25 minutes of perfection.. and not a pedal in sight

english_bob

RocknRollDave said:
Overall, what really strikes me is how tight the band are, and how disciplined they are - no over-egging the pudding with widdly ad-libs or pick slides and added lead parts between phrases...Just playing what is meant to be there, nothing more. I don't know a single guitarist who has that discpline in their playing, and I certain don't possess it myself. Truly inspiring. 


Surely even harder when you're as talented as they were. They clearly had the chops to do that sort of thing and didn't. 

They really are at odds with a lot of their contemporaries in that respect. You could never accuse Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple of underplaying. I still think it's the soul music thing.

Funnily enough, this thread has reminded me how much I like Free too. They're probably one of the very few bands I've been able to listen to consistently for... wow, probably 20 years.

StageStruck

english_bob said:

Yeah, I imagine if you'd been a fan of Free since the '70s you probably would hate the remixes from the get-go, but this was the Free album I was introduced to them through, so apart from having heard All Right Now on the radio I'd never really listened to them. I wore out my tape of the remix album and thought that

Molten Gold sounded wrong when I got that years later- tinny little drums and so bare without the reverb and double-tracking!

I had started discovering the great bands & blues-rock a year or two before the remixes were released whilst in my early teens. I suppose I was reasonably attuned to hearing the overcooked drum productions of the 80s. I do feel that in some ways you are correct, that the original mixes were somewhat subdued and deserved some work which the extended CD reissues went some of the way to correcting. A great song is a great song however and that counts more than a bad production.