Correcting Sir Paul

Far be it from me to disagree with Sir Paul McC....but. The other night we watched the documentary on the making of Love: both the music and the Cirque du Soleil performance. The parts with the two Martins talking about how the mashed the tracks was interesting. The performance stuff was disappointing - very literal interpretations of the lyrics and the documentary emphasised the dancing, running around bit of their shows which I have always found filler between the exciting acrobatics.

Anyway, Sir Paul was commenting about how their works could be taken from the old recordings and brightened up. His comparison was with the manuscript of Tolstoy which just sits in a museum aging and gathering dust. An unfair comparison me thinks. If we want a literary one, a better comparison would be: remastering is like putting on a bright new cover, improving the layout and font and republishing; the sort of remixing done here would be like getting a new translation done.

But a better comparison would be with the sort of conservation/restoration done in the arts: freshening up The Nightwatch or cleaning the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Glad to have got that of my chest!