The 4 Disc MOFO arrived this morning at around 8, when a postal worker rang the doorbell saying he had a special delivery. Standing in the doorway in the freezing cold waving an oversized package at me, it soon became clear what was special about it as far as the post office was concerned: a 10 euro customs fee needed to be paid. Doctor Sharl and I proceeded to dig out what coins we had left — it took a mere 10 minutes — upon which I was granted The Package.
We’re now some 9 hours later (and back from work duties): all four discs have been imported into iTunes, I’m listening to disc one (the original! stereo! vinyl! mix!) and by golly, the sound is just gorgeous — wonderfully crisp overall, in treble as well as bass. This coming from a guy who does not see the point in keeping lossless audio as he thinks mp3 will do just fine. I’ve yet to hear the other 3 discs but I thought it would be nice to post some pictures of the lavish packaging for the curious and/or nay-sayers among you. Pardon the image quality — we’ve yet to acquire a professional grade photo-studio here at KUR…
Tiny Lil’ Update:
Compostions?
Yeah, arrived in Holland just before Xmas (no duties) and it is greattt!!
my copy turned up today as well.
i’ve listened to the first three discs so far…
haven’t gotten to disc four yet. i’ve been playing the last tracks from disc three (the concert part) for a couple of times now.
they did a very fine job, over at the zft
— UniMuta
Mine arrived last night. Makes the music live again. well done ZFT.
Just about to import disk 3 & see what goodies are on that.
I thought that the return of the son of monster magnet came up really well, much better than on the RYCO release.
And they spelled my name correctly in the booklet. (is yours in ther Barry?
Oh yes: left top-ish, close to one “Ton van Mierle” :)
Disc three is turning out to be my favorite so far by the way — wonderful drum pieces.
YOU WILL ENJOY IT!!!!!!! i dig disc 2!
I received my copy late last week and stayed up all night Saturday Night/ Sunday Morning listening to all four discs straight through. The sound is great, clear and clean . The digital engineers have finally figured out how to master stuff and have it sound as good as the old vinyl records. This record was made on four track analog equipment. It took intelligence, creativity, vision and originality to come up with this stuff in 1965, something I feel is lacking in our high tech point-and-click era. FZ had a vision and knew what he wanted to say about his world and the culture he functioned within. He captured the moment for the ages. The 3 discs of out takes, interviews, live cuts and other building blocks, show how it was assembled. This was FZ’s first album and he would go on to do more with bigger budgets and better technology, but I don’t believe he ever did anything more influencial or paradigm shifting than FREAK OUT!
Happy New Year! :)
I have said it before and I shall say it again…
Happy New Year! :)
What kills me is that, after all these years, this is still one of Frank’s best-SOUNDING recordings, certainly the cleanest/clearest/warmest audio of any of the MGM albums. This has struck me with every iteration of Freak Out on LP & CD. I don’t know why–fewer overdubs? better studio equipment, maybe some tubes in there? Anyway, it’s never sounded better than it does here. Serious kudos to the ZFT. They outdid themselves this time.
so…that fold out flap that says, “FUCK”. What’s that all about?
Bob Again, there is a clip from an interview on disc four with the explantion.
thanks.
we’re so cute!!
9. “Dope Fiend Music” 2:06
Interview with Matty Biberfeld
WRVR, New York City, NY
Summer, 1967
Interviewer: There’s a story that, um, during one of your recording sessions, during one of the numbers you were recording, there were some friends who, uh, were saying a BAD WORD, right there into the microphone. And that you left it in the record because you figured that no one would ever believe that, uh, they were saying that bad word. Is that, is that true?
FZ: No, I’m the one who said the bad word, and I left it in there because I wanted to leave it in there, I wanted to test the intelligence of the record company. Let me show you how this works. Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, in side four of the Freak Out! album, if you’ll play it at a very slow speed and wait for just the right moment, you’ll hear a tiny voice in the background saying FUCK! Beep it out, that’s it, you little devils. And the reason you hear that in there is because at that point, I was making some noises inside of a piano, I was dropping things on the strings of the piano, and my hand got underneath of one of the things that I was dropping on the piano and it smashed my finger, and it was one of those agonized cries. Well, I figured we might as well leave it in, why chop it out? Because at that point I knew that MGM was starting to censor things in the album that I thought were really ridiculous. For instance, today the word “psychedelic” is a great teenage, uh, commercial item. Uh, MGM was afraid of that word in this first album. I had that word in an echo chamber, just said once in the middle of one of the tracks. They said, “We can’t have that! It sounds too much like dope fiend music.” They chopped it out. There was another line at the very end of, uh, one of the selections, where the voice says, “Suzy, we’ve been very interested in your devlopment since you first took the shots.” And she says, “Forget it.” They had to take out “since you first took the shots,” because it sounded like dope fiend music, when actually all we were talking about is a little paraffin injection.