McCartney- Ram

[w_]

Sweet Jesus does this record sound great.

[Zygomorph]

It certainly has that Abbey Road hi-fi with a tinge of lo-fi quality.

And of course, it's Paul McCartney! At that time he was still playing with the idea of not only making records at home (<i>McCartney</i>) but records that <i>sounded</i> like Home, even if they were made at Abbey Road. Of course, McCartney's idea of what Home sounds like is a bit bizarre, but very endearing. In any case, that's one reason why the overall sonic qualities and affects behind RAM might be so appealing to TapeOppers.

One of my favorite moments on the record is in "Eat at Home" where he and Linda sing "Come on little la-dEH-deh-deh-deh-deh-deh"... accenting the end of "lady" to make it repeat with echo to fill out the measure. Whenever I sing that song, I always sing the echoes. It's a hard thing to place an echo effect so judiciously that it naturally becomes part of the lyrics... or rather, rarely does one get to do it unless it unless you plan it out at songwriting. And that usually happens, I think, to DIY recording songwriters who record themselves at home, for whom the recording equipment becomes another musical instrument in the proper sense.

[tfred812]

Always liked Ram. I don't know about lo-fi, tho. It was recorded at CBS and A&R Studios in New York, with Phil Ramone among the engineers. Hugh McCracken and David Spinozza were the guitarists on the sessions, and the New York Philharmonic appears on a couple of tracks. Probably pretty state of the art sound for '71.

[Zygomorph]

First, sorry about the slipup about where it was recorded.

And also, how the heck does one delete a post, sorry about the duplicate up there.

By "lo-fi" I mean several things. First, I mean the intimacy of the sounds-in-themselves with relation to the recording. There's a lot of the same bedroomy quality going on in Ram as there is in McCartney. Probably the most obvious example of this is the title track itself, which features all sorts of random blips of stuff on the tape before the song starts, and then when the song starts, it's a ukelele and foot-tapping! Furthermore, you can hear him breathing, etc. All these little sounds that in more 'commercial' recordings are nominally eliminated.

Second, I have noticed that in more complex productions, such as this one - where there are odd and interesting combinations of sounds, samples, spaces, etc. - it becomes more obvious that the engineering is being pushed to its current limits. For example, if you listen carefully to a lot of pop tunes from the late sixties, such as the Mamas and Papas or the Beatles, you can actually figure out which things were recorded first and bounced, hear edits and noises, and so on. The recordings have a certain labored quality. And I love these things! My theory is that these types of artifacts of engineering were purposefully encouraged or permitted by McCartney and his production team.

Listen to the very opening of the record, for example. There's totally some sort of 60-cycle buzz in the right channel which continues throughout the entire track. What it is why it's there is up for grabs, but I'm guessing that they were just concerned with other things when it got printed during the five billion percussion overdubs.

As for State-of-the-Art sound in terms of pure engineering at around the same time, the first name that comes to mind is Enoch Light. I am always blown away by the Free Design stuff, it sounds magnificent and more in line with what we now consider to be a "tight" pop production than Ram.

[w_]

Listen to the very opening of the record, for example. There's totally some sort of 60-cycle buzz in the right channel which continues throughout the entire track. What it is why it's there is up for grabs, but I'm guessing that they were just concerned with other things when it got printed during the five billion percussion overdubs.

Which reminds me...unfortunately I only have this on CD because I haven't been able to track down a vinyl copy yet, but at 1:57 into "Ram On" everything quickls pans to the right channel for a half of a secongd and then returns to where it was. I wonder if this was an intentional "trippy" effect or an error...or an error intentionally left in.

[Groovedog]

I am psyched to hear of others loving "Eat at Home".........It is a gem that I haven't heard in a while........thanks for reminding me how pleasing that album is to the ears

[Zygomorph]

I noticed that too, about "Ram On". It might be a tape dropout at the time of the digital transfer that was unfixable. It would be great to know if it's on the original vinyl pressings.

[pantone247]

I've not heard Ram, but I am listening to McCartney constantly these days, such a great sounding record. Dry dry drums, cracked up vocals, all very first take sounding

I must pick up Ram