Search - Mason Proffit :: Wanted

Long overdue, yet poorly reproduced

Donald Jones | Nashville, IL United States | 06/21/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Mason Proffit deserves much more than a poorly engineered re-issue of a wonderfully diverse and groundbreaking long player. From a listener's point of view, it sounds as if Wounded Records simply took the tape used for pressing the record and transferred it to disc. As I said, not what the Talbot brothers deserve. After 4 hours of work, I was able to get the sound to a listenable level through Sony Sound Forge technology. Unfortunately, this should have been done by Wounded Records. At least now I can enjoy the richness of the music and message of Mason Proffit that Wounded Bird should have provided in the first place."

You Need to Hear This

Jack Murphy | Salt Lake City, UT USA | 05/28/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This album served as a cornerstone for more than one musical genre. Recorded in 1969, it was a first for the Talbot brothers Terry and John Michael (15 years old at the time) who went on to be trail blazers of Contemporary Christian Music. More directly, this album was hugely influential to the Eagles and others. There is a succinct musical connection that can be heard in the song "Two Hangmen" and the Eagles "Hotel California" recorded 9 years later. There is also a strong hint of the influence in "It's All Right" with the Eagles "Take It Easy". Today John Michael Talbot is a world reknown Franciscun Monk with over 40 devotional CDs to his credit. Terry went on to join Barry Mcguire as a Christian Folk duo, all worth a good listening."

5 Stars For The Music, -100 Stars for Wounded Bird!

AudioObscurica | United States | 07/17/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you already own the "Come & Gone" disc, and are hoping that these Wounded Bird reissues of "Wanted!" and "Movin' Toward Happiness" will correct your sonic woes, sorry.

The tracks on this disc are a DIRECT CLONE of the tracks on One Way's "Come & Gone" CD, issued 13 years ago at the time of this writing. That CD was a reissue of the LP of the same name, a double set issued in 1974 that feature the first two Mason Proffit albums. However, that CD was mastered from the LP master, which in turn, was a copy of a master, which in turn was mastered from copies of LP masters of the 2 albums which it contained. You do the math, we're easily talking 5 or 6 generations of signal loss & tape hiss here.

It's not that these albums were poorly recorded. Pull out your old (perhaps even beat-up) copies of them and even now you can hear a vibrancy in the mastering. Even if the tapes used for THOSE LPs were not in the best of shape today, a better mastering than what we have now would have been possible.

Another nit to pick: The "Come & Gone" CD, for all its faults, gave you 2 albums, for $13. Sound quality poor or otherwise, this is not much a loss in terms of investment. Here we have WB's discs of each of these separate albums which cost over $30 combined. So, is having the original cover art worth spending the extra near $20?

On the "Movin' Toward Happiness" disc, the compilers of the "Come & Gone" LP rearranged the track order on the second side of this album, and interrupted the segue of some tracks. WB simply cloned that CD, and reordered the songs as you or I would do with our PC without doing any actual editing whatsoever. They simply dumped the tracks into a CD burning program and re-ordered them, without actually EDITING at all. Transitions and segues just drop abruptly and the next song comes in with no gap whatsoever. The tracks were left as-is. The result is akin to the mix CDs you and I make.



Maybe one day, some overseas label will get it right, and you and I must decide if $40 a shot is worth it to get something of actual QUALITY. Can't you buy any decent American-made product anymore?"