A Disc Review: The Cowboy Junkies - Whites Off Earth Now!!

I thought that I had all of their albums.  I was wrong.  I thought The Trinity Sessions was their first album.  I was again wrong.  It turns out, the Cowboy Junkies recorded an album called, "Whites Off Earth Now!!".  Strange name.  Michael Timmins saw a protest poster stating this, and he thought it would be a funny album title.  

In 1986, the Junkies were playing in a club.  Margo, a temporary lead singer (she was working as a college-educated social worker with plans of getting her Master's), was singing in her usual whispery way.  A guy in the audience asked to record them.  This guy wasn't anyone big at that time.  This was more or less a self-financed adventure.  Here are some of the recording details.  Warning: They might make you cringe.

The "recording engineer" was Peter Moore, who had some notoriety in Canada and the United States for some smaller projects.  Peter just acquired his new microphone, a Calrad Ambiasonic unit that he purchased at WHOLESALE, for $9000.  This single microphone recorded in stereo.  After the mic, the details go downhill fast.  The Calrad does use its own preamp, which was included in the purchase.  From the preamp, the signal went to a Sony PCM-F1 A/D 16/44.1 converter.  Its binary signal output was captured on...a Betamax.  I suppose I should mention that they recorded it in their garage.  

The recording session comprised all blues covers (except 1 song written by Michael and Margo Timmins) and took around 7 hours.  This recording session was pressed to vinyl, and 4000 copies were made in total, which they sold at their bar and club performances.

This recording has to be awful, right?  Not at all.  In fact, it's one of the most natural and lifelike recordings I've ever heard.  Think: Muddy Waters, Folk Singer.

The music is really quite good, if you're a Junkies fan.  Margo has a way with her singing that simply rearranges male hormones.  Their youngest brother, Pete, was just learning how to play the drums.  All the makings of a recording disaster, yet it's awesome.  It's awesome enough that Mobile Fidelity reissued it on vinyl and SACD.  I have both.  I also have one of the original 4000 albums as well, which, surprisingly, sounds excellent.

This recording is saturated with detail, a variety of tone colors, truth of timbre, dynamics, shadings, and incredible transparency.  Do you like soundstaging?  This recording has so much depth that it borders on surreal.  During one song, Margo's first verse did seem a bit overpowering.  On the next verse, you can hear and visualize that she must have been given the "Back away from the mic" signal, because it's clear in both the sonics and the soundstaging.  The songs, their interpretations, and the performances are solid, to me at least.  I'll be the first to admit, Margo Timmins could sing the phone book to me, and I wouldn't complain.

I don't doubt the $9K microphone part of it.  The fact that a 16/44.1 Sony A/D converter that came out in 1982 along with a Betamax is how this recording was captured, simply blows my mind and makes me question many things I have believed in for decades.  This recording doesn't seem to be "lacking".  When done cleanly, was 16/44.1 enough?  Their second album, The Trinity Sessions, was recorded on an RDAT at 16/44.1 as well, and it's been a long-term reference as an audiophile recording.

I'm going to take a shot in the dark and say that this recording's simplicity and sparse arrangements are what allowed the recording format to achieve what it did.  Something of far greater complexity would not have fared as well.  This is, unfortunately, out of print within the MoFi catalog, but there is still 1 company making vinyl of this, and it's around $40 at Music Direct.  Yes, I have a copy of that too, and while it's not a Mobile Fidelity, it's still really good.  It might even be available on Compact Disc.

For now, I'll stick with my theory about the simplistic approach, simplistic music, and a $9000 microphone.  They combined to make this incredible 16/44.1 recording despite the odds.

But then, there's Dire Straits "Brothers In Arms" that blows my simplicity theory to pieces........ 

What these recordings tell me is: There is no excuse for the crap recordings out there.  Whites Off Earth Now!!, Trinity Sessions, and Brothers In Arms were ALL 16/44.1 recordings.  Clearly, while something more would have been appreciated, HOW they captured and mixed these events was more important than the format itself.

In closing, THREE CHEERS FOR PHYSICAL MEDIA!!!