Folk Rock, British/Irish – Reviews and Commentaries

Cat Stevens Wants to Know How You Like Your Congas: Light, Medium or Heavy?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Cat Stevens Available Now

During the shootout for this record a while back [the late 2000s would be my guess], we made a very important discovery, a seemingly obvious one but one that nevertheless had eluded us for the past twenty plus years (so how obvious could it have been?).

It became clear, for the first time, what accounts for the wide disparity in ENERGY and DRIVE from one copy to the next. We can sum it up for you in one five letter word, and that word is conga.

The congas are what drive the high-energy songs, songs like Tuesday’s Dead and Changes IV.

Here is how we stumbled upon their critically important contribution.

We were listening to one of the better copies during a recent shootout. The first track on side one, The Wind, was especially gorgeous; Cat and his acoustic guitar were right there in the room with us. The transparency, tonal neutrality, presence and all the rest were just superb. Then came time to move to the other test track on side one, which is Changes IV, one of the higher energy songs we like to play.

But the energy we expected to hear was nowhere to be found. The powerful rhythmic drive of the best copies of the album just wasn’t happening. The more we listened the more it became clear that the congas were not doing what they normally do. The midbass to lower midrange area of the LP lacked energy, weight and power, and this prevented the song from coming to LIFE the way the truly Hot Stampers can and do.

Now I think I understand why. Big speakers are the only way to reproduce the physical size and powerful energy of the congas (and other drums of course) that play such a big part in driving the rhythmic energy of the song.

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Does Year of the Cat on Mobile Fidelity Have Audiophile Sound?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Al Stewart Available Now

Our answer, judging by the copy we played not long ago, would be solidly in the negative. The final grade we awarded both sides was No, our way of saying the record is Not Good.

Below is a description for what a top copy of the album sounds like, based on our most recent shootout:

Incredible sound throughout this vintage Janus pressing of Stewart’s 1976 Masterpiece. With engineering by Alan Parsons, the top pressings are every bit the audiophile Demo Discs you remember. The best sides have sweet vocals, huge amounts of space, breathtaking transparency, and so much more.

Tubey Magical acoustic guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this recording. Simply phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum, along with richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern recordings (and especially from modern remasterings).

But if you own the wrong Mobile Fidelity pressing — this one was reissued in 1981, the original came out in 1978, so there may be some other pressings that sound better than this one — you would never know how good sounding the album can be. We put a copy we had laying around in a shootout recently and the results were, not to put too fine a point on it, pretty painful.

As the notes make clear, the Mobile Fidelity pressing, with the stampers you see on the sheet above, is:

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Letter of the Week – “…now I’m compelled to listen, it’s just so damned good.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of Personal Favorites Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stamper pressings he purchased recently (emphasis added):

Hey Tom,

You bring up several experiences that can happen with listening to Hot Stampers, and I’ve had them all (which has caused me to pay more attention to you than I might have, since you clearly learn as you age, which makes you a rarity.)

I often come up with my own – they don’t count unless there are multiple instances. Here’s one — I’ve been meaning to write you with a list of many, but it’s always in the middle of listening, so it never gets done.

Records that have been forever more or less my least liked of a particular band suddenly become my favorite.

This is really weird, but it happens often enough to notice.

Pretzel Logic is the most obvious.

Never really like it much, but the sound quality of yours is so amazingly better than any other I’ve heard, I just fell into the music, even though I’d heard it for decades. I totally love this record now, and the most it would get from me in the past was a grudging acknowledgement of its existence.

I suppose I should at least mention two, but I’ll have to modify the category, lol. Records where I love the music, but can’t stand to listen, but now with a HS, I can’t get enough.

It’s not just that now I can listen, but that now I’m compelled to listen, it’s just so damned good.

Really, this one is one of my absolute favorites for pure sound quality, and the music is so up my alley I can’t believe I get both on the same record. Okay, Every Picture Tells a Story. Wow, what a record, er, stamper.

There was a time not long ago, a few years, that I thought I could help myself by ignoring the Heavy Vinyl but buying the SACD or whatever from the same companies. Maybe there’re some good ones, but Rod’s Masterpiece certainly wasn’t one of them.

