Sorry, D.J - "Original" is a Relative Term
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By Main Street Jim
No disrespect intended, but after wasting $2 on a couple of cuts from this album, I felt like I needed to post a warning to other old timers looking to hear the sound that made this group a breakout in the '60s. I'm not old enough for a hearing aid yet, but old enough to have handled the original Philly Groove single of La La Means I Love You in a radio station. This version is billed as "remastered", but it has also been seriously remixed to the point where the lush instrumentals that distinguished the "Philly Sound" from its R&B cousins have been reduced to background music and the vocals have been pumped with so much air space that they've lost the original fire and depth that made them great.
It's a challenge to remaster analog tapes for digital music in a way that preserves the visceral impact of densely produced music played in mono and cooked to remove the quiet parts for AM broadcast. It's also a temptation to remix hit singles from the '60s to capture the empty echo and unmixed sound of early stereo LP records rather than keeping the guts of the single as originally produced and released. By the time the vocal of La La had cut in, this effort so missed the mark that my mind flashed back to being stuck in an elevator instead of cruising in a muscle car. The remix of Didn't I was too airy to "blow anyone's mind", and the famous instrumental bridge into the last chorus had been tamed so badly that it sounded more like the bumpers they use on NPR talk shows than the song that had the power 40 years ago to make a dead man get up to slow dance at a party.
If you're looking for a remastered version that preserves the "original" Thom Bell mix of La La, the reissue of the original album on this site was worth spending another dollar - and if you read this review along with D.J.s, it may save you paying twice to get the sound you wanted and having to delete this version off your computer. I still can't find a reliable rendering of the original mix of Didn't I, but I will keep looking (BTW Apple, how about giving people a break by including at least a couple of bars of intro in each preview, since most producers who cook a mix tip you off early). In the meantime, if you grew up in the digital age, the "originality" of this remix may sound great to you, but if you are an old analog guy, or even a kid who really wants to know why the Philly Sound captured the hearts of your parents or grandparents, you really need to get past D.J.'s promise that you've arrived just because this album has all the right song titles and used original tracks as source material and keep looking for the right mix.
