Deserved Better Restoration Quality
4
By midwest music
To be clear, I always give Stones the benefit of the doubt. For my age group, 50 years old, I could possibly be one of the biggest Stones fans in the world. I saw them for the first time in July of 1978 on their Some Girls tour. In 1981 I saw them in Rockford, IL. at the 6,000 seat Metro Center and in Chicago at the Rosemont Horizon. I’ve seen them multiple times since. I own dozens of bootlegs and every commercially released album or video/movie they have ever put out. Several classic concert films have been released by the Stones. 1972’s Ladies and Gentleman, 1983’s Let’s Spend the Night Together, Stones & Muddy Waters at The Checkerboard and Some Girls Live From Texas ’78…all with great sound and picture quality.
I just downloaded From the Vault Hampton 1981. I saw the original broadcast on ONtv in 1981and halfway decent bootleg rips of the show on YouTube. Needless to say I was extremely pumped for this release and downloaded the minute it became available. First things first, the sound remastering is brilliant. The picture quality and restoration, not so much. As a matter of fact, it seems as if they did a lazy cheap dub from a second generation master tape and left it at that. Released in Standard Definition, it appears there was no effort to do any color correcting, sharpening or digital enhancement. There are rolling ghost bars and an extremely soft resolution. I’m pretty sure the pre digital age original broadcast in 1981 had a better picture resolution. There is no reason Eagle Entertainment nor the Stones themselves couldn’t have invested a little more time and money into this release and given it the remastering and restoration it deserves. Shame.