Take Care,

Erich H.

Erich,

Thanks so much for your letter. As you point out, I know exactly what you mean.

However, I fell in love with both of those albums after the first play, so how they failed to impress you the first time around is probably mostly attributable to a fact of record collecting that few audiophiles seem to appreciate: luck.

The first time I played Pretzel Logic I was amazed at the sound quality of the copy I had just bought from Tower Records. That would have been 1974, and the way I would have found out that the album had been released is by going in the store every week and checking out all the newest arrivals.

Obviously they sold me an original — nothing else existed at the time — and although it may not technically have been a Hot Stamper — they didn’t exist either — it was most assuredly a very good sounding copy.

I was already a big Steely Dan fan after playing Countdown to Ecstasy for months on end. This album put them right up there with all of my favorite bands of the day, bands that were dedicated to making their record albums as emotionally powerful a listening experience as possible, and ensuring the quality — sonically and musically — was as high as possible from the first note to the last. (Here are two others that tell that same story.)

The copy I had in 1971 of Every Picture Tells a Story would have been the domestic original as well. The right stampers on that title are amazing sounding — as you now know firsthand, since that’s what we sent you — but of course that is something I would have had no understanding of at the time and wouldn’t come to appreciate for another twenty years or more.

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Thick as a Brick Is a Top Test Disc for System Accuracy

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

From 2009 to 2010 this was our single go-to record for testing and tweaking our system.

Although we now use an amazing copy of Bob and Ray (the big band version of The Song of the Volga Boatmen located therein has to be one of the toughest tests we know of), we could easily go back to using TAAB.

Artificiality is the single greatest problem that every serious audiophile must guard against with every change and tweak to his stereo. cleaning system, room, electricity and everything else.

Since TAAB is absolutely ruthless at exposing the slightest hint of artificiality in the sound of the system, it is clearly one of the best recordings one can use to test and tune with. Here are just some of the reasons this was one of our favorite test records back in the day:

Dynamics

The better copies are shockingly dynamic. At about the three minute mark the band joins in the fun and really starts rocking. Set your volume for as loud as your system can play that section. The rest of the music, including the very quietest parts, will then play correctly for all of side one. For side two the same volume setting should be fine.

Bass

The recording can have exceptionally solid, deep punchy bass (just check out Barrie “Barriemore” Barlow’s drumming, especially his kick and floor toms. The guy is on fire).

Midrange

The midrange is usually transparent and the top end sweet and extended on the better pressings.

Tubey Magic

The recording was made in 1972, so there’s still plenty of Tubey Magic to be heard on the acoustic guitars and flutes.

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Richard Thompson / Action Packed: The Best of the Capitol Years

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Richard Thompson Available Now

UPDATE 2025

Note that this review was written in 2001 when the record came out and we were still selling sealed new releases based on the audition of a single copy. (I had the play copy of this record in my personal collection for years and never got around to playing it, one of the downsides of having to play records all day to make money, resulting in little time to play the recordings of favorite artists that lack a customer base.

We have no idea what Action Packed would sound like these days on the much more revealing system we use now. I do know that the CD is very good. It’s probably the best way to approach the music initially. If you become a fan, consider the vinyl.

We would love to do a shootout for this title, but at a hundred bucks or more a pop it’s hard to imagine that a decision to devote the resources to such a project would be wise on our part.

We already do plenty of shootouts for records that are hard to sell, of titles that should be more popular with audiophiles but for some reason just aren’t.

Our Review from 2001

Another top outing on TWO clear vinyl LP’s from the master of modern electric folk music. It doesn’t get any better than this.

The sound is excellent and the music is some of the best Richard Thompson has ever made. If I had to choose one later Richard Thompson album, this would probably be it.

Almost every one of these pressings is very slightly dished, but this should not have any effect on the sound, which is excellent.

Thompson’s lovely duet with his son on Persuasion is worth the price of the album.

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Letter of the Week – “Kenney Jones’ drums are absolutely ripping my listening room apart”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Rod Stewart Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

My testimonial on this one is simple: Holy f@#%!

Kenney Jones’ drums are absolutely ripping my listening room apart! They’re so three-dimensional it’s almost scary. That extended riff, with just the tambourine accompanying him, is just extraordinary. It gets going like a railroad train and just keeps building in power … Jeez. Really?

