Genres

What to Listen For on Breakfast in America

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Supertramp Available Now

What follows is some advice on what to listen for.

If you are interested in digging deeper, our listening in depth commentaries have extensive track breakdowns for some of the better-known albums for which we’ve done multiple shootouts.

What to listen for, you ask?

Number One

Too many instruments and voices jammed into too little space in the upper midrange. When the tonality is shifted-up, even slightly, or there is too much compression, there will be too many elements — voices, guitars, drums — vying for space in the upper part of the midrange, causing congestion and a loss of clarity.

With the more solid sounding copies, the lower mids are full and rich; above them, the next “level up” so to speak, there’s plenty of space in which to fit all the instruments and voices comfortably, not piling them one on top of another as is often the case. Consequently, the upper midrange area does not get overloaded and overwhelmed with musical information.

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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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Van Morrison – Saint Dominic’s Preview

More of the Music of Van Morrison

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them from top to bottom, you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this vintage Green Label pressing
  • It’s unusual (to say the least) to find copies of Moondance or Astral Weeks that sound anything like the better copies of Saint Dominic’s Preview (or His Band and Street Choir, an equally good recording)
  • One of the better sounding Van Morrison albums, thanks to the superb engineering skills of Donn Landee at Wally Heider’s and elsewhere
  • 5 stars in Rolling Stone: “The coexistence of two styles on the same record turns out to be very refreshing; they complement each other by underscoring the remarkable versatility of Van’s musical imagination… the best-produced, most ambitious Van Morrison record yet released.”

We’ve been huge fans of this album for ages and don’t understand why it doesn’t get more respect. This is the album that comes right after Tupelo Honey and His Band And The Street Choir, so that should tell you something.

The piano has real weight, the bottom end is solid, and the brass sounds lively and rich, never squawky. (more…)

Energy Is the Key to the Best Sounding Pressings of Let’s Dance

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Bowie Available Now

With Let’s Dance the name of the game is energy, and boy do the best copies! Both sides of this former shootout winner have the deep, punchy bass, smooth vocals and sweet, extended highs that Bowie’s music needs to come alive.

With that big bass and natural top end, this is one record you can turn up good and loud without fear of fatigue. On a big pair of dynamic speakers, you will get more than your money’s worth from the best of our Hot Stamper pressings. 

If you’re a fan of big drums in a big room with jump out of the speakers sound, this is the album for you.

Side One

Modern Love

This track has a tendency to be a bit brighter than those that follow. To find out if your Let’s Dance is killer, see how the title track further down sounds.

China Girl
Let’s Dance

The best sounding track on the album and one of the handful of best sounding Bowie tracks ever recorded. With a truly Hot Stamper copy, try as you might you will be very hard-pressed to find better sound. Demo Disc quality doesn’t begin to do it justice.

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Charles Mingus – Oh Yeah

More of the Music of Charles Mingus

  • Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) sides, this vintage Stereo Atlantic Blue and Green Label pressing of Mingus’s brilliant Oh Yeah was doing just about everything right
  • Tubey Magical, lively and clear, with three-dimensionality that will fill your listening room from wall to wall
  • Phil Iehle and Tom Dowd made up the engineering team for these sessions, which explains why the better copies of the album sound so damn good
  • A raucous (and rockin’) deviation from traditional jazz, this compilation incorporates R&B and soul influences – Mingus even lends his rich vocal stylings to a few songs
  • Forget the later label pressings – we stopped buying them years ago
  • 5 stars: “Oh Yeah is probably the most offbeat Mingus album ever, and that’s what makes it so vital.”
  • It’s hard to imagine that any list of the Best Jazz Albums of 1962 would not have this record on it

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Listening in Depth to Hot Rats

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Frank Zappa Available Now

Presenting another entry in our extensive listening in depth series.

Hot Rats was mastered by Jack Hunt, a man we know to be responsible for some of the thickest, dullest, most dead sounding MoFi recuts found in their shameful catalog.

We have to admit that he did a good job cutting this album though.

