Radio-Friendly Pop

A lot of great music got played on the radio, and we don’t hold that against them.

Bee Gees – Main Course

  • KILLER sound for this early RSO pressing with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or very close to them – this is the best sounding Main Course ever
  • I can’t recall how many times we’ve tried to get this shootout going and failed – this very pressing represents the breakthrough we were hoping for the last twenty or so years
  • 4 1/2 stars: “It may sound silly to call the 12th album by a group with an eight-year string of gold records behind them a “breakthrough,” but that’s what Main Course was… Years later, Main Course holds up as well as anything the group ever did, and with killer album cuts like “Wind of Change” (featuring a superb Joe Farrell tenor sax solo) and “Edge of the Universe” all over it, demands as much attention as any hits compilation by the group.”

The impossible has happened – we found a good sounding copy of Main Course. The right stampers eluded us for a very long time, but we finally lucked into a good sounding pressing, and that allowed us to put the wheels in motion for this shootout.

Here are some other titles that represent the most dramatic Breakthroughs from the last ten years or so. (more…)

Starship – Knee Deep in the Hoopla

  • The debut for the band Starship finally arrives on the site with two Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides and quiet vinyl 
  • We guarantee you’ve never heard this Top Ten hit album from 1985 sound remotely as good as it does here
  • If you want to hear the Tubey Magic, size and energy of the album, a vintage pressing like this one is the only way to do it in our experience
  • Not a hit with the critics, but it does contain two of this band’s biggest singles, both of which rocketed all the way to Number One: “We Built This City” and “Sara”

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The Lovin’ Spoonful / The Very Best of…

More Compilation Albums with the Potential for Very Good Sound

As Good As It Gets (AGAIG) White Hot Stamper sound for some of the biggest hits of The Lovin’ Spoonful, a band I wouldn’t expect to hear sound good on vinyl if I lived to be a hundred, and yet, here it is! This pressing changes EVERYTHING. 

This copy lets you hear versions of Younger Girl, Didn’t Want to Have to Do It, Daydream, You Didn’t Have to Be So Nice, Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?, and Do You Believe in Magic? with the kind of sonics never thought possible, not by us anyway. This copy is truly a revelation. And side two ain’t too shabby either.

Why does this stereo compilation sound so much better than others we’ve played in the past? Who the hell knows? We don’t pretend to have all the answers. What we have — that nobody else has, if that’s not too obvious — are the records that back up what we say about them. How they came to be is anyone’s guess. All we know for sure is that, judging by the best copies of this album somebody got hold of some awfully good tapes and somebody mastered them with uncanny skill to what sounds to these ears like near perfection.

That is, if you have this copy (which just happens to be on the original Pink Kama Sutra Label). This copy just could not be beat on side two. We tried, we had some very very good ones, but none that sounded like this.

Side Two

A+++, by far the best we played. So CLEAR and UNDISTORTED — Wow! There are always problem areas in ’60s pop recordings, but this side sounds so good you’re liable to forget there are any such things. This is a four track recording? Yes, in the way that Rubber Soul is a four track recording. It can be done.

This copy had the most extension high and low, the best clarity in the vocals and the most richness overall. I’m telling you, it is Hard To Fault! (more…)

Tom Jones – What’s New Pussycat?

  • A killer early pressing with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from the first note to the last
  • These sides are doing everything right — big, full-bodied, clean and clear with wonderfully present vocals and a solid bottom end
  • We guarantee you’ve never heard the Burt Bacharach/Hal David penned title track sound better than it does here!  

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Petula Clark / Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 – Surprisingly Good Sound on the Early WB Label

More Compilation Albums with the Potential for Very Good Sound

SURPRISINGLY GOOD SOUND! I didn’t expect this music to sound so smooth and sweet. The only versions I’ve ever heard were the 45 mixes on the radio.

Of course, the sound of those is quite suspect, but seeing as how these are mid-’60s pop recordings, one might assume that they’re the kind of midrangy artificial productions that were common in those days.

But one would be wrong — this material is actually quite well recorded. Stick to the early Green Label pressings. The reissues are godawful in exactly the way most reissues of albums from this era are.

This is an Older Review.

Most of the older reviews you see are for records that did not go through the shootout process, the revolutionary approach to finding better sounding pressings we developed in the early 2000s and have since turned into a fine art.

We found the records you see in these older listings by cleaning and playing a pressing or two of the album, which we then described and priced based on how good the sound and surfaces were. (For out Hot Stamper listings, the Sonic Grades and Vinyl Playgrades are listed separately.)

We were often wrong back in those days, something we have no reason to hide. Audio equipment and record cleaning technologies have come a long way since those darker days, a subject we discuss here.

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Ricky Nelson – Ricky Nelson on Sunset Vinyl

  • This killer copy of Ricky Nelson’s 1966 release for Liberty has stunning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or very close to it
  • We’ve had a devil of a time finding Ricky Nelson records with audiophile quality sound, but here’s one, and it won our shootout
  • Relaxed, rich and tubey, yet clear, this is the right sound for this music, and the vinyl is about as quiet as we can find
  • The sound has real resolution, clarity and transparency – this album may be a compilation, but it sure doesn’t sound like one

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Carpenters – A Song For You

  • An outstanding original A&M pressing, with both sides earning excellent Double Plus (A++) sonic grades – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This LP is full of the Midrange Magic that has the Carpenters sounding rich, smooth, sweet and breathy – in other words, in ANALOG, so they sound every bit as good as you remember them
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The duo’s best album, and the place to start beyond the hits compilations… a seemingly unified concept album written and recorded during a frantic period of concert activity, and brimming with lovely musical ideas even more lovingly executed, laced with good humor, and enough hits of its own to have established any artist’s career on its own. And even in between the hits, the album was built on material that could have made a whole career for anyone.”

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The Supremes / Sing Rodgers and Hart – This Is a Motown Record?

What an amazing find! You could have knocked me over with a feather when this record started playing. Where was the awful Motown bright, gritty, distorted sound I’d been suffering through all my life? Certainly not on this copy.

The Tubey Magical richness is off the charts on this side one, with a healthy but not quiet equal dose on side two (hence the grade). As everyone knows by now (everyone who comes to our site at least), not every copy has the magic. Having access to a big pile of pressings is the only way to figure out just how much magic the grooves can contain.

This side one is proof that the grooves can indeed contain huge amounts of richness, sweetness, smoothness, naturalness and, above all, Tubey Magic.

Listen to how tight and note-like the string bass is on the second track of side one. What a sound! (more…)

Carpenters – Now & Then

More Carpenters

Pure Pop Albums Available Now

  • Insanely good sound and the first copy to ever hit the site; Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from start to finish!
  • “The Carpenters, with their finger on the pulse of the changing pop fashions as always, were one of the first acts to identify the new appetite for fond reminiscence of times gone by, and brilliantly combined the past and the present with their fifth album, Now & Then…”

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Dionne Warwick – Very Dionne – Our Shootout Winner from 2011

 

SUPERB Super Hot Stamper sound on BOTH sides of this original Scepter pressing, with QUIET VINYL no less. Folks, don’t expect to see records like this coming to the site too often. We can’t find them anymore in this kind of clean condition, so if you like the lovely Ms Warwick, consider taking this one home and giving her (the record, not Dionne) a spin on your table.

Side one is LOVELY — the bass is tight and punchy, the strings have lots of texture, and the background vocals are clean and clear. The grit and grain that plague the average copy are practically nowhere to be found here. The midrange is full of that old analog Tubey Magic, the kind that has completely disappeared from the modern record, (even the modern reissue of a vintage record!). The sound is so open and transparent, you hear directly into the soundfield.

Notice how the limiter on Dionne’s microphone is working overtime. She is practically shouting into it but it never seems to get much louder! Still the energy and the passion come through clearly. That’s the sign of a well-recorded vocal track. (more…)