Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Talking Heads Available Now
UPDATE 2026
We reviewed this awful pressing shortly after its release in 2006. More proof, as if more were needed, that Heavy Vinyl collectors have lost their minds.
A more accurate formulation might be that such collectors can’t tell a good record from a bad one. If they could, the number owning this pressing would be a fraction of that seen below, as would the number who want it. Let’s take a deeper dive into the actual evidence for its desirability:
More than 10,000 Discogs members have this album, almost two thousand would like to own it, and the consensus is that it is an outstanding reissue, having earned a grade of 4.66 out of 5 from 735 members. (Don’t worry, I won’t show you what they had to say about it, but you are welcome to go to Discogs and read it yourself.)
With an average price of 25 bucks, what is keeping those 1948 potential buyers from pulling the trigger? Seems affordable to me. Inflation has gone up 62+% since 2006, making the album cheaper now than if you had bought it when it came out.
Our 2006 Review
The Rhino Heavy Vinyl reissue of this album was deemed dead on arrival the minute it hit my turntable.
No top, way too much bottom, dramatically less ambience than the average copy — this one is a disaster on every level.
Rhino Records has really made a mockery of the analog medium. Rhino touts their releases as being pressed on “180 gram High Performance Vinyl.” However, if they are using performance to refer to sound quality, we have found the performance of their vinyl to be quite low, lower than the average copy one might stumble upon in the used record bins.
Mastered by Kevin Gray, this record has what we would call ”modern” sound, which is to say it’s clean and tonally correct, but it’s missing the analog qualities the better originals have plenty of.
In other words, it sounds like a CD.
Who can be bothered to play a record that has so few of the qualities audiophiles are looking for on vinyl? Back in 2007 we put the question this way: why own a turntable if you’re going to play mediocrities like these?
Further Reading
Records are getting awfully expensive these days, and it’s not just our Hot Stampers that seem priced for perfection.
If you are still buying these modern remastered pressings, making the same mistakes that I was making before I knew better, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed Mastered LPs.
At the very least let us send you a Hot Stamper pressing — of any album you choose — that can show you what is wrong with your copy of the album.
And if for some reason you disagree with us that our record sounds better than yours, we will happily give you all your money back and wish you the very best.