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Bill P.

Bill,

Thanks for your letter. I couldn’t agree more. I said as much many, many years ago.

I Know I’m Losing You rocks as hard as any song from the period, with DEMO DISC SOUND. If you have BIG DYNAMIC SPEAKERS and the power to drive them to serious listening levels, you will be blown away by the power of this recording.

You know what this album is? It’s the Nirvana Nevermind of the early ’70s. It has that kind of power in the bass and drums.

But it also has beautifully realized acoustic guitars and mandolins, something that virtually no recording for the last twenty years can claim. In that sense it towers over Nevermind, an album I hold in very high esteem.

If you’re a fan of BIG DRUMS, with jump-out-of-the-speakers direct-to-disc sound quality, this is the album for you. The opening track on side one has drums that put to shame 99% of the rock drums ever recorded. The same is true of I Know I’m Losing You on side two. It just doesn’t get any better for rock drumming, musically or sonically.

Some of the best rock bass ever recorded can be found here too — punchy, note-like and solid as a rock. Got big dynamic speakers? A concrete foundation under your listening room?

You are going to have a great time playing this one for your audiophile friends who have screens or little box speakers. Once they hear how big well-recorded drums sound on speakers designed to move air, they may want to rethink their choices.

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A Pink Label Island LP Left Us with Egg on Our Face

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Traffic Available Now

We used to think that The Best of Traffic had better sound than the early pressings of Mr. Fantasy, but in a head to head comparison with a killer copy we played not long ago, we were proved wrong, or, perhaps more accurately, we proved ourselves wrong, something we pride ourselves in being able to do by carrying out regular shootouts for records we’ve been listening to for more than twenty years.

Oddly enough, in our shootouts we often learn new things about records we thought we knew well.

Here is what we had to say about one of the tracks on Mr. Fantasy that we thought sounded dramatically better on The Best of Traffic back around 2005:

Best evidence: Heaven Is In Your Mind, the second track on side one. It is amazing sounding here and such a disappointment on every Pink Label Island original we’ve played.

Once you know how good that song can sound — by playing a Hot Stamper copy of Best of Traffic like this one — going back to the original version of the song found on the album is not just a letdown, it’s positively painful. Where’s the analog magic? The weight to the piano? The startling clarity and super-spaciousness of the soundfield? The life and energy of the performance?

They’re gone, brother. Not entirely gone, mind you, more a shadow of what they should be, but once you’ve heard the real thing it’s not a lot of fun listening to a shadow.

You can be sure that we did not know what we were talking about when we wrote all that.

What we had done is assumed that all the pink label pressings of Mr. Fantasy sounded like the one we played, something we’ve been telling audiophiles for twenty years not to do, because collecting records by label is a fool’s game.

In this case, clearly we are the fools.

It probably — probably, since all the evidence points in the same direction — had the stampers you see below, apparently known as an Orlake Pressing, something I knew nothing about until reading about it on Discogs just now.

  • Matrix / Runout (Side A, stamped): ILPS+9061+A
  • Matrix / Runout (Side B, stamped): ILPS+9061+B

These same stampers would be used to press the Pink Rim Label copy you see below. We put it into a recent shootout and described it as having “hollow, dubby” sound.

Yes, we heard the very same “dubby” sound on a copy we played about twenty years ago, and thought all the early pressings on Island, pink and pink rim alike, had these same mastering shortcomings.

Back then we didn’t know what we know now, which is that the right UK pressings on Island of Mr. Fantasy are dramatically better sounding.

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Two of Robin Black’s Engineering Masterpieces

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Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Jethro Tull Available Now

Thick As A Brick is quite possibly the BEST SOUNDING ALBUM Jethro Tull ever made. It’s dynamic; has really solid, deep punchy bass; transparency and sweetness in the midrange; Tubey Magical acoustic guitars and flutes; in other words, the record has EVERYTHING that we go crazy for here at Better Records. I can guarantee you there is no CD on the planet that could ever do this recording justice. The Hot Stamper pressings have a kind of MAGIC that just can’t be captured on one of them there silvery discs.

