We described our most recent shootout winning pressing this way:
A Moondance like you’ve never heard, with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this early Green Label pressing.
Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “silky and 3D and present”…”sweet and breathy vox”…”spacious and rich”…”huge and lively”…”jumping out of the speakers.”
Drop the needle anywhere on the album for a taste of early-70s Tubey Magical analog, not to mention the kind of blue-eyed soul that will remind some of you just how good music on vinyl used to be.
Side one was killer in every way, and the way we know that is we played a bunch of copies and nothing could beat it. This side one took top honors for having exactly the sound we described above.
Side two is another matter. We came across a side two that was slightly better than the side two you see here.
When we played the two best copies back to back, side one of this copy came out on top, earning a grade of 3+. However, the side two of another pressing showed us there was even more Tubey Magic in the recording than we’d noticed the first time around.
With another copy earning a better grade for having even more Tubey Magic, the full 3 pluses, we felt the right grade for this side two was 2.5+.
Helpful Advice
To aid you in doing your own evaluations, here is a list of records that we’ve found to be good for testing Tubey Magic.
This is exactly why we do shootouts. If you really want to be able to recognize subtle (and not so subtle!) differences between pressings, you must learn to do them too.
And make sure to take notes about what you are hearing, good and bad.
One more thing: stick with the Green Label early pressings, they are the only way to fly on Moondance.
Mistakes Were Made
If you made the mistake of buying the Rhino pressing of Moondance, I hope you heard what we heard: a complete lack of Tubey Magic! This on one of the most Tubey Magical analog recordings we’ve ever played. You can thank Kevin Gray for helping you flush your record money down the drain. When we first reviewed the remaster in 2014, we wrote:
Where is the Tubey Magic of the originals? The sweetness? The richness? And why is there so little ambience or transparency? You just can’t “see” into the studio on this pressing the way you can on the good originals, but that’s fairly consistently been the knock on these remastered Heavy Vinyl records. We noted as much when we reviewed Blue all the way back in early 2007, so no surprise there.
We also complained that the Heavy Vinyl reissue gets the voice wrong. When the voice is wrong on a Van Morrison record, you have yourself a completely worthless piece of vinyl. 180 grams or 120 grams or any other number of grams, vinyl with sound this bad should hold no appeal to the audiophile. The record collector, maybe, but collecting for the sake of collecting has never been our thing and we hope it’s never been yours.
Triple Plus Grades
One side falling short of the full A+++ happens more often than not. One out of five records that has one shootout winning side will have a matching shootout winning other side.
The math works like this. 3+/3+ records go in this section, which currently holds 23 titles as of 5/2025. Records with at least on 3+ side go in this section, and there are 127 of those as of the same date, five times as many.
You know what’s unusual about these notes?
They’re the kind of notes we’ve never written for any Heavy Vinyl reissue, even for the one that won our shootout not long ago.
They are the kind of notes that make it clear to us what a sham the modern Heavy Vinyl pressing tends to be, even those that are done right.
No modern record we’ve ever played has ever had anything even approaching this kind of big as life sound, and we doubt one ever will.
Records like this vintage vinyl pressing are thrilling in a way that very, very few records ever are.
Many of the most thrilling records we’ve ever played came from the same decade this record came from: the 70s.
(Other phenomenally good Must Own rock and pop titles from 1970 can be found here.)
Once you hear sound like this, you are not likely to forget it.
It sets a standard that modern remastered records simply cannot meet.
Further Reading