More Entries from Tom’s Audiophile Notebook
It has to be.
You can find Demo Disc quality records all over the site, but what if you are not interested in demonstrating your equipment and just want to play the music you love?
And what if the music you love wasn’t recorded all that well?
What if the music you love is on the third Band album, Stage Fright, a notoriously problematic recording?
You buy the best sounding version you can find and put up with the sonic limitations because the music is always more important than the sound.
(My wife toured with the band Asia in Europe one year, a tour to celebrate their Number One debut album. It happens to be one of the worst sounding records I have ever played, but that didn’t stop people from loving the music. Why would it?)
A better example than Stage Fright are the albums released by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Good recordings, not great ones, nothing like Demo Discs, just some of the greatest roots rock music ever made. Their first six albums probably belong in any collection of pop and rock. (Number seven, not so much.)
It’s how Washington Post writer Geoff Edgers first learned for himself that our records are the real deal.
We sent him one of their albums, a second rate copy with one good side, and according to him it’s still the best sounding CCR record he’s ever heard. I told him he should play the AP pressing and he said “Why bother?” He’s heard enough of their records to know what to expect, and it sure isn’t better sound.
And, because I can’t resist, allow me to point out that the Heavy Vinyl pressings those AP guys made were really something, and by really something, I mean really bad. After playing the Heavy Vinyl (and the MoFi), I had only one question: why would anyone want to take all the fun out of CCR’s music?
Still waiting for an answer to that one.
Further Reading
Tom, further to your final point – if you can’t turn the music up loud enough to annoy your neighbours without flinching, how much fun can you really have? It’s certainly what I did as a teenager.
Cosmo’s Factory is an album I counted as a desert island favourite for most of my life, but it barely gets any turntable time these days. I spin a CD of it in my car instead. Have my musical preferences changed or my listening ones? I can’t be sure.
A different question about Asia, and why would (bad sound) stop people from loving the music, is – how many of them know the difference between good sound and bad? My guess is not many. A lot of bad sounding music was tremendously popular back when most people were playing it on primitive systems, true enough of the 80s, and 80s music today has a large and constant fanbase, although most would be listening to digital transfers of the music and not hearing it the way it was heard when it first gained popularity.
Not that we lucky few are listening to our wonderful 70s pressings the way they would have been heard back in the day. It’s wild to think that this hot stamper hobby is only a 21st century phenomenon and a niche one at that. It sure raises a bunch of questions.
Austin, thanks for writing.
1. As for CCR, my take would be that it’s great driving music but not so good for sitting and listening, maybe.
2. You are right about music in general and the listening skills of practically everybody. I remember so often thinking that I wish this album or that one had been recorded better. Most of the time I had a bad pressing, but I didn’t understand that concept and just put up with it.
3. Very niche and hard for most people to understand. When discussing recordings, I often say the orchestral recordings from the late-50 to the mid-60s are the best, and the rock records from the late-60 to the late-70s are the best, and 95% of everything after that may be ok but not much better than that with very few exceptions.
Cinemascope was bit in the mid-50s. 70mm for David Lean’s films in the 60s. What movies made since then look better?
4. As far as raising questions, for 99% of the audiophiles it might ruffle some feathers, but raise questions they refuse to raise because the answers would shake up their happy homes? Not a chance.
Best, TP