More Billy Joel
- With two outstanding Double Plus (A++) sides, this pressing of Joel’s 1982 release is excellent from top to bottom
- The sound is tonally correct, open and spacious with plenty of hard-rockin’ energy for the more uptempo tracks
- Allentown, Pressure, Goodnight Saigon, Laura, She’s Right On Time – some of Joel’s biggest hits are here
- “Since this was an album about Baby Boomers, he chose to base his music almost entirely on the Beatles, the pivotal rock band for his generation. Joel is naturally inclined to write big melodies like McCartney, but he idolizes Lennon, which makes The Nylon Curtain a fascinating cross between ear candy and social commentary. ” – Allmusic
We completed a shootout for The Nylon Curtain a while back and this turned out to be one of the better copies we heard. After playing a stack of mediocre copes, we are completely confident in saying that you’ll have a very hard time finding one that sounds this good.
What excellent sides such as these have to offer is not hard to hear:
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes even as late as 1982
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments (and effects!) having the correct timbre
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space
- No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is, of course, the only way to hear all of the above
Best Practices
If you have five or ten copies of a record and play them over and over against each other, the process itself teaches you what’s right and what’s wrong with the sound of the album. Once your ears are completely tuned to what the best pressings do well that the others do not do as well, using a few specific passages of music, it will quickly become obvious how well any given pressing reproduces those passages.
The process is simple enough. First, you go deep into the sound. There you find something special, something you can’t find on most copies. Now, with the hard-won knowledge of precisely what to listen for, you are perfectly positioned to critique any and all pressings that come your way
TRACK LISTING
Side One
Allentown
Laura
Pressure
Goodnight Saigon
Side Two
She’s Right On Time
A Room Of Our Own
Surprises
Scandinavian Skies
Where’s The Orchestra?
AMG 4 1/2 Star Rave Review
… The Nylon Curtain is where Billy Joel went serious, consciously crafting a song cycle about Baby Boomers in the Reagan era. Since this was an album about Baby Boomers, he chose to base his music almost entirely on the Beatles, the pivotal rock band for his generation. Joel is naturally inclined to write big melodies like McCartney, but he idolizes Lennon, which makes The Nylon Curtain a fascinating cross between ear candy and social commentary.
…the first half of the song suite — “Allentown,” “Laura,” “Pressure,” “Goodnight Saigon,” “She’s Right on Time” — is layered, successful, mature pop that brings Joel tantalizingly close to his ultimate goal of sophisticated pop/rock for mature audiences.