Sports

by

Huey Lewis & The News

Edit

This is one of my all-time favorite albums; it certainly brings back lots of memories of 1984, though I did not actually own a copy until 2003. It is the hit singles that I remember hearing on the radio throughout 1984.

My favorite track would have to be "The Heart of Rock and Roll," followed closely by "I Want a New Drug" and "If This is It," which, coincidentally, were the three biggest singles.

However, this "re-mastered" edition, which was released in 1999, is very, very poor. I purchased this edition in the summer of 2003, at which time I was taking an internship in audio engineering. This "24-bit re-master" is an engineer's worst nightmare. The engineer who re-mastered this disc has taken some pretty tasteless liberties with the bass and treble.

On most of the tracks, there is too much low end bass, which makes them sound muddy and overbearing. There is also a lack of treble (high-end), making this an extremely poorly-balanced re-master. The best example of this is track #4, "I Want a New Drug." The bass drum pounds and pounds away, ready to break my car stereo speakers at any given moment. The high-end is not as airy or clear as it sounds on the old CD edition. And the following track, "Walking On a Thin Line," opens with a synthesizer bass line that is excessively overbearing.

At first, I thought that this was intentional, but after downloading mp3s of each track, presumably ripped from the original CD release, I can safely say that this release was severely botched up. The mp3s, particularly "I Want a New Drug," sound much more balanced out and tighter.

Again, a great album, but a very poor re-master. To think that this edition was intended to replace the original CD release is unthinkable.

Also, Chrysalis/Capitol Records missed an opportunity to include the extended 12" remix of "I Want a New Drug," as well as the very rare 12" remix of the first single, "Heart and Soul." I would have listened to those more than once, which is more than I can say for the existing bonus tracks, which consist of alternate session takes for "The Heart of Rock and Roll" and "Walking on a Thin Line," respectively, as well as live, concert versions of "If This is It," "Heart and Soul," and "I Want a New Drug."

UPDATE: I managed to locate a copy of the original CD edition, which sounds a heck of a lot tighter, crisper, and better balanced than this atrocity of a re-master.