More Rock and Pop Demo Discs

More Little Feat Albums We’ve Reviewed

• Knockout Demo Disc Rock and Roll sound for this amazing Little Feat EP, with both sides earning incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades, just shy of our Shootout Winner – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
• This is the Big Rock Sound we love – huge and punchy with plenty of space and a big bottom end
• This EP may only hold four songs, but each is a Demo Disc Track of the highest order

It may contain only a handful of tracks from the Hoy Hoy album but, folks, stunning sound doesn’t begin to do justice to this EP. I would state categorically that there is not a single rock record on the TAS List that can hold a candle to it in terms of live-rock-in-your-living room blasting power. This is one of the most Amazing Demo Discs of All Time. If it were an album I would put it on a Top Ten Best Sounding Rock and Pop List (if we had such a thing).

It’s really not fair to judge the Harry’s List by records like this, which have never been the man’s forte. We, on the other hand, know these kinds of records about as well as anyone, and to prove it we would love to send you this copy.

And do you know how we discovered it? We had a couple of these promos lying around, and after shooting out the Hot Stamper Hoy-Hoys, we figured what the hell, throw one of them on just for fun. To our shock and dismay, it blew the doors off our BEST Hot Stamper pressings song for song. As good as those album sides sound, the EP took the same material to an entirely new level of sonic splendor.

What The Best Sides Of Hoy-Hoy Sampler 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 1981
• 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 studio space

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.

Pop and Rock Shootouts

What are the sonic qualities by which a Pop or Rock record — any Pop or Rock record — should be judged?

Pretty much the ones we discuss in most of our Hot Stamper listings: energy, vocal presence, frequency extension (on both ends), transparency, spaciousness, harmonic textures (freedom from smear is key), rhythmic drive, tonal correctness, fullness, richness, three-dimensionality, and on and on down the list.

When we can get a number of these qualities to come together on the side we’re playing, we provisionally give it a ballpark Hot Stamper grade, a grade that is often revised during the shootout as we hear what the other copies are doing, both good and bad.

Once we’ve been through all the side ones, we play the best of the best against each other and arrive at a winner for that side. Other copies from earlier in the shootout will frequently have their grades raised or lowered based on how they sounded compared to the eventual shootout winner. If we’re not sure about any pressing, perhaps because we played it early on in the shootout before we had learned what to listen for, we take the time to play it again.

Repeat the process for side two and the shootout is officially over. All that’s left is to see how the sides of each pressing match up.

It may not be rocket science, but it’s a science of a kind, one with strict protocols that we’ve developed over the course of many years to insure that the results we arrive at are as accurate as we can make them.

The result of all our work speaks for itself, on this very record in fact. We guarantee you have never heard this music sound better than it does on our Hot Stamper pressing — or your money back.

What We’re Listening For On Hoy-Hoy Sampler

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt — George Massenburg in this case — would put them.
• 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, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also 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 instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don’t have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that’s certainly your prerogative, but we can’t imagine losing what’s good about this music — the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight — just to hear it with less background noise.

Select Discography

Little Feat, 1970
Sailin’ Shoes, 1972
Dixie Chicken, 1973
Feats Don’t Fail Me Now, 1974
The Last Record Album, 1975
Time Loves a Hero, 1977
Waiting for Columbus, 1978
Hoy-Hoy!, 1981

AMG on Little Feat

Little Feat is an enormously versatile rock band with an ever-growing cult following in the United States and Europe. Detroit Free Press contributor Gary Graff describes Little Feat as “one of those groups that baffled record company executives and radio station program directors [with] a Cuisinart blend of rock, country, jazz, soul, blues and gospel, chopped and mixed into a dish that defied categorization.” In fact, the band probably owes its current existence to the popularity of album-rock and classic-rock radio stations. Many Little Feat albums from the 1970s are still selling today thanks to the enduring allure of Feat hits such as “Dixie Chicken” and “Oh Atlanta,” and the group’s new work is finding enthusiasts as well.

