Stage Fright (Remastered)

If you think you know Stage Fright, take a closer look at this CD. The usual procedure for audiophile releases is to use the original released master of the album. DCC and producer Steve Hoffman did something different with Stage Fright, however, going back to an alternate mix that was prepared at the time of the album's completion. The group turned copies of the multitrack tapes from the Stage Fright sessions over to the album's producer, Todd Rundgren, and to engineer Glyn Johns, whom they'd met at the Isle of Wight Festival, and asked each to prepare a mix. According to one account, the album released in 1970 consisted of seven songs prepared by Rundgren and three Johns tracks, but it's also been claimed that the Johns mixes were all that were used (that fits with the credits of the original album). Hoffman and DCC went back to the mixes — apparently those by Rundgren — that weren't used, coming up with a version of the album that's completely different in every detail from the LP or other CD reissues from Capitol. The songs sound more raw, more "live" in the studio, and far more interesting than the relatively flat, smooth versions on the original album. The singing has a raw, immediate quality, and both the singing and playing have lots of wrong (but honest) notes that were buried in the official mix — all of the material is different and, one has to say, better, making this worth the $30 list price. This version of Stage Fright puts it much closer in content and spirit to Music From Big Pink and The Band, which preceded it. And the sound is really good, too, with extraordinarily close, vivid textures on "Strawberry Wine," "The Shape I'm In," "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show," "Daniel and the Sacred Harp," and the title track.