Hot Stamper Pressings of Contemporary Jazz Records Available Now
This album is fairly common on the OJC pressing from 1988, but more recently we’ve found the sound of the OJC pressings we’ve played seriously wanting. They have the kind of bad reissue sound that plays right into the prejudices of record collectors and audiophiles alike, the kind for whom nothing but an original will do.
They were dramatically smaller, flatter, more recessed and more lifeless than even the worst of the ’70s LPs we played. (We tend to like those, by the way.)
The lesson? Not all reissues are created equal. Some OJC pressings are great — including even some of the new ones — some are awful, and the only way to judge them fairly is to judge them individually, which requires actually playing a large sample.
Since virtually no record collectors or audiophiles like doing that, they make faulty judgments – OJC’s are cheap reissues sourced from digital tapes, run for the hills! – based on their biases and reliance on inadequate sample sizes.
You can find those who subscribe to this approach on every audiophile forum there is. The methods they have adopted do not produce good results, but as long as they stick to them, they will never have to worry about discovering that inconvenient truth.
DCC
This is one of the all time great Contemporary recordings. DCC was going to do this on CD at one time; I loaned Steve Hoffman an OJC LP back in the ’90s, which he promptly fell in love with.
In the ’90s there were a great many more OJC titles I liked the sound of then than I do now, a classic case of live and learn.
To quote a very wise man named Ronny Lane, formerly with The Faces:
I wish that I knew what I know now / When I was younger
Unfortunately DCC went out of business, and Analogue Productions, the people doing the jazz reissue series on 45 RPM Heavy Vinyl, wouldn’t recognize a top title like this one if it bit them in the ass.
And if they did remaster it, their version probably wouldn’t sound good anyway.
How could I possibly know that?
Easy. None of their stuff ever does, which is why you can find all of their reissues in our hall of shame.
UPDATE 2023
Not all of their records belong in our hall of shame. Some portion of them would best be described as mediocre, not awful.
It is true, as far as we know, that they have never produced a truly good sounding record since their founding in 1991.
Further Reading