*Discoveries, Rock, Pop, Soul

Records we’ve “discovered” with exceptional sound.

Barbra Streisand / Guilty – Bab’s Best and Most Underrated Album

More Pure Pop Recordings

  • Streisand’s Pop Masterpiece returns to the site on this original pressing with killer sound on both sides, just shy of our Shootout Winner – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • You get lovely extension up top, good weight down low, as well as exceptional transparency in the midrange, all qualities that were much less evident on the average copy we played
  • This is Barbra and The Bee Gees at the peak of their Pop Powers – it just doesn’t get any better
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The biggest selling album of Barbra Streisand’s career is also one of her least characteristic. The album was written and produced by Barry Gibb in association with his brothers and the producers of the Bee Gees, and in essence it sounds like a post-Saturday Night Fever Bee Gees album with vocals by Streisand. Still, the record was more hybrid than compromise, and the chart-topping single ‘Woman in Love’ has a sinuous feel that is both right for Streisand and new for her.”

This ain’t no zombie audiophile BS, the kind of sleep-inducing, reverb-drenched trash that passes for “female vocals” in bad audio showrooms around the globe. (Paging Diana Krall.)

This is the best album Babs ever made, and you can take that to the bank. It’s also one of the best sounding, if not the best sounding of her later Monster Pop Productions. Can’t say for sure as I haven’t played all that many. Her first album is a true Demo Disc as well, but that one’s all about the Tubey Magical ’60s Columbia era, the Golden Age of Natural Sound, a world away from Guilty and its layers and layers of tracks. Having said that, there are multi-tracks and then there are multi-tracks.

The engineers and producers here pull it off brilliantly.

If you don’t feel something deep inside when playing this record, open up a vein and let some of the ice water in your system that passes for blood run out.

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David Bowie – David Live

More David Bowie

  • A David Live like you’ve never heard, with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on sides one and four, and excellent Double Plus (A++) sound on sides two and three
  • One of our favorite live recordings – a great overview of Bowie’s career through 1974
  • “1984,” “Rebel Rebel,” “Sweet Thing” and “Rock and Roll With Me” come ALIVE in performance like you have never heard before
  • A-List players of the day deliver sonic treats, including multiple horn players, multiple percussionists, all-male chorus background vocals, the searing fuzzed-out guitar leads of Earl Slick, piano and Mellotron by Mike Garson, and the amazing Herbie Flowers on bass
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” with an accent on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. David Live is a good example of a record audiophiles may not know well but we think might benefit from getting to know better
  • If I were to compile a list of Must Own rock and pop albums from 1974, this album would definitely be on it

When you listen to an outstanding copy of this Bowie classic, you will have no trouble picturing yourself in the audience with a front row center seat. And the great thing about a record like this is that you can be in the front row of this very concert whenever you want!

The other top live album is, of course, Waiting For Columbus, and the two have much in common. Most importantly, the songs played live on both albums are consistently better than their studio versions. (This is especially true on the Little Feat album. Little Feat was not a studio band and their live arrangements — with the Tower of Power horns — just murder the studio ones.)

For us audiophiles, the other reason to own a Hot Copy of David Live or Waiting For Columbus is that the sound is much improved over most of the studio albums in which the material was originally found. Have you ever heard a good sounding “Diamond Dogs”?

But David Live is full of great sounding material from the album. “1984” is much better here than on the original album. “Rebel Rebel,” “Sweet Thing” and “Rock & Roll With Me” also come alive in performance. They rock!

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Blondie – Eat To The Beat

More Blondie

More Women Who Rock

  • Outstanding sound for the band’s followup to Parallel Lines, with both sides of this original pressing earning Double Plus (A++) or BETTER grades – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Turn it up as loud as you want – the top end and vocals are balanced, smooth and tonally correct, not gritty or edgy
  • The drums and bass of “Die Young Stay Pretty” are as real sounding as if you were standing five feet from the band
  • It’s an amazingly punchy, lively Demo Disc for Big Speakers that Play at Loud Levels
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The British… made Eat to the Beat another chart-topper, with three major hits, including a number one ranking for Atomic and almost the same success for Dreaming.”

