Month: March 2020

The King on Century Direct Disc – Not Good Enough

Hot Stamper Pressings of Big Band Recordings Available Now

This is a Century Direct-to-Disc LP that is every bit as good sounding as the excellent Glenn Miller disc, and in some ways better.

The problem is that Benny sounds much too old and tired, so this one gets a Not Good Enough ranking from us.

Our Pledge of Service to You, the Discriminating Audiophile 

We play mediocre-to-bad sounding pressings so that you don’t have to, a free service from your record-loving friends at Better Records.

You can find this one in our hall of shame, along with others that — in our opinion — are best avoided by audiophiles looking for hi-fidelity sound.

Some of these records may have passable sonics, but the music is weak.  These are also records you can safely avoid.

We also have an audiophile record hall of shame for records that were marketed to audiophiles with claims of superior sound. If you’ve spent much time on this blog, you know that these records are some of the worst sounding pressings we have ever had the misfortune to play.

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Letter of the Week – “…slow, murky and all the other things that your commentary says…”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Boston Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased a while back:

Hey Tom, 

Just wanted to say thanks for finding a record like this. I looked in my collection and thought, wow I have an anadisc (Serial #5), let’s see how they compare?

The MOFI is so bad! It sounds like there are three layers of Saran wrap on it… slow, murky and all the other things that your commentary says… the food analogy would be crappy soggy french fries… bloated… lifeless…

There is no comparison to the sound on side two…. the organ is rolling and alive and sounds like the Hammonds I have heard through Leslie cabinets… on the MOFI it was like the organ was behind glass doors… flat… no life…. I could go on and on.

The other songs were so much better on the Hot Stamper… makes me want to go frisbee my MOFI or maybe just sell it on ebay.

Ed F.

Tom Waits / Heartattack and Vine in 2020

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Tom Waits

Surprisingly, it took us until 2025 to do our first real shootout for this album. Here is what we had written in 2020 before then.

One of the better copies of Heartattack and Vine we’ve ever heard! We enjoy listening to the music of Tom Waits here because the music and sound can be excellent. His albums are certainly a nice change of pace from the stuff that’s usually on our table. We had quite a few copies of this one and none of the other ones were in a league with this bad boy. The sound is very rich and full with incredible immediacy to the vocals. You just couldn’t get the vocals to sound any better than they do on this copy.

This obviously ain’t your everyday Classic Rock album — Waits’ music is an acquired taste and certainly not for everyone. Those of you who appreciate Randy Newman are likely to get a lot out of this one.

Side One

Heartattack and Vine
In Shades
Saving All My Love for You
Downtown
Jersey Girl

Side Two

‘Til the Money Runs Out
On the Nickel
Mr. Siegal
Ruby’s Arms

AMG  Review

Heartattack and Vine, Tom Waits’ first album in two years and his last of seven for Asylum Records, is a transitional album, with tracks like the rhythm-heavy title song and “‘Til the Money Runs Out” foreshadowing the sonic experiments of the Island albums, while piano-with-orchestra tracks like “Saving All My Love for You” and “On the Nickel” (written as a motion-picture title tune) hark back to Waits’ Randy Newman-influenced early days. It is just as well that Waits never entirely gave up on the ballad material.

Grateful Dead – Shakedown Street

 

  • This original Arista LP earned Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades – you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this one does – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Midrange magic that’s no doubt missing from whatever 180g reissue has been made from the tapes (or, to be clear, a modern digital master copied from who-knows-what-tapes)
  • Grateful Dead fans and completists will surely want to add this to their collection – it’s As Good As It Gets
  • “The rough-edged blues of “I Need a Miracle” and the Caribbean-tinged “Fire On the Mountain” would become set list staples, and their Latin-flavored version of The Rascals’ ’60s rock classic “Good Lovin'” is one of the band’s most beloved covers.” Amazon

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