Not sure it's the right section, but here's a story. I fell in love with Suzanne Vegas' music one night in 1985/86 when after meeting a a young lady post gig in Aberdeen, I was introduced to the debut album. It made me all excited about acoustic music again.
Roll on, 15 years . I was privileged to support SV, totally in awe of her and her songs.
Have not listened to her music for years until tonight ( still think she is genius) suddenly the acoustic guitar of the first ( still brilliant album ) sounds so thin. Is it the fact that a) tastes have changed or b)has recording acoustic guitar improved ? or )c my ear has become more adept to hearing nuance of acoustic guitar on record ?, especially as when I first heard SV, my music and band were somewhat more electric and a lot louder than the music of SV ?
Either way, that first album is glorious in every way.
Comments
I would agree - combination of all three.
Production styles can date in the same way that say fashion or interior design does. How a certain song relates to a particular period in your life is an enormous factor.
When my son got me to sign up for Apple Music a while back I was downloading stuff from my youth. Back in my late teens / early twenty's I was a big Rush fan. I downloaded the old stuff that I used to have on vinyl together with the later stuff from after I'd stopped following them. I came to the conclusion that, whilst still technically very competent, the later stuff just didn’t do it for me. The fact was that there hadn’t been such a step change in what they were doing, it’s just that I’d learned to love the older stuff when I was young and that my tastes and listening habits had changed since.
Nostalgia just isn’t what it used to be. Have a Wow for supporting SV though.
Earlier stuff from the late '60s and early '70s still sounds good to me - even on CDs that were just transferred from the analogue masters.
And even different rooms - when I moved to where I am now in 1990, same components, different room, never sounded quite as good.
80s production was regrettable, though. There are some things that sound simultaneously 80s and beautiful - like Thomas Dolby's production on Prefab Sprout records. But mostly not.
As I have thought about this, I also remember the arrival of the first Taylor guitars onto the scene. They were relatively rare beast back then and were desired in recording situations for their crisp bright tone, bearing in mind that if you were using a Martin back then it was certain to be a dreadnought as 000 and OM's were just not part of the 80's Martin catalogue (unbelievable to think of now ! ) other than special order.
The arrival of these crisper sounding guitars definitely contributed to the sonic landscaped changed the direction of acoustic guitar manufacture.
It's also true that we have seen massive advances in recording with a desire to capture more of the full range of frequencies, rather than cried high end ( usually with some spacial enhancer and lots of compression in those days ). It has also become cool to go for for vintage tones again and allow the mids and lows have some space.