More Gordon Lightfoot
More Folk Rock
- This vintage Reprise pressing boasts very good Hot Stamper sound from first note to last – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
- We guarantee there is more space, richness, presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard or you get your money back – it’s as simple as that
- “Lightfoot pays tribute to the many and varied places that make up his [Canadian] homeland. All in all, there’s not a bad cut here. It’s well worth your time.”
This vintage Reprise pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely 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 Dox Quixote 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 1972
- 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.
Lee Herschberg
One of the top guys at Warners, Herschberg recorded and mixed this album along with a number of others by Gordon Lightfoot. You’ll also find his name on many of the best Ry Cooder, Doobie Brothers and Frank Sinatra album credits, albums we know to have potentially excellent sound — not to mention an album most audiophiles know all too well: Rickie Lee Jones’ debut.
His pop and rock engineering credits run for pages. The most amazing jazz piano trio recording we know of is on the list as well: The Three (Shelly Manne, Ray Brown and Joe Sample), along with most of the other Direct to Disc recordings released on Eastwind.
He also won the Grammy for Strangers in the Night.
What We’re Listening For On Dox Quixote
- 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 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.
TRACK LISTING
Side One
Don Quixote
Christian Island (Georgian Bay)
Alberta Bound
Looking At The Rain
Ordinary Man
Brave Mountaineers
Side Two
Ode To Big Blue
Second Cup Of Coffee
Beautiful
On Susan’s Floor
The Patriot’s Dream
AMG Review
Perhaps one of his most Canadian releases, Don Quixote is a very pleasant folk sounding album. From “Alberta Bound” to “Christian Island” to “Ode to Big Blue,” Lightfoot pays tribute to the many and varied places that make up his homeland. Also of note are such love songs as “Beautiful” and the lovely “Looking at the Rain.” All in all, there’s not a bad cut here. It’s well worth your time.