I happen to have a copy of the original "rockin'" on the RCA Dyna-flex disc and it is far superior to this in sound quality. Even my old vinyl sounds better. The songs, however, are some of the best the band ever commited to vinyl. "Smoke Big Factory", "Guns Guns Guns" are sublime pop. Performed with precision and sung only the way Burton Cummins (the best rock vocalist in history)can sing 'em. There is really no filler here (on the original Rockin'), even the band's seemingly toss-away songs such as "Running Bear" and "Your Nashville Sneakers" are remarkable in their arrangements and performance. The whole disc just sings with catchy songs, killer hooks, and meaningful messages. I love the Randy Bachman era GW, but Rockin' is my favourite GW release. If you've never heard the album, buy this to hear the songs, then look in every used record store that sells vinyl you can find and purchase the original vinyl. The sound quality (if it's in decent shape)will put it over the top in your Guess Who rankings of favourite recordings. This album (Rockin') is in my top 20 of all-time great albums.
February 6, 2005 |  | Great music, but subpar sound, sadly |  |
Yes, what you may have read about the sound quality of the 4 two-albums-on-one-CD reissues of Guess Who RCA-era albums is true. The sound is not quite up to the standard of original CD reissues. But, you can compensate fairly well with a graphic equalizer or bass and treble controls on your stereo system. (Of course, you probably can't do much about the sound when playing on a portable CD player these days, since some marketing genius decided that bass-boost was the only tone control that anyone needs anymore.) But what about the actual muusic offered here? Well, the first album is "Rockin'." Released in early 1972, it is the first RCA-era album by the band that did not contain any USA top 40 singles. Concert-goers will recognize the 2 singles that flopped ("Heartbroken Bopper" and "Guns Guns Guns"). But, those 2 songs really give you a pretty good pictue what else is here. Mostly plain and simple rock & roll--fun and wholly satisfying. Included are the only 2 cover versions ever included on an RCA album. Side 2 of the LP opened with an apparently alcohol-soaked version of "Running Bear" that shows the band getting silly in the studio. Side 2 closes with the 3 song medley beginning with the "Sea of Love" cover playing in the background as if it was coming from a jukebox, followed by the serious ballad "Heaven Only Moved Once Yesterday," and concluding with a truly fantastic rocker, the outrageous "Don't You Want Me" (probably one of the funniest jealousy songs ever written). 4 stars for "Rockin'." The other LP here is "Flavours." It was originally released at the beginning of 1975 as the follow-up to their suprise comback LP "Road Food" in 1974. Opening with the band's last top 40 hit "Dancin' Fool," it features some of the best songs they ever recorded. Catchy tunes with intriguing lyrics abound. "Nobody Knows His Name" describes Burton Cummings ancestor's immigration to Canada. It gives you a feel for how it was to tear yourself away from your roots and try to establish try a new identity in a foreign place. "Seems Like I Can't Live With You" was the band's tribute to country rock that actually worked well enough to appear on a top 100 countdown of popular songs on a country station I listened to at the end of 1975. "Long Gone" drips with venom, but obscures who is being attacked by lacking the necessary specific details. It could be Burton striking out at Randy Bachman's success with BTO at the time, or it could be directing rage at one of the music critics who dismissed the Guess Who as just a singles band without checking into the depth of quality of their RCA albums. Based on the songs alone, I would give "Flavours" 5 stars as being one of the band's best albums, but it is dragged down by one inescapable detail: Dom Troiano's jazzy guitar never meshed with the Guess Who for my taste. He is obviously a quality player and his songwriting collaberations with Burton here are great, but he was in the wrong band. I find it revealing to note that the various reunited versions of the band have always avoided performing any of the Troiano-era material. (I have always secretly wished for someone to radically remix the 2 Troiano LPs by removing Dom's guitar and substituting Randy's licks. Instead of endlessly repacking the same hits over and over, how about someone doing some serious work on the band's archive of material? Wishful thinking, I know...) Anyway, 4 stars for "Flavours." By the way, the CD offers the entire package of LP covers and inserts, a plus if you like those kinds of things.
November 27, 2004 | | 4 for the music, 2 for the sound quality | |
As time goes on, I become more and more picky about sound quality in the recordings I buy. I realize some recordings are meant to be lo-fi (there's an entire genre dedicated to those), but professional/big budget/major label releases should never sound sub par (unless they're meant to). That includes re-issues. The band with the most botched back catalogue has to be the Guess Who. The first time their albums were issued on disc, they weren't available in the States, and some weren't available anywhere ('Flavours', for one). My CD copy of 'So Long, Bannatyne' (BMG, 1991) was clearly transfered to disc from vinyl! I suppose a label could redeem itself by issuing one or two pristine sounding anthologies, but the Guess Who have had tons, and none are spectacular. The best is probably 'The Ultimate Collection', released in the late '90s, but the bass in the mix is annoyingly high. Buddha's reissue of 'Live at the Paramount' is one of the best remasters in my entire music collection, so why can't a label do the same with the rest of the catalogue?
