There’s a lot of older music fans out there who would give anything to “bring things back” – whatever that might mean to them. Bring it back to the days of radio hits, record stores and so on. Optimistic though we may be, we’re pretty much resigned to the fact that most things aren’t going to revert back to the way they were.
One notable exception exists in the catalogue world, though: it’s a simple four-letter word that is quite literally changing the way we listen to our older music. It’s something that, in our rush for the best surround sound and audio fidelity, we may have forgotten about.
The subject, of course, is mono.
Listeners buying reissues at a steady pace may have noticed the rise of mono in recent years. These days, finding a dedicated mono mix of an album on CD is like finding part of the Rosetta Stone. Records by The Who, The Velvet Underground and others have been reissued in mono and stereo to vast acclaim. The Beatles remasters of course represented the peak of the trend with The Beatles in Mono box set from last year. Other mono releases are still sought after, including several of the albums in Jimi Hendrix’s catalogue (such a release may have increased excitement over the latest batch of reissues).
There’s something really interesting about seeing mono albums come back in a kind of big way. As someone who grew up in an age where most entertainment was already in stereo (where available) and FM radio was king, it’s a great trend to help new listeners gain a fresh, informed perspective on familiar music. Sometimes you miss a run of notes or a particular instrumental part if it’s buried in a stereo mix. And it’s little things like that which make listening to songs over and over again over time such a fun experience.
What are your mono memories? What one-channel sets would you like to see released on compact disc? Your thoughts are, as always, graciously observed below.
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As someone who grew up listening to Rock & Roll Music is the ’60s (and who started collecting in the ’70s), I enjoy collections of ’60s music in mono. The CD era brought us (and still bringing us) collections by artists like The Rascals, Love, The Beatles, and the Motown stable in mono. While I do enjoy stereo (and multi-channel sound), ’60s rock often sounds better in mono due to the fact that engineers spent more time mixing the songs (and stereo mixes were considered an afterthought).
Early June, 1967 and I make my way downtown from the suburbs to buy my copy of the Beatles’ newest release….something called Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band?! Sounds wacky and the few images I’ve seen of the album only solidify my anxious feeling of getting it on my newly purchased STEREO phonograph. I walk into Miller Music and see copies of the album displayed on the store counter. Wild and mystical sounds are flooding the store, in stereo!
I go to pay for my copy, having saved the usual exact amount of my lawn mowing money to buy the stereo version of the album. (Stereo was a buck more expensive than old mono) But, wait, for this release Capitol Records has increased the suggested retail price of mono and stereo one dollar each…so I only have enough money for the mono version! I’m crest-fallen…but I must have my own copy of Sgt. Pepper, so I buy the mono version and hustle it home to get lost in its sounds, even in mono!
Subsequent listenings to friend’s copies of their stereo versions seem, somehow, unsatisfying. And I have that same feeling to this very day. In a world of supersonic stereo and 5.1 and DTS and what have you, the mono version of Sgt. Pepper is the way “they” intended for us to listen to it. And, believe me, it IS a different animal than the stereo one. Seek it out, play it loud, a splendid time is guaranteed for all!
I know this was originally posted years ago, but I can’t help but add my two cents worth, cuz it’s as valid now as it was when this post first went online–BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD AGAIN IN MONO—-why oh why won’t someone put a gun to Neil Young’s head and make him sign off on this? They don’t HAVE to put bullets in the gun! 😉