I grew up with the music of the sixties, but then so did most people under fifty.

I'm not suggesting I was some sort of starry-eyed hippy – I also spent a lot of time with glam rock, punk rock, grunge, and many things that have emerged since, but the sixties was where it all began.
It wasn't like music started in the sixties, but the grammar, the language of what we call rock music, was spawned during that decade. It combined rock ‘n' roll, country, vaudeville, jazz, musical theatre and much more, but the whole thing came together as something we can recognise as 'modern music” sometime in the mid-sixties.
So those albums are ingrained upon my mind, the – as they say – soundtrack to my life. And people keep messing with them.
The latest blow came again last week when I decided to buy The Doors first album. Like so many things I used to have on vinyl, I've never got round to re-buying The Doors on CD. So, I thought, start at the beginning, just get the first album, the one with 'Light My Fire”, 'Soul Kitchen”, 'The Crystal Ship” (a personal favourite) and 'The End”, one of the greatest rock debuts of all time.
But when I put it on it was all different.
It's a weird feeling. You listen to the music and think 'I don't remember it sounding like this…”
I thought I knew every note on that album yet when I played it there was something wrong - it didn't sound like the music I remember dancing naked in the moonlight to all those years ago.
And, sure enough, it wasn't.
I'd bought the 40th Anniversary reissue and, unlike the just-released Beatles catalogue which has been remastered (jigging with the overall final sound) this has been remixed. All the bits have been thrown up in the air and reassembled in different proportions. It now has a 'modern mix”. What!?!?
Perhaps because he's the one member of the band not still alive, the decision was made somewhere to turn Jim Morrison's vocals down. They're now kinda distant while the drums (as is the way these days) dominate the mix. Why would you do that? This is an album that has been described for four decades as a masterpiece – wasn't that good enough?
I have listened to it again and it's not the same. One of the reasons hearing an old musical favourite makes you feel so good is that association with your past, taking you back to a time or place in the same way that an evocative smell can. That's all gone. Now it's just some music.
And, speaking of music (hah!), there's a whole pile about to land from local sources. I guess the impending nature of Christmas has focused the minds of various artists around town. Or perhaps it's just the arrival of spring. Here's a preview of things you'll see written about and reviewed over the next few weeks.
Firstly, the long-awaited Brilleaux album, Decade, marking the band's first ten years together, is on the way. Mixing was delayed a while back after Tim Julian's Colourfield Studio in Welcome Bay was hit by lightening. Fortunately it only resulted in a pile of equipment being fried and no part of the recording was lost. From what I've heard this will be Brilleaux's best offering to date.
Also long-awaited is the album from Jamie Strange, Thanks For Faking It Sometimes, which he recorded at Tim's studio over the course of several years. Jamie's now resident in Hamilton and has mixed the album himself over there. The cover art looks very good, but that's as far as I've got.
And a little jazz from Colourfield is on the way courtesy of the Woody Woodhouse Connection and their new CD, Pruning Time. A quick listen confirms this as definitely the most enjoyably recorded of their three albums so far. Expect a review in the next couple of weeks.
Meanwhile, a couple of albums are due from The Boatshed Studio in Whakamarama: Sonia (Kokomo) Bullot's debut solo disc Tonight On Trumpet will be launched after the Arts Festival in November and prolific musical artist Dave Roy has a new offering, this time a wild and wonderful country album, called Dog Only Knows.
watusi@thesun.co.nz