Genres

The Tubes – Self-Titled

More of The Tubes

  • The Tubes’ self-titled debut returns to the site after an eighteen month hiatus, here with with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish
  • This copy is simply bigger, richer, fuller, and livelier than practically all others we played
  • Their music is definitely not for everyone – I saw them live many years ago and they did put on one helluva show, but you have to be a fan of eccentric pop or none of it will make any sense
  • This is the band’s best sounding album as far as we know. Roughly 100 other listings for the best sounding album by an artist or group can be found here
  • In our opinion, the first album is the only Tubes record anyone needs. Click on the link to see more titles we like to call one and done
  • “Produced by Al Kooper, this debut by the notorious San Francisco group is best known for the blazing anthem ‘White Punks on Dope.’ Although the Tubes’ raison d’être was their shock-rock stage dynamic, Bill Spooner, Fee Waybill, and company could, on occasion, deliver some offbeat pop splendor.”

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Townes Van Zandt – Flyin’ Shoes

More Folk Rock

  • This original Tomato pressing boasts superb Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from start to finish – remarkably quiet vinyl too
  • Amazingly present, real and resolving, this copy is guaranteed to murder any remastering undertaken by anyone – past, present and future
  • The LIFE of the man’s music is captured on this pressing, and you can be pretty sure that that is simply not going to be the case with whatever Heavy Vinyl mediocrity they’re peddling to record buyers these days
  • 4 stars: “The melodies here are strong, the lyrics full of Van Zandt’s razor sharp insight, and the production is sparse and to the point, bringing to mind the inconspicuous polish of High, Low and in Between. The feel here is a balance between folk and country, with Van Zandt’s voice and guitar up front, letting the songs speak for themselves. “
  • If you’re a Van Zandt fan, this title from 1978 is surely a Must Own

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Tom Waits / Heartattack and Vine

More Tom Waits

  • Both sides of this vintage Asylum pressing (the first copy to hit the site in years) have superb sound for Waits’s 1980 release, earning STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them
  • The overall sound is exceptionally rich and full with wonderful immediacy to the vocals
  • Waits’s music is an acquired taste and certainly not for everyone, but those of you who appreciate Randy Newman, just to take one example, are likely to get a lot out of this one
  • “…Heartattack and Vine reveals just how much Waits had grown during his tenure with Asylum. …almost every song stands on its own as a dusty gem.”

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Another Great Conga Tester Title

Hot Stamper Pressings of Recordings by Rudy Van Gelder Available Now

The best pressings of Prelude are especially full-bodied and rich.

The congas are well up in the mix, which allows them to drive the powerful rhythmic energy of the music.

We know this because the copies with congas that were veiled or thin never seemed to have any get up go. 

There is wonderful transparency and openness to the soundstage, as well as less congestion in the loudest parts. Also Sprach (2001) is on side one of the album and it is KILLER on the best pressings.

Both sides can also be surprisingly sweet and Tubey Magical, nice qualities for a CTI record to have since so many of them are aggressive and edgy to the point of distraction.

Full, lively horns; rich, punchy, smear-free congas; fuzzy fuzzed-out guitars; as well as correct tonality and Tubey Magic in every area of the spectrum, what’s not to love?

The best pressings are so much bigger than most copies too. There is no doubt that you will hear the difference immediately. If you do a shootout with your best copy and ours plan on it being over almost before it starts.

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Henry Mancini / Hatari!

More Soundtrack Recordings of Interest

  • An original Living Stereo pressing with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on both of these TAS-approved sides
  • This side two is wonderfully relaxed, natural, and musical, with a remarkably sweet top end, and side one is not far behind in all those areas
  • The brass is breathy with a nice bite, avoiding most of the blare-y quality we heard on so many other pressings (particularly on side two)
  • And you’re not going to believe all the ambience surrounding this room full of musicians, especially on the drums (also particularly on side two) – we love that sound

“Baby Elephant Walk” is of course the track everyone knows, and just wait until you hear how breathy the calliope is here. When the piccolos come in watch out! There is more high frequency information on this album from the woodwinds alone than from all the instruments on 99 out of 100 other records. (A tough tracking test if ever there was one!)

High Fidelity

What do we love about these Living Stereo Hot Stamper pressings? The timbre of every instrument is “Hi-Fi” in the best sense of the word. The instruments here are reproduced with remarkable fidelity. Now that’s what I call Hi-Fi, not the kind of audiophile phony BS sound that passes for Hi-Fidelity these days. There’s no boosted top, there’s no bloated bottom, there’s no sucked-out midrange. There’s no added digital reverb (Patricia Barber, Diana Krall, et al.). The microphones are not fifty feet away from the musicians (Water Lily) nor are they inches away (Three Blind Mice).

This is Hi-Fidelity for those who recognize the real thing when they hear it. I’m pretty sure our customers do, and any of you out there who pick this one up should get a real kick out of it!

Hard to Find?

Not really; they made loads of these back in the day. But so many just don’t sound good. As we so often say about famous TAS list records like this, playing the average copy would make you think that Harry must have been smoking something when he nominated Hatari to be a Super Disc.

And we have to defend him when a copy like this comes along that really is a Super Disc. (Well, sort of. It’s a great sounding record. Super Disc I’m not so sure about.)

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Lee Konitz With Warne Marsh in 1955

More Titles that Sound Better in Mono

  • Outstanding MONO sound throughout this reissue copy of Lee Konitz with Warne Marsh (the first to hit the site in years), with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them
  • This side one is remarkably spacious and three-dimensional, as well as relaxed and full-bodied, and side two is not far behind in all those areas
  • If you want to hear the Tubey Magic, size and energy of this wonderful session from 1955 – originally recorded by Tom Dowd and expertly remastered by George Piros – this pressing will let you do that
  • Our most recent shootout was a tough one – our top copy had too many issues to make it to the site, as did our only second-tier copy with Super Hot stampers on both sides
  • Those of you looking for top quality sound may have to wait for a while, especially if it takes us as long to get our next shootout going as it did this last one
  • 4 stars: “Altoist Lee Konitz and tenor-saxophonist Warne Marsh always made for a perfect team. Even by the mid-50s when they were not as influenced by Lennie Tristano as previously (particularly Konitz), their long melodic lines and unusual tones caused them to stand out from the crowd. This set is worth searching for, as are all of the Konitz-Marsh collaborations.”
  • This is one of those records that we’ve “discovered” with audiophile quality sound — until we came along, who knew the album could sound this good? The originals are godawful.

The 1955 mono sound by Tom Dowd is Demo Disc quality. The horns are breathy and clear, yet full and rich as can be. There may be a good reason that this pressing sounds as good as it does: it was remastered by one of the greatest mastering engineers of all time, George Piros.

Tom Dowd is the original recording engineer, and this one album should be all the proof you need that when it comes to jazz in mono, the guy is hard to beat. Rock in stereo, there his record is quite a bit more spotty (see, or better yet, listen to Cream, The Young Rascals, Delaney and Bonnie and too many others to list).

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Glenn Frey – Soul Searchin’

More Eagles

  • With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides, this copy (only the second to hit the site in years) is practically as good as we have ever heard
  • We were shocked to find out that this album actually sounds very analog – rich, smooth, sweet and natural
  • Elliot Scheiner (Royal Scam, Aja, Nightfly) produced and also did some engineering – he is to be commended for his excellent work here
  • “Though I left Detroit and went to California to cut my teeth on country-rock, I’ve remained obsessed with the music of my adolescence, the great soul hits of the 60s and early 70s.”

The best copies are both rich and open, with the sound we tend to associate with the better 70s recordings and rarely hear on records from the 80s. But here