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The Lemonheads burst on the alternative rock scene
with their Big Star brand of power pop rather suddenly with
"It's A Shame About Ray" and their cover of "Mrs. Robinson".
Evan Dando lead singer, guitarist and songwriter for the
band also had the good looks to make the combination appeal
to a mass audience of young girls while the music itself
appealed to guys because it was accessible, with solid hooks
and memorable. Dando didn't write instantly disposable tunes
like most artists of his generation. It also helped that
they had a music video with Johnny Depp that helped sell
the album.Unfortunately they were consumed and quickly discarded
by the same MTV generation that had showed impatience with
their brand new idols previously. ***
This new special two disc edition of The Lemonheads'
break through album "It's A Shame About Ray" includes the
original album plus demos of a variety of the songs on the
original album for a total of 23 tracks. The special DVD
included with it runs about 45 minutes, includes the "Two
Weeks In Australia" video as well as music videos for the
title track of the album, "Mrs. Robinson", "Half The Time",
"Hannah & Gabi", "Rockin' Stroll", "It's About Time", "My
Drug Buddy" and a live video of the band playing "Alison's
Starting To Happen". ---
Image & Sound:
Image quality varies a bit but on the whole it's quite
good. Pay attention to the name badge that Dando wears in
"Mrs. Robinson" (it refers to a Suzanne Vega song and is
a clever tip of the hat). Colors are good, image quality
varies from crisp to a bit soft at times but part of the
latter could be due to the use of various filters for the
shooting of the music videos. ***
Audio for the DVD is excellent with a strong presence.
The original CD sounded just fine. This new remastered edition
is more compressed, sounds harsher and is louder than the
original much like an Mp3 so clearly Rhino is continuing
to buy into the "louder is better" mentality. A pity that
Bill Inglot left Rhino as the sound quality would probably
have been better if he and Dan Hersh had been involved in
the transfer. It's not a horrible transfer nor is it a horrible
remaster but it could sound a lot better. I'm hoping one
of these days the majors will realize the mistake they made
in creating all of these harsh, loud recordings that are
compressed and have no dynamic range. It's not a bad recording
by 2008 standards but if it had been released in, say, 1992
when this album was originally issued it would have been.
Times may have changed the essence of good sound remastered
music really hasn't. What they really needed here was a
mastering engineer like Steve Hoffman or Eroc who would
work to make the material sound as great as possible. ---
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