By Mike Jahn
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by Mike Jahn THEPOP -Music tape market, though a huge one, few in open reel as well. They were picked to give does not yet have the ear of the music industry to the fledgling collector of pop tapes a guide to what the same extent as do buyers of discs. Pop music is available of quality. still is made with the disc in mind, and producers apparently feel justified in doing anything they JuoY Cowen:Colors of the Day: The Best of Judy Collins. want to the music in order to cram it onto a cassette Judy Collins, vocals and guitar; instrumental accompaniment. or 8 -track cartridge. It's as if they were saying, (Someday Soon; Both Sides Now; Sons of; nine more.) "Well, the kids are going to listen to it on the way to ELEKTRA: 8 -track cartridge, ET 85030; cassette, TC 55030. McDonald's anyway, so why worry about pro- JuoY Counts: InMy Life. Judy Collins, vocals and guitar; in- gramming and fidelity." Yet cartridge and cassette strumental accompaniment. (Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues; Pi- rate Jenny; Suzanne: La Colombe-The Dove; Maratr Sade; six machines have become good enough to be legiti- more.) ELEKTRA: 8 -track cartridge, ET8 74027; cassette, TC5 mate components of a complete high fidelity sys- 74027. tem. How long will it be before manufacturers real- ize this and acknowledge that they are not only Anthologies of "best hits" usually are not carefully pro- recordcompanies, buttapecompanies as well? grammed for song sequence. but strangely enough. Who knows? All one can tell is that they haven't re- "Colors of the Day" is one that has been put together in- alized it yet. telligently. It's a bright little collection of Ms. Collins' In listening to the tape configurations of many best-known songs from the period since she dropped the old folk ballads; the song -to -song flow on the disc ver- noted pop albums, I was struck by several things. sion is excellent. But as for the cartridge programming. There is a maddening lack of consideration vis-à- few tunes are left unturned in the course of fitting what vis programming, particularly on cartridges, where was originally designed for two twenty -minute sides a three -minute song may be cut in half by the head - onto four ten-minute programs. Oddly enough, there moving mechanism, or a shoddy song sequence even is a slight amount of shifting on the cassette version. may be hit upon in order to "solve" this problem. but of a less damaging nature. Cartridges also seem to present serious sonic prob- "In My Life" is a pop recording classic. Judy Collins lems to anyone listening on good -quality home changes totally from traditional folk balladeer to con- equipment-usually an amount of static that ac- temporary art -song artist. Many of the songs are soft. companies any loud playing, especially in the bass flowing, and sensitive, but thankfully they don't appear in any overwhelmingly important sequence. This is for- range. This got so bad on some hard -rock cartridge tunate since the order of the songs is thoroughly rear- tapes that they were at times almost unplayable. As ranged in the cartridge version. Only one tune is fol- R. D. Darrell points out in the preceding article, lowed by the same selection as appears on the disc stereo cartridges are best restricted to use in your version(Pirate JennybySuzanne).This random shuf- car, where ambient noise can mask much distor- fling prevents the songs from beinginterrupted by a sole- tion. In fact, I would suggest to manufacturers that noid click, a pause, and program change, an occurrence they include the sound of traffic in the background that well could be disastrous in the case of Ms. Collins. of all recorded cartridges, so that listeners at home The cassette has the same song sequence as the disc. don't get distracted by the lack of sonic quality. Yet Of all the cartridges I sampled for this article, I found quadraphonic cartridges present a different story. the sound quality was best on these two. Whereas in most cases the quality is better on cassette than on car- Recent developments are encouraging, and the tridge, here there is no readily noticeable difference. prospects for the future are impressive. Even such Judy Collins in the past five years has had a tremendous early samples of Q-8 as I was able to find were impact on the course of modern folk music, and on the thrilling. And with both cartridges and cassettes course of pop music as well. These recordings are thereis something childishly endearing about brilliant examples of the reasons why. being able to carry your music with you, from home to car to wherever you are going, even if it is only to a local McDonald's. ALICE COOPER:Billion Dollar Babies. Alice Cooper, vocals, harmonica; Neal Smith, drums; Michael Bruce, guitar, key- The following twenty -plus -one pop recordings boards; Dennis Dunaway, bass; Glen Buxton, guitar. (Hello! are those that struck me as being rather good on at Hurray!: Raped and Freezin'; Elected; seven more.) WARNER least one, and sometimes more. of their tape ver- BROS.: 8 -track cartridge M8 2685; cassette M5 2685. sions. All are available in cartridge and cassette; a Wemust continue to assume that artists still make Mike Jahn's book, Rock, will be published by Quadrangle recordings primarily with the disc in mind. Tapes come Book Division of the New York Times this fall. later. The problems this causes show up mainly in the Auw:si 1973 57.