Further researching my little CTI RVG jag here, I dug out Thomas Conrad's overview in Stereophile of five Epic/Legacy-CTI remastered CD reissues from the July '02 issue, all recorded by Van Gelder in the early to mid 70's (but not remastered by him). His average rating for sonics was a measely 2 1/2 stars, with the exception of the above mentioned "Moon Germs", to which he gave 3 (and at that rate I sure hope it sounds one helluva lot better than my original LP). Farrell's was also one of only two out of the five albums Conrad actually gave high marks to the music on, about which I am mostly in agreement regarding CTI generally (not that I share that critic's tastes when it comes to such things as his fixation with all things white, European and non-swinging, along with their ECM-infested sonics).
However the article did remind me of two other RVG CTIs, Kenny Burrell's excellent "God Bless The Child" which I have on original vinyl (and which was the other disk of the bunch that Conrad rated highly for music), and Stanley Turrentine's "Sugar", which I don't have on vinyl but is the only Epic/Legacy-CTI reissue on CD that I own (Conrad didn't review this one). These both being from '71, and each sounding considerably better and fuller than the '72 and onward RVG CTIs I played on vinyl the other day, if still somewhat constrained, stuffy and studio-artificial in absolute terms.
So this mini-survey, while hardly comprehensive, would lead me to believe that something bad happened in the RVG/CTI chain around '72, and if "Moon Germs" really does sound acceptably decent on remastered CD, then whatever that bad thing was (new solid-state gear?) may well have afflicted both the recording and mastering processes, the latter of which I assume RVG probably had no hand in at the time (CTI LPs, as with essentially any vintage LPs, not listing who mastered them).
And now I've had way more than enough electric piano for one week...
