I heard the CTA remix before buying it and I'm sure glad I did. To my ears, it was almost to point of being unlistenable. They should've had Steven Wilson remix this one. The Wilson remix of Chicago II was awesome in my opinion. The CTA remix is just a mess.
This is remixed in the most horrendous way any record in history has ever been remixed. I'd rather have a thousand flying jackasses farting and shiting in my face repeatedly for 3 days than listen to this thing. THAT'S TRULY HOW BAD IT IS!!
Big Chicago fan here. For the remix version, they make everything louder, not clearer, and even less separation in my opinion. And of course, the drums in Beginnings, that is my favorite part, now sound horrible. What a disappointment.
As soon as I heard the intro to “Introduction” on the remix I knew something was off. I thought it was my headphones or maybe some equalizer setting, because the bottom was missing. I went back to the original, and heard the rich sound of all the instruments. I’ll compare the other tracks, but I am not optimistic.
Tim Jessup was quite defensive of his remix claiming that there were tears in Jimmy Pankow's eyes while listening to the remix, and that he was deleting comments on his Facebook page criticising his remix. Guy seems to not handle criticism very well not to mention all the excuses he was making at the same time. Steven Wilson should have remixed this album but no, apparently, Lee Loughnane lives in the same town as Jessup does in Arizona, therefore, Jessup has been given the task with mixing their recordings in recent years. I'll stick with CTA on the Quadio Set, methinks... and speaking of Wilson. The 50th Anniversary of King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King just came out as a 3CD/1BD set with a full 1969 boxset soon to follow. Wilson improved on his recent 40th Anniversary remix of the album after honing his skills as a remix engineer over the past 10 years so now, the Crimson debut is sounding closer to the original mix than ever before. :)
What do you think about the Leonid & Friends Chicago covers? They make me feel like I'm in the room during the recording. The clarity is unbelievable and the music seems very close to the originals.
I own several versions of this album: Columbia, MFSL, Rhino, Quadio, Friday Music, and now this one ....which hurts my ears. :( Want to know the truth? I think the best sounding version (to me) is still the original Columbia album I bought 40 years ago in High School. This album doesn't need "fixing" . It was a masterpiece then and it still is now.
TJR, I happened across your review and was very impressed at how well thought out your comments were. You explained in detail, with good reference and without being hyperbolic why this remix did not measure up to the community's sonic standards for this album of which I'm in total agreement. You would be a good diplomat. I, on the other hand would not be a good diplomat because I think this remix has a lot in common with the likes of the Hindenburg and Chernobyl. A total disaster! Missed opportunity indeed!
I feel that the 2002 remasters of the first two albums sound muddy. The Steven Wilson remix of the second album fixed that. Btw, a lot of the Amazon reviews of the CTA remix aren't very flattering either.
I'm sitting here on hold for a phone call, and I'm a Man comes on the hold music. I haven't had a chance to listen closely to the remixed version much as of yet, but not sounding optimistic. I'll see.
Couldn't agree more. I have the 2002 mix which is great and the Quadio box set. Its a shame because Chicago is definitely a band that deserves superior mixes. Just get Steve Wilson to remix all the Kath albums. After that, discontinue and take all of the post Kath albums out of print. Forbid soft rock radio from playing the "hits" from David Fosters bastardized version of Chicago and we act like they broke up when Terry died and the world is right again.
Agree 100%. I’m very disappointed. I also feel the vocals are undermixed and somehow “flat”, not in pitch, but in excitement. No chills all over my body.