A Real Gem

When we do these shootouts we play quite a few original copies of the record (the reissues are not worth the vinyl they’re stamped on) and let me tell you, the sound and the music are so good we can’t get enough of it. Until about 2007 this was the undiscovered gem (by TP anyway) in the Tull catalog. The pressings we had heard up until then were nothing special, and of course the average pressing of this album is exactly that: no great shakes.

With the advent of better record cleaning fluids and much better tables, phono stages, room treatments and the like, some copies of Thick As A Brick have shown themselves to be simply amazing sounding. Even the All Music Guide could hear how well-engineered it was. At one time this was our go-to record for testing and tweaking the system.

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Hey Mr. Fantasy – Where’s the Bass?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Traffic Available Now

For our newest take on the sound of the various labels and stampers for Mr. Fantasy, please click here.

A long, long time ago, probably at the start of the 2000s, we put up this early UK pressing on the Island pink label.

Charged good money for it, too, justified by the fact that the early pink label pressing would be assumed to have the best sound for audiophiles in search of higher fidelity.

Back then we didn’t know what we know now, which is that the right reissues are dramatically better sounding.

In fact, they handily win our shootouts, something they have been doing for at least the last ten years or so.

The pink label pressing we review below is very unlikely to earn a grade high enough to qualify for Hot Stamper status.

Our Old Listing

This pink label original Island pressing has amazingly sweet, open, extended and transparent mids and highs.

It has two major shortcomings: a lack of bass, and a fair amount of surface noise.

If you can add a few — let’s say three — dB around 50 cycles and can put up with some surface noise and scratches, you are guaranteed to hear some wonderful sound in the best tubey Island tradition. 

Side two sounds better than side one. It has more bass and is more tonally correct overall.

Live and learn is our motto, and progress in audio is a feature, not a bug, of record collecting at the most advanced levels. (“Advanced” is a code word for having little to no interest in any remastered pressing marketed to the audiophile community. If you want to avoid the worst of them, we are happy to help you do that.)

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Huge, Powerful Choruses Like These Are a Thrill

Hot Stamper Pressings with Huge Choruses Available Now

This is one of the rare pop/rock albums that actually has actual, measurable, serious dynamic contrasts in its levels as it moves from the verses to the choruses of many songs . The second track on side two, Demon Lover, is a perfect example. Not only are the choruses noticeably louder than the verses, but later on in the song the choruses get REALLY LOUD, louder than the choruses of 99 out of 100 rock/pop records we audition. It sometimes takes a record like this to open your ears to how compressed practically everything else you own is.

The sad fact of the matter is that most mixes for rock and pop recordings are much too safe. The engineers believe that the mixes have to be designed to be played on the average (read: crap) stereo.

We like when music gets loud. It gets loud in live performance. Why shouldn’t some of that energy make it to the record? It does of course, especially in classical music, but all too rarely even then.

We happened to do the shootout for Thick as a Brick the same week as Commoner’s Crown, and let us tell you, those are two records with shockingly real dynamics in the grooves of the best copies. If you like your music loud — which is just another way of saying you like it to sound LIVE — then the better copies of either album are guaranteed to blow your mind with their dynamic energy and power.

It’s the Engineer?

That can’t be a coincidence, can it? Well, it can, but in the case of these two albums it seems it isn’t. The engineering for both records was done by none other than Robin Black at Morgan Studios. Robin co-produced Commoner’s, takes the main engineering credit, and is solely credited with the mix. He is the sole engineer on TAAB (along with lots of other Tull albums, including Benefit and Aqualung).

Apparently he has no problem putting the dynamic contrasts and powerful energy of the live performance into his recordings and preserving them all the way through to the final mix. God bless him for it.

Thrills R Us

We admit to being thrillseekers here at Better Records, and like most of the things we do, and the wildly unpopular opinions we hold, we make no apologies for it.

The better the system and the hotter the stamper, the bigger the thrill.

It’s precisely the dynamic sound found on these two albums that rocks our world and makes our job fun. It makes us want to play records all day, sifting through the crap to find the few — too few — pressings with truly serious Hot Stamper sound. There is, of course, no other way to find such sound, and, of course, probably never will be.

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