Roots Music

Bob Dylan and The Band – The Basement Tapes

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  • Boasting excellent Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER on all FOUR sides, this vintage copy will be very hard to beat
  • Side three was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • The recording may not be an audiophile dream come true, but these pressings are far better than most others we can ever recall playing, and lets the music come through in a way that we guarantee you have never heard before
  • 5 stars: “… the music here (including the Band’s) is astonishingly good. The party line on The Basement Tapes is that it is Americana, as Dylan and the Band pick up the weirdness inherent in old folk, country, and blues tunes, but it transcends mere historical arcana through its lively, humorous, full-bodied performances. Dylan never sounded as loose, nor was he ever as funny as he is here, and this positively revels in its weird, wild character… among the greatest American music ever made.”

This vintage Columbia Double LP pressing has some of the very best sound we’ve ever heard for this album.

Of course, given the nature of these recordings, you don’t get stunning sonics along the line of, say, Magical Mystery Tour or Dark Side Of The Moon, but at least you get to hear these great songs sound the way they were intended to, without the complications of bad mastering and pressing getting in the way.

Most of the copies we’ve heard wouldn’t be fit to list on the site at any price, but we felt strongly that this copy did justice to the music in a way that the typical pressing does not. While this may not be a Demo Disc, it’s MUCH better sounding than most copies we’ve come across. We’ve played a bunch of these over the years and most of them paled in comparison to this one.

This is of course a famous album, with The Band backing up Dylan (and adding some of their own material) in the famous Big Pink House which would later be the place where The Band’s 1st album was born. (more…)

Creedence Clearwater Revival – Mardi Gras

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  • CCR’s final studio album appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with superb Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides of this original Fantasy pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • We shot out a number of copies and this one had the midrange presence, bass, and dynamics that were missing from most others we played
  • Analog at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
  • “Recorded after the departure of guitarist Tom Fogerty, it was the band’s only studio album as a trio, and featured songs written, sung, and produced by each of the remaining members [Stu Cook and Doug Clifford], rather than just John Fogerty” – Wikipedia

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Ry Cooder – Paris, Texas

More of the Music of Ry Cooder

  • This excellent copy of Ry Cooder’s soundrack LP (one of only a handful to hit the site in close to a three and a half years) boasts solid Double Plus (A++) grades from start to finish
  • The sound on these TAS-approved sides is bigger and livelier than most others we played – above all it’s balanced, avoiding the tonality issues we heard on so many other pressings
  • 4 stars: “Suggestive of both the imagery of Wim Wenders’ movie Paris, Texas and the desert itself, Ry Cooder’s score is a peaceful, poetic journey into the soul of an acoustic guitar… a powerful and immensely evocative journey for those whose experience with the material is the album alone. “
  • If you’re a fan of Ry Cooder’s, this classic from 1985 belongs in your collection.
  • The complete list of titles from 1985 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

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The Band – Self-Titled

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  • A killer copy of an absolutely essential album with Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades on both sides – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • One of the most difficult albums to find great sound for, but the music makes it worth all the time and trouble we spent finding this outstanding copy
  • Huge amounts of deep bass (something that only the best Robert Ludwig-mastered original pressings can offer), meaty guitars and silky vocals make this pressing of The Band’s second album a very special listenng experience indeed
  • Problems in the vinyl, especially for this title, are sometimes the nature of the beast with vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of analog is important to you
  • 5 stars: “As had been true of the first album, it was the Band’s sound that stood out the most… The arrangements were simultaneously loose and assured, giving the songs a timeless appeal…”

The lucky person who takes this record home is in for quite a shock. This very pressing is proof positive that this album is much better recorded than the audiophile community gives it credit for being. How could anyone judge the sound of the record without a great copy such as this one to play?

This vintage pressing has no trace of phony sound from top to bottom. It’s raw and real in a way that makes most pop records sound processed and wrong. These two sides have plenty of the qualities we look for in an album by The Band. Energy, presence, transparency, Tubey Magic… you name it, you will find it here. Its biggest strength — and the biggest strength of the album as a whole — is its wonderful, natural midrange.

And the bass is huge. On the better copies it always is.

