Search - Royal Guardsmen :: Snoopy Vs. Red Baron / Snoopy & His Friends

Hi, this is John Brumage

Zeke | Las Vegas, NV | 09/21/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I was the co producer (with Phil Grenhard) of the original Roayal Guardsman singles, and the first album.



I wanted to point out that the original recordings were layered by dubbing between two 2-track reel to reel machines. The "ping pong" stereo in not a stupid remix, it is the way the original masters sounded when thety were sent to new york for mastering.



Our little studio, Charles Fuller Productions, in tampa, florida, did not have any High-End audio stuff, so we sent everything "dry" to the label. The music track was created first, overdubbed a few times, then the vocals were layered on the second track. I seem to recall there are eight layers of overdubbing on SVRB.



I built most of the equipment from scratch, and created some of the sound effects, one of my favorites being the "bone biting" sounds in BEARS, which was a mouthful of potato chips!



Those were exciting days, i was 26 years old at the time, and travelled with the RG and another band "NOAH'S ARK" to engagements in central florida. If you have seen the movie "almost famious" you have an idea what it was like.



This was Vietnam Draft days, and the guys in the band were on all on college deferrment, so they didn't dare miss classes, so they were severely limited in the anount of travel.



One interesting side note, Most of the original songs by the RG were written by Richard Holler, who also write "Abraham, Martin, and John" he had a discipline for writing: Buy a newspaper every Day, write a song about SOMETHING in the newspaper. I recommend this to every songwriter i know.



Ok, enough blathering, i do not make a penny of royalties from sale of these records but i wanted to share a tiny bit of the history of these songs."

"Lousy remastering of a good album!!!"

Michael Slater | Massapequa Park, NY United States | 07/28/2003

(1 out of 5 stars)

"I can't believe that anything remastered this badly could ever be released!!! On the "Snoopy and his Friends" half of the CD,a big piece of the beginning of "Snoopy Vs.The Red Baron" is missing from the song!!! Does anyone check these things out before they come out?!!! Apparently not!!! It's bad enough that fans like me wait for a certain LP to come out on CD only to get stuck with a shoddy job like this,but it also means that as long as a piece of ... like this is on the market,it will take that much longer before it is re-released and done RIGHT..."

Definitely better than the "Anthology".

David Kenner | Fort Worth, Texas United States | 06/26/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Those disappointed in the One Way "Anthology" on The Royal Guardsmen may want to pick up this disc. It contains the RG's first two LPs in their entirety and is a considerable improvement in sound quality. Actually, in some ways it makes a good companion to "Anthology" because while most of the tracks on that disc are mono, everything on this disc is true stereo. The RG's first album, "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron" is presented first, opening with the classic title track. The rest of the album is okay being mostly filled out with cover versions of novelty hits of the day. These are performed well but not essential. The other two standout cuts on the "Vs." album are the RG's hit cover of The Young Rascals' "Baby Let's Wait" (and it's the first time I can recall hearing it in stereo on compact disc) and the Guardsmen original, "Sweetmeats Slide" which served as the b-side of the "Return of The Red Baron" 45. The next LP presented is the more interesting of the two. "Snoopy and His Friends" contains all three of the original "Snoopy" hits, each prefaced by a story presented as a radio broadcast, even though the stories are about World War I, "when radio didn't actually exist to tell the story" as the liner notes point out. The stereo mix of "Return of the Red Baron" is a little annoying, being instruments on one channel and vocals on the other. The second half of "Friends" is six excellent Guardsmen originals including "So Right" and "It Kinda Looks Like Christmas" both making their CD debut. The sound of the "Friends" LP is not quite as bright as the "Vs." LP but it's still good. The "story" portions of the "Snoopy" tracks have a few dropouts and the treble goes up and down a little during the dialogue but it sounds like the remastering engineers did the best they could with what I believe to be original master tapes. Overall the sound of the entire disc is very good. Original liner notes of both LPs are reproduced and there are some new notes as well. Overall, a good job from a label that's getting to be one you can always trust, Collectables Records. Shortly after writing the above review, claiming that Collectables was a label you can always trust, I discovered that the first several seconds of "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron" are missing the second time the track appears on this disc. I wrote Collectables about the error and was flat out told that the disc was correct, having been taken from the original masters! I don't know what irritates me more, the error on the disc, or Collectables customer service implying that I'm mistaken! I wrote another review and gave the disc 2 stars so that my two reviews would give it an average of 3."