Blue Eyed Soul

Boz Scaggs – Self-Titled

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Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Boz Scaggs

  • Boasting two outstanding Double Plus (A++) sides, this vintage copy was giving us the sound we were looking for on Scaggs’s self-titled LP
  • Clean and clear and open are nice qualities to have, but rich and full are harder to come by on this record – but here they are!
  • 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
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…the record is pitch-perfect, from the Jimmie Rodgers cover ‘Waiting for a Train’ and the folky ‘Look What I Got!’ to the extended 12-minute blues workout ‘Loan Me a Dime,’ which functions as much as a showcase for a blazing Duane Allman as it does for Boz.”

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Janis Joplin – I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!

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More Blues Rock Albums

  • Boasting superb Double Plus (A++) grades from top to bottom, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this original 360 Stereo pressing
  • This copy has the ideal combination of openness and transparency balanced with the richness and solidity of vintage analog
  • When Janis starts singing, watch out – her voice positively jumps out of the speakers, something we didn’t hear her do on many of the other copies in our shootout
  • Features “Try,” one of Janis’s All Time Classics – and with these grades you can be sure it sounds positively amazing here
  • Marks 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

This Columbia 360 Stereo pressing is the cure for Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues!

Drop the needle on the great song “Try” and just listen to how crisp, punchy, and big the drums sound. The bottom end has real weight and the top end is silky and extended. The overall sound is rich, full, and smooth.

Energy is the key element missing from the average copy, but not on this bad boy (or girl, if you prefer). The electric guitars are super Tubey Magical and the bass is solid and punchy.

On many copies — too many copies — the vocals are pinched and edgy. Here they’re breathy and full — a much better way for Janis to sound. There’s a slight amount of grit to the vocals at times and the brass as well, but the life force on these sides is so strong that we much preferred it to the smoother, duller, deader copies we heard that didn’t have that issue.

On copy after copy we heard pinched, squawky horns and harsh vocals; not a good sound for this album. Janis’s voice needs lots of space up top to get good and loud, and both of these sides have it in spades.

Few other copies had this combination of openness and transparency on the one hand, and full, rich tonality on the other.

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Elvis Presley / From Elvis in Memphis

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Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Elvis Presley

  • Solid Double Plus (A++) sound brings Presley’s 1969 release to life on this vintage RCA pressing
  • Both sides here are superb – big, full-bodied and Tubey Magical yet exceptionally clear, spacious and open
  • 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 own whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market, made from who-knows-what tapes
  • 5 stars: “…one of the greatest white soul albums (and one of the greatest soul albums) ever cut, with brief but considerable forays into country, pop, and blues as well. Presley sounds rejuvenated artistically throughout the dozen cuts off the original album, and he’s supported by the best playing and backup singing of his entire recording history.”

Of the handful of Elvis albums to ever make it to the site, this is clearly the critics’ favorite, and one listen will tell you why. This is the album that single-handedly revived Elvis’ fortunes, setting the stage for his record-breaking series of shows in Las Vegas doing pretty much the type of music he had recorded for it.

The next year he would go on tour for the first time since 1957 (!)

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The Young Rascals – Self-Titled

More of The Young Rascals 

More Rock and Pop

  • The Young Rascals’ self-titled debut LP hits the site for the first time ever with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades from start to finish
  • We chanced upon an amazing sounding stereo original about ten years ago, and only ten years later (!) we finally have enough clean copies to do a proper shootout
  • This shootout-winning bad boy was a long time coming, but we hope the lucky buyer will agree with us that it was worth the wait
  • We often say that the average copy of Album X is no great shakes — here’s a title where almost no copies sound any good and the average pressing is awful
  • Big, rich, energetic, with tons of Analog Tubey Magic, this Blue and Green Atlantic Stereo pressing has exactly the right sound for this music
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The Young Rascals is that rare example of a genuinely great album that got heard and played, and sold and sold. [It] couples a raw garage band sound with compelling white soul more successfully than just about any record since the Beatles’ Please Please Me.”

