Portrait of a Boot Leg (Misterclaudel MCCD 770-2)

[billylentz]

Nhammy! Thanks!

[hkb]

thanks for this one

[Toe Blake]

Thanks so much!

[Rupert Pupkin]

How fascinating is it : "Pure Smokey" emphasize George's lovely voice and this stunning guitar work; so sweet.
Generally the first #1 track is a lead vocal + some bass or minimal instruments.
I don't know if MisterClaudel has made his choice in mixing; this could not be achieved with OOPS technique. I remember the piano+voice only mix done with A.I isolating Nicky Hopkins on Give Me Love.
This is not the choices I would have chosen if I had to demux the D.Atmos tracks so expect to be surprise and rediscover some pure George Harrison's gems.

But the instrumental takes or fascinating : "You" for instance, I did not expect so much orchestration or layers of instruments behind the basic track from the original sessions. The basic track from 1970 seems to be isolated on another version #2.
But there are many others : "Beautiful Girl"...
"Try Some Buy Some" : there is a kind of connection with John's Happy Xmas ("the tremolo orchestra" and guitar).
"Far East Man" (one of my favorite George Harrison song) enlightens apparently 2 different vocal takes and the tremendous sax/horns arrangement+keyboard: #1 before George went into "Dark Hoarse"; perfect voice, with the infamous spoken message to Frank Sinatra.
#2 shows vocal harmonies, but I didn't expect another vocal take (the song has double-tracked vocals), here with a kind of trembling voice.
Too bad that "I've Got My Own Album To Do" by Ronnie Wood was not available in D.Atmos (is it?) they could have done some alternate mixes of Ronnie's "Far East Man" (George is singing a verse on an early version which was shared there; csnyfan remixed it). I can't decide which was is best : the Ronnie's version is a Ode to slide-guitar.

Thanks so much for this share!

[MrKIA]

Fantastic! Thanks very much for sharing!

[rhino]

Thanks very much !

[ntwined88]

Fantastic to hear all these revelations, thank you!

[beatles2me]

Thank you

[20YearsAgo]

How fascinating is it : "Pure Smokey" emphasize George's lovely voice and this stunning guitar work; so sweet.
Generally the first #1 track is a lead vocal + some bass or minimal instruments.
I don't know if MisterClaudel has made his choice in mixing; this could not be achieved with OOPS technique. I remember the piano+voice only mix done with A.I isolating Nicky Hopkins on Give Me Love.
This is not the choices I would have chosen if I had to demux the D.Atmos tracks so expect to be surprise and rediscover some pure George Harrison's gems.

But the instrumental takes or fascinating : "You" for instance, I did not expect so much orchestration or layers of instruments behind the basic track from the original sessions. The basic track from 1970 seems to be isolated on another version #2.
But there are many others : "Beautiful Girl"...
"Try Some Buy Some" : there is a kind of connection with John's Happy Xmas ("the tremolo orchestra" and guitar).
"Far East Man" (one of my favorite George Harrison song) enlightens apparently 2 different vocal takes and the tremendous sax/horns arrangement+keyboard: #1 before George went into "Dark Hoarse"; perfect voice, with the infamous spoken message to Frank Sinatra.
#2 shows vocal harmonies, but I didn't expect another vocal take (the song has double-tracked vocals), here with a kind of trembling voice.
Too bad that "I've Got My Own Album To Do" by Ronnie Wood was not available in D.Atmos (is it?) they could have done some alternate mixes of Ronnie's "Far East Man" (George is singing a verse on an early version which was shared there; csnyfan remixed it). I can't decide which was is best : the Ronnie's version is a Ode to slide-guitar.

Thanks so much for this share!

I'm glad you (and others) like this one. It's a strange boot though, isn't it? While most of Misterclaudel's mixes are "gorgeous," they aren't necessarily "enjoyable." I like the most stripped-down ones best, but even then very few of them "improve" upon the released mixes.

Elsewhere, Lord Reith started a thread on "split personality" remixes. Some of these Misterclaudel remixes here are downright schizophrenic. For example, "Dear One #1." I was playing that in my car the other day when driving my intellectually disable son to the pool. The mix starts off so sublime. The strings (cello? viola?) were a revelation. My son was really getting into it-- and then it got all weird. He ended up thinking it was spooky. (Edit: "creepy" might've been the word he used).

