Singer / Songwriter

Tom Waits – Nighthawks At The Diner

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  • Excellent sound for this Tom Waits classic, with Double Plus (A++) grades on all FOUR sides of these vintage Asylum pressings – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • A superb recording, with much credit due to Waits’ constant collaborator Bones Howe, who produced and engineered
  • It’s a live-in-the-studio romp through Los Angeles with Waits playing the role of tour guide, and the results are wonderful
  • “As entertainment, Nighthawks at the Diner is one of Waits’ most thoroughly enjoyable albums … it’s hard to imagine anyone not being charmed by it.”

At its best, this album has the immediacy and energy of a real live performance, but the typical copy just doesn’t bring it to life. This one is a big step up on all four sides, with the kind of life and clarity we just don’t hear often enough.

This album was recorded live at The Record Plant back in 1975, and while I can’t be certain, it sure seems there are no overdubs or post-performance additions. There’s a touch of hardness to the vocals at times, but it was on every copy we played and it’s obviously on the tape. It’s the kind of sound we hear on Johnny Cash records and it just seems like a by-product of the microphones these guys used. It doesn’t seem to far a reach to imagine that an iconoclast like Waits might prefer an old-timey microphone sound that doesn’t soften or smooth his vocal style. (For those in search of buttery vocals, there’s usually an Al Stewart record or two on the site. This ain’t the one for you.)

We played quite a few copies and while we were absolutely blown away by the better pressings; the typical copies left us cold. When you have a copy that’s veiled and lacks presence, the magic is gone.

I’m not very familiar with the musicians that make up the backing band here, but they are a top-notch crew. The way they interact with Waits as he spins stories, songs, and even a few jokes is in the very best jazz tradition. Waits actually hooked up with the great drummer Shelley Manne to record his next album (the classic Small Change) so this is a man who clearly knows how to pick a band.

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Leonard Cohen – Songs Of Love And Hate

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  • You’ll find insanely good Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on both sides of this copy of Cohen’s third studio album
  • With sound that is both rich and clear, this vintage pressing captures the emotional intensity of Cohen’s music truthfully and completely
  • Features some of Leonard’s most famous originals, including “Famous Blue Raincoat,” and “Joan of Arc”
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…Songs of Love and Hate captured Cohen in one of his finest hours as a songwriter, and the best selections… rank with the most satisfying work of his career. If Songs of Love and Hate isn’t Cohen’s best album, it comes close enough to be essential to anyone interested in his work.”

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Kris Kristofferson – Me and Bobby McGee (aka Kristofferson)

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  • This vintage Monument pressing was giving us the sound we were looking for on Kristofferson’s debut LP, earning seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades from start to finish
  • You won’t believe how rich, Tubey Magical, big, undistorted and present this copy is (until you play it anyway)
  • Although the self-titled originals will always win our shootouts, the early reissues with the cover you see above can sound quite good on the right pressing
  • 5 stars:: “[Kristofferson] brought a conviction to his vocals and a complete understanding of the nuances of the lyrics. The songs were so personal that they seemed to demand a personal interpretation, and established the persona of a poor songwriter struggling against despair.”
  • This is an excellent title from 1970, which just happens to be a great year for Rock and Pop Music, maybe the greatest of them all

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Joni Mitchell – Night Ride Home

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  • This original import copy of Joni’s hard-to-find 1991 release boasts STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Both of these sides are rich, full, and Tubey Magical for days, with exceptional immediacy to the wonderfully breathy, clear vocals
  • ANALOG at its Tubey Magical finest – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digital sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
  • “Cutting back on the guest musicians of her previous effort and paring down to a basic small group of musicians helps add immediacy to Night Ride Home. Very involved and a rather tough listen, but well worth the attention….”
  • Our Overview of Joni Mitchell‘s albums can be found here

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Bob Dylan – Empire Burlesque

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  • This vintage pressing was doing pretty much everything right, with both sides earning superb (A++) grades or close to them – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more richness, fullness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Say what you want about Empire Burlesque – at the very least, it’s the most consistent record Bob Dylan has made since Blood on the Tracks, even if it isn’t quite as interesting as Desire. However, it is a better set of songs, all deriving from the same place and filled with subtle gems… this is as good as Dylan gets in his latter days.”

