Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review the extras. We know it's a classic., 30 Mar 2009
The albums a classic. There's nothing more I can add to what's already been said in heralding this album.....so i'll concentrate on the merits of this version of the re-release ie the MTV show, the Re-Mix and the new tracks.
Starting with the Re-Mix. I love it. There had been a suggestion that you would hardly spot the difference but for me it's there in spades. I'm not saying it's better, and the original slightly muddier lower budget production, I suppose, was part of it's charm. However, on the re-mix you can now clearly pick out all the relevant instruments as clear as a bell....which is particularly good if you have ever tried learing some of the guitar parts which in the original mix sometimes dissappear in a wall of sound.
One of the best parts of getting into a band is discovering them in the first place and then discovering more and more in an album listen after listen......and it's not often you get a chance to discover that classic moment all over again.
As far as the MTV DVD is concerned the quality is excellent and it's great to have that memory of the band in the early days with the whole band looking a little shy but sounding so assured, completely unaware of the classic status they would achieve. The quality of the music and performance is excellent...better in fact than I remembered.
Finally, the extra tracks. Bearing in mind that Lost Dogs trawled through most of their unreleased past and had seemed to prove they'd were not capable of releasing a dud, the extras do not really live up to those expectations. However, the first of these, Brother, is pretty good, as is Just a Girl, although I could have lived without the latter.
State of Love and Trust and Breath and a Scream are just earlier versions of the two on the 'Singles' film soundtrack release, but give you a good feel for what they started out as......and makes you appreciate the fact they took time to improve them.
Evil Little Goat is worth it for the smile it puts on your face. 2000 Miles Blues....doesn't do any harm.
All in all this is one re-release that's really been worth the purchase.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Reviewing the extras, 20 April 2009
Like one of the previous reviewers I'm reviewing this based on whether as a big fan of the band its worth paying for the extras and remixes if you already own the original classic debut.
There seems to be mixed feelings about the remixes. I don't know about the technical details but I know that the redux version by Brendan O'Brien sounds great. Finally when you make a mix CD the tracks from Ten aren't quieter than the others. Also the sound is much clearer without the heavy reverb of the original. But.... they are different to the versions of Alive, Evenflow etc that were remixed (again by Brendan O'Brien) for the Greatest Hits collection not long ago. And... I think I prefer the versions from this collection - they had little extra vocal bits and slightly different sounding intros sometimes. Just a matter of personal preference I suppose.
Extra tracks in my opinion are not going to hold the attention of even the most die-hard fan for long. The exception to this is Brother (with lyrics that were absent from the Lost Dogs version) which is pretty good.
The DVD of MTV Unplugged looks and sounds great. I've never seen it and it was great to see the band at such an early stage - a little shyer but sounding fantastic. I loved the end when Eddie and Jeff go a bit crazy and get up on their stools and of course the comedy moment previously where Eddie falls off his stool. Well worth having.
The booklet was very dissapointing. I was hoping for some freshly penned liner notes from the band recounting their experiences and mindset when forming the band and creating the album. Instead we get a bunch of arty photos and scribbles and old posters for early gigs with the likes of Alice in Chains and the Screaming Trees amongst others. Mildly interesting but nothing out of the ordinary.
The price tag is possibly a little steep here as well I feel, given that its basically a special edition of the album (do we really need two different versions?) with a DVD and some fancy packaging. I think maybe £15-£17 would have been a little more reasonable.
So overall I really like the remix and the DVD but with the other extras being a little bit dissapointing - and the hefty price tag I rate it four stars overall (but obviously the album itself is a five-star classic).
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14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Surely they can do better than this?, 9 April 2009
Firstly let me say that I'm a massive fan of Pearl Jam and I think the original Ten is a masterpiece.
However, this edition has major problems. Firstly the first disc, the remastered disc, sounds worse than the original pressing. This is due to the disc being mastered about 4 dBa louder than the original, and to do this the dynamic range had to be compressed. This results in the complex layering being merged together, sounding flat and indistinct. If this is remastering then so is turning up the volume on my hi-fi and putting a pillow in front of the speakers!
The second disc the "remixed" disc is more interesting and features a clearer, simpler and less layered sound when compared to the original versions. Are the tracks better? No. Are they worse? No, just different.
Unfortunately this second disc is mastered just as loud (or 'hot') as the first disc, though admittedly it gets away with it more than the first disc does (due to it's relative simplicity).
However this second disc is not what 'The Freedom Sessions' is to 'Fumbling Towards Ecstasy', the remixed disc is just a remixed disc rather than alternate versions.
So if you don't have the original, then I'd recommend you buy that instead of this edition. If you have the original then I'd recommend that you go for the next edition up that adds a DVD-Video of their MTV Unplugged session, but keep hold of your original!
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