We are in a strange age…….To STREAM…...or ……..To COLLECT? Or BOTH?
It was summer 1988 when we first got our hands on a well mastered CD set on Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons 25th Anniversary 3 CD Box Set and how lucky we felt. 26 years ago.
2024 opened with news of ever diminishing sales of Compact Discs….just as 2400 ‘world-wide’ fans bought the highly researched and highly priced ‘Working Our Way Back To You’ Snapper Music ‘career spanning’ Box Set of 44 of these little physical music storage discs in an age were everyone in the music industry is now focusing on the income from streaming. Music listening has changed, and as a result, the owners of past music have had to think hard about how to preserve a good income stream. Most fans of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons are not optimistic about getting more from the ‘Partnership’ on CD. Sales of CD’s generally reached a peak by 2001, but now sales are a third of that peak. The music pundits however see new trends emerging. The study of ‘generations’ and their life experiences is now big business in understanding how music income will be generated in ‘Future Years’[as Frankie Valli sings]. “Generations provide the opportunity to look at Americans [does the rest of the world really exist?] both by their place in the life cycle – whether a young adult, a middle-aged parent or a retiree – and by their membership in a cohort of individuals who were born at a similar time.”
How do Frankie and Bob and their music story, help their families cope with their legacy and the past with future generations.? Will the music that related to ‘Boomers’ have any impact on future generations of fans, now that the show that captured ‘Millennials’ with Jersey Boys extended the relevance of their catchy songs.?
This article is I believe essential reading for us all. It is “a reminder that generations themselves are inherently diverse and complex groups, not simple caricatures.” Many of us may be ‘Boomers’ but we are not yet ‘Silent’ and we have a right to voice our wishes re past music ‘errors’ and the correction of mis-information and suppression of art during our long lives. This has been the background to our calls for more unreleased tracks from ‘the vaults’. Too many have not had the sheer joy of hearing emotional and entertaining music by our favourite vocalist and his past collaborators. Rex Woodard, Frank Rovello, Stuart Miller and Stefan Wriedt are just some no longer with us that were celebrated in the box set as contributors who never got to hear the achievement. They are the ‘Silent’ generation who we will all eventually join.
But as my great-grandson reaches his ‘first’ birthday, I wonder if he will ever understand why this music was so important to me and why I campaigned so many decades for more? Four Seasons music may in the future simply be a catchy ‘streaming’ oddity with little relevance in the music revenue expectations. Perhaps the ‘tap has almost run dry’ for Bob and Frankie?
The readers of this blog will be ‘cohorts’[is that the same as ‘friends’?] that shared experience of the group across several decades and probably most are ‘collectors’ with physical product like the Box Set. But we see that we are now deeply in to a new age for music as after 35 years of buying/owning and playing the humble CD we see forecasts of its demise before our own!! With Vinyl sales now peaking in the age of ‘streaming’ ……...what will the future hold for our listening as our fave artist reaches his 90th birthday.? He will be happy that his family and his partner in music [Bob Gaudio at 81] can feel satisfaction at the major achievement of a physical product of their music that is so comprehensive in the Box Set. Well almost!!!
As Master Track Adviser to the Box Set, I am happy that we achieved with the Snapper Team an amazing Collectors Item. My commitment was for it to be as comprehensive as possible, and perhaps, on the face of it that was achieved. But the reality is, as I have explained in these blogs, that barely 75% of the potential work has been reviewed and there are still unheard tracks to be released. My disappointment too is that not all in the Box Set is mastered to the best sound quality.
So are there reasons for the deficiencies, and is there a way to approach the problems that would help us as fans and the ‘Partnership’ and their successors.? I can only analyse and advise based on my experience as a former Project Manager and on the developing technologies for music sharing. World events and major government decisions may shape an uncertain future.
The key success of the Snapper Box Set Project was the collaboration and teamwork that the late Bob Fisher and I generated. Bill Inglot was commissioned and contributed to this as much as the financial structure supported his research. By the end of the research it became apparent that he would have insufficient time funded to identify all stored music, as 200+ unmarked tapes remained unheard. He did what he could with the funds available from Snapper Music. The network of fan collectors contributed over 5% of the Bonus Rare or Unreleased Tracks along with many ‘released’ songs not preserved within the Partnerships own storage facility. Decades of poor tape management since the 1960s became apparent.
Secondly the teamwork did not extend to Snapper, the Partnership and Universal Motown in terms of research and mastering. We were shut out of quality assurance.