This is Mike Chapman’s Big Beat Sonic Masterpiece — yes, the sound is actually bigger and better than the sound on Parallel Lines — akin to the debuts of The Knack and The Cars, and every bit as huge and punchy as either.

Eat to the Beat lives and dies by its energy, its bass and above all by its transient snap. The drums and bass of “Die Young Stay Pretty” are amazing. On the best copies it’s hard to imagine that song sounding any better. The drums and bass are massive in their attack. It’s the very definition of punch.

If you’re a fan of big drums in a big room, with jump out of the speakers sound, this is the album for you.

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Fleetwood Mac – The Original Fleetwood Mac

More Fleetwood Mac

More British Blues Rock

  • This incredible UK import pressing boasts a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a seriously good Double Plus (A++) side one
  • Most of the time this album sounds like Fleetwood Mac is playing live in the studio, which they probably were, and on big speakers at loud volumes that is a glorious sound
  • 4 stars: “An undeniably strong collection culled primarily from the band’s first incarnation, featuring John McVie, Mick Fleetwood, Peter Green, and Jeremy Spencer.”
  • If you’re a Fleetwood Mac fan, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this Peter Green era title from 1971 is one of their best sounding

The music on this album was recorded when they were still a blues band — tracks left off their early albums for one reason or another.

As is so often the case with unreleased material, these songs do not have that overproduced, too-many-generations-of-tape sound. This sounds like Fleetwood Mac live in the studio most of the time. In other words, awesome.

If the drum sound on the first track isn’t enough to convince you this is an amazing sounding record, I don’t know what would.

These British imports are the only way to go. The domestic copies are definitely made from dub tapes. They can sound good, but they sure never sound this good! (more…)

Mike Bloomfield & Al Kooper – The Live Adventures Of…

More Al Kooper

  • The Live Adventures Of… is finally back on the site after a twenty-six month hiatus, here with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on all FOUR sides of these early 360 Stereo pressings
  • This copy is doing everything right – it’s clean, clear, spacious and present with a big bottom end, just the right sound for this raw, live blues rock music
  • Great material to be found here, including covers of well-known tracks by Paul Simon, The Band, and Traffic
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 stars: “One of the seminal live albums of the late 60s… The idea of musical spontaneity both in live performance and in the recording studio had reached a certain apex in 1968… But it was the union of Bloomfield and Kooper that can truly claim an origination of the phenomenon, and this album takes it to another level entirely.”

Outstanding sound for this double LP of superb live blues-rock! We rarely have a copy of this title on the site, so if you’re a fan of Super Session, you should jump on this one right away.

Some of the tracks here (recorded on the second night) feature none other than Carlos Santana. (more…)

Darin at the Copa / Another Great Sounding Reissue? What the Heck Is Going On!?

More Hot Stamper Pressings that Sound Their Best on the Right Reissue

More Records We’ve Reviewed that Sound Their Best on the Right Reissue

  • Darin At The Copa arrives on the site with stunning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from top to bottom 
  • Recorded live at the Copacabana in New York City, this album captures Darin’s unique charisma, as well his phenomenal music
  • With clear, present vocals, huge amounts of space, and boatloads of Tubey magic – the kind they had plenty of in 1960 – this copy blew away the competition in our recent shootout
  • “…an appearance that confirmed for the adult pop crowd that the former singer of ephemera like “Splish Splash” had made the complete transition from rock & roll to more “serious” music. Serious this record certainly isn’t, though.” 
  • If you’re a fan of Bobby Darin’s, this live album from 1960 surely deserves a place in your collection
  • The complete list of titles from 1960 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

This Shootout Winning pressing of Bobby Darin’s live album from 1960 has ENERGY and TUBEY MAGIC like you will not believe. The reissues on Bainbridge that we used in our shootout just KILL the original pressings, which are truly awful based on the ones I have heard. I started out with a copy such as this way back in the early ’90s, and when I finally tracked down a clean original on Atco, not a hard record to find really, I was shocked at just how bad it sounded.

This is, of course, one of the best reasons to own a good CD player. It’s simply a fact that some recordings, vintage and otherwise, were never mastered properly for the analog medium.

Defending Reissues

We bash reissue labels like Classic and Sundazed mercilessly on this site for making the worst kind of substandard pressings, all the while absurdly promoting them as “superior.”

