427 - The Ronettes - Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes

[csberry]

Thank you again, Rolling Stone for making a wacky list. Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes may be a good album. I can't know for certain because the album has been out of print for decades and has never been released as a CD. Since I'm not about to dole out $175-200 for one of the remaining vinyl copies, I had to piece together the tracks the best I could from Ronettes and Phil Spector compilations. Alas, I couldn't find their cover of Ray Charles's "What'd I Say" and "How Does It Feel?" for me to listen to for my review. Because I'm not listening to a release of the album but a collection of songs from a few compilation albums, I don't feel comfortable judging the sound of the recordings.

Now that I have that HUGE disclaimer out of the way, what is left to say? The songs are a showcase for Spector's Wall of Sound - layers of sound that fill the entire audio spectrum from the drop of the needle to the groove between tracks. This is accomplished by a layer of percussion (and usually lots of tambourine, bells, and chimes) that is treated with echo, backing "shoo-wop" and "ooo-ahh"-type vocals...also treated with echo, bouncing piano that is mixed to about the same volume as the percussion, sometimes with horns reinforcing the backing vocals, and the main vocals sitting at the same level as much of the other sounds. Now, when I say "treated with echo," in those analog times that meant using an echo chamber. Would you believe that the studio would have a bare-walled basement space with speakers that would play the tracks and microphones that would capture the sound of those tracks bouncing around the echo-filled room? Now-a-days, you just punch a button for the computer to simulate the same thing.

In the end though, I don't know why this album is on the Top 500 other than it being a showcase for the Wall of Sound and the greatest example of that sound (and one of the best pop songs ever recorded), "Be My Baby." The rest of the songs reinforce the sound of the full-sounding girl group, but don't indicate anything of particular importance of the singers or songwriting, just the recording and production of the album.

Songs I knew I liked: "Be My Baby" and "Chapel of Love"

Songs I didn't know but now like: "Baby, I Love You" and "(The Best Part of) Breaking Up"

Songs I can go the rest of my life without hearing again: Any song not listed above...although I would love to hear the studio version of their cover of "What'd I Say." The live versions I found on YouTube were pretty nice.