
opinions of people interested in ‘future trends’ and ask if time will diminish
interest in the group and their music.