SFBM songs that you can hear the "old" Live in Options

[Existentialist]

Whether you like the album or not, there's no debating that SFBM is a very different sounding album from the likes of MJ through TDTH. But, are there any songs on SFBM where you hear an "old" Live sound coming through?

I think the most obvious one for me is the outro on Where Do We Go From Here, which to me sounds like something of the later TDTH vintage along the lines of The Distance jam sessions that took place on the Live and Counting Crows tour.

Unfortunately, that's the only moment of the "old" Live coming through that I hear. Let's hear some ideas...

[Alex]

That's the point, it's what makes MJ great amongst other things. The problem with Live's albums now is that they are overproduced to the point where it completely destroys music. Sofia is a great example. So is Life Marches On, over produced so badly, they completely ruined the fucking music.

MJ is raw and not tampered with, part of what makes it great. Guess you can't expect children to recognize something truly great, even when it's staring them straight in the face. Gives me great faith in our future generation, jesus.

What do you mean by 'overproduced'? I just had a listen to Life Marches On, very basic run down is this:

Drums. Very compressed snare sound, and very squashed kit in general.
Bass. Low in the mix. Again, very compressed, but I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing with the bass guitar.
Guitars. Double tracked L+R in the verses, 2 more come playing different inversions in the chorus. Light distortion.
Vocals. Again, very compressed. Pretty straight forward mix in the verses. Has slight vocal chorus during the choruses, along with some unusually placed BV's.

The bridge has a lot of what I think are non-sensical effects happening- is this the kind of thing you were referring to? Major 'underwater' flanger on lead vox, minor effects on other vox.

The end has a couple of interesting reverb tails and effects, followed by that 'incorrect' bass slide which, again, gives me a distinct picture of Pat sitting on a chair in the control room, DI'ing the bass in.

The whole song has a very 'multi-tracked' sound to it. Very precise, and quite obviously not all performing at the same time in a room. Couple this with even more compression at the mastering stage, and you get the BOP production.

I'm just curious about which aspects lead you to calling it overproduced?

(I could go a lot deeper in to this, but there's probably not much point)

MJ is raw and not tampered with, part of what makes it great. Guess you can't expect children to recognize something truly great, even when it's staring them straight in the face. Gives me great faith in our future generation, jesus.

I don't know if you're referring to me here, but I'll answer as if you are. I can understand what you mean, to be honest- not that a lot of teenagers pay attention to the techincal aspects of recording. On the other side of things, there are a lot of 'indie' kids think they're the beatles, and are all about 'old fashioned' recording.

(The beautifully ironic part is that whilst some of them use vintage equipment and convince themselves that they sound like they're from the 60's, a lot of them don't use it how it was originally intended. Micing close when back then it was very frowned upon back then, etc.)

The thing is, you claim MJ has a 'raw, untampered' sound.. but it doesn't. It has very obvious (unnatural) reverbs and delays happening. It's not bad, but it has quite an 80's/ early 90's sound to it. I'm not particularly fond of this sound myself. And whilst I like music to have mistakes, and to sound human (which 99% of mainstream music doesn't anymore), I also like music that has lots of layers. Sgt Peppers, Abbey Road, Pet Sounds are early examples of this- and they still manage to sound raw.

Sorry about another long post. I just type furiously and then find that I've rambled.