Anyone else notice the poor editing on BOY?

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gherman

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Before Bono starts singing on Another Time Another Place you can hear Bono vigorously clearing his throat. And then at the beginning of Shadows And Tall Trees Bono does the same thing... but it sounds like he's going to throw up!

Did anyone else notice this? and if you did where there any other songs that had this on them?
 
read somewhere that he had a cold...i've never listened to it on speakers where i could actually hear it though

:shrug:
 
yes, he had a cold whilst recording a lot of boy. oh well, what can you do? when the best take features him clearing his throat, what's there to do? i don't see how it's such a big deal.
 
KhanadaRhodes said:
yes, he had a cold whilst recording a lot of boy. oh well, what can you do? when the best take features him clearing his throat, what's there to do? i don't see how it's such a big deal.


yeah. and i wouldn't really call it bad editing...
 
Why wouldn't you call it poor editing? When they do the final mix they can easily cut that part out of the vocals. They did have technology in 1980:sexywink:
 
Oh yeah IWasBored

Did you purposely make it look like Edge was having a seizure on your posts? Is that just on my computer? :)
 
gherman said:
Why wouldn't you call it poor editing? When they do the final mix they can easily cut that part out of the vocals. They did have technology in 1980:sexywink:
i'll put it this way. i've only heard this stuff when i listen to the cd really loud. that's why i don't think it's a big deal. if i have to blow out my eardrums (or at least risk doing so) i wouldn't say it's such a horrible thing.

now the bum bass line on "love rescue me," things like that, yeah, i can only guess they left it in for us to be able to laugh at them and know U2 makes mistakes and to show us they're not perfect.
 
i think Pop had worse editing..lol..Adam playing like half the song in the wrong key..and you can hear people saying stuff. Oh well. it's not like "dear god. this record is shit because i heard a throat clear!" it's great music. Thats all i care about
 
i never even heard bono clearing his throat on boy. and i've had the cd for 10 years. i guess i need to listen to it better.
 
gherman said:
Oh yeah IWasBored

Did you purposely make it look like Edge was having a seizure on your posts? Is that just on my computer? :)


your computer's fucked. looks like he's stomping on my computer. stomping, on my computer, that is...not stomping on my computer. i don't see computer getting crushed under his foot.
 
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I wonder what it would be like ie U2 re-did Boy today? After hearing them do Out-of-Control at Slane I think it would be interesting:eyebrow:
 
What is bad editing?
As some said, leaving those bits in gives it a more natural feel. The same goes for Ultra Violet (Light My Way) on AB. They (Brian Eno) made a conscious decision to keep the take where Larry loses one of his sticks and there are many more moments like this in various U2 records. It's not that they did a bad job with the editing (accidentally keeping those takes), but they made a decision not to alter the recording, making it more sterile. I personally never bothered hearing those moments.
When discovering it I often had a feeling that I was one of those 'manic fans' who heard something unusual in the recordings (like Larry miscounting and then cursing at the beginning of The Unforgettable Fire). And as a fan of Dylan, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground I'm sort of used to hearing stuff like that.

C ya!

Marty
 
gherman said:
Where does Larry curse in Unforgettable Fire?

I never heard that one!

listen to the very beginning... you hear Larry counting with his sticks, and then mumbling what sounds like "Oh shit" upon realizing that he's a couple bars early.
 
Popmartijn said:
As some said, leaving those bits in gives it a more natural feel.
i agree. as you said, it makes it seem less sterile. mistakes happen, i mean how many times have they messed up playing a song live and had to start over? leaving some in kinda humanizes them.
 
oh!!! by the way, there's a site that shows most of these and other errors in U2 songs and stuff. the site's called mysterious ways. it's how i found out about bono clearing his throat, other little things like that that you can't hear unless you blast it.
 
that site's pretty funny, i made an attempt at trying to lok for all those things and couldn't hear any of them...oh well...
 
yeah, a lot of them have to be heard with the speakers turned way up (like wince-worthy loud) or heard through headphones. i'm telling you though, even after hearing it reversed, i can't heard van diemen's land in wake up dead man. also, i can't hear the bomb ticking in love is blindness. IIRC, the rest i can hear.

today i was finally able to hear the hammering in until the end of the world. my advice is pick a time where no neighbours are home, it's the middle of the day (so no one can call the cops, lol), and turn up the volume as loud as you can. if you play the bits over and over again you may eventually hear them. but most of them either are impossible to hear or require someone to listen to it on repeat for three months whilst bleeding from their ears to hear it.
 
my speakers are crap, maybe i'll have some fun with this stuff next time i'm down at the radio station...blast the hell out of the moniters, just put things in cue and turn the sound way up so i won't have to play 2 hours of u2 for my show :evil; uh...not like i don't already do this...:shifty:

i've heard the hammering in UTEOTW
 
:up: once you hear this stuff, you can't help but hear it in the songs after that.

now i crack up at the beginning of shadows and tall trees, and start like fake coughing when i play it, depending on how goofy i'm feeling, and who else is around. :shifty:
 
KhanadaRhodes said:
:up: once you hear this stuff, you can't help but hear it in the songs after that.

now i crack up at the beginning of shadows and tall trees, and start like fake coughing when i play it, depending on how goofy i'm feeling, and who else is around. :shifty:


hehehehehe

now i've got a question, it would be more audible on the cd, not on the vinyl, right?
 
IWasBored said:
now i've got a question, it would be more audible on the cd, not on the vinyl, right?
oy, i don't know! :laugh:

tomorrow i can try on something of U2's i've got on both cd and vinyl. i can try something on unforgettable fire or an early single if there's anything hidden on them. although my guess is it's more to do with volume and speakers than the format.
 
i just wasn't sure if maybe some digital editing got thrown in when early albums were put out on cd, but i kind of doubt it.
 
take you out, spin you'p [up] high

i don't know, it sounds like something different everytime i listen to it...
 
I haven't noticed any coughing or anything on Boy, and I wouldn't say that it's bad editing. What I DO wonder about every time I listen to that album is if the tempo is constantly changing in songs. I swear to god that Larry doesn't keep tempo in any of the songs...or maybe I just hear that because I once read an interview with them where they talked about not being able to keep time when they first started out lol!

Personally, I like any "extraneous" stuff that makes into the songs...background talk, funny instrument sounds, bum notes, missed beats, the whole lot. One of the things I didn't like about ATYCLB was that it sounded to "clean". While I liked the songs, it felt sterile somehow, like they were overly concious to make each and every recording perfect. I don't know why it feels more that way than other albums. On the Joshua Tree, in Red Hill Mining Town, I used to HATE the guitar sqeaks from Edge's acoustic. But they really do add something. When you listen to it, you feel closer to the music, to the experiance because of those sounds. I know that many producers now-a-days would have told Edge to put some stuff on this strings, or do some fancy editing to make the string sqeak less evident. I'm glad U2 didn't do that.

The soul of a song is not in the recording, but it the power of the performance. I've always believed that.
 
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