LIVE IN JAPAN

This remixed recording has so much potential, and yet falls so miserably. The good: you get to hear the shows mostly in the order that they were performed (a few songs were cut in order to keep the length to 3 CDs), including the onstage banter - mostly Ian Gillan offering explanations of the songs. The bad: the bass guitar sound has been ruined. All you can hear are the sub-bass frequencies, there is no high end or midrange. I haven't listened to Made in Japan (the classic album that was culled from the three shows represented on Live in Japan) in decades, so I thought maybe my memory was faulty, but it just couldn't sound like this! So I bought the cheapo original CD release, and there was the glorious bass sound of Roger Glover!

I think I know what happened - when they went to remix the original tapes, they heard that the bass was distorted and must have tried to "fix" it. But to me, that distorted bass sound is what was so cool! That's what bass sounded like in the early '70s! It may not be the ideal bass sound if you expect it to be clean, but nowadays people spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars to try and get that sound (think Orange amps and Darkglass Electronics effects, for example). They really really messed up on this one. I bought my copy used, I've heard it, and it's getting sold right back to Amoeba Records. Completely unlistenable to me. I'm going to keep my classic cheap original master CD and enjoy that. Apparently the deluxe single CD release from 2013(?) has the original Made in Japan track listing but also includes the encores and is remastered from the 1972 mix I might spring for that but I would have to listen to the 2013 remix before buying in case they screwed it up again.