I thought BMG might get their stuff together with these re-issues, but I was wrong. After reading the reviews here, I was very reluctant to purchase any of them, since they're pretty expensive here in the States. I decided to buy this one, because I wanted to have one Troiano-era album on disc, and because 'Rockin'' is one of my favorite mid-period GW albums. As stated in other reviews, the sound is embarassing, period. If it were any worse, BMG would be taking back all of these discs in mass quanities and would be hard at work on the re-re-issues. It's just good enough to be listenable, but it's a frustrating listen. Certain elements in the mix sound strange: the cymbals are too loud, the S's in the vocals are hissy, everything is tinny and cheap sounding overall. A real dissapointment coming from a major record label and considering how badly the Guess Who's catalog has been butchered. The packaging is absurd, too. The booklet is reminiscent of those instruction manuals that are in English as well as Spanish if you flip and reverse it. An OK approach for instruction manuals, stupid for CD reissues.
The bottom line: if your vinyl is still in good shape and you have good audio equipment, transfer your records to disc. I guarantee they'll sound better than these. A solid 4 for the music and a low 2 for the sound quality equals a reluctant 3. This is the sound of a couple great albums being carelessly tossed aside.
July 12, 20041972's Rockin' ranks as one of The Guess Who's best (if not, the best) albums. The mix is closer the original than any of the other albums. It's not exact, but it's close. There are dropouts during the fade on "Get Your Ribbons On" along with some major equalization on "Heaven Only Moved Once Yesterday"--effectively ruining the song. The rest of the album is about as close to the original vinyl as you're going to get with these CDs.
Pairing Rockin' with Flavours (1975) is the musical equivalent of mixing apples and oranges. We're talking two completely different bands at this point in the group's history. The equalization and mix on most of Flavours is just plain terrible. Cummings' piano is buried on "Dancin' Fool" and the vocals are too loud. The acoustic guitar on "Hoe Down Time" sounds unnatural now, due to the EQ boost. From there, it's one extreme to the other. "Nobody Knows His Name" has too much bass. "Diggin' Yourself" has been compressed and the high end is muffled. "Seems Like I Can't Live with You..." suffers from too much bass and major noise reduction at the end. "Dirty" also has major equalization and compression, and awful noise reduction at the end. The rest of the album doesn't fare any better. May 18, 2004
| | | Yet another odd pairing...really odd | |
To rehash the same criticism yet again, why pair an album released in 1972 with one incarnation of the Guess Who with an album released in 1974 that is very different in sound and has only two members of the band in common with the '72 album? Sure, it would be nitpicking if the two albums weren't so dissimilar, but ROCKIN' is both different from and also head, hands and feet way, way better than FLAVOURS overall! The underdog first: FLAVOURS sole redeeming feature is "Dancin' Fool," already available on umpty-ump "greatest hits" collections BMG has made of the band. The rest of the album is a hodge-podge of styles, which itself isn't all that different from the way the Guess Who put together previous recordings (look at the differences in musical styles throughout SO LONG, BANNATYNE and ARTIFICIAL PARADISE, for example). But this time out, it's as if Burton Cummings and crew just took half-realized ideas and stuck 'em together without much thought. The nadir is "Seems Like I Can't Live With You, But I Can't Live Without You," an UN-parody of George Jones-style country-and-western that cries out for a raspberry in the middle somewhere and gets none.
ROCKIN', on the other hand, is one of the G Who's best albums ever. "Heartbroken Bopper" and "Arrivederci Girl" should've been stable-mates with songs like "Mississippi Queen" on the radio of the '70s, and "Guns, Guns, Guns" is about the best anti-hunter (or, more accurately, anti-AMERICAN hunter) song ever. There's more, though; "Smoke Big Factory" features some of the most gorgeous harmonizing the band ever put to tape, while "Your Nashville Sneakers," "Running Bear" and "Get Your Ribbons On" show off the band's sense of humor and, in the case of the first song, their ability to swing as well as rock. If there's any one criticism I have, it's that ROCKIN' is much too short an album----so you gotta play it again!
I don't know what the reasons were for this peculiar pairing, but I suspect that whoever was serving as archivist/compiler surmised that ROCKIN' was a strong enough album to pull the less-compelling FLAVOURS with it and made the descision based on that. If I didn't already have ROCKIN' on CD, I probably would buy this two-fer using that logic. But I do, so I won't need to. May 15, 2004
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