Posted on 04/11/2024 8:00:53 PM PDT by FLNittany
Some people didn't/don't like this song for one reason or another. Not sure why. It's a damn near masterpiece imo.
IMHO, “Year of the Cat” is brilliant ... however ... my favs on the album are “On the Border” and “One Stage Before”. Both of which I highly recommend.
Stairway to Heaven makes a lot of sense. The second verse makes a reference to an earlier hit, Over the Rainbow.
A lot of times it’s due to technological improvements that are capable of reducing ambient noise artifacts in the source recording older technologies couldn’t reduce. Such as tape wow snd flutter. Most of the remasters I’ve heard are an improvement over the original masters. They are certainly no worse.
CC
I keep my mom entertained by putting words in the cats mouth that he allegedly said.
In my house, Nimbus and indigo both completely white cats. Love this song as well thanks for bringing it up. I haven’t heard it in so long.
It is one of the most incredible songs ever written.
The guitar solo is simple and elegant, and the lyrics are storytelling at its best.
Thank you for posting this.
Gotta admit, some of “my songs” simply make zero sense.
Neither do rap songs...
“Year of the cat” is my test song for any new audio equipment I buy. The only issue I have with it is the guitar solo is too loud. other than that, the clarity and stereo separation along with the mixing is top notch. the piano intro is well done, the guitars, the strings, The lyrics are a mind trip! If you cant hear whats in the song, thats your problem.
+1
I was fortunate to see him perform live.
Listen to Gucci Mane “Everybody Know Me” and you know exactly what he is saying.
That’s my thought to.
That’s why no cats live around me.
Circle of life.
“Masterpiece”...I agree.
So now I have a tuxedo pattern cat who rules the roost. He eats forty dollar a bag premium cat food, with a side dish of human grade tuna fish and occasional treats. The cat even makes it known when he wants me in the recliner, petting him as he sits on my chest and watches TV.
The cat -- my cat now -- prefers action shows and nature documentaries, but he also seems to find Steve Bannon's War Room of interest. I think that Bannon's voice reminds him of his late owner.
“if theres a bustle in your hedge row, dont be alarmed now...its just a spring clean for the May Queen”....huh?
What's the song about?
Seems to me it’s about a tourist/traveler who meets up w/ a really hot woman who’s a little sketchy but he doesn’t really care.
That’s legit. Good accompaniment.
Correct!!
The poster doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Very often “remasters” DON’T sound better, largely because of the “loudness wars” in which dynamics get sacrificed for maximum average sound level on “radio”. One can follow well-recorded albums with many re-releases over the years, and generally the dynamics go downhill. :-(
But sometimes remasters DO come out better — not all mastering engineers are equally talented, not all studios have equal acoustics, gear, etc. “Import” releases may (or may not) sound better than US releases. Not every re-release has fallen prey to the loudness wars. And then there’s the whole angle of CD’s or other digital media NOT having the resonances and so on that vinyl records played on turntables (including tonearm resonances) do. Those tend to “warm up” the sound a bit, and a lot of albums released originally on vinyl can sound a bit dry or sterile on the CD release. Mastering engineers in particular eventually learned to compensate for this (or “uncompensate” perhaps), but it did a lot to reinforce the resistance to CD’s early on that they did not sound “musical”. (For those unfamiliar, this is a different sound quality issue than analog compression (squashing the peaks) or “digital compression”, where you are actually throwing away some information to squeeze more minutes of music / audio into a given storage space or bandwidth. All three effects can degrade the “hi” of “fi”, but digital compression is usually not the issue on CD’s.)
Sometimes (perhaps often?) “remasters” ARE remixed: The tune “Salisbury” by Uriah Heep (also about being “swept away” by a woman) has a long, 3 section, pretty amazing wah-wah guitar solo by Mick Box. At the breaks in the solo the background vocal harmony “ahh-ahhh-ahhhh-ahhh’s” become tongue in cheek “wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah...’s” — sort of a comic relief slipped in to the writer’s “despair” when the relationship fails. But then at the intro to the final movement(?) of the guitar solo, the lead singer David Byron slips in a real cry of “wah-wah”. On some releases, this is barely audible and fades before the Byron’s whole “wah-wah” cry is out. On others, the remaster including the “5.1 mix” in particular, it is quite clear.
Then there are albums like Alan Parsons’ major re-issue of “Tales of Mystery and Imagination”: It was really a new performance in which each song retains some recorded tracks from the original, but among the many things he did with it, some entirely new guitar solos get added. (Parsons’ own discussion is needed to really understand what all was done with this one!)
Is it “better”? Opinions vary enough that a bit later yet, the album was re-released again, this time as just a remaster (I think).
ThereâÂÂs a short video on YouTube where he describes his early career in England and how he came to write this song.
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