Drop the needle on “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” or “King Harvest Has Surely Come” and get ready for some serious Analog Magic. This is The Band’s second album like you have never heard it before.

Overview

This copy has superb space in the midrange — it was wider, deeper and clearer than practically all of the Robert Ludwig originals we played (which are, of course, the only way to go on this album). Few copies were this full-bodied, solid, meaty and rich, yet clear. It was so tubey, never dry, unlike more copies than we care to remember.

Despite what anyone might tell you, it’s no mean feat to find good sounding copies of this record. There are good originals and bad originals, as well as good reissues and bad reissues. Folks, we’ve said it many times — the label can’t tell you how a record sounds, but there’s a sure way to find out that information. You’ve got to clean ’em and play ’em to find out which ones have Hot Stampers, and we seem to be the only record dealers who are doing that, in the process making unusually good pressings like this one available to you, the music-loving audiophile.

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Ry Cooder – Show Time

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  • An original Palm Tree pressing of Cooder’s 1977 live album (only the second copy to ever hit the site) with a KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side one – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • The sound is big, lively, open and clear with Tubey Magical richness that only these good vintage pressings can show you
  • Of course the main attributes that set the best copies apart from the also-rans are size, energy, weight, vocal presence and an overall freedom from grit and grain, and we guarantee that this copy will do better in all of these areas than any you have ever heard
  • “…it’s the Negro spiritual, ‘Jesus on the Mainline,’ stripped down to just four voices and Cooder’s remarkable bottleneck, that’s the real showstopper here.”

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Creedence Clearwater Revival – Willy and the Poor Boys

More of the Music of Creedence Clearwater Revival

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  • Both sides of this early pressing were giving us the big and bold sound we were looking for, earning stunning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Whatever you do, don’t waste your money on the awful Heavy Vinyl remasters of CCR’s albums that Acoustic Sounds commissioned – they are so wrong they should make your head ache
  • Features “Down On The Corner,” “Fortunate Son,” “Midnight Special,” and more, and we guarantee you’ve never heard them sound as good as they do on this vintage copy
  • 5 stars: “…a fun record, perhaps the breeziest album CCR ever made. Fogerty’s rage remains, blazing to the forefront on “Fortunate Son,” a working-class protest song that cuts harder than any of the explicit Vietnam protest songs of the era, one of the reasons that it hasn’t aged where its peers have. Also, there’s that unbridled vocal from Fogerty and the ferocious playing on CCR…”
  • This is a Must Own album from 1969, one that deserves a place in any audiophile collection’s pop and rock section, especially for fans of roots rock

The Virtues of Shootouts

The story of our recent shootout is what real progress in audio is all about.

Many copies were gritty, some were congested in the louder sections, some never got big, some were thin and lacking the lovely analog richness of the best — we heard plenty of copies whose faults were obvious when played against two top sides such as these. The best copies no longer to seem to have the problems we used to hear all the time.

Of course the reason I hadn’t heard the congestion and grittiness in the recording is that two things changed. One, we found better copies of the record to play — probably, can’t say for sure, but let’s assume we did, and, Two, we’ve made lots of improvements to the stereo since the last time we did the shootout.

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Los Lobos – How Will The Wolf Survive?

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  • How Will The Wolf Survive? returns to the site after a sixteen month hiatus, here with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this early Slash pressing – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Big, rich (for 1984), present and lively, with good weight to the bottom end, this is clearly the right sound for this music
  • 4 1/2 stars: “… the band’s exemplary taste, musical smarts, and road-tested maturity [is] in evidence on every cut. While rarely flashy, even a casual listen offers all the proof you might need that Los Lobos were a band of world-class musicians…”

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Bonnie Raitt / Self-Titled – Our Shootout Winner (with Liner Notes)

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Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Bonnie Raitt

The average Green Label Warner Bros. copy we played was lackluster to say the least.

The words on some of my notes read flat, veiled, dry, dark, edgy.

[Many years later we would characterize the above shortcomings as the Warner Bros. House Sound.]

None too promising, but we persevered and found a good one.

The reissues we heard tended to be modern and thin. Definitely not our sound. 

Bonnie Raitt fans take note: This album did not sell well. It appears that it never even charted, which means that original copies are hard to come by.

On top of that, clean ones tend to be expensive and prices are climbing.

