Focus-Rock, Pop and Soul

Here you will find rock, pop, soul, etc. albums we think we know well, having cleaned and played them by the score over the course of many decades.

There are currently more than 200 entries, but the number could easily exceed 1000 considering how many records we play every week in our shootouts. This is how we learn what we know, — because there is no other way.

Are Your Cellists Digging In on I Am the Walrus?

Hot Stamper Pressings of The Beatles’ Music Available Now

This commentary was written many years ago.

Over the last decade I Am The Walrus has evolved into a good test for side one, a fact that came as a complete surprise to me. As I was listening to the various copies in a shootout years ago I noted that the opening cellos and basses in the right channel were often tonally identical from copy to copy, but sounded quite a bit more lively and energetic on some pressings relative to others. Was it EQ? Level? Compression?  

Why so much more passion from the players on some copies and not others?

As I tried to puzzle it out, playing first one copy and then another, it became clear to me what was happening. The cellists and the bassists were just plain digging HARDER into the strings on the best copies. When you see live classical music, the cellists at the front of the orchestra are usually sawing away with abandon when the music is really going. They dig their bows hard into the strings to make them vibrate as loud as possible. To make their instruments heard in the back row it becomes a matter of muscle, of pure physical exertion.

So armed with the copies where the string players are working the hardest, I checked the other tracks. Sure enough, the opening cut, MMT, jumped out of the speakers with the most energy I had heard on any copy. As I went through the tracks one by one, they had the most life of any of the copies I had been listening to. To use a word that was popular at the time, the music was HAPPENING.

This was the final piece to the puzzle. Tonality always comes first. Frequency extension; lack of distortion; rich, powerful bass — these are important qualities as well. But the life of the music is in the micro and macro dynamics, and that is what I had not been paying sufficient attention to during the shootout.

That was until I listened to Walrus and heard the players working up a good healthy sweat. Then I knew I had a Hot Stamper. And when I played the not-so-Hot Stampers, the string guys sounded like session musicians picking up a paycheck.

Where was their passion? Didn’t they realize they were making a classic?

If you get the right pressing they sure were!

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Advances in Playback Technology Are More Than Blind Faith

More of the Music of Eric Clapton

In a 2007 commentary for a Hot Stamper pressing of Blind Faith we noted that:

When it finally all comes together for such a famously compromised recording, it’s nothing less than a THRILL. More than anything else, the sound is RIGHT. Like Layla or Surrealistic Pillow, this is no Demo Disc by any stretch of the imagination, but that should hardly keep us from enjoying the music. And now we have the record that lets us do it.

The Playback Technology Umbrella

Why did it take so long? Why does it sound good now, after decades of problems? For the same reason that so many great records are only now revealing their true potential: advances in playback technology.

Audio has finally reached the point where the magic in Blind Faith’s grooves is ready to be set free.

What exactly are we referring to? Why, all the stuff we talk about endlessly around here. These are the things that really do make a difference. They change the fundamentals. They break down the barriers.

You know the drill. Things like better cleaning techniques, top quality front end equipment, Aurios, better electricity, Hallographs and other room treatments, amazing phono stages like the EAR 324p, power cables; the list goes on and on.

If you want records like Blind Faith to sound good, we don’t think it can be done without bringing to bear all of these advanced technologies to the problem at hand, the problem at hand being a recording with its full share of problems and then some.

Without these improvements, why wouldn’t Blind Faith sound as dull and distorted as it always has? The best pressings were made more than thirty years ago [thirty? make that fifty] — they’re no different.

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Rockin’ the Mandolin with Loggins and Messina

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Loggins and Messina Available Now

A recent White Hot Stamper pressing of L&M’s fourth release demonstrated pretty convincingly just what an amazing Demo Disc this album can be.

When Jim Messina rips into his mandolin solo halfway through Be Free, your jaw is likely to hit the ground. On the best copies it positively leaps out of the left speaker.

