Pro tip: Check the liner notes on any 1970s jazz fusion album twice

I picked up a copy of a 1974 album by some session guys I'd never heard of last Saturday at a swap meet in Tucson. After comparing the original pressing to a 1990s CD reissue, I found the reissue had three tracks replaced with completely different takes and the credits were all wrong. Has anyone else run into this kind of bait and switch on older releases and do you trust digital remasters at all anymore?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_rowan6d ago

idk, maybe it's just me but swapping out tracks on reissues feels more like sloppy archiving than a conspiracy. liner notes have always been kinda questionable, I wouldn't lose sleep over it.

the_blair6d ago

That "sloppy archiving" thing is exactly what they want you to think. I read somewhere that record labels in the 90s would swap out tracks to avoid paying royalties to the original session guys who had weird contracts. My buddy had a Herbie Hancock reissue where they replaced a 12 minute jam with a completely different take because the original drummer was in a legal fight with the label. Liner notes are a joke half the time, but when you start swapping whole tracks that's not an accident. Digital remasters can sound fine if they're honest about what they did, but most of them are just a money grab with a louder mix.