The Kristy 45 saga
The quality is poor because it came directly from Kristy herself via an old mid-70's cassette copy of her unreleased LP!!!!
I agree that we didn't do anything like as good a job on re-mastering as we possibly could have done (even way back in 2000!). Today though, i bet it could be done far easier and cheaper than it would have done way back when!
We made 300 copies of the 45 with a view to selling them quickly to justify (and to afford) to release the full LP! In actual fact we gave away about 20 copies as demos and there were about 50 faulty 45's in there, so there's less than 250 around (although i think i have a handful left, buried deep in my garage somewhere!). I paid for the license/manufacture of the 45's in the US and i also paid Kristy upfront for all 300 copies!
Unfortunately, probably due to the quality (although i think there may have been other 'on the scene' factors) they didn't sell half as quick as we wanted them too to justify the LP release, so it never happened
I've always said that one day BOTH sides would be monsters on the Northern AND Modern scenes because they are imho two of the very best records ever made!!!! The LP is also fantastic with 9 brilliant tracks that i described at the time as being as good as the unreleased Sandra Wright LP!
I do actually have the original CD that was made directly from the cassette and it's fidelity is way better than the 45, so i guess something 'could' be done with it?
The problem is, before i could do any remastering i'd have to get back in touch with Kristy, who i'm sure will be as pi**ed as i was that we couldn't make it happen the first time around, so what chance would we have of getting the success i originally promised her, the second time around????
However, i really would still love to see the full LP released one day...........
Cheers
Steve