I can’t recall another pop or rock recording that captures either the plucked energy or the harmonic nuances of the instrument better. To hear such a well-recorded mandolin on a copy of this quality is nothing less than a thrill.

This copy showed us:

  • A full-bodied piano
  • Rich, lively vocals, present between the speakers and brimming with enthusiasm
  • Harmonically-rich guitars, mandolins, dobros and the like, as well as a
  • Three-dimensional soundstage that revealed the space around them all

What to Listen For

What typically separates the killer copies from the merely good ones are three qualities that we often look for in the records we play: transparency, speed, and lack of smear.

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Listening to Aja (with Free Cisco Debunking Tool)

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steely Dan Available Now

UPDATE 2024

This commentary references a shootout we did in 2007 or thereabouts, shortly after the release of Cisco’s misbegotten remaster.

Our track commentary for the song Home at Last makes it easy to spot an obvious problem with Cisco’s remastered Aja: This is the toughest song to get right on side two.

Nine out of ten copies have grainy, irritating vocals; the deep bass is often missing too. Home at Last can sometimes be just plain unpleasant, which is why it’s such a great test track.

Get this one right and it’s pretty much smooth sailing from there on out.

If you own the Cisco pressing, focus on Victor Feldman’s piano at the beginning of the song. It lacks body, weight and ambience on the new pressing, but any of our better Hot Stamper copies will show you a piano with those qualities in spades on every track. It’s some of my favorite work by the Steely Dan vibesman.

The thin piano on the Cisco release must be recognized for what it is: a major error on the part of the mastering engineers.

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801 Live – None Rocks Harder

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Brian Eno Available Now

I listened to this album from start to finish just yesterday (5/31/2024), so I thought it only fitting that I share my enthusiasm for this absolutely amazing record with those who read this blog.

The best Island copies of this album rock harder than practically any record we’ve ever played. If you have the system for it, this amazing Rhett Davies recording will bring a live art rock concert right into your living room.

This is a big speaker record. It requires a pair of speakers that can move air with authority below 250 cycles and play at fairly loud levels. If you don’t own speakers that can do that, this record will never really sound the way it should.

It’s right at the top of the list of my favorite rock albums — a desert island disc if ever there was one. I stumbled across it more forty years ago and I’ve loved it ever since. It all started when a college buddy played me the wildly original Tomorrow Never Knows from the album and asked me to name the tune before the vocals kicked in. Eno’s take is so different from The Beatles version that I confess it took me an embarrassingly long while to catch on.

Demo Disc Quality Sound

This is a true Demo Disc in the areas of sound reproduction listed below. Other records with these important qualities can be seen by clicking on any of these links.

Adventures in Music and Sound

Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno were founding members of Roxy Music. AMG calls Roxy Music the “most adventurous rock band of the early ’70s” and I’m inclined to agree with them.

Those who played in Roxy Music are certainly some of the most influential and important artists in my growth as a music lover and audiophile, joining the ranks of 10cc, Steely Dan, Yes, James Taylor, Peter Gabriel, David Bowie, America, Fleetwood Mac, Supertramp, Eno, Talking Heads, The Doors, Jethro Tull, Elton John, The Beatles, Santana, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Little Feat, Traffic, Nilsson, Elvis Costello, Sergio Mendes, Neil Young, The Eagles, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, The Cars, Peter Frampton, Led Zeppelin, Cat Stevens and countless others.

These musicians and bands were clearly dedicated to making high quality recordings, recordings that could only come to life in the homes of those with the most advanced audio equipment.

My system was forced to evolve in order to reproduce the scores of challenging recordings issued by these groups in the 60s and 70s.

The love you have for your favorite music has to be the strongest driving force if you actually want to be successful in this hobby.

Some of the records that did the most to help me advance in audio can be found here.

Want to find your own top quality copy?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice concerning the pressings that tend to win our shootouts.

