More Free
More British Blues Rock
- Tons of Sobs returns to the site for only the second time in over two and a half years, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER from top to bottom – fairly quiet vinyl too
- Side one was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
- This Island Pink Rim UK pressing gave us what we were looking for from these British Blues rockers – it’s smooth, weighty, and overflowing with Tubey Magical richness
- The key is to find a copy with a top end — a lot of what we played was just too dull up high, and we take a lot of points off for the copies that are too smooth, because that is simply not the right sound for this album
- It’s tough to find these imports in audiophile condition, which is why they only hit the site at most every two years or so
- 4 1/2 stars: “…a blistering combination of youth, ambition, and experience that, across the course of their debut album, did indeed lay the groundwork for all that Zeppelin would embrace. …Tons of Sobs has a density that makes Zeppelin and the rest of the era’s rocky contemporaries sound like flyweights by comparison.”
Here is just the kind of sound you want on an album like this — big and bold!
If you’ve got the full range dynamic speakers to play Tons of Sobs good and loud, you will discover, as we have, what a powerful British Blues Rock album this is. No hits, just heavy electric blues played with feeling, months before Zeppelin would come along and take the genre to a whole new level.
What The Best Sides On Tons of Sobs 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 1969
- 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.
What We’re Listening For On Tons of Sobs
- 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 — Andy Johns 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.
Side One
Over the Green Hills (Pt 1)
Worry
Walk in My Shadow
Wild Indian Woman
Goin’ Down Slow
Side Two
I’m a Mover
The Hunter
Moonshine
Sweet Tooth
Over the Green Hills (Pt 2)
AMG 4 1/2 Star Rave Review
Although Free was never destined to scrape the same skies as Led Zeppelin, when they first burst out of the traps in 1968, close to a year ahead of Jimmy Page and company, they set the world of British blues-rock firmly on its head, a blistering combination of youth, ambition, and, despite those tender years, experience that, across the course of their debut album, did indeed lay the groundwork for all that Zeppelin would embrace.
That Free and Zeppelin were cut from the same cloth is immediately apparent, even before you start comparing the versions of “The Hunter” that highlight both bands’ debut albums. Where Free streaks ahead, however, is in their refusal to compromise their own vision of the blues — even at its most commercial (“I’m a Mover” and “Worry”), Tons of Sobs has a density that makes Zeppelin and the rest of the era’s rocky contemporaries sound like flyweights by comparison.