Little Feat’s down-and-dirty blues-rock was primarily the invention of Feat founder Lowell George. George and bass guitarist Roy Estrada were veterans of the Frank Zappa band Mothers of Invention before they formed their own group in 1970. The original incarnation of Little Feat also included keyboardist Bill Payne and drummer Richard Hayward, both of whom had spent years establishing themselves in the California rock scene. Much of the early Little Feat material was composed and sung by George, a talented songwriter and producer. The group’s first live gigs were performed under the dubious name Country Zeke and the Freaks, but George eventually hit upon the name Little Feat when he recalled how former band companions had teased him about his feet.

George was so well-connected in the music business that he had little trouble persuading Warner Brothers to sign his new band. Their debut album, Little Feat, was released in 1970. A “fine set of post-psychedelic country-influenced rock,” to quote the Rolling Stone Record Guide, Little Feat sold steadily behind the group’s spirited concert performances. A second album, Sailin’ Shoes (1972), was hailed by critics for its ground-breaking fusion of widely varied musical elements and for its catchy lyrics, most of them provided by Lowell George. Unfortunately, the band’s eclectic sound defied easy categorization, so pop stations were not quick to play Little Feat cuts. As a result the band sold more albums in Europe than it did in America, although concert attendance was hefty on both sides of the Atlantic.

Roy Estrada left Little Feat in 1972, and George recruited several new members to fill the gap. That year bass guitarist Ken Gradney, guitarist-vocalist Paul Barrere, and conga player Sam Clayton joined the group. These performers form the nucleus of the current version of Little Feat, and in the early 1970s they proved to be valuable members of a promising band. The first album produced by the expanded Little Feat band was Dixie Chicken, released in 1973. The title song from this release is probably the best-known Little Feat number, a swinging, good-natured rocker with elements of gospel in its sound. A 1974 album, Feats Don’t Fail Me Now, also sold well and produced another popular single, “Oh Atlanta.”

A rock band’s success is measured in increments of one million, and under those criteria Little Feat did not seem so successful. Album sales in the United States averaged a half-million per title or less, despite critical acclaim. Still, the band was prosperous enough to continue recording and performing, with Payne and Barrere contributing more and more material to the albums as the decade wore on. George gradually diminished his role in the group as he sought a solo career, but he was still a member of Little Feat and can be heard singing on the 1979 album Down on the Farm, which was released after his death from a heart attack.

George’s untimely death proved to be the undoing of Little Feat. For several years the band suffered caustic reviews that suggested its reputation rested solely on George’s talent. Rather than put that hypothesis to the test, the group disbanded in 1979. Then a curious thing happened. Little Feat actually gained popularity. Copies of the classic Little Feat albums continued to sell, much to the delight of Warner Brothers executives. The group’s best numbers began to be featured on classic-rock radio stations. Like other hard-rocking bands of the early 1970s, Little Feat got a second wind from the music public’s taste for vintage recordings.

Little Feat re-formed in 1988 with a fine representation of original members—Payne, Hayward, Gradney, Barrere, and Clayton—and with new associates Fred Tackett and Craig Fuller. In little more than two years the group released two albums of new material, Let It Roll and Representing the Mambo, which both sold more initial copies than any of the classic Little Feat works. The group’s music was also used in the soundtracks of two feature films, Pink Cadillac and Twins. On tour once again, Little Feat played to appreciative audiences in smaller arenas, drawing the kind of devoted followers usually associated with cult bands like the Grateful Dead.

The comparison between Little Feat and the Grateful Dead is not an idle one. Both groups are at their most brilliant in live settings—a fact not lost on Little Feat’s critics over the years. Little Feat’s virtuoso instrumentation plays extremely well in mid-size theatres. The band’s current audiences are as eclectic in make-up as is the music itself—young rockers who list the group as an influence on their work, middle-aged business people with a fondness for real rock, and vintage hippies rejoicing over the rediscovery of an old friend. In the Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock & Soul, Irwin Stambler describes Little Feat as “a premier concert band, one able to involve the crowd passionately in its constantly changing mixture of vocal and instrumental sounds.”

Needless to say, Little Feat’s original aim was to ascend to the highest pinnacles of rock music fame. That ambition has been denied the group, but more satisfying accomplishments have come in droves—praise from critics, influence, and most importantly, lasting music. “What we do is rather special,” Bill Payne told the Detroit Free Press. “Basically, what we’re trying to do is develop this thing into a nice, long run. It takes work to bring that growth, and we’re willing to do it.”