Classic Albums

I've been thoroughly enjoying the Classic Albums DVD series via Netflix. If you decide to check these out, beware the Classic Albums Under Review copycat series, which don't have anything to do with the people who actually made the music, because the insights into the making of the classic albums are the best reason to watch these.

For example, I just watched the one about the making of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" album. One of the more interesting bits was the opportunity to hear Roger Waters' original demos of some of these songs. If you heard those demos and weren't familiar with the eventual end product, you'd never believe these songs would eventually become part of one of the greatest rock albums of all time. The songs themselves are obviously solid, but the demos sound weak, and it's clear how much the players themselves bring to the material when you hear what they were working from.

In contrast, Pete Townshend's personal demos for the Who are incredibly good. The bass and drum parts even bring Entwistle's and Moon's playing to mind (though Townshend's playing of those instruments obviously isn't as good). He knew the players he was working with and did a great job of bringing across exactly what he wanted them to do.

The making of Queen's "A Night at the Opera" gave me a whole new appreciation of the members of that group as well. Freddie Mercury gets a lot of well deserved credit for what he did with Queen, but with this DVD, you can really hear the contribution of the other people involved as well, and see that Queen was more than a backing group for Freddie.

The Classic Albums series includes a lot of footage of the people involved in the making of these albums (producers and sound engineers as well as players) using the master tapes and a mixing board to drop out various parts or effects so you can clearly hear the separate parts, so you can learn how Queen executed their distinctive harmonies in the studio, how Pete Townshend's synthesizer experiments led to the songs on "Who's Next", and other interesting bits of information. These are not performance videos; they're more like the "making of" extras on most movie DVDs, and they are real gems if you're a musician or a hardcore fan who is really into the details of how some great music was made. Very highly recommended!