Canned Heat - "Poor Moon" b/w "Sic 'Em Pigs"
Original 1969 mono 45 RPM single mixesLiberty – LBF 15255 (U.K. pressing; Discogs)
~ThePoodleBites rip at 96 kHz / 24 bit FLAC + full hi-res scans!~
"Poor Moon" is, for me, both the Heat's best and their most underrated (or perhaps most unjustly forgotten) single. Released just after the Apollo 11 moon landing in July 1969, the lyrical themes echo quite a distinct message from the typical awe of space-age inspiration: guitarist and songwriter Al Wilson, a well-known environmentalist, feared that the moon's natural beauty will someday be scarred and irreparably damaged by the same capitalistic pillaging and man-made pollution which plagues the Earth today. Reading the news nearly 60 years later, this message sadly continues to resonate... Now imagine what the Blind Owl would have thought of Elon Musk!
Unfortunately its historical timeliness and great musical depth did little to propel "Poor Moon" into the charts. It skyrocketed (pun intended) to a whopping #95 in Cash Box before disappearing within a month. As a result, this 45 has become the rarest out of the Canned Heat catalog (at least of the singles that are worth tracking down). Nonetheless, I did my duty to search for and secure a top-playing copy so that both dedicated mono sides can be preserved here, for those rare souls like me who still care about such things.
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| Artwork from the original German picture sleeve |
"Poor Moon" was released nearly simultaneously with the band's Hallelujah LP, perhaps just a week or so before. The A-side, however, was not included on the album nor on any of the band's other LPs. Nonetheless, separate mono and stereo mixes were prepared. The original stereo mix is the rarer of the two, and exists only on the 1972 History Of Canned Heat vinyl compilation outta France, which surprisingly sounds terrific; this mix was also reissued once on CD in 1989 (Let's Work Together: The Best Of Canned Heat), though with nasally sound quality, as if sourced from a high-gen copy tape and then EQ'd into submission. An extended digital remix produced in 1994 has since replaced this version on all subsequent reissues. As with other Canned Heat releases, the mono mix exists only on 45, and is likely to be the version preferred by collectors.
The B-side of the 45, "Sic 'Em Pigs," is an excerpt from the then-yet-to-be-released LP, but appears here with a dedicated mono mix which is significantly truncated from the LP version. At the point where the 45 ends, the album version continues on with a tongue-in-cheek LAPD advertisement absent from the single's fade-out. Frankly, I find any version of this song tough to listen to: the Heat had every right to distrust authorities ("pig" is old American slang for a policeman), but the squealing and snorting sounds scattered throughout come off as incredibly immature following the hard-hitting lyrical masterpiece which graces the A-side.
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| Blurb from Cash Box, 19 July 1969 | Blurb from Billboard Magazine, 26 July 1969 |
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| Review in Billboard Magazine, 09 August 1969 |
For the aforementioned "Time Was" post, I opted to use the German release, which appeared to have used a nearly identical master to the American one. For "Poor Moon," this is again the case, but the German "Sic 'Em Pigs" is instead an edited fold-down from the stereo LP version, which is unusable for me. And anyway, the American mastering is stunningly poor, with essentially no real frequency response above 9 kHz or so. It was understandably aiming at AM radio, but to the modern ear it's a sonic disaster, so mimicing its sound is not really a good thing.
More variants were explored. The French edition sounds like it features the U.S. master, but the French engineer tried to restore some treble with EQ, which made it sound brighter but not much clearer. "Poor Moon" on the Swedish single sounds much like the German one; the Danish edition is similar too, but more muted. The Italian 45, which sports a picture sleeve quite similar in design to its German cousin, sounds totally different: high frequencies in the cymbals can actually be heard, though are also somewhat masked by high levels of noise from the inadequate pressing quality.
The best-sounding edition that I found was the one issued in the U.K., which offers a remarkable improvement over the American and continental European versions. Unlike "Low Down," where the U.K. pressing apparently contains a fold-down of the stereo mix, a fold-down of the stereo "Poor Moon" sounds nothing at all like the mono edition found on the British (or any other) pressing of this single. I was also able to verify with some tinkering that a heavy dose of EQ can reproduce the lo-fi American version, proving that they are in fact the same mix. It's not clear why, but the U.K. seems to have received an unprocessed master unlike other countries (except perhaps Italy, though the British edition is certainly clearer than theirs). Though the pressing still suffered from various levels of pressing fog causing light background hiss throughout, I was able to use the best-sounding sides from three copies that I procured to make a terrific-sounding master of these two mono mixes. Though the Brits didn't include picture sleeves on their Canned Heat releases, here are some other countries' artwork to enjoy!
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| Artwork from the Italian picture sleeve, featuring a picture similar to the German edition |
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| French picture sleeve, with pig-inspired pink artwork |
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| Picture sleeve for the Swedish edition |
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| Cover artwork from the Danish edition of the single |
Track listing:
1) "Poor Moon" -- 2:51
2) "Sic 'Em Pigs" -- 1:57
Vinyl condition: M-
Dynamic Range: 11
Equipment / Lineage:
– Audio-Technica VMN40ML stylus on AT150MLx dual moving-magnet cartridge
– Audio-Technica AT-LP1240-USB direct drive professional turntable (internal stock preamp/ADC removed)
– Pro-Ject Phono Box S2 Ultra preamp with dedicated Zero Zone linear power supply
– Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 MkII (96kHz / 24bit)
– Adobe Audition CC 2024 (recording)
– iZotope RX 11 audio editor (manual declicking, EQ subtraction, additional adjustments)
– Audacity 3.x.x (fades between tracks, split tracks)
– Foobar2000 v2.x.x (tagging, dynamic range analysis)
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