This is one of the better-sounding Dylan records from the ’80s. It’s not exactly Blood on the Tracks, the only Dylan album we think is qualified to be on our Top 100 Rock and Pop List, but it sounds good for a record from this era. (more…)

Jim Croce – You Don’t Mess Around With Jim

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  • This early pressing boasts outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish – the ’70s ABC vinyl is also about as reasonably quiet as we can find it
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more space, richness, presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard or you get your money back – it’s as simple as that
  • “Croce’s debut ABC album was also his commercial breakthrough, topping the charts for five weeks, largely due to the comic, up-tempo title tune, a story song about competing pool hustlers, although Croce also reached the Top 20 with the change-of-pace ballad ‘Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)’.”

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Paul Simon – Self-Titled

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  • Boasting seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish, this copy of Simon’s sophomore album will be very hard to beat – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Balanced, musical, present and full-bodied throughout – this pressing was a big step up from every other copy we played
  • Roy Halee handled the engineering and as usual he did a great job for the time – thankfully it was recorded in 1972, not 1982
  • A member of our Top 100 and rated 5 stars on AMG: “It was miles removed from the big, stately ballad style of Bridge Over Troubled Water and signaled that Simon was a versatile songwriter as well as an expressive singer with a much broader range of musical interests than he had previously demonstrated.”
  • Simon’s first solo is our pick for his best sounding album. Roughly 150 other listings for the Best Recording by an Artist or Group can be found here.

I don’t think any Paul Simon solo album was recorded better. Once you get to Graceland there is a world of difference between this album’s sound quality and that one’s. This record has the wonderful sound of analog in its grooves. Graceland sounds more like a CD (and the CD of Graceland really sounds like a CD.)

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Bob Dylan – Desire

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  • This copy of Dylan’s 1976 release was doing just about everything right, with both sides earning outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades
  • Both sides are exceptionally clean, clear, full and lively with excellent bass and lots of space around the instruments
  • Desire spent five weeks at Number One, mostly on the strength of the powerful and provocative “Hurricane”
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…one of [Dylan’s] most fascinating records of the ’70s and ’80s — more intriguing, lyrically and musically, than most of his latter-day affairs.

As I’m sure you know, Desire is one of those Dylan albums from the ’70s that generally gets less respect than his earlier work, except from the All Music Guide, who gave it 4 1/2 big stars. Not sure we would go quite that far, but it is clearly a more enjoyable and compelling album when the experience comes from a high quality analog pressing. This one should do nicely.

It’s probably not fair to lump it in with later ’70s albums like Street Legal (1978) and Slow Train Coming (1979). It is, after all, the follow-up to the brilliant (and very good sounding, good enough to make our Top 100) Blood on the Tracks. And it did spend five (5!) weeks at Number One. And Rolling Stone did call it one of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (#174 to be exact).

All of which makes it hard to deny that Desire has a lot going for it.

The album kicks of with the raging “Hurricane,” one of Dylan’s most passionate political songs, and doesn’t let up for a good twenty five plus minutes until the side is over. Most copies lacked the energy and presence that this music needs to really come to life, but not this one.

Drop the needle on “Hurricane” and you will quickly see how much the violin player (Scarlet Rivera) contributes to the song. I can’t think of another hard-rockin’ track from the era that has such a well-recorded violin. If you have an overly smooth copy (there’s tons of ’em out there and we’ve heard plenty of them) you aren’t going to hear the rosiny texture that gives the instrument its unique character.

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Kris Kristofferson – Kristofferson

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  • Boasting KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides, this vintage Monument pressing was giving us the sound we were looking for on Kristofferson’s debut LP
  • You won’t believe how rich, Tubey Magical, big, undistorted and present this copy is (until you play it anyway)
  • Both of these sides are full-bodied, natural and clear, with Kristofferson front and center, exactly where he should be
  • Problems 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
  • 5 stars:: “[Kristofferson] brought a conviction to his vocals and a complete understanding of the nuances of the lyrics. The songs were so personal that they seemed to demand a personal interpretation, and established the persona of a poor songwriter struggling against despair.”
  • This is an excellent title from 1970, which just happens to be a great year for Rock and Pop Music, maybe the greatest of them all

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Joni Mitchell – Mingus

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  • This vintage pressing of Joni Mitchell’s brilliant collaboration with Charles Mingus boasts seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound from start to finish
  • If you’re a fan of Joni’s more adventurous work, you’ll find a lot to like here
  • Features “luminaries” including Herbie Hancock and some of Weather Report, who join Mingus in helping Joni bring these jazzy works to life
  • “… Mitchell could not have chosen any finer musicians than the sextet she ultimately incorporated into this work.”

Two of Joni’s more famous late ’70s songs are on here — “God Must Be A Boogie Man” and “The Wolf That Lives In Lindsey.” If you like the more adventurous music that Joni produced at the later stages of her career, this should make a wonderful addition to your collection.

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