Daniel Amos Message Board | Print: Horrendous Disc Re-release

Posted by NonProphet on 12-28-2006 at10:02:

Shotgun Angel snafus...

...let's not forget the misspelling of Jerry Chamberlain's name on the bonus disc.

He's listed as "Jerry Chamberland"

oops! Shocked

Posted by Audiori J on 12-28-2006 at11:04:

That on that M8 one? The only thing I liked about that one (Shotgun Angel 25th) was the layout because Brian Heydn did it, I thought it looked cool. The album isn't too bad, they did add some noise to it somehow. The bonus disc ended up quite a bit worse after manufacturing, not sure what they did to it. We were told they were going to remaster them, maybe they did it in fruity loops or something. I am just glad the M8 days are over.

Posted by MarkyMark77 on 12-28-2006 at14:58:

So, should I ask?

What was the deal with M8?
I knew they did the "Little Red Riding Hood" re-release, etc., but, what exactly was it and who was behind it, and how did our favorite bands get involved in it?

Posted by servantsteve on 12-28-2006 at15:02:

M8 are poopyheads. The quality of their recording is the equivalent of a tin can and a string. They can take good masters and make horrid copies. If they did Horrendous Disc, it would have been horrendouser than the hound of Larry Norman could make it.

Posted by audiori on 12-28-2006 at21:13:

quote:

Originally posted by MarkyMark77
So, should I ask?

What was the deal with M8?
I knew they did the "Little Red Riding Hood" re-release, etc., but, what exactly was it and who was behind it, and how did our favorite bands get involved in it?

M8 started out years ago as bootleggers. They actually printed catalogs of bootleg live CDs and videos that they would sell to people.. the artists received nothing from it.

Then, I guess somewhere in the late 1990s, they wanted to try to become a semi-legitmate company. For some reason, Warm&Filled hooked up with them pretty early on and wanted to keep using them for various releases. I think the attraction was just that they would be willing to shell out the cash for almost any project. But, Jason and I always hated it because 1) we knew their past and didn't fully trust them, 2) they would always give the bands the 'worst deal possible, and 3) the more power they were given on something, the more they would screw it up. Some of the earliest releases weren't too bad.. like "Late" by the 77s. Things like that turned out great because it was the band putting it together and then handing it over to M8 to manufacture. That actually worked fairly well. (Although, the band would also get a sickeningly small number of the discs to sell.. in some cases, we would sell out in a few months or so.. that also caused many of those titles to go out of print rather quickly, because the band wasn't making enough on each release to pay bills and reprint it in many cases).

But, as time went on, M8 pushed to be more in control of the releases they were distributing.. and unfortunately, Warm&Filled seemed to be more willing to let them do things on their own or at least have more control over stuff. They started changing artwork, adding in weird stuff.. on one release, they nearly put "M8" in gold letters all the way around the cover. It got to where almost anything they had control over would be screwed up. For the Alarma! Bookset.. the only thing they had control over was proofreading. And that turned out to be about the only thing that was wrong with it... there were some rather large typos in there *that weren't in the original text that was given to them*. So, they actually *created* typos out of text that was prepared for them.

The horrible "Little Red Riding Hood" and the mediocre "Shotgun Angel" reissues were the last straws. Those were two releases that they did almost entirely by themselves (the only exception was the layout on SA, which was the only thing that really turned out ok with either of those releases). W&F finally cut ties with them for good after that.. I'm not entirely sure why it took so long, but at least it finally happened.

I remember hearing from W&F that those releases were coming... then, much to our horror, they suddenly showed up on our front doorstep. I remember how my heart sank when I opened the box and looked at LRRH. Then, we popped them in the CD player and heard how they sounded. We were on our way to Nashville to meet up with the former manager.. the first thing we said about them was that the bands were going to hate them. He looked like he had just seen a ghost... all of the blood drained out of his face. A few days later, we were back in St Louis and the Dogs were coming through.. we asked them what they thought of LRRH in particular and one of them said "Throw'em in the dumpster." Tongue

So we did.

Posted by Mountain Fan on 01-02-2007 at11:57:

and now for the rest of the M8 story/opinion:

Well, as a fan I don't really care that much how poor quality M8 Shotgun Angel and LRRH were - because if it weren't for them, I wouldn't have them on CD (I do have original LRRH on cassette, though). Tongue

They definitely sounded far better than bootlegs and I dare say better than a worn cassette too.

I hope the ongoing quest for quality doesn't translate into unnecessary delay on future re-release projects.

Posted by audiori on 01-02-2007 at15:27:

Nah, I don't think so. Most of M8's mistakes could have been fixed in 10 minutes.

Posted by Mark on 01-03-2007 at16:39:

It seemed like M8 fell apart very quickly afterwards.

Posted by Audiori J on 01-03-2007 at16:42:

I think they also got into some hot water.

On Horrendous Disc, Larry emailed and said they are done looking over the contract and added their adjustments. They are sending a copy to us and we will have to see if there's anything they added that needs clarified. Its all a negotiation.

Posted by Mark on 01-03-2007 at16:47:

I'm really looking forward to this especially if it has the HD bonus songs done around the same time.

I would think Larry wants this done, because the $ will help him too. A couple of months ago he was auctioning off several things, guitars I think.

Posted by Audiori J on 01-03-2007 at16:48:

Yeah that was half of our intent in doing it. It can be good for both parties to make it a good release.

Posted by Mark on 01-03-2007 at16:56:

The guitars he was auctioning were quite interesting, if I remember right. I don't think I recognized them. To me they looked like cheap guitars with unknown brands. I'm no expert, so they may have been rare and worth a lot of money. I can't remember if I heard how much they sold for.

Posted by Audiori J on 01-03-2007 at16:57:

Yeah I have no idea on that stuff. I could never make it out to oregon for his auction/concert things.

Posted by Mark on 01-03-2007 at17:00:

I just checked and you can still see the guitars on his website under the news section. One is hand carved.