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Simply Red – Picture Book

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More Debut Albums of Interest

  • This UK pressing of the band’s Masterpiece boasts KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on both sides
  • Big, spacious and clear, but also remarkably analog-sounding, with the kind of fullness and richness that’s so rare on records from this era – if you’re a fan of this music, this is the copy for you
  • Even more surprising is how dynamic the best pressings can be — the best are Demo Discs in that respect
  • “Holding Back the Years” was the big hit (#1), but what really sold me on the album was the band’s cover of The Talking Heads’ “Heaven” – not an obvious choice, and a truly inspired one
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The band finds a steady R&B groove reminiscent of ’60s Stax house band the MG’s, and, as with the MG’s, it’s all in the service of a big-voiced soul singer, in this case a British redhead.”
  • If you’re a fan of the band’s, this classic from 1985 belongs in your collection.

Finally, Analog Sound for this wonderful music. The average copy of this album may sound like you’re playing a CD, but not this one. Here is the warmth and richness and depth you didn’t know you could find on Simply Red’s Masterpiece (assuming you were even looking). That flat, opaque, dry CD sound that we all love to hate is nowhere to be found on this pressing.

The domestic pressings can be good, but they sure don’t sound like this Killer import.

A recording from 1985 is unlikely to have the Tubey Magic and warmth of an old Columbia. Let’s be serious, the 1980s –- unlike the three decades that preceded them — were not known for the naturalness of their recordings. A few would make our Top 100 list (Let’s Dance springs to mind) but the pool of available candidates is shallow, not wide and deep like that of the decades before, in which so many records sound so good we could not begin to squeeze them nto a list limited to merely one hundred. Two hundred would easily make the cut, maybe more.

For the ’80s, it would be hard to come up with even a dozen I should think. Which is neither here nor there. The record must stand or fall on its own merits, not those of other records from the same decade, and fortunately this one stands very tall.

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Boz Scaggs and His Background Singers – How Well Can You “See” Them?

More of the Music of Boz Scaggs

What to Listen For – Transparency Vs Opacity

This original (SD-8239) pressing has two excellent sides, which is two more than the typical cardboardy, flat, thin, lifeless copy has. If you like your music dry and clean, try the remixed version (SD-19166), the CD, or perhaps there is a heavy vinyl version out there (at one tenth the price). That’s not our sound here at Better Records.

The best recordings from the era do not have that sound, so when we find that kind of analog richness, sweetness and naturalness on a pressing such as this, we know the record is RIGHT.

What to Listen For — Background Singers You Can “See”

If you have multiple copies of the album and want to shoot them out, here’s an easy test. Listen for how clear and correct the female background singers sound. This is an excellent test because it will hold true for both sides on the album.

On opaque copies they are hard to “see,” on transparent copies they are easy to “see.”

On tonally thin copies they will sound edgier and harder than they should.

And on Tubey Magical copies they will sound full-bodied, solid and real.

Keep in Mind

It’s nice when the copy in hand has all the transparency, space, layered depth and three-dimensionality that makes listening to records such a fundamentally different experience than listening to digitally-sourced material, but it’s not nearly as important as having that rich, relaxed tonal balance.

A little smear and a subtle lack of resolution is not the end of the world on most of the records we sell, including this one.

Brightness and leanness, along with grain and grit on the vocals, can be.

The Bottom Line

Transparency (and all the other stuff we talk about) can and do make a big difference in your enjoyment of music like this.

If the average record sounded even close to right nobody would need us to find good sounding copies for them, they’d be in every record bin in town and we would have to find some other kinds of records to sell.

The records may be in every bin in town — that’s where we found the copies that went into this shootout — but the sound sure isn’t.

Further Reading

Joe Cocker – Joe Cocker!

More Joe Cocker

  • This copy of Cocker’s sophomore release boasts excellent Double Plus (A++) sound throughout
  • Consistently stronger material than his debut – did Cocker ever release an album with more good songs than this one?
  • Take a gander at this track listing: “Dear Landlord,” “Bird on the Wire,” “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” “Something,” “Delta Lady,” “Darling Be Home Soon” – and there’s plenty more where those came from
  • Records like these are getting awfully hard to find these days in audiophile playing condition, which explains why you so rarely see them on the site
  • 4 stars: “Cocker mixed elements of late-’60s English blues revival recordings (John Mayall, et al.) with the more contemporary sounds of soul and pop; a sound fused in no small part by producer and arranger Leon Russell, whose gumbo mix figures prominently on this eponymous release and the infamous Mad Dogs & Englishmen live set.”