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Exile on Main Street – A Good Test for Grit and Grain

More reviews and commentaries for the music of The Rolling Stones

The best copies will tend to have the qualities we discuss below, and the more abundant these qualities are on any given pressing, the higher its grade will be.

Yes, it is a science, an empirical one, which can only be carried out by the use of strict protocols and controls, but it sure ain’t rocket science.

All you need is the system, the room, the records, the time and the will to do the painstaking critical listening required to carry out the task.

It can be done, but you could spend a lifetime meeting audiophiles of the vinyl persuasion and never run into a single one who has made the effort more than a handful of times.

To be honest, shootouts are a bitch. If you aren’t getting paid to do them the way we are, finding the motivation to devote the time and energy required to do them right — not to mention the piles of copies of each record you will need — is daunting to say the least.

So, back to the question: what to listen for? (more…)

Check Out the Huge Chorus of The Ark

Hot Stamper Pressings of Albums with Huge Choruses

Listen to the chorus on the first track, The Ark. On the best copies, it really gets loud without becoming harsh or shrill. So many popular albums have choruses (and guitar solos) that are not much louder, and sometimes not even as loud, as the verses, which rob the songs of their drama.

This recording has the potential to give you a dramatic, powerful, loud chorus and it’s a thrill when you find a pressing that delivers on that promise.

One way we know to listen for these volume changes is that we actually play our records good and loud. When a dynamic recording such as this comes along, we have to watch our levels, otherwise, the chorus will overwhelm the system and room.

When playing this copy, be sure to set the level for the chorus of the first track. Everything should play just fine once that setting is correct, as the artist intended.

The double-tracked vocals on Whatever’s Written in Your Heart are a good test for transparency, resolution and Tubey Magic. There should clearly be two voices heard. The richness and the clarity of the best pressings make it possible to have it all.

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It’s 2007 and We’ve Just Discovered a New Wave Record to Beat Them All

Hot Stamper Pressings of New Wave Recordings

This review/commentary was written in 2007.

As far as we know, this is the only New Wave rock record with DEMO DISC sound ever made. We’re talking huge amounts of dynamic energy, tons of bass, a luscious midrange, all topped with a sweetly extended high end. I always knew there were superb sounding copies of this album, but I honestly had no idea they any could sound like this. There is only one copy that earned our coveted Triple Plus designation for both sides, and this is it. As Good As It Gets.

One other copy received a Triple Plus on side one, but this copy was still a step up from it. We hold the line at three pluses but three doesn’t begin to tell the whole story. This record is really just plain off the charts.

On our two day journey through this shootout we discovered that Candy-O only offers two things on its menu*:

1) Open Top Sandwich – extended and open top end with not enough bass 
2) Topless Tacos – driving solid punchy bass with not enough top end extension

But here’s Today’s Special:

Delicious Combo Platter – a sampling of the highest highs, the deepest punchiest bass, and the most open transparent mids, all beautifully laid out on a slab of vinyl, a veritable feast for the ears. Ahem.

(*all items come with free side of shipping when ordered from our mailer.)

What other New Wave band ever recorded an album with this kind of DEMONSTRATION QUALITY sound? It positively JUMPS out of the speakers.

No album by Blondie, Television, The Talking Heads or ANY of their contemporaries can begin to compete with this kind of sound.

[UPDATE: Not true, this one does.]

The Cars very own first album is excellent, but it doesn’t have this kind of LIFE and ENERGY. No way, no how.

If you have big dynamic speakers and like to rock, you can’t go wrong here. Neil Young albums have the Big Rock sound, and if you’re more of a Classic Rock kind of listener, that’s a good way to go. We’re behind you all the way, just check out the commentary for Zuma.

For a band with thin ties, leather jackets, jangly guitars, synths and monstrously huge floor toms that fly back and forth across the soundstage, Candy-O is the girl for you, no doubt about it.

2007 was a long time ago. It was in fact the year we made a great many breakthroughs.

In fact, we made more breakthroughs in that year than in any other in the history of the company, including this singularly important break with the past.  There are many reasons for that, reasons we discuss on this blog endlessly.