Still, this set offers plenty of revelations, and it also made me realize how over-produced these albums were. Layer upon layer of sound and muck and clutter. At certain points, Misterclaudel peels back the onion skins to reveal, say, backing vocals that were almost entirely lost in the original mixes. But even when Misterclaudel cuts back on a lot of the clutter, well, there's still a lot of clutter remaining. Too many keyboards, too many superfluous orchestral parts. Makes me wish he had a reliable no-nonsense producer like George Martin on hand back then. Many of the songs would've been much much better had George attempted them solely on solo acoustic, or with a Beatle-like band.

[Rupert Pupkin]

I was particularly surprised to discover so much layers of instruments and overdubs : but especially the use of synth/keyboards enlighten by these new mixes, to the point that I was suspecting this could be fake (which is not the case!) They were kind of buried in stereo mixes, I never expect to hear such synth sounds, almost like French yé-yé Christophe did when he went into atmospherical dark pop song a-la Pink Floyd (it started with "les mots bleus") : you have "Dear One", "Can't Think About You", even "You" and many others ("Beautiful Girl")
But the use of synth reminds me that George was one of the first to use frankly synth in some Beatles song : Here Comes The Sun, etc...
I don't think that this synth were supposed to be hear that much; with the new audio extraction tools Misterclaudel was able to do these "another side of..." mixes. I don't think that these surprising layers could be revealed by OOPS techniques so far.
For instance I think that a lof of "McCartney Recording Vault" by Misterclaudel are using D.Atmos source to do these different tracks; I put a comments in the thread for this title; but it's still sounds like "McCartney I", "minimalist" so to speak. Although the content is fascinating (listening to different harmonies, bass lines, etc...)
I wonder if one day with an album like "Walls & Bridges" they could do some radically different mix like the one we can hear from George Harrison. I wish W&B will be available in D.Atmos mix (the next box set being Mind Games so we will have to wait) and a Misterclaudel release like this would be great!
I'm not sure there are some hidden layers like that in Walls & Bridges.
I think that George had a kind of passion for synth and keyboards (after all there are some sequencial tapes into two rock songs like Won't Get Fooled Again or Baba O'Riley)- but if an album like "Made In England" or "Gone Troppo" had a synth-feel in the mix, this new mixes by Misterclaudel shows that Geoerge's keyboard-synth-interest was already there right from the start (the Wonderwall soundtrack, the use of Moog during the Abbey Road sessions) but George choose to mix it differently (Extra Texture, Dark Horse); I don't think that the production of these albums were a "mess"; this shows on the opposite a richness of overdubs layers where you couldn't expect it. And they weren't supposed to be heard like this; since the extraction tools now reveal some "buried in the mix" thing.

For instance I haven't been that surprised and disconcerted by the Misterclaudel release (based on D.Atmos mixes probably) of "Cloud Nine". I could "guess" this arrangements; and it shows that the production was really "plagued" (IMHO) by all this reverb on the drumming (blame it on Jeff Lynn).
Wheras some songs have some superb arrangements (When We Was Fab) and the funeral dirge of "Just For Today". But I wasn't that surprised contrary to this set.

And I'm rarely happy by Misterclaudel releases generally. The way that they choose to "give us" the opportunity to listen such drastically different mix is fascinating (even if this starts beautiful and ends in a scary way like the song you described ("Dear One"); I don't know how much they work on these mixes, but I prefer that they left these extractions as they were; not trying to edit the mix in order to make it more pleasing to listen to it.
I was really pleased and intrigued to listen to these mixes; and after all we listen to bootlegs to be surprised.

If you were disappointed by "Extra Texture" (which contains song almost uninspired which revisit While My Guitar Gently Weeps or the "hi-yo silver" "cadence" of Dark Horse (Tired Of Midnight Blue), now with these new mixes we know the meaning of "Extra Texture(s)".

and regarding the songs, I think that how George revisited on acoustic guitar the guitar solo of "Something" on "Learning How To Love You" is just superb.