Dead Ringer 35th Anniversary

[PanicLord]

If I have got my maths right, this year marks the 35th Anniversary of the release of Dead Ringer. A terrific under appreciated album, with my favourite song of all time, I'm Gonna Love Her For Both Of Us.

Sadly for me, I only have it as a poorly mastered CD in a double pack with Midnight At The Lost And Found, but surely this album deserves a remastered anniversary special edition? I mean it still sold millions and even Blind Before I Stop got a slightly cleaned up re-release.

Anyone heard anything along those lines?

[rockfenris2005]

Apparently they DID do a new master, but they just didn't release it, for whatever reason. I'm not counting on this one. It should but it hasn't. Sony have been pretty lousy at times, IMO. "Bat out of Hell" deserves a release like the one Billy Joel had for "The Stranger". All we ever get besides the two live tracks is the stuff we have always had.

[PanicLord]

Of course Dead Ringer For Love has been remastered and now I'm Gonna Love Her For Both Of Us which made me very happy. But I would like a decent copy of the whole album now please :)

[evil nickname]

Read 'Em and Weep, Dead Ringer and I'm Gonna Love Her for Both of Us have been remastered on the 2009 expanded Hits Out of Hell. The latter two also appear to be remastered on Playlist: The Very Best of Meat Loaf from 2012.

But I agree, a full remaster with possibly some bonus content (that Live from Wembley VHS finally on DVD?) would be nice.

[Danny L]

Meat says he completely wants to rerecord his vocals for this album, but keep the rest!

[rockfenris2005]

Yes. It comes up in a 1994 interview as well that I heard maybe last year. He said in that one that he and Jim Steinman were actually talking about it. But if he's going to do it, I wish he would just rerecord the whole thing. It's not just the vocals. The whole thing could sound better to me. I don't know how much a remaster could improve it. These are great songs. And that's the thing.

[PanicLord]

I was amazed at howmuch difference the remaster made to be fair. I only really listen in high quality mp3 format but the regular album I have sounds like someone taped the songs off a record player then twenty years later found the tape and burned it to a cd. Honestly it's really bad. Huge amounts of hiss and lots of detail missing. The remastered tracks are a revelation. Still a little hiss but now it is something you have to listen out for in the background and the clarity of instruments and voices is hugely improved, to the extent that on some tracks there are instruments I hadn't previously been able to pick out that are now loud and clear, and the backing vocals have far more detail with extra notes and patterns ringing through.

IGLHFBOU is my favourite song so I was truly excited to listen to them.

I don't want it rerecorded to be honest just a decent restoration would be amazing.

[rockfenris2005]

OK. I thought about this some more while I was walking. It's not the DR sound that I have a problem, I mean the arrangements and the playing. It's the quality of the recording. Not that I tend to put ML/JS into context with whatever else was going on at the time, but when I think about say Billy Joel "Glass Houses" I like it. I don't think I even want a remake of it actually, unless it was someone else doing it like a tribute album like "The Rocky Horror Punk Show" or whatever. That would actually make a pretty cool fan project (Are you paying attention, Wario? ;) )

The more I think about it, no matter how much I can understand Meat wanting to improve it, I WOULD just prefer a big remaster. We're only human after all. We can't be perfect all the time. Some albums are going to sound better than others. And if you remake one album, you can remake more.