I was listening to a CD of the soundtrack from Pulp Fiction and I noticed something odd about one of the tracks, “Bustin’ Surfboards” by the Tornadoes: I am almost certain I heard the characteristic pops of a slightly scratched record in the first thirty seconds or so of the music.
Are my ears deceiving me? Clearly, a CD must be made from some source, but I always imagined that CD’s were made from master tapes.
What happened with this song? Did a fire consume the original master tape, forcing Quenton Tarantino to offer his own precious 45 of the song for the soundtrack?
Is it common for commercial CD tracks to come from a vinyl source?
(fyi: in the film, this song plays while the two girls are discussing body piercing)
I have a few cd’s where they make it sound like there is record pops and scratches. I wish they would stop. It’s barely interesting the first time you hear it, and just plain annoying every time after that.
There were even records that had fake pops and skips intentionally put on:
On The Birds, The Bees, and the Monkees was a track called “Magnolia Simms” that was a take-off on '20s Rudy Vallee tunes and it came complete with a couple of pops and a skip.
It may very well be an added effect on the Pulp Fiction version of “Bustin’ Surfboards” – that’s a semi-famous song where the master tape has probably survived.
However, the original master tapes to thousands of 45s issued in the 1960s have been lost, simply because nobody figured there was a point in holding on to the tape of some flop single by some obscure local band. If you listen to albums that reissue these forgotten records, like the “Pebbles” series, you’re often listening to recordings made straight from 45s.
And of course, before 1948 or so, the phrase “original master tapes” has no meaning – there was no tape, and masters were made on discs.
I listened to that specific section of the DVD prior to posting, and I found that the volume was so low that I couldn’t hear the pops.
In addition, the film used many other songs of the same era, but there were no “special effects” pops in those songs.
It seems odd that they would put the pops in for effect, in only one song, if they would be inaudible in the finished product.