Bainbridge reissued this album sometime in the early ’80s I would guess, and they did this one right. Discovery Records reissued some jazz in the ’70s (Shorty Roger’s Jazz Waltz comes readily to mind) and they did a great job.

Reissues can sound great, but they seem to be limited to the ones from back in the day when they still knew how to make good sounding records. Modern reissues, for whatever reason, almost never do, and that’s the reason we criticize them (and their apologists / promoters so relentlessly).

We are not anti-reissue. We are anti-bad-sounding-reissue.

Bobby Darin was a tremendously talented performer and this record catches him showing off his stuff to good advantage. I don’t know of a better Darin album on vinyl.

Variety Review

Darin’s finger snapping, jazzy and extremely hep delivery has its moments of humor, ease and at all times, a singular brand of charm that make it big at this particular scene.

Darin on CD

Speaking of CDs, This Is Darin from 1960 on the ’90s CD pressing is, or can be — CDs don’t all sound the same either — superb, and the record is, again, just awful. We don’t make many CD recommendations here at Better Records but we do recommend that one. We don’t know if the newer version is any good so that’s a caveat emptor situation you will have to figure out for yourself.

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Andrew Gold – What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Hot Stamper Pressings on the Asylum Label Available Now

More Records on Asylum – A Label We Love

The best copies of Gold’s sophomore release are incredibly rich, sweet and Tubey Magical. They also have tons of deep punchy bass and wonderfully breathy vocals.

If you own many Asylum records, you know this title is yet another example of classic Asylum Analog. Think of the sound of the Eagles first album and you won’t be far off.

Andrew Gold is another talented popster who got little respect from the critics, or the public for that matter. His music has a lot of the same qualities as Buddy Holly’s: simple catchy tunes about love, with clever lyrics and tons of hooks. He covers one of Holly’s songs on this very album.

But the best song he ever did is right here on side two: One of Them Is Me. Everybody has been the guy telling this story at one time or another; it’s a heavy song if you make the effort to listen to the lyrics.

More importantly, from an audiophile recording point of view, the song builds and surges to a stirring, dynamically powerful climax, then drops down to the noise floor with just an electric piano playing softly. This is what being a studio wizard is all about, and Gold is definitely a wizard. Any Super Hot or better pressing will demonstrate to you that this is one helluva well recorded album.

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Leon Russell’s Carney – Classic Analog from 1972

More Leon Russell

  • Carney as a recording is classic analog from 1972 – the best vintage copies are exceptionally rich, solid and smooth
  • Russell’s highest charting album, making it all the way to Number Two if you can believe that, no doubt on the strength of the hit single, “Tight Rope,’ but “This Masquerade” is on here too
  • “The music is good, the lyrics are entertaining, the album worthwhile. Leon Russell – the only man around that can pull it off when he’s not trying.” – Cameron Crowe (San Diego Door, Aug. 1972) 
  • More Must Own titles from 1972 can be found here.

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76 Pieces of Explosive Percussion / Direct to Disc

Hot Stamper Direct-to-Discs Available Now

Hot Stamper Percussion Records Available Now

A poor man’s Bang-Baaroom with a stage full of percussionists playing a variety of instruments.

This LP presents a realistic, three-dimensional soundstage and an amazing array of percussion.

There’s also some incredibly deep bass drum work.  

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The Band / Northern Lights – Southern Cross

More of The Band

More Roots Rock

  • These sides are bigger, more natural, more warm and more solid than those of any other copy you’ve heard or your money back
  • This is The Band’s undiscovered gem, containing the most powerful tearjerker they ever wrote: “It Makes No Difference”
  • 4 stars: “…the Band’s finest since their self-titled sophomore effort … “Acadian Driftwood” stands out as one of Robertson’s finest compositions, the equal to anything else the Band ever recorded.”
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” but with less of an accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. This album by The Band is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but should.

Thankfully both sides here are rich and full-bodied. This pressing is not nearly as dry and flat as the vast majority of pressings we run across. Both sides have a nicely extended top end to go along with the weighty bottom. The guitars and keyboards are Tubey Magical as well, a quality we we focused on, and one that we believe is essential if the album is to sound its best. (more…)