You were very nice with your review, unfortunately. One thing you didn't mention is the overall garbage sound quality. I thought when I first heard the new mix that maybe I was just being the snobby audio perfectionist that I can tend to be, until I read the reviews on Amazon. Most agreed with me. My wife, who is very UNpicky about sound quality, listened to it just out of curiosity after hearing me gripe about it. Her response after only a few seconds: "Bleeaaaaaahh!!! What the f*** is this?!" So yeah...if it bothers her, that means it's...pretty bad. From what I understand, in the end Tim Jessup wasn't really happy with the final product and he hopes he'll get a chance to make things right. I heard a bit of the new Carnegie Hall 16-CD set and the sound on that thing is pretty phenomenal, so that tells me he's capable of good work; just not on this CTA remix. (Although I do totally disapprove with "correcting" the performance of "Someday" on the Carnegie set.) When fans got all up in arms over the sound on the CTA remix, the folks at Rhino / Warner / whoever said "Oops, we accidentally put the vinyl master on the CD instead of the digital master." Which...of course is bulls**t because the people who have the vinyl edition have the *exact same complaints*. They sent out "corrected" copies...that are 100% the exact same. (I did a video demonstrating how the only difference is the "corrected" version has a very slight delay before the music starts.) As for why else a remix would be made...remember, this album is from 1969, when typically eight tracks is what artists had to work with, 16 if they were lucky. If they ran out of room, they'd have to do a reduction mix to free up some tracks, which itself causes a generation of tape loss. A new mix with today's technology could sync up the original unmixed multitracks with the stuff that was overdubbed post-reduction to give a much better sounding experience, which I'm pretty sure is what happened with, say, the Beatles' remixes, and certainly a lot of Beach Boys remixes that came out in the last 25 years.
This remix literally pissed me off. Overall, the drums are buried tenfold in the mix, the horns are waaaay too loud, the guitar is over compressed, all accumulating into a muddy hodgepodge of banging trash cans trying to swing and rock at the same time but keep running into the wall repeatedly. There’s no punch to the tracks and to call this a stereo remix would be not only false advertising, but simply disgraceful. “I’m A Man” and “Questions 67 & 68” are literal trash. “Beginnings” almost got a pass except there was no separation of any of the instruments. It just sounds like they put one mic in the room and told everyone to play as loud as possible without considering phasing issues let alone dynamics. But the part that just made me soooo angry and pissed off, shouting to the top of my lungs "WHY? WHY? WHY?", was the remix of “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?”. It sounds like it was recorded through Garage Band and with the finest sample drums Casio can provide. It feels like a porcupine spiking your ears while it’s hailing. It smells like a skunk drenched in expired school lunch milk. It’s like Tim Jessup lobotomized Danny Seraphine and probed him with his own drums sticks. It’s like Tim ripped off the skin of Robert Lamm’s hands and the piano is being played nothing but Bobby’s cold dead skeleton bones. It makes Terry Kath almost irrelevant, and his guitar part is minimal but even he had way more presence in the 2002 stereo remix. It’s like if Peter Cetera played bass like a broom or never played bass at all. The horns and vocals sound fine, they are just waaay too fucking loud and they muddy the mix.
Just got this monstrosity myself--the only point I can disagree with you about, TJR, is that there are a few sprinkled moments of "revelation", as you put it--some vocalizing of Robert Lamm in Poem 58 that were mixed out originally, for example. And god yeah, does Danny Seraphine, whose drumming I adore, get the shaft here--except for one spot I never noticed on the original, namely the build-up back to tempo in Liberation right after Terry sings "oh, thank you, people." But most of it sounds like an attempt to reproduce good old compressed teeny-bopper transister radio am mastering. God, it's bad!
@@TJRtheOriginal Yes! And as half the world is speculating--how could the band, and Lee in particular, have signed off on it? Still, I like having it almost as a perverse evil twin of the fantastic true mix.
Lionheart Roar You’re out of your mind if you think the Chicago II remix is bad. Steven Wilson is a genius when it comes to remixing Classic Rock albums, in addition to his own stellar music.
Yea. I agree. Steven Wilson is quite literally the best remixer on the planet, as per Jethro Tull, Yes, King Crimson, Tears For Fears, XTC and many others. He actually knows what he is doing and he is typically faithful to the original mixes, just with more clarity.
I heard this for the first time yesterday on Amazon music and could not believe my ears as how bad it sounded compared to my original CD. I thought my streamer had gone wacko till I read a review online and now this video. How can Chicago allow this travesty to be released. Worst sounding crap I've heard in a long time.
Unfortunately, I did not see this review before buying it. Mediocre LP pressing vinyl looks horrible, like stained, and sounds horrible as well, washed, like needle is dirty, all is thin, flat, distorted. I have two original US 70s versions as well as a Netherland import, they all sound far better than this piece of junk. What happened?
