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I still regularly watch and listen to the DVDs of public television's iconic "Sessions at West 54th St.," recorded at Sony Music Studios in Manhattan, in the late '90s and 2000. "Best of Sessions...Vol. 2" leads off with The Mavericks' "Dance the Night Away." With the arguably valid substitution of the utterly flat and lifeless Natalie Merchant offering (with 10,000 zombies?), the opening, lead-off Mavericks track is the worst on the disc, so airless at the top, compressed dynamically and two-dimensional as to be stultifying, notwithstanding all the obvious energy going on onstage. It just wasn't captured in the recording and mix. If it were mono, that would both explain a lot, and also be the least of its worries...
They might as well have had the several trumpets and saxes literally phone in their performances, to be played over an on-stage "full range" clock radio. Seriously: and I'm not even talkin' Bose Wave... Let's not even wonder how all these dancin' fools magically managed so much frenetic activity without passing out, early on, when there was obviously no air at all in the cavernous room...
Compare this relatively disappointing outing, at least in places (c'mon, Sony, the lead-off track?!) with the incredible sonic benchmark that was "Best of Sessions...Vol. 1" and you will hear the obvious differences in production values (or at least homogeneity at an excellent level with the first offering)--notwithstanding notable and well-produced performances on the second disc by the Afro-Cuban All-stars, Steve Earle, Ozomotii, Neil Finn and Lucinda Williams, among others...can't leave out Elvis Costello with Burt Bacharach and a full string orchestra (first impression: wha?). The Costello/Bacharach, Afro-Cuban All-stars and Ozomotii tracks surely demonstrate that large, complex bands could be miked and mixed to excellent effect in the room--hell, the latter band offered a mobile parade around the studio!
I've always wondered the extent to which the bands/artists involved--rather than the Sony crews, presumably intimately familiar with the reverberant space--were responsible for those two execrable mixes. Perhaps now I can infer "quite a lot."
Deliberately mixing such a large, vibrant band to mono, as here, seems like a no-brainer...as in, if you decide to do it, you have no brain. I don't even wanna give it a listen; I'm still depressed about "Vol. 2" fifteen years later. That first so-anticipated track hugely damped down my enthusiasm for the DVD the first time I spun it, right out of the frenzy-torn, onerous shrink wrap. I often skip it to this day: who needs a bummer?
I certainly cannot DELIBERATELY put myself through anything akin to that, again, sorry.