I picked up the Pied Piper Japanese CD. It's a needle drop from an Lp. I guess the master tapes are missing in action. It would be cool if the original Heider multitracks were located and the complete show was remixed and issued.
Oh dear, I just ordered it! Is the sound awful?
The sound is ok for a needle drop. It's a Wally Heider recording so it was well engineered. You will hear slight LP surface noise on some tracks if you listen on headphones. Also, the original producer of the album had the stupid, cringeworthy idea of fading out "Walk On By" and then concurrently fading up post-production overdubbed applause over the musical fade out. Wilson's performances are of a high caliber, but one soon pines for the complete sets, remixed from the multis after hearing this Lp dub. A remix would also rescue the material from the stupid original production decisions and fade outs on some tracks. If the Heider multi-tracks still exist, one one presume they might contain unissued performances of other Wilson songs.
This YouTube clip will give you an idea of the overall sound quality, although it's a compressed mp3 so the CD sounds a bit better. A very exciting rendition of Coltrane's "Impressions:"
Many thanks for that, monkboughtlunch.
I like Jack Wilson a lot so l won't cancel my order