Folk Rock, American

Neil Young / Self-Titled

More of the Music of Neil Young

  • Here is a vintage Reprise pressing of Neil’s solo debut with solid Double Plus (A++) grades from start to finish
  • Both sides are rich, full and Tubey Magical with a big bottom end and excellent resolution
  • Surely one of Neil’s toughest to find with top quality sonics – and only certain early pressings have the potential to sound as good as this one does, a subject we discuss on the blog in some detail
  • “…a flowing tributary from the over-all Springfield river of twangs, breathless vocals and slim yet stout instrumentation. Especially vivid is Young’s sense of melancholy and the ingenious clusters of images he employs in his lyrics (printed in full).” – Rolling Stone

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Brewer & Shipley / Tarkio

More of the Music of Brewer and Shipley

  • A Tarkio like you’ve never heard, with solid Double Plus (A++) sound throughout this early pressing
  • It’s the rare copy that’s this lively, solid and rich… drop the needle on any track and you’ll see what we mean
  • “Notable not just for the inclusion of ‘One Toke Over the Line’ but also for the great back porch stoned ambience of the entire recording… Not that it ever takes away from the excellent country-style playing that pops up all over the record.”

Not Really One Toke Over the Line

Please don’t assume that this album has much in the way of uptempo country rockers like One Toke Over the Line, Flying Burrito Brothers style. Nothing could be further from the truth. Practically every other song on the album is better, almost all of them are taken at a slower pace, with none of them having the “poppy” arrangement of that carefully calculated Top Forty hit. The rest of the music on the album, the music you probably don’t know, is much better than the music that you do know if what you know is that song.

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Bob Dylan – Slow Train Coming

More of the Music of Bob Dylan

  • Slow Train Coming returns to the site on this early Columbia pressing with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish
  • These sides are bigger, more natural, warmer and more solid than those of any other copy you’ve heard or your money back
  • The big hit here is “Gotta Serve Somebody” – Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits is featured throughout
  • I doubt this is anyone’s very favorite Dylan album, but it’s sure a lot more enjoyable when you have sound like this

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Joni Mitchell – An Overview

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

When the dust settles, Joni Mitchell may stand as the most important and influential female recording artist of the late 20th century. Uncompromising and iconoclastic, Mitchell confounded expectations at every turn; restlessly innovative, her music evolved from deeply personal folk stylings into pop, jazz, avant-garde, and even world music, presaging the multicultural experimentation of the 1980s and 1990s by over a decade. – Allmusic

Discography 1968-1991

1968 Song to a Seagull
1969 Clouds
1970 Ladies of the Canyon
1971 Blue – Top 100, TAS List
1972 For the Roses – Some of her best sound
1974 Court and Spark – Top 100, TAS List, her best sounding recording
1974 Miles of Aisles – Lovely analog sound
1975 The Hissing of Summer Lawns
1976 Hejira
1977 Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter
1979 Mingus
1980 Shadows and Light – Modern sound, a far cry from the Miles of Aisles
1982 Wild Things Run Fast – TAS List and a personal favorite
1985 Dog Eat Dog – Awful sound and music
1988 Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm – Maybe even worse
1991 Night Ride Home – Surprisingly good, but very hard to find these days and expensive to buy when you do

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Jefferson Airplane – Crown of Creation

More of the Music of Jefferson Aircraft

  • Crown of Creation is back on the site after a four and a half year hiatus, here with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides
  • This may actually be their most well recorded album from the 60s – it’s rich, smooth, sweet, open, natural, and very analog sounding
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more presence and energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying some Heavy Vinyl LP
  • “The album captured the group’s rapidly evolving, very heavy live sound within the confines of some fairly traditional song structures, and left ample room for Slick and Marty Balin to express themselves vocally, with Balin turning in one of his most heartfelt and moving performances…”

This is not an easy album to find good sound for, and finding a copy with this kind of richness and transparency is nearly impossible. If you’re a fan, you’ll be hard pressed to do any better than this one.

We played a pile of these recently, and let me tell you — it is tough sledding finding good sounding copies of this one that play quietly. Of course, it didn’t surprise us too much having been through a number of shootouts for Surrealistic Pillow, but it was frustrating just the same.

The sound of the recording itself varies quite a bit from track to track, with songs like Lather sounding amazing but other tracks not so much. These crazy San Francisco hippies were high as a kite and running around with the Grateful Dead, so I’m guessing that getting audiophile quality sound onto vinyl was pretty far down their list of turn-ons. Still, they managed to produce an album with sonic qualities that should appeal to most audiophiles. (more…)

The Byrds – Mr. Tambourine Man (Red Label)

More of the Music of The Byrds

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  • With very good Hot Stamper sound from start to finish, this Columbia Red Label pressing will be hard to beat, especially for those looking for quiet vinyl
  • The 360 Label pressings in stereo will always win our shootouts, but there are Red Label pressings like this one that can sound very good, just not as good
  • It’s richer and fuller than the average copy, with notably more presence, and that will be especially true when you compare it to whatever godawful Heavy Vinyl pressing may be currently available
  • This is true of even our lowest-priced, lowest-graded copies – they are guaranteed to sound much better than any pressing you can find on the market today, as well as any pressing you may already own
  • 5 stars: “One of the greatest debuts in the history of rock … nothing less than a significant step in the evolution of rock & roll itself, demonstrating that intelligent lyrical content could be wedded to compelling electric guitar riffs and a solid backbeat.”
  • If you’re a fan of the Byrds, this is a Classic from 1965 that belongs in your collection.

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Dave Mason – It’s Like You Never Left

More Folky Rock

  • It’s Like You Never Left returns to the site after a nearly three and a half year hiatus, here STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound throughout this early Columbia pressing
  • Mason’s 1973 comeback album got help from the likes of Graham Nash, Stevie Wonder and George Harrison
  • Both sides have good extension up top and down low, with plenty of meaty bass and silky highs
  • “Mason is perhaps one of the most creative forces, lyrically, musically and vocally, in pop today.” – Billboard, 1973
  • Thank Al Schmitt for delivering top quality — albeit glossy — sound on this 1973 recording
  • If you’re a Dave Mason fan, this has to be considered a Must Own Title of his from 1973.

I was a big fan of this album when it came out in 1973. I used to play it all the time, in fact. Now I hear why — it’s big and rich with a solid bottom end and a smooth, sweet top; perfect for the big but not especially sophisticated speakers (the Fulton J System) I had back in the day.

This album has the kind of sound that the typical CD just doesn’t want anything to do with. Not that the Compact Disc couldn’t pull it off — there are good sounding CDs in this world, I own hundreds of them — but it doesn’t seem to want to even try.

Graham Nash helps out on vocals on tracks one, two and five on the first side. Stevie Wonder plays a lovely harmonica solo on “The Lonely One” on side two, and George Harrison guests on guitar on “If You’ve Got Love,” the third track on side one.

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Joni Mitchell / Shadows and Light

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

  • A superb copy of Mitchell’s second live album with solid Double Plus (A+++) grades or BETTER on all FOUR sides of these vintage Asylum pressings
  • The sound is full-bodied, lively and dynamic, with wonderful immediately to Joni’s remarkably present and breathy vocals
  • If you’re a fan of Joni’s more experimental work from the mid to late 70s, this album is a Must Own
  • “…it serves as a good retrospective of her jazzy period from 1975-1979. As expected, she assembles a group of all-star musicians including Pat Metheny (guitar), Jaco Pastorius (bass), Lyle Mays (keyboards), and Michael Brecker (saxophone) who give these compositions more energy than on the studio recordings.”

Four outstanding sides! We recently had a huge shootout for this famous double album and this copy blew our minds with Double Plus sonics (or better) and reasonably quiet vinyl from start to finish. In the high-stakes game of Better Records Double Album Poker, that’s a full house, man. This one gives you the kind of you are there immediacy and transparency that put you front and center for a late 70s jazzy Joni Mitchell show. Not too many copies will do that.

Joni’s voice is breathy and present with real texture, and the three-dimensional imaging gives the music a real sense of space — just like you’d get at a concert. This helps convey the intimacy of the songs and the performances, and isn’t that what we audiophiles got in this crazy hobby for in the first place?

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Crosby, Stills and Nash – Daylight Again

More of the Music of Crosby, Stills and Nash

  • With excellent Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides, this vintage copy is doing just about everything right
  • This is the embodiment of the classic CSN sound we love – rich, full-bodied, warm, punchy, dynamic and clear
  • Steven Barncard, one of our favorite recording engineers, no doubt deserves most of the credit
  • AllMusic on “Wasted On The Way” and “Southern Cross”: “Both were extracted as singles and became among the best-known tracks not only on Daylight Again, but also in the post-60s CSN canon.”

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We Didn’t Know How Good We Had It in the Seventies

Hot Stamper Pressings of Well-Recorded Folk Rock Albums Available Now

Stealin’ Home has long been a Folkie-Pop favorite of mine, mostly on the strength of the consistently smart songwriting, polished production and audiophile sound quality.

But really, to be truthful, what I found attractive right from the start was Iain Matthews’s especially clear, sweet tenor. That’s the hook that drew me to the album.

Only later would I be pleasantly surprised to find that the recorded sound was wonderful; that the production was equal to the best major label Rock and Pop around (a comparison to The Doobie Brothers would not be a stretch); and, with repeated listening, it was clear that the level of songwriting was high indeed (an a capella rendition of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught, which opens side two, can’t help but raise your averages).

ian_matthews_-_stealin_homeWe Didn’t Know How Good We Had It

Produced in 1978, the best copies are rich, smooth and sweet in the best tradition of ANALOG recording.

Only a few years later this sound was out of style, replaced by the edgy, hard, digital qualities preferred by synthpop bands like Tears for Fears and Simple Minds.

This would turn out to be a bad time for audiophiles (like me) who liked the pop music of the day but not the pop sound of the day. Heavy-handed processing as well as the overuse of synthesizers and drum effects, with the whole of the production slathered in digital reverb, have resulted in most of the albums from the early- to mid-80s being all but impossible to enjoy on a modern high-end system. Believe me, we’ve tried.

UPDATE 2026

Getting distortion out of the system, electricity, room and all the rest helps make the records from the 80s much more enjoyable. Brothers in Arms comes instantly to mind, but there are scores of others. Obviously some heavily processed recordings are going to sound much better than others, especially if you have the right pressings, but few of them can compete with the better recordings from the 70s.

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