If you want to make huge leaps in your enjoyment of the music you play on vinyl, please consider reading some of these posts.

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This Is Why We Love Columbia in the 60s

More of the Music of Al Kooper

More of the Music of Michael Bloomfield

Please excuse the copying and pasting from previous listings. When records are this good, we tend to say the same things about them, because they are doing all the things we want them to do.

From time to time a record comes our way that sounds absolutely amazing, “Way better than it used to sound” amazing. Progress in audio is a feature, not a bug, of record collecting and music reproduction at the most advanced levels.

If it’s the kind of record that sounds like the best copy of The Live Adventures of Bloomfield and Kooper from our most recent shootout, we might even let our enthusiasm for its superb fidelity get the better of us. That’s the effect a record as good as the copy we played can have. You just can’t stop yourself from saying one great thing after another about it.

Our over-the-top notes, like those you see below, attempt to convey what it’s like to experience the superb sound we were hearing.

But where is the harm in that? These are notes that no one outside of the staff are ever expected to see. They are helpful to us in writing our commentary and pricing the specific copy we auditioned, but they are practically never quoted in the listings.

The Live Adventures of Bloomfield and Kooper is an example of one of those recordings that comes along from time to time in order to show us sound that we’d almost forgotten was possible.

Oh yes, with the rare properly-cleaned, properly-mastered, properly-pressed vintage vinyl LP, played back on top quality equipment in a heavily treated, dedicated soundroom, we can assure you it is very possible indeed. Allow us to make the case with the Shootout Winning original pressing you see below.

The notes for side one read: 

  • Big, Tubey and jumping out
  • Breathy vocals
  • Deep, sustained bass

Side two:

  • Spacious
  • Glowing and rich drums are weighty and 3-D
  • No congestion
  • Extending high and low
  • Silky and present vocals

Side three:

  • Weighty and rich
  • No hardness
  • Extending high and low

Side four:

  • Rich and ? and space
  • More dynamic and 3-D
  • All around good weight

You know what’s unusual about these notes?

They’re the kind of notes we have never written for any Heavy Vinyl reissue, even for the one that won our shootout not long ago.

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The Drums and Cymbals Are Key to the Best Pressings of Presence

Hot Stamper Pressings of Led Zeppelin’s Albums Available Now

The drum sound on the best copies is punchy and huge, with prodigious amounts of studio space swirling around Bonham’s kit.

There’s real resonance to the toms, not the standard overdamped sound of a studio kit, which gives them a lively, realistic, natural quality that you rarely hear outside of Zep records.

And the cymbals crash and splash just like real cymbals do, which is yet another sound you rarely hear outside of the best Zep pressings. (The best copies of Zep IV have crashing cymbals on Black Dog and Rock and Roll like few records in the history of rock.)

We just finished a massive shootout for this album and were reminded just how hard this album rocks. Achilles Last Stand, For Your Life and Nobody’s Fault But Mine are all KILLER on a Hot Stamper pressing like this one. After cleaning and playing a pile of copies we are pleased to report that the best of them are full of The Real Zep Magic. The average LP may not be much of a thrill but our Hot Stampers sure are, with all the energy, dynamics, whomp, and presence (pun only slightly intended) you could hope for.

That is EXACTLY the kind of sound we love here at Better Records.

Hey Man, Turn It Up!

We’re hoping this copy ends up in the hands of someone who will play it good and loud because that’s the way it was meant to be heard. It’s the only way the mix works, which is a sure sign that that is clearly how the artists intended their records to be played.

Turn up the volume and play the midsection of For Your Life on side one or the entire Nobody’s Fault But Mine on side two to hear Zep rockin’ out in their prime.

Nobody did it better than these four guys. If you have Hot Stampers of their albums, you have some of the best sounding rock and roll records ever made, records that sound the way Zep wanted you to hear them as long as you play them at good loud levels.

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