More of the Music of Rickie Lee Jones
- Seriously good sound throughout this original copy, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them
- This import pressing is rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience, dead on correct tonality, and exceptionally breathy vocals (particularly on side one) – everything that we listen for in a great record is here
- If you like the sound of her first album, you are going to love Pop Pop
- This album was only available on import vinyl in 1991, and only for a short time, which is why they are so hard to find (and expensive when you do find them)
- I was importing these back in the day, and they never played any quieter than Mint Minus Minus – the vinyl of the day was just not that quiet, and they often showed up here in the states with scratches from grit inside the inner sleeve if you can believe that!
- Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, but once you hear how superb sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting stitches and just be swept away by the music
- “Rickie Lee Jones cradles each of these songs with her pleading, gentle voice, backing them with subtle orchestration courtesy of notable performers including Robben Ford, Joe Henderson, and Charlie Haden.”
This vintage Geffen import 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 Pop Pop 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 1991
- 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 Pop Pop
- 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.
Side One
My One And Only Love
Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most
Hi-Lili Hi-Lo
Up From The Skies
Second Time Around
Dat Dere
Side Two
I’ll Be Seeing You
Bye Bye Blackbird
The Ballad Of The Sad Young Men
I Won’t Grow Up
Love Junkyard
Comin’ Back To Me
AMG Review
An eclectic collection of covers from one of jazz-pop’s most eclectic performers, Pop Pop travels from the stage to tin pan alley through Jimi Hendrix’s sky. Rickie Lee Jones cradles each of these songs with her pleading, gentle voice, backing them with subtle orchestration courtesy of notable performers including Robben Ford, Joe Henderson, and Charlie Haden. Her attention to love songs of the ’40s and ’50s demonstrates almost a longing for simpler times and simpler love, and these qualities are echoed in the treatment of songs like “My One and Only Love” and “I’ll Be Seeing You.” Her subdued take on the psychedelic Jimi Hendrix screamer “Up From the Skies” is slowed to a bluesy acoustic number, while the bratty refrain from Peter Pan’s “I Won’t Grow Up” seems blushingly sweet.