the whole story about The Whole Story

[William LeFebvre <phil@rice.edu>]

Well, not the *whole* story......

Many days after ranting and raving about the incredibly inflated price
of the CD The Whole Story, I went out to one of the larger local chain
record stores and found <ta, ta!> The Whole Story on CD at a lower
price, about $15.  I still don't consider such prices reasonable, but
they do seem to be the norm.  Anyway, not being able to resist Kate's
eyes on the cover of the CD, I bought it.

Now I am quite sure why the other one was >20 and this one was only 15.
The expensive one must have been an import.  The one I purchased is
made by EMI America and was undoubtedly made in the good ole' USofA.
And what does the recording quality sound like?  In a word, lousy.

My receiver/amplifier displays volume as db reduction, i.e.:  30db is
loud and 60db is soft.  Almost every other CD I own, and certainly all
the rock/jazz CDs, is played at 50db.  This produces the most
comfortable listening volume.  But, sad to say, The Whole Story is, on
the Whole, recorded much softer than any other disk.  I find myself
turning it up to as much as 40db just to hear some of the tracks.  And
what's worse is that not all the tracks are recorded at the same
volume.  Some are louder than others.  The softer ones sound muddy and
murky.  Basically, the production quality of this disk isn't worthy of
the artist it attempts to reproduce.  I am very disappointed and in a
quandary about what to do next.  I don't really want to shell out the
bucks for an import copy, and if I did what would I do with this lousy
domestic one?

FLAME:=true;

I'm really getting tired of the domestic record companies and the
federal government conspiring to decrease the quality of our recorded
music while making it more expensive and generally harder to acquire
GOOD quality recordings.  If there were some decent disc and record
makers in this country, the situation would be a little different.  But
import taxes continue to climb, import quotas continue to decrease, and
the quality of domestic recordings continues to drop.  Sounds like a
secert plan to get more tax money out of us serious listeners.

FLAME:=false;
WEIRD_IDEA:=true;

Consider this:  since any given American record company holds an
EXCLUSIVE license to market a specific album/song by a specific artist,
then that company, as far as I'm concerned, holds a MONOPOLY on that
specific instantiation of music.  I think the ARTIST should hold
exclusive license to his/her music and let as many record companies
produce and market the music as he/she wants.  That would be true
competition!

WEIRD_IDEA:=false;
SIGNATURE:=true;
			William LeFebvre
			Department of Computer Science
			Rice University
			<phil@Rice.edu>
SIGNATURE:=false;