More of the Music of James Taylor
Reviews and Commentaries for Mud Slide Slim
This Shootout Winning copy from 2008 or thereabouts showed us a Mud Slide Slim we had no idea could possibly exist. We have a name for records like this. We call them Breakthrough Pressings. They are one of the reasons we play so many thousands of records every year. We’re looking for records that sound like this. Experience has taught us they cannot be found any other way.
As you will see from our commentary, the first track on side one, Love Has Brought Me Around, is a great test for energy.
If your copy does not seem very energetic to you, then we recommend you keep buying every green label original you see until you find one that does.
Our commentary from the early days of shootouts can be seen below.
What REALLY sets this one apart is how much IT ROCKS. The energy on this pressing has to be heard to be believed. Forget all that detail and soundstaging stuff and just focus on how this band is playing the HELL out of that first track, which, we might argue, is the best song on the album. When you hear it sound like this there is no argument.
The sound was jumping out of the speakers, with breathy, intimate, full, rich vocals.
Midrange Presence is tough to come by on Mud Slide. Most of the time JT’s voice is recessed, dark, veiled and has a slightly hollow quality. To find a copy where his vocals are front and center — which of course is exactly where they should be — but still rich, sweet and tonally correct, is no mean feat. Only the best copies manage to pull it off. Out of the dozens of copies we played, not that many had the midrange we were looking for and knew could exist.
Sibilance
Distortions that are common to the other good original pressings simply don’t seem to be much of a problem here. This is especially true in the case of sibilance, which can be a major problem on some of these Green Label James Taylor records. No copies won’t have some spit, but this one doesn’t have much, a clear sign that the cutter head was doing a bang up job.
Inner Groove Distortion
Can be a problem on this album. The 55 second long last track on side two is practically always groove damaged to some degree. This copy has IGD for that track, par for the course.