(audio) ABBA 1982 Just Like That (mixed & mastered by Philippe Dupont-Mouchet)

NOT FOR SALE - FOR LISTENING PLEASURE ONLY. JUST LIKE THAT (MASTER) THE HOLY GRAIL OF ALL UNRELEASED ABBA TRACKS THE MOST MYTHOLOGISED RECORDING “And they [Benny & Björn] said the verse and the chorus don’t fit. And i said, ’What do you mean? They fit together perfectly’ It’s an incredible great tune – It’s a hit!“ MICHAEL B. TRETOW, CIRCA 1994 (Carl Magnus Palm, “The Complete Recording Sessions“) “I remember it as a very good song and recording. I don’t recall why they decided not to release it. A pity! But maybe it’s going to be released one day.“ AGNETHA FÄLTSKOG, 1983. ____________________________________ KEYBOARDS : BENNY ANDERSSON GUITAR : LASSE WELLANDER BASS : RUTGER GUNNARSSON DRUMS : PER LINDVALL SAXOPHONE : RAPHAEL RAVENSCROFT ____________________________________ JUST LIKE THAT. THE SAME ORIGINAL RECORDING WITH SAME VOCAL TAKE, AT DIFFERENT STAGES OF THE MIX. 4 MAY 1982 / EARLY ROUGH MIX : First stage of production, consisting of the recording of the working basic backing-track with vocals, without overdubs. This mix is often mistakenly called the “slow version“. 17-19 MAY 1982 / EARLY ROUGH MIX GUIDE-VOCAL OVERDUB : This step consists of recording an additional vocal-track on the basic EARLY ROUGHT MIX recording. This is a guide-vocal overdub by Agnetha who guides saxophonist Raphael Ravenscroft (to indicate the parts where he should play). This mix is often mistakenly called the “na-na-na version“. 24-28 MAY 1982 / MASTER : This final step consists of recording overdubs including Raphael Ravenscroft’s saxophone. The mix is made on 28 may 1982. This mix is the Master. This mix is often mistakenly called the “saxophone version“. 1983 : Benny Andersson tries an alternate instrumental version with working title “When The Waves Roll Out To Sea“. ____________________________________ In 2010, Carl Magnus Palm wrote : “the tapes […] started circulating among collectors when Björn’s car was stolen […] – this story has sometimes been presented as a ‘rumour’, but Björn confirmed to me that it did indeed happen. I also understand that one or two tracks may have been given in good faith to friends by people within the ABBA camp, or to people at the many record companies that released their music around the world. Inadvertently or not, these tapes have since ended up on bootlegs.” The tape containing “Just Like That” have since ended up on bootlegs. Unfortunately, the first copy from the cassette containing the Master (also called “Final Mix”) seem to have been made forgetting to activate the Dobly-B filter when playing the original tape (we notice the very characteristic sound imprint that we usually have when this error is made). All the copies which subsequently circulated kept this bad range of frequencies (totally altered by the initial error), and the cassettes used for copies could not absorb these frequencies without the sound being very damaged. By the end of the 80s you could find bootleg-cassettes and vinyl-records. Later, in 1990-1997, the parallel/bootleg market had “Just Like That“ on CDs (all manufactured in Italy). Italy was in the 90’s a great producer of rarities, they released real manufactured CDs including beautiful booklets (it seems that controls were non-existent in this country at that time). Even if some CDs seem to offer better generation sources, everything that was released in the pre-internet era came from the same source (i totally exclude everything that is circulating on the Internet today, because those sources are all doubtful).