More British Blues Rock
- Shake Down finally makes its Hot Stamper debut with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout
- Big, with a punchy bottom end and driving blues/rock energy, as well as the all-import British Tubey Magic, here you will find all the elements critical to the best sounding copies
- “… a raw and immediate album of hard primal blues and blues-rock with huge bass guitar, lots of guitar solos, piano and powerful drums… if you like the British Blues in the vein of early Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall or Chicken Shack, don’t hesitate ! This is enthusiastic and thrilling top-notch album.”
This vintage British Decca pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records rarely even BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.
If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.
What the best sides of Shake Down 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 in 1967
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional space of the studio
No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
Size
One of the qualities that we don’t talk about on the site nearly enough is the SIZE of the record’s presentation. Some copies of the album just sound small — they don’t extend all the way to the outside edges of the speakers, and they don’t seem to take up all the space from the floor to the ceiling. In addition, the sound can often be recessed, with a lack of presence and immediacy in the center.
Other copies — my notes for these copies often read “BIG and BOLD” — create a huge soundfield, with the music positively jumping out of the speakers. They’re not brighter, they’re not more aggressive, they’re not hyped-up in any way, they’re just bigger and clearer.
And most of the time those very special pressings just plain rock harder. When you hear a copy that does all that, it’s an entirely different listening experience.
What We’re Listening For on Shake Down
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
- Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks for the guitars and drums, not the smear and thickness common to most LPs.
- Tight, note-like bass with clear fingering — which ties in with good transient information, as well as the issue of frequency extension further down.
- Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the players.
- Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, way behind the speakers. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would have put them.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
TRACK LISTING
Side One
I Ain’t Superstitious
Let Me Love You Baby
Black Night
High Rise
Rock Me Baby
I Smell Trouble
Side Two
Oh! Pretty Woman
Little Girl
The Doormouse Rides The Rails
It’s My Own Fault
Shake ‘Em On Down
Rave Reviews
This is the birth of one of my all-time favorite bands, the one and only Savoy Brown. Their first long play is blues just blues and nothing but the blues. That great boogie blues is still in the future but for an initial recording, this is very good.
The lead guitar solos from Kim Simmonds and Martin Stone sizzle and the bass from Ray Chappell booms, what more do you want in a blues album? The British blues revival was one of my all time favorite music scenes.
-rod45
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Savoy Brown has been signed to Decca records by Mike Vernon’s recommendation. It’s a raw and immediate album of hard primal blues and blues-rock with huge bass guitar, lots of guitar solos, piano and powerful drums.
All the tracks here, except the instrumentals, are fantastic covers of blues classics by John Lee Hooker, Fenton Robinson, B.B. King and Willie Dixon.
“I Ain’t Superstitious”, “Rock Me Baby” and “Oh Pretty Woman” are particularly convincing while the closing upbeat track “Shake ‘Em on Down”, recreating the band’s live shows, is a traditional tune artfully arranged by the band.
Though, if you like the British Blues in the vein of early Fleetwood Mac, John Mayall or Chicken Shack, don’t hesitate ! This is enthusiastic and thrilling top-notch album.
-PC_Music
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