The Day the Music Burned - The story of the 2008 Universal fire

[Gardenista]

The Day the Music Burned

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.

The Day the Music Burned

 

[Gardenista]

Estates of Tupac and Tom Petty Join Massive Lawsuit Over ‘Biggest Disaster in History of Music’

 

[Betty P]

The Day the Music Burned

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.

The Day the Music Burned

Hundreds of firefighters responded, including Universal Studios’ on-site brigade. But the fire crews were hindered by low water pressure and damaged sprinkler systems and by intense radiant heat gusting between combustible structures.

Universal Studios is a very profitable company. There's no excuse for having such shoddy systems for fire fighting.


Amazing they were able to keep this a secret for so long. Not only did they lie to the artists, they filed and collected on a big insurance claim over the loss of the artists' work. Ugh.

OMG, what a massive loss: Virtually all of Buddy Holly's masters, Patsy Cline, most of Chess Record's recordings, Etta James' "At Last", Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, Bill Haley, The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie", Ray Charles, the Ink Spots, Joni Mitchell, the list goes on. What a tragedy.

Vivendi is looking to sell 50% of UMG, I hope Apple Records (the Beatles) buys it. Paul McCartney will make sure its managed properly.

To clarify why master recordings are so important:

For years, what people were able to record was of greater quality than what they were able to play back. “Most people don’t realize that recording technology was decades more sophisticated than playback technology,” Sapoznik says. “Today, we can decode information off original recordings that was impossible to hear at any time before.”

Today, engineers can take old master recordings and electronically re-create them in ways that pick up even more details of the sound than before. With master tapes, they can change the mix, if needed to make drums, or vocals, etc. louder or softer than in the original commercial version of the song. Sometimes records pressed from old master tapes didn't have the best mixing. With masters, where all the different tracks of the recording are still separate, future engineers can change the "mix" to improve the song.

Tom Dowd does it in this video him showing how he mixed the song "Layla". Please God, don't tell me the masters for this song burned up!

 

[Gardenista]

Universal Studios is a very profitable company. There's no excuse for having such shoddy systems for fire fighting.


Amazing they were able to keep this a secret for so long. Not only did they lie to the artists, they filed and collected on a big insurance claim over the loss of the artists' work. Ugh.

OMG, what a massive loss: Virtually all of Buddy Holly's masters, Patsy Cline, most of Chess Record's recordings, Etta James' "At Last", Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, Bill Haley, The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie", Ray Charles, the Ink Spots, Joni Mitchell, the list goes on. What a tragedy.

Vivendi is looking to sell 50% of UMG, I hope Apple Records (the Beatles) buys it. Paul McCartney will make sure its managed properly.

To clarify why master recordings are so important:



Today, engineers can take old master recordings and electronically re-create them in ways that pick up even more details of the sound than before. With master tapes, they can change the mix, if needed to make drums, or vocals, etc. louder or softer than in the original commercial version of the song. Sometimes records pressed from old master tapes didn't have the best mixing. With masters, where all the different tracks of the recording are still separate, future engineers can change the "mix" to improve the song.

Tom Dowd does it in this video him showing how he mixed the song "Layla". Please God, don't tell me the masters for this song burned up!

This video is amazing. TY for sharing

 

[Gardenista]

Interesting comments on this article from people who really understand all of this

Lawsuit Expected Next Week in Response to Universal Music Fire

 

[Betty P]

This video is amazing. TY for sharing

Tom Dowd was a master. He worked with so many artists and brought out the best in them

Tom Dowd - Wikipedia

I hope they can uncover higher quality tapes of some of these lost masters. They won't be the same, but better than what is currently available for most commercially available music. A lot of what you can download today is of poor quality. I've listened to many songs from downloads that I once owned on vinyl and the quality is not good at all. Even some CD's are junk, they music has been copied so many times instead of coming from masters.

I guess our original vinyl collections are worth more now. Hubby is now wanting to keep all of his Steely Dan vinyl.