The Rolling Stones / Their Satanic Majesties Request – How Good Is the Original Unboxed Decca?

More of the Music of The Rolling Stones

Good.

But not as good as the right later pressings with the Decca in a Box label, the ones that were produced from about 1970 on.

The Unboxed Decca pressing earned a Super Hot Stamper grade (A++). The later pressing, which seems to always have the same stamper, showed us just how good the album can sound.

Since the originals are pricey and hard to find, not to mention noisier than the later pressings as a rule, we don’t pick them up unless they are very cheap. They cannot win a shootout in our experience.

As of 2021, this album sounds better to us this way:

If you are interested, click on the link below for:

This is the Stones at their most experimental, so there are plenty of strange effects and trippy arrangements. Only the best copies manage to make sense of it, but when you find one this music is a lot of fun.

Not only is it hard to find great copies of this album, it’s hard to play them when you do find them. You’re going to need a hi-res, super low distortion front end to play this properly, but if you’ve got the goods this is one hot record! Play this with a budget cart / table / arm and you’ll hear very little of the magic that we heard.

This is some crazy music! If you’re looking for the raging bluesy rock of Sticky Fingers and Let It Bleed, you’ll find some of that here but also a lot of psychedelic madness. You get some great rockers though — Citadel, 2000 Man, and 2000 Light Years From Home to name a few. She’s A Rainbow is the poppiest song here, and on this copy it sounds WONDERFUL.

TRACK LISTING

Side One

Sing This All Together
Citadel
In Another Land
2000 Man

Side Two

Sing This All Together (See What Happens)
She’s a Rainbow
The Lantern
Gomper
2000 Light Years from Home
On With the Show