Of course, not cutting at Half Speed was a big help, because Half Speed mastering is just a bad idea that ends up making some of the wackiest sounding records we have ever played.

Side One

Peaches En Regalia

This track tends to be a bit dull and could use a little sweetening on the top end on almost any copy you find. 1 or 2 dB at 10k might be just what the doctor ordered.

Willie the Pimp

This is one of the two extended tracks on the album; the second track on each side is “the long one,” and they both suffer from the same slight upper midrange boost. This song and The Gumbo Variations on side two are both difficult to turn up due to their tendency to be slightly aggressive.

Son Of Mr. Green Genes

One of the best sounding tracks on the album, and probably the best sound to be found on side one.

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John Lee Hooker – Never Get Out Of These Blues Alive

More of the Music of John Lee Hooker

  • Both sides of this vintage ABC pressing were giving us the big and bold sound we were looking for, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades
  • It’s one of the best sounding John Lee Hooker albums we’ve heard – exceptionally well recorded at Wally Heiders’ right here in L.A.
  • Features a host of “the greats” lending a hand, including Van Morrison, Elvin Bishop, Charlie Musselwhite, and Steve Miller
  • “…this album continues his work with mostly younger musicians and predates similar projects The Healer and Mr. Lucky by about 20 years.”

With superb sound from beginning to end on this pressing, Hooker is in the room with you, as he should be. The sound is big, rich and lively with a huge bottom end, lots of space, wonderful transparency and real immediacy.

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Talking Heads – Stop Making Sense

More of the Music of Talking Heads

 

  • A vintage Sire pressing with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Every five years, like clockwork, we do a shootout for this superb title — our last was in 2021
  • Both of these sides are big, bold and dynamic, with the kind of energy that you rarely find outside of the live event
  • “. . . ‘A bona fide classic,’ opined Neil Jeffries in a five-star review of the reissue for Empire, ‘a perfectly measured snapshot of a widely loved and respected band playing at the height of their powers … No other band could do this. No other music movie soundtrack sounds this good.'” -Wikipedia

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Folks, This Is Why We Love Vintage Analog

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Emerson, Lake and Palmer Available Now

This is ANALOG at its Tubey Magical finest. You ain’t never gonna play a CD that sounds like this as long as you live. I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade, but digital media are evidently incapable of reproducing this kind of sound. There are nice sounding CDs in the world but there aren’t any that sound like this, not in my experience anyway.

If you are thinking that someday a better digital system is going to come along in order to save you the trouble and expense of having to find and acquire these expensive original pressings, think again.

This is the kind of record that shows you what’s wrong with your BEST sounding CDs. (Best not to talk about the average one in your collection, or mine. The less said the better.)

This is the kind of record that somebody might hear in a stereo store and realize that the digital road he’s been going down for so many years is nothing but a sonic dead end.

The organ captured here by Eddie Offord (of Yes engineering fame — we’re his biggest fans) and then transferred so well onto our Hot Stamper pressings (that’s partly what makes them Hot Stampers, right?) will rattle the foundation of your house. This music really needs that kind of megawatt reproduction to make sense.

It’s big bombastic Prog Rock that wants desperately to rock your world.

At moderate levels it just sounds overblown and silly.

At loud levels it actually will rock your world.

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Frank Sinatra – Trilogy: Past, Present and Future

More of the Music of Frank Sinatra

  • A killer copy of Sinatra’s wonderful 1980 release with Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound on all SIX sides – just shy of out Shootout Winner (side four actually won the shootout)
  • The sonics here are rich and full-bodied with much less grain and much more Tubey Magic than practically all other copies we played in our recent shootout
  • Credit the brilliant engineering of Frank Laico for the excellent sound – this record doesn’t sound like 1980, and that’s a very, very good thing
  • “An audacious, ambitious way to stage a comeback, each of the album’s three records was conceived as an individual work, and each was arranged by one of Sinatra’s major collaborators. . . the best moments are triumphant, proving that the Voice was still vital in his fourth decade of recording.”

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