Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now
This commentary about a very special 2-pack was written close to ten years ago. We think it’s every bit as true today as it was then.
The long and the short of it is simply that when it comes to collecting high quality vinyl:
There are no easy answers and there are no quick fixes.
To those of us who have been doing this for a long time, the above is obvious, perhaps even axiomatic in the sense that it is a “self-evident truth that requires no proof.”
(The fact that the modern audiophile reviewer class has yet to appreciate this basic concept goes a long way in explaining how inadequate and error-prone their approach to records and audio has always been. Some of them may still be living in 1982, but I’m glad to say we’re not. Our business could not exist in 1982. Many of the technologies on which it is based had not yet been invented.)
Once you stop looking for easy answers and quick fixes, you will then be free to build a truly wonderful stereo system and acquire a superb sounding record collection to play on it. It will, naturally, and to some of you surprisingly, comprise virtually nothing but vintage vinyl.
The album under discussion today is Joni Mitchell’s Song to a Seagull. Our commentary begins:
It took two records to make this White Hot Stamper 2-pack, with top quality sound from start to finish. The result? One of the best sounding, if not THE best sounding copy to ever hit the site. If you’re a Joni fan this is one of her strongest records, and one that definitely belongs in your collection. If you own any other pressing we’re confident that this copy will positively blow your mind.
These two sides have the kind of sound quality you probably never imagined would be possible — but it is! We played it, we heard it for ourselves, and now we offer it to you, the Joni Mitchell (nee Roberta Joan Anderson) fans of the world.
I’ve been trying to get this album to sound good for more years than I care to remember. If you own a copy you know what I’m talking about — the sound is typically drenched in echo, with Joni sounding like she’s standing at the back of a cave. Harmonically-challenged acoustic guitars. Vocals with no breathy texture (much like practically all the heavy vinyl reissues we’ve suffered through over the course of the last decade or two).
Blue vs Song to a Seagull
In its own way, it’s every bit the challenge that Blue is, just reversed.
Blue tends to be bright, shrill, thin and harsh.
Song to a Seagull is usually dark, veiled, smeary and dull.
What’s an audiophile to do?
Simple. Commit the resources. Find more copies of the record, clean them and play them.
The recording may have its faults — you’ll get no argument from us about that, we just finished playing a big pile of copies so we are intimately aware of just how problematical the recording can be — but what holds it back from sounding musical, and in its own way, magical, is often the reproduction part of the equation.
We couldn’t get the album to sound right for ten years. Now we can. Something changed, and it wasn’t us simply lowering our standards. The magic in the grooves of the best copies has to have been there all along. It was up to us to figure out how to get the muck out of the vinyl with better cleaning technologies, then get the stereo to unlock and reveal the wonderful music in those nearly forty-year-old grooves.
And we did. The result is an album whose best copies are warm, sweet and rich, with breathy, full-bodied, present vocals, clear guitar transients and a solid-sounding piano. These, as well as the other instruments captured in these grooves, are beautifully arrayed on a three-dimensional, wide and deep soundstage.
What is an audiophile not to do? Blame the recording.
We’ve done it plenty since we started our record business in 1987, and as it turns out, it has never been a good idea.
Why We Do It
I put this one right up with her best (the ones we’ve done Hot Stamper shootouts for, of course), and on any given day I would rather play side one of this album than practically any of the others. As good as those others are, this one has a special charm I can find on no other record, by Joni or anyone else.
All this work and trouble only makes sense if the music is good. I loved this album from the minute I first heard it; all of side one is magical in a way that no other Joni album is. Is it the particular guitar tunings she was using? The minor key melodies? Whatever she did, however she did it, the result is an absolutely SUBLIME folk album, as unique in its own way as Leonard Cohen’s first album.
Further Reading