Thought I'd mention I got the chance to hear the bad Reputation & Johnny The fox expanded remasters on my main system tonight.

IMO, sonically Johnny while not oh my God was much better sounding than the average major label hard rock release.

Bad Reputation was REALLY GOOD (right on the edge of stunning); it's the best sounding major label rock release I've heard in years.

Not sure why the 2 are this different, but Bad Rep really sounds great.

Bad Rep is (supposedly) a new remastering done by Andy Pearce last year. Johnny is (supposedly) a copy of a Japanese remastering from several years ago.

Unfortunately the new Pearce remasterings for Johnny & Jailbreak were not used for some pretty unfortunate reasons. I would have loved to have heard them, seeing how great Bad Rep & the other new ones sound (like Black Rose).

Slip, is it just this last batch of 3 that Pearce did then?

I believe so but it is hard to say for sure. There was a huge controversy brought to light on the previous 3 releases (Jailbreak, Johnny TF, Live & Dangerous - actually I don't recall what the deal with L&D was though). And the previous 3 before those done by Paschal Byrne according to the liner notes. So yeah, I'm assuming just the last 3 (Bad Rep, Chinatown, Black Rose) were done by Pearce (even though the liner notes for the previous 3 mention him).

One of my wholesalers got in 3 of the TL Deluxe's, so I ordered them for myself: Chinatown, Live & Dangerous & Jailbreak.

One thing that surprised me: There's been so much talk about the new remasters being left off; but the booklets on all 3 clearly state they were mastered in 2010 by Andy Pearce. Was Universal just too cheap to reprint corrected booklets?

I'm listening to Chinatown at the moment. It's pretty badly compressed & strident sounding.

All of the remasters are new and by Andy Pearce and Matt Wortham.
The only ones that were supposedly pulled were Jailbreak, Johnny The Fox and L&D and all of those sound great to me. They are apparently from 2004 Japanese remasters.
Everything else is new and I think they all sound great. Nightlife and Fighting are out next week and Renegade, Thunder and Lightning and Life/Live are out in September.

My Jailbreak & L&D (real UK official Universal editions) state on the booklet they're by Andy Pearce also. Is it likely a misprint or a 2nd edition?

No, not a misprint and it was never changed-they just didn't change the credits and there's still some debate as to what remastering was done. However, it seems Pearce and Wortham's work was not used on those 3 releases.

I think IP already got it covered in his reply. They never corrected the booklets to remove their names, but there were some booklet changes with bad tracklists, I forget all the twists & turns, got pretty confusing.

As I understand it I guess they could still leave the names on there since they did kind of "master" the new discs for the project, from the standpoint that Wired Masters took the CDRs that came from Gorham (or whoever) & "mastered" (copied the 16 bit WAV files) them for the release. They just didn't get to use the work they had already started on from the master tapes.

That is almost certainly what happened slipkid-you said it better than I did!
By the way, what do you think of these remasters so far? I've been loving them-sound, liner notes, bonus tracks, packaging-first rate all the way.
I have Fighting and Nightlife reported as shipped today!

I love 'em, everything you said. I'm not golden eared enough to have any complaints about the sound, and dig the design/photos/etc. Wish they used the plastic deluxe slipcovers from the old days of D.E.'s since I liked that extra special touch, also the materials they used to use for D.E.'s were thicker/better paper back then. Minor quibbles.







Me too, shipping along with the Dio D.E.s and the Lizzy Dublin National Stadium DVD. Think they all came out on the same day (!).

I think that DVD is a boot and in PAL, but I'm not sure, so let us know how that DVD ends up being.

Yeah, definitely is in PAL format. No worries there since all my players play/convert PAL. I suspect the quality may be on par with boots but I think this is an official release. Will try to report back with how it looks/sounds once I've got my mitts on it.

At least the tape came off without tearing the covers! I haven't heard Jailbreak yet. My memory from a couple listens of someone else's copy of L&D a couple months back is that it wasn't bad sounding at all.

I did some digging, and good news-it's official alright and it is stacked with loads of stuff. I have most of it from unofficial VHS tapes many years old, but this is in incredible quality-I can't believe how good it looks and sounds!
It is coming out in the US in May, so I will be ordering that one for sure.