The Day the Music Burned

[zekezebra]

Not sure if anyone posted this yet:

It was the biggest disaster in the history of the music business — and almost nobody knew. This is the story of the 2008 Universal fire.
New York Times article

 

[suzywong]

We’d already booked a day at universal for our upcoming holiday, which was scheduled for late June-July 2008 - less than a month after the fire. And which was to have included the tour of....the backlot!

Still had a good day though, including earth tremors, which daughter#1 & I didn’t notice coz we were on a rollercoaster at the time!

 

[hockman]

I am surprised this article has not generated more responses here. This is shocking.

 

[Tony L]

I had heard about it, but not quite the extent. Has anyone been able to locate a proper full list of what was lost?

 

[Nick_G]

That is truly shocking. 500,000 titles gone forever. If music is a river ecosystem (well, we do stream), then the DNA blueprint of hundreds of thousands of species have been destroyed forever.

 

[Tony L]

That is truly shocking. 500,000 titles gone forever. If music is a river ecosystem (well, we do stream), then the DNA blueprint of hundreds of thousands of species have been destroyed forever.

I’d have thought/hoped a very substantial quantity of that inventory had already been transferred to digital (hopefully high-res), so the actual music shouldn’t be lost. As an example how much John Coltrane was still lying in the vaults unreleased? I can’t imagine there would be much. I guess it will be a more worrying picture for less significant artists, some off which may be lost forever, though by saying that may never have been acknowledged or reissued anyway. This is why I’d like to see an actual list of what went. It sounds horrific, and it is simply inexcusable from a historical artefact custodial role, but in reality many old masters are long past their best now being barely playable and the best transfers possible were made decades ago. I can think of a lot where the first early-80s CDs are the best we’ll ever get aside from original vinyl as the masters have worn out or delaminated.

I’d really like to see more detail to this story anyway.

 

[Arkless Electronics]

Wow! Just read it... truly shocking.

 

[evand]

Not to worry, I’m sure Bob has most of these in MQA

 

[DGP]

I’d have thought/hoped a very substantial quantity of that inventory had already been transferred to digital (hopefully high-res), so the actual music shouldn’t be lost. As an example how much John Coltrane was still lying in the vaults unreleased? I can’t imagine there would be much. I guess it will be a more worrying picture for less significant artists, some off which may be lost forever, though by saying that may never have been acknowledged or reissued anyway. This is why I’d like to see an actual list of what went. It sounds horrific, and it is simply inexcusable from a historical artefact custodial role, but in reality many old masters are long past their best now being barely playable and the best transfers possible were made decades ago. I can think of a lot where the first early-80s CDs are the best we’ll ever get aside from original vinyl as the masters have worn out or delaminated.

I’d really like to see more detail to this story anyway.

There's a secondary link in the article to a list of what burned in terms of artists and eras but no full detail.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/us/master-recordings-universal-fire.html?module=inline

DGP

 

[Hove 100]

Thanks for the link.

Interesting , shocking and sad.

 

[Arkless Electronics]

It seemed to suggest that vast amounts of 1st rank stuff like Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, some Steely Dan etc etc (just a few of the famous names mentioned) was lost forever but then towards the end it suggests that tapes of many of the most famous and "valuable" artists had already been digitised. It would be interesting to know if for example "Battle Royal: the duke meets the count" or "Ella and Louis", stuff of that musical and historic importance, and which many of us will own copies of, were lost... no remastered 24/96 and 180g vinyl ever to happen for classics such as these (No idea If these examples have had 2496 remastered versions issued... but you know what I mean)

 

[Zagreus]

If these were the original masters and the copies that now exist are being used for so called re-mastering, what are we buying? When very well known material is re-released, e.g Sgt. Peppers, we are given chapter and verse on what was used to create what we end up buying. It does make you wonder where the material from artists that are not so well known comes from. I know from time to time the quality of some re-masters is questioned on various forums, could this be the reason?

 

[Tony L]

I know from time to time the quality of some re-masters is questioned on various forums, could this be the reason?

Most of the time the tapes are legit, but the decisions made in the mastering suite pretty terrible (over-use of compression, de-noising, boosting bass etc).

 

[Joe P]

This is news to me. How tragic.

Joe

 

[Arkless Electronics]

This is news to me. How tragic.

Joe

Yeah I vaguely remembered the huge fire at Universal being on the news but the loss of all this valuable archived material was equally new to me!

 

[Tony L]

A predictably long and fast-growing thread over on Steve Hoffman’s site. The suggestion being that pretty much the full Impulse and Chess catalogues have been lost along with mountains of other stuff. Clearly a tragedy from a historic perspective, these are high-points in human culture, though hopefully most of the music still exists digitally or on copy-masters elsewhere in the world.

It is also interesting to note just how many very high-price audiophile vinyl cuts of Impulse jazz titles and things like Muddy Waters Folk Singer have appeared since 2008. Hmmm....

PS Thinking about it I was getting confused saying I’d heard about this previously. I was certainly aware there was a fire ages ago that had lost a lot of Atlantic masters, this being why say Coltrane’s Atlantic albums in stereo don’t sound as good as they should as they are from copy masters. Also massive amounts of unreleased Ornette Colman material was lost in that fire. As such I’m getting the two events confused. Hopefully we are better prepared for this one and have good high-res digital for most of it. I still want to see a bloody list! What was in the Impulse archives that hasn’t been heard?

 

[evand]

I can't wait to see just how many of these lost masters have been sold as MQA after the event.

 

[Seanm]

A predictably long and fast-growing thread over on Steve Hoffman’s site. The suggestion being that pretty much the full Impulse and Chess catalogues have been lost along with mountains of other stuff. Clearly a tragedy from a historic perspective, these are high-points in human culture, though hopefully most of the music still exists digitally or on copy-masters elsewhere in the world.

It is also interesting to note just how many very high-price audiophile vinyl cuts of Impulse jazz titles and things like Muddy Waters Folk Singer have appeared since 2008. Hmmm....

PS Thinking about it I was getting confused saying I’d heard about this previously. I was certainly aware there was a fire ages ago that had lost a lot of Atlantic masters, this being why say Coltrane’s Atlantic albums in stereo don’t sound as good as they should as they are from copy masters. Also massive amounts of unreleased Ornette Colman material was lost in that fire. As such I’m getting the two events confused. Hopefully we are better prepared for this one and have good high-res digital for most of it. I still want to see a bloody list! What was in the Impulse archives that hasn’t been heard?

Impulse and Chess.

 

[hockman]

The article suggests that a lot of the mastertapes had indeed been lost and careful proper digital copies had been made for only a fraction of them, particularly to preserve those that were in poor or deteriorating shape.

It really begs the question what all these "remastered from the original analog tapes" reissues are based on. They can only be using the digital copy or copies of the mastertapes several times removed. From my understanding, for hi-rez digital media, it is necessary to go back to the mastertapes to specifically master this stuff.

 

[mercalia]

A large cover up ? Thanks for sharing this I didnt know about it