Quote:
Originally Posted by RM
The albums credits show Mike Hefferman and Barry Keane as contributors. I wonder why Terry Clements and Rick Haynes didn't participate.
I can see why Lightfoot takes a great deal of pride in that effort. Producing and arranging is a heck of an undertaking.
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lots of session players on that one, for sure...good question re the RH TC
across music in general, i certainly love the albums that are made with the live players and recorded pretty 'off the floor' with colour added as needed
as an analogy, most of the animation films out there are created with most the the voice actors never even crossings paths and the whole thing is mixed together seamlessly so the audience would think a 4 minute scene had everyone in one room concurrently and it was pulled off in a few takes
some of these albums strike me as being like that, where other than the foundation bed tracks (percussion, bass and guitar) being captured, everything else was added piece meal with restrictions on # of tracks to work with in those days so you'd end up with multiple tracks being bounced down to free up some fo the tracks that had previosuly been assigned...anyone who ever owned a even a 4 track recorded would know about this...new folks have no clue (ie. how many tracks does Garage band offer or IS there even a limit at all? i know in my edit suite I'm contrained to 99 video tracks...i've never used more than a dozen)
anyhow, I think one (even Gord) can lose some objectivity with some decisions as to what to choose for final mixes or arrangements when so much time is spent in post production mode and one's listened perhaps hundreds of times to the same or alt-arrangments and mixes...i guess Ken must have been a good sounding board for fresh opinions along the journey to what became the final EOM product
I am going to give her a fresh listen after reading BillW's sweet comment, it's been years...I will be skipping over the Foster track...as someone said, gotta hand it to Gord for occasionally checking out new avenues...if it wasn't for the challenges of the circumstances, I'd have loved to have heard an album like Harmony recorded and released in Back Here on Earth fashion ie. pretty much straight off the studio floor ...on the last track (Sometimes I Wish) you can hear the blip of Gord's guitar before the last verse...there was no way for Doidge to effectively mute that...I love it cos it reminds me how that whole album was basically resurrected from the ashes...I'm sure that guitar track would have been redone given the chance...and those vocals were only meant to be guide vocals for the bed tracks...I wish a camera had been rolling during that time and capturing the various challenges Gord, the band and foremost, Doidge overcame...I'd be hanging on every word if a documentary such as that came to be, i think it would be an eye opener for many
btw, if any know of youtube links to 'off the floor' recordings, please share
ps) from Wayne Francis's site notes:
This was a titanic recording effort on Lightfoot's part, taking up huge periods of time in 1985 and much of 1986 in post-production and single remixes. One final recording of Forgive Me Lord was undertaken which turned out very well but once again was not included on the finished album. In January 1985 Stay Loose; Morning Glory and Lifeline were finished. June saw East Of Midnight; I'll Tag Along and A Passing Ship undertaken, while in December A Lesson In Love; Let It Ride; Ecstacy Made Easy and Anything For Love ended recording for the year. Feeling he needed one more song when Forgive Me Lord was deemed unsuitable for the album, he recorded You Just Gotta Be in March 1986 completing his longest recording effort for a single album.