This is a surprisingly good recording. Cocker and his band — with more than a little help from Leon Russell — run through a collection of songs from the likes of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and the Beatles, and when you hear it on a White Hot Stamper copy it’s hard to deny the appeal of this timeless music.

This album is a ton of fun, with Cocker and his band putting their spin on some of the best songs of the era. You need energy, space and full, rich, Tubey Magical sound if this music is going to sound right, and on those counts these copies deliver. (more…)

Energy Is Key to I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!

More of the Music of Janis Joplin

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blues Rock Albums

ENERGY is the key element missing from the average copy of I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, but not on this bad boy (or girl if you prefer). 

Drop the needle on the song Try and just listen to how crisp, punchy, and BIG the drums sound.

On many copies — too many copies — the vocals are pinched and edgy. Here they’re breathy and full — a much better way for Janis to sound. There’s a slight amount of grit to the vocals at times and the brass as well, but the life force on these sides is so strong that we much preferred it to the smoother, duller, deader copies we heard that didn’t have that issue.

On copy after copy we heard pinched squawky horns and harsh vocals, not a good sound for this album.

Janis’ voice needs lots of space up top to get good and loud, and the best sides give her all the space she needs.

This record, along with the others linked below, is good for testing the following qualities:

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Hall and Oates – H2O

More Hall and Oates

  • A stunning copy of this Hall and Oates classic from 1982 – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • It’s lively, open, and natural – the voices of the two leads sound especially full-bodied, real and tonally correct from top to bottom, which is pretty much all you need to earn top grades in a shootout
  • Much more consistent than most of their releases, this one boasts three killer hits including Maneater, Family Man and my All Time Favorite by the band, One on One
  • 4 stars: “Private Eyes solidified Hall & Oates’ status as one of the most popular acts in America in the early ’80s, and…… with 1982’s H2O, they capitalized on its success, delivering an album that turned out to bigger than its predecessor, as it climbed higher on the charts and launched three Top Ten singles…”

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Hall and Oates – Remembering the Glorious Sound of Tubes

More of the Music of Hall and Oates

Our Current Rock & Pop Top 100 List

This record has the sound of TUBES. I’m sure it was recorded with transistors, judging by the fact that it was made after most recording studios had abandoned that “antiquated” technology, but there may be a reason why they were able to achieve such success with the new transistor equipment when, in the decades to come, they would produce nothing but one failure after another.

In other words, I have a theory.

They remember what things sounded like when they had tubes. Modern engineers appear to have forgotten that sound. They seem to have no reference for Tubey Magic. If they use tubes in their mastering chains, they sure don’t sound the way vintage tube-mastered records tend to sound.

Transistor Audio Equipment with Plenty of Tubey Magic

A similar syndrome was then operating with the home audio equipment manufacturers as well. Early transistor gear by the likes of Marantz, McIntosh and Sherwood, just to name three I happen to be familiar with, still retained much of the smooth, rich, natural, sweet, grain-free sound of the better tube equipment of the day.

I once owned a wonderful Sherwood receiver that you would swear had tubes in it. In fact it was simply an unusually well-designed transistor unit. Anyone listening to it would never know that it was solid state. It has none of the “sound” we associate with solid state, thank goodness.

Very low power, 15 watts a channel. No wonder it sounded so good.

Stick with the 4 Digit Originals (SD 7269)

If you’re looking for a big production pop record that jumps out of your speakers, is full of TUBEY MAGIC, and has consistently good music, look no further. Until I picked up one of these nice originals, I had no idea how good this record could sound. For an early ’70s multi-track pop recording, this is about as good as it gets (AGAIG as we like to say). It’s rich, sweet, open, natural, smooth most of the time — in short, it’s got all the stuff we audiophiles LOVE.   

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