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Jefferson Airplane / The CD Vinyl Replica Collection / 9CD box set

By Paul Sinclair

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Jefferson_airplane_vinylreplica

Culture Factory are to release three ‘CD Vinyl Replica Collection’ box sets later this month including this nine-CD collection featuring psychedelic rockers Jefferson Airplane.

The label is well known for its vinyl replica CD releases and over the years they’ve reissued catalogue albums from artists such as Robert Palmer, Donna Summer, The Stranglers and Suzanne Vega.

The Jefferson Airplane box will be released alongside sets from Quicksilver Messenger Service and Hot Tuna and will feature all seven studio albums of the original era and two live sets:

  • • Takes Off (1966)
  • • Surrealistic Pillow (1967)
  • • After Bathing at Baxter’s (1967)
  • • Crown Of Creation (1968)
  • • Bless Its Pointed Little Head (1969, live)
  • • Volunteers (1969)
  • • Bark (1971)
  • • Long John Silver (1972)
  • • Thirty Seconds Over Winterland (1973, live)

The 12″ x 12″ numbered box is a limited edition of 1000 worldwide, with Culture Factory rather over egging the pudding with “Special release for Fans & Collectors only: Ultra Deluxe Set!”

There is no doubt that their vinyl replicas are excellent and really look the part with the black-finish discs and reproduced record label. It’s fair to say that they are probably the best I’ve seen outside of Japan. So for example, in this set, the Bark cardboard jacket comes in a custom-made re-creation of the brown paper grocery bag (with J.A. logo) that housed the original LP, and the Long John Silver ‘paper sleeve’ features the original photo of cigars and the song lyrics, and its printed, folded, perforated cardboard ‘sheath’ can be assembled into a mini-cigar box, just like the original release.

Despite the groovy packaging, the jury is out on some of the label’s remastering, with the Culture Factory version of Robert Palmer‘s Some People Can Do What They Like described as “dreadful” when we asked a professional audio engineer to examine it two years ago.

jeffersonairplane_poster
Large poster

Culture Factory also continue to say this about their CDs: “remastered sound is 96 kHz/24-bit high definition”. This is rather meaningless and fairly misleading since a CD is limited to 44.1 kHz / 16 bit and no standard CD isn’t capable of delivering ‘high-definition’ sound. They presumably mean the source tapes are transferred to 96 kHz/24-bit high definition digital files which are then remastered and used to produce the CDs. Why not say that then?!

Each box comes with a 1′ x 2′ tour poster designed exclusively for these sets by Dennis Loren, along with an LP-sized 28-page booklet featuring extensive liner notes by Richie Unterberger, rare photos, memorabilia and a reproduction of the original LP artwork in 12-inch format.

The Jefferson Airplane CD Vinyl Replica Collection is released on 17 December 2015. Similar sets from Hot Tuna and Quicksilver Messenger Service also available.

pre-order

jefferson_airplane-back
click to enlarge

track_listing

Disc: 1
1. The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil
2. A Small Package of Value Will Come to You, Shortly
3. Young Girl Sunday Blues Martha
4. Wild Tyme
5. The Last Wall of the Castle
6. Rejoyce
7. Watch Her Ride
8. Spare Chaynge
9. Two Heads
10. Won’t You Try/Saturday Afternoon

Disc: 2
1. Have You Seen the Saucers
2. Feel So Good
3. Crown of Creation
4. When the Earth Moves Again
5. Milk Train
6. Trial By Fire
7. Twilight Double Leader

Disc: 3
1. When the Earth Moves Again
2. Feel So Good
3. Crazy Miranda
4. Pretty As You Feel
5. Wild Turkey
6. Law Man
7. Rock and Roll Island
8. Third Week in the Chelsea
9. Never Argue with a German If You’re Tired or European Song
10. Thunk
11. War Movie

Disc: 4
1. Clergy
2. 3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds
3. Somebody to Love
4. Fat Angel
5. Rock Me Baby
6. The Other Side of This Life
7. It’s No Secret
8. Plastic Fantastic Lover
9. Turn Out the Lights
10. Bear Melt

Disc: 5
1. Lather
2. In Time
3. Triad
4. Star Track
5. Share a Little Joke
6. Chushingura
7. If You Feel
8. Crown of Creation
9. Ice Cream Phoenix
10. Greasy Heart
11. The House at Pooneil Corners

Disc: 6
1. Long John Silver
2. Aerie (Gang of Eagles)
3. Twilight Double Leader
4. Milk Train
5. The Son of Jesus
6. Easter?
7. Trial By Fire
8. Alexander the Medium
9. Eat Starch Mom

Disc: 7
1. She Has Funny Cars
2. Somebody to Love
3. My Best Friend
4. Today
5. Comin’ Back to Me
6. 3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds
7. D.C.B.A.-25
8. How Do You Feel
9. Embryonic Journey
10. White Rabbit
11. Plastic Fantastic Lover

Disc: 8
1. Blues from An Airplane
2. Let Me in
3. Bringing Me Down
4. It’s No Secret
5. Tobacco Road
6. Come Up the Years
7. Run Around
8. Let’s Get Together
9. Don’t Slip Away
10. Chauffeur Blues
11. And I Like It

Disc: 9
1. We Can Be Together
2. Good Shepherd
3. The Farm
4. Hey Frederick
5. Turn My Life Down
6. Wooden Ships
7. Eskimo Blue Day
8. A Song for All Seasons
9. Meadowlands
10. Volunteers

 

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17 Comments

17 thoughts on “Jefferson Airplane / The CD Vinyl Replica Collection / 9CD box set”

  1. I was about to buy they Quicksilver Messenger Service box, but after reading this I’m not sure. I have the BGO-releases of Just For Love and What About Me and they don’t sound good. What About Me is awful and sound compressed / muddy and with no dynamics – like some bad vinyl transfer. Can anyone recommend better cd/digital-versions if Culture Box is not the way to go?

    I ahve the first QSM in a 2005 japanese re-issue (Toshiba/EMI) which I think sounds pretty good. And the Repertoire re-release of Happy Trails also sound ok, I think. Have anyone compared those to the ones from Culture Box?

  3. I agree with the others here that CF release a lot of great titles and faithfully reproduce the original packaging very nicely. The only problem is the mastering – way too loud and brickwalled. All the dynamics are squashed – they master cd’s for modern listeners who listen on small portable devices, not actual stereos which are becoming quite rare, apparently. I’m in the minority, however – Joe Sixpack has spoken and he likes his cd’s mastered like this, so that’s what they are getting. Audiophiles beware!

  4. I’m just happy that years ago I bought “Jefferson Airplane Loves You” at a great price, and own a gorgeous near-mint “Baxters” on vinyl, with the inserts intact. I have zero need for this over-priced, underwhelming new box.

  6. Well, Culture Factory has already released all these separately in 2003. I bet these are exactly the same. As I have the remastered and expanded CDs from BMG Heritage from 2004 I don’t see any point in any of this.

  7. I don’t know about these current box sets but I have three Culture Factory discs of power pop groups (2 x Paul Collins’ Beat and The Romantics first album). I have a Bose portable CD player and average hearing. They all sound fine to me and I like the way they look and feel. My only minor gripe is they’re a bit tight to get in and out of the card sleeves, but otherwise, I’m very happy to have them.

  9. STAY CLEAR OF THESE! Culture Factory uses terms like HD -High Definition – as though it was video. Don’t be confused, it’s *not* HDCD encoded nor is it high resolution audio. I ordered the complete Hot Tuna set from PopMarket and I regret doing so. Hands down some of the worst sounding discs I have ever heard. Remember how harsh CD’s sounded in the early 1980’s when digital -CD’s – technology was in its infancy? That’s what CF has managed to achieve in 2015 with these titles. Way too bright at the top end. Simply horrible.

  11. SDE readers would be best served to buy 1 cd and see if they can handle the approach used by Culture Factory (CF). Skipping all the technical stuff the discs are brickwalled meaning they sound really loud and flat.

    I use the CF Blue Oyster Cult “On Your Hands…” disc as a test medium for the uninitiated to demonstrate the results of this approach which was created during the loudness wars some time back. This approach has also been used in the studio since way back when.

    I will let others pass judgement. You will either hate it or love it and there is no in between
    J

  13. From http://culturefactoryusa.com/home/1831-jefferson-airplane-the-cd-vinyl-replica-collection-boxset-.html we can read:

    Culture Factory strives to achieve an authentic sound with the highest possible fidelity to the original studio masters. Our remastering process brings out the music’s true dynamics and original clarity with low levels of noise. In the remastering studio the audio tracks are handled in the form of high-definition, 96Kz / 24-bit digital files for greatest preservation of fidelity. Signal compression is sometimes used to bring out frequencies that were absent or barely heard in the original recordings, and we use the least amount of compression possible. While sound perception varies greatly among individuals our vinyl replica CDs are designed to provide the optimal listening experience when using flat EQ settings.

    Too bad that, as Paul says, CD is limited to 44.1 / 16 bit.
    At this point, HDCD mastering would have been preferable…

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