I found a quote in old posts re Motown Unreleased and the man Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons fans relied on to help achieve the release of the unheard recordings by them in the Motown Tape Archive. He got a job that led to becoming the Vault Services Manager at Universal Motown and he has been there for over 20 years. A collector said of him, “On the Motown front, you have Andy Skurow. He first got involved with Universal by sending in suggestions for a series of compilations. Somebody liked the idea and used it without giving Andy the credit. Fortunately, Andy was offered a small job in the office from where he has used his knowledge and enthusiasm to get things done.” He has done sterling main research on projects such as the Bobby Darin’s retrospective Motown CD ‘Go Ahead And Back-Up’ in conjunction with Real Gone Music assembling 24 ‘Unreleased’ tracks from the early 1970s at Motown so we anticipated a full collaboration and review based on our offer to help. Snapper supplied our Tape Index List and I attempted to ‘reach-out’ to him as he ‘pulled’ tapes from Iron Mountain Storage for research. We had 52 Artists Cards from the Motown microfiche records but he did not ask us for these or find them internally within their data files[or even reply to me]. We only received, via Snapper, news that Tape Box Notes revealed 19 unreleased tracks with vocals listed and a possible 11 more. We received only one tape box scan and awaited further involvement and listening tests or transfers but Andy Skurow was unwilling to collaborate with Bob Fisher and I. Instead it was agreed with Bob Gaudio [who also did not communicate with our research team] that Snapper would pay for ‘a number of tapes’ to be supplied to Bob Gaudio for evaluation. We never found out what was supplied [or missed?] but some we were told had tape boxes indicating NO VOCAL. But as they have always said at Motown...’You never know what is there until you play the tape!!
Amazingly Bob Gaudio must have played the tapes as tracks listed as NO VOCAL were eventually found by Bob Gaudio and ‘approved’ and supplied to Snapper for inclusion. [eg ‘What Love Has Joined Together’]. It remained unclear with 11 tapes still to be reviewed by Andy Skurow just how many vocals would turn up but we eventually got approval to 13 with 2 tracks from the Michael Masser sessions [ ‘Minute By Minute’ and ‘After You’] which did not have a confirmed Master Tape. What great finds these are. Several tape boxes listed from the original tape index were indicated as NO VOCALS by Frankie Valli in Andy Skurow’s Tape Box review and were listed as for example, ‘re-assigned to ‘The Jacksons’ or ‘Suzie Ikeda’ or ‘The Commodores’ and some were listed as ‘working vocals’ which would indicate they were incomplete. That doesn’t mean the recording by Valli doesn’t exist. Notation on Artists Cards for several were listed with Motown Master Numbers which would indicate that they were complete and some had been copied to T Tape[Safety Copies] The whole review was in my opinion incomplete and remains controversial particularly as the Artists Cards were not checked. As a result the track information in the Box Set is incomplete. I have posted some of the additional track data in a past blog-post. Such a significant library of tracks clearly deserved better research and I maintain that Universal need to do more and complete and verify the search of all of the source tapes both Multi-Track and STEREO Mix-down copies.[including T Tapes where indicated by Artists Cards]
And finally whilst many will be happy with the sound of the Discs in the Box Set, there are 13 Discs below an optimum Mastering standard and all are from the early 1960s. But I have already fixed that with retrieval and re-setting CD Masters from the 1990s that have preserved the ‘original STEREO’ Masters in best sound quality. They and pristine MONO Mixes from our studio are in our DIGITAL LIBRARY for ‘FutureGenz’
But all this aside it does not remove the problem that there are no funds to complete any further research unless Bob Gaudio or his son Shannon commit to it, [Bob’s age and interest may prevent this] and given there is no avenue to a release the material as a result of the slowing of the CD market and any simple financial model for track release. The expected return on such tracks by both Universal and the FSP is just unrealistic for 50 year plus recordings or the recovery costs are not being ‘amortised’ over their sales life income stream.Some independent Record Companies are only interested in releasing on vinyl now and there will be no output from Universal. There are still respected 60s artists that still have unreleased tracks sitting in known ‘digital recovery’ in their Vault Services team but no pathway to release. This is important to us as we are ‘collectors’ more than ‘streamers’.
Clearly things will change as ‘streaming’ is not adequate sound quality for serious listeners and their catalogues do not contain the many ‘Bonus Tracks’ that have appeared in past CD releases. This is covered up as ‘unimportant’ by the streaming services. But GenZ collectors in our fan groups are increasing and as the above listed article indicates they will want physical product…….and the major publications are recognising the loss of great artists and recognising their catalogues.[most recently The Detroit Spinners]
Music consumption will evolve and access to tracks will change and it is the technologies, debates and events that will shape every generations needs as more respect for lost past music is continually revealed. The Tape holders have with-held these tracks for decades with casual curation and someone needs to act on our research and accept that not enough has been done. The FSP should want more respect for the full history and push the research. They have the resources. Collaboration brings success for artists and fans. We will continue to pursue a further review of the Motown Tapes and of the ‘lost’ unmarked reels sitting in the FSP storage. CD’s remain a viable outlet as vinyl is so expensive [and difficult] to manufacture and with streaming you still have incomplete playlists of the artists which are never comprehensive. I believe a CD based Motown Label Review of Frankie and the group with fully annotated session notes and top quality mastering is still a viable commercial product.[a 5 CD Box Set] There may only be around 3000 fans worldwide willing to pay a premium price for such a release but ‘Next GEN’ people are finding out what we have maintained for decades…...The Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons catalogue at Motown is a superb set of music and needs completion.
Ken Charmer
PS Checkout [and sound sample] this recently SOLD OUT CD from Ace Records of London which shows that unreleased tracks on CD are still selling…..and these are it seems all Charlie Calello productions
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