With those things considered, it is unlikely we would ever do this shootout again.

Side One

A++. By track two the sound is rich and solid, yet clear. Lovely Tubey Magic and an unprocessed live quality make this one sound about as right as it’s going to get. The drums are especially real sounding, with little in the way of EQ and compression (not that those are bad things).

The rich piano and vocals on track three seal the deal — It’s Super Hot.

Note that the first track, a cover of Bluebird, was a bad idea from the start. The sour sound did it no favors either.

Side Two

A++. Yes, it’s a dead room, but on the best pressings there is still ambience and space to be heard. 

The vocals, often edgy on other copies, were not edgy here. The sound is rich and clear, the ideal combination.

Based on what were the winners of this shootout, this album should sound better this way:

For those of you who might be interested in finding their own Hot Stamper pressings of other titles, we here provide more moderately helpful title specific advice.

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Creedence Clearwater Revival – Pendulum

More of the Music of Creedence Clearwater Revival

  • Bigger and bolder, with more bass, more energy, and more of that “you-are-there-immediacy” of ANALOG that set the best vintage pressings apart from reissues, CDs, and whatever else you care to name
  • Those of you who are familiar with this record will not be surprised to learn that these shootouts are TOUGH – very few copies are any better than mediocre
  • 4 stars: “John Fogerty spent time polishing the production, bringing in keyboards, horns, even a vocal choir. His songs became self-consciously serious and tighter, working with the aesthetic of the rock underground — Pendulum was constructed as a proper album, contrasting dramatically with CCR’s previous records, all throwbacks to joyous early rock records where covers sat nicely next to hits and overlooked gems tucked away at the end of the second side.”

This copy will surely beat any pressing you put it up against. This will be especially true if you put it up against the Analogue Productions Heavy Vinyl from years back, which will sound thick, opaque, airless and congested next to a properly mastered Fantasy pressing (deep groove or otherwise) such as this one. (more…)

Ry Cooder – Into the Purple Valley

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  • A vintage Reprise pressing of Ry Cooder’s 1972 release boasting KILLER Tubey Magical Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) Master Tape sound or close to it on both sides – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Side two was Tonally Right On The Money from top to bottom and from start to finish – it’s got the kind of presence and energy needed to bring these old songs to life
  • All of the elements you could ask for from this kind of music are here: superb clarity; amazing richness and warmth; serious energy and immediacy; texture to the vocals and so on
  • It’s pretty cool to hear these old Dust Bowl-era numbers by greats like Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly performed by top musicians and recorded on quality equipment by one of the All Time Great engineers, Lee Herschberg
  • 4 1/2 stars: “‘Phenomenal’ is the descriptive word to describe his playing, whether it is on guitar, Hawaiian ‘slack key’ guitar, mandolin, or the more arcane instruments he has found. This is a must for those who love instrumental virtuosity, authentic reworkings of an era, or just plain good music.”
  • If you’re a Ry Cooder fan, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this title from 1972 is clearly one of his best, and one of his best sounding

We’ve become pretty big Ry Cooder fans here at Better Records, and an amazing pressing like this one will show you exactly why. We played a big stack of these this week, and you’re going to have a very difficult time finding a copy that can keep up with this one!

Most of the copies we played were overly clean sounding, lacking in the richness and warmth that are critical to the enjoyment of top quality analog. Not this one though — it’s got plenty of Tubey Magic, with the kind of sound that keeps guys like you and me digging in bins and spinning dusty old records instead of going digital.

There’s A Good Reason Audiophiles Love Ry

Ry’s music holds special appeal to us audiophiles, as he’s always throwing instruments into the mix that you hardly ever hear on your standard rock album. I wish I could tell you everything he plays on this album, but I’d just be guessing if I tried. (Wikipedia credits him for guitar, bass, and mandolin, but I’d bet my bottom dollar there’s more to it than that.)

This I can tell you — when the man picks up an instrument, he can sure play the heck out of it, and it’s an audiophile’s treat to hear how naturally he incorporates these sounds into his songs.

I’m not personally familiar with Fitz Maclean’s original version of “F.D.R. In Trinidad,” but I can’t imagine there’s a recording of it that sounds nearly as good as Ry’s version here.

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