Name: Universal Music Group
Age: 85
Occupation: recording company
Last Seen: Santa Monica, CA
Bee-otched For: going up in smoke
-Age: 85
Occupation: recording company
Last Seen: Santa Monica, CA
Bee-otched For: going up in smoke
It was a tragic day in 2008 when a maintenance man's blowtorch caused a wild, catastrophic fire at the Universal Studios lot in Hollywood.
The fire destroyed a King Kong exhibit and worst of all, a warehouse that stored over 40,000 video copies of movies and TV shows chronicling Universal's 100-plus years in business. After the fire, a Universal exec stifled rumors that they were the master prints, claiming that they were simply copies. The original prints of the films were kept in various vaults, including an old mine in Pennsylvania.
Now, the studio is trying to put out another fire of its own: the fact that the fire destroyed more than we thought.
The New York Times revealed in a confidential memo written shortly after the fire that 500,000 individual recordings were all destroyed in the blaze. They included classic recordings from Aretha Franklin, Chuck Berry, The Andrews Sisters, Benny Goodman and Fats Domino. Plus, later 20th century gems from Al Green, Elton John, Eric Clapton and Neil Diamond. Many 1990s and 2000s-era recordings from Nirvana, Snoop Dogg, Soundgarden and Eminem were all believed to have perished in the blaze.
When the Times report was released early today, Universal released a statement, stating "While there are constraints preventing us from publicly addressing some of the details of the fire that occurred at NBCUniversal Studios facility more than a decade ago, the incident – while deeply unfortunate – never affected the availability of the commercially released music nor impacted artists’ compensation. Further, the story contains numerous inaccuracies, misleading statements, contradictions and fundamental misunderstandings of the scope of the incident and affected assets. In fact, it conveniently ignores the tens of thousands of back catalog recordings that we have already issued in recent years – including master-quality, high-resolution, audiophile versions of many recordings that the story claims were “destroyed."
Many in the business - including Spin Magazine, whom I sourced today's BOTD from - are saying that Universal is full of shit. Many well-known tunes sadly only exist as copies and lack the quality the original masters had. Hell, even Mike D of The Beastie Boys admitted that he doesn't know where the masters to their 1986 album "Licensed to Ill" are.
The sad truth is that many of the big entertainment companies that have been around since the early 20th century - i.e. Universal, Warner Bros., Paramount, Fox, MGM and Disney - plus the major broadcast networks all have lost media. The majority of the silent movies made before 1929 are lost forever because the studios destroyed or neglected them all. Many long-lost silents have ended up in film vaults in eastern Europe turning into one pile of nitrate dust. The same goes with old TV shows. Before the age of cable TV, home video and streaming, NBC, CBS and ABC would reuse tapes of everything from soap operas, game shows and even sporting events like the first Super Bowl for other TV programs. I've even read that ABC reused tapes of the 1971-75 run of Password for Family Feud. Now that we have channels like Game Show Network and Buzzr, I'll betcha that those networks are PISSED that they wiped all those shows.
I know, recordings of all those tunes wiped away in that fire will live on. We'll still have Nirvana's "Nevermind" and Soundgarden's "Superunknown" for centuries to come since unlike silent movies and old TV shows, people are allowed to have copies today. **WARNING: BABA BOOEY "PIECES OF VINYL" TALK AHEAD** However, in this age in which vinyl outsells CDs by a mile and a half, those who ACTUALLY buy records know that vinyl has a fuller, richer sound than a digital CD. So yes, that copy of "Superunknown" that I bought in 1995 should sound better today if it were remastered from the original tapes if I were to buy a vinyl version of it right now.
Over time, recordings will lose layers of sound quality, or as they call them, generations if one tape is recorded off of the master, and that master is recorded onto another recording and so on. It's like this YouTube video. So centuries from now, if one wants to listen to Eminem, he'll sound like he has diarrhea spewing out of his mouth.
It's important that ALL media over time is saved. OK, maybe not a blank screen when the local TV station experiences technical difficulties, but we're talking about everything from local newscasts to other local shows. Music, movies and so on should be saved for posterity. Universal should be shamed for not admitting that the recordings destroyed in that blaze were the originals. If audiophiles discover that the vinyl copy they bought of Nine Inch Nails' "The Downward Spiral" was mastered off of an old CD, they have every right to be pissed.
At least some forms of the recordings exist, especially of dead artists. If I were to buy a Nirvana album and it's really a karaoke album, I'm suing.
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Bee-otch of the Day Archives can be seen on http://beeotchoftheday.blogspot.com
Bee-otch of the Day is a production of Chuck69.com, Grand Rapids' site for Stern, politics and more!
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