Andrew Sandoval twitters about 2CD Rhino reissues

[sweetest punch]

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January 2020 marks my 30th year as a record producer. For the next 30 days, I will post one of the albums I have worked on over the past three decades. Here is day #8.

Today: Elvis Costello - 2 CD versions of all of his albums from My Aim Is True (1977/2001) to All This Useless Beauty (1997/2001) for Rhino, as well as Demon/Edsel (My Aim Is True through Blood And Chocolate only).

Joseph Satlin said: "Quantity has a quality all of its own." And proving this musically, Elvis Costello struck a deal with Rhino in 2001 to reissue his voluminous catalog of albums and make them even more voluminous. It was my job to add the bonus material, and from 2001 - 2006 my aim was, shall we say, true.

I was variously listed as Sound Producer (with Bill Inglot) and on the last title in the series, The Juliet Letters, top billed Reissue Producer (alongside Val Jennings and the late Gary Stewart). I mention this only because Gary (who, along with Bill, gave me my first break as a producer/compiler/liner notes writer) made quite a big deal about it. After five years, I was dealing with Elvis Costello directly in picking out the bonus tracks. I am not sure if Elvis felt this an improvement or signpost that it was time to move on!

On this series, I did the tape research as well as a lot of mixes for the second discs with Brian Kehew. I can genuinely say we used the original masters for these sets, but that involved shipping a lot of tapes to Los Angeles and weeding out a ton of material. Elvis has, besides the Beach Boys (whose catalog I worked on from 1997-2000), one of the deepest archives of recordings I had seen up to that stage.

The process for these was that I would order in tapes, do transfers and mixes where there were no mixes. I would then compile my dream bonus disc. Gary Stewart would listen to it and ask me to make any changes he wanted and then it would go to Elvis for review. Costello is the only artist I have ever worked with who added more material rather than take things off. And let's be honest, his material is all pretty great.

The only things he did not like were Geoff Emerick's rough mixes for All This Useless Beauty (which Gary and I loved), as well as a hilaious radio spot for The Juliet Letters done in the style of a motorcross demolition commercial.

Val Jennings penned the liner notes by doing lengthy interviews with EC and then having them edited by him. The CD's themselves were matched to original UK LP's, but we took a couple of left turns with Get Happy and Imperial Bedroom because the original masters were so dark (EQ wise) by comparison.

It was really amazing doing these albums. I had grown up listening and buying them and getting to hear the session reels was a thrilling adventure. These editions are now out of print and it was Gary who suggested to Universal (when they took over the catalog in 2007) to issue their versions with zero bonus material. I always wondered if that was to make the Rhino ones special.

When Gary passed away, I thought of many things. Only one thing was clear to me: I could not bring myself to go to his estate sale. My friend Jim Laspesa went and bought me one thing left behind in a random box. It was a homemade CDR I had done for Gary of my ideas for the Juliet Letters bonus tracks. Despite the fact that we kept in regular contact, that was the last physical CD I ever worked on with Gary.

[verbal gymnastics]

Interesting.

I want to hear The Juliet Letters motocross style ad!

And who is surprised that Elvis added more rather than taking things off

[migdd]

I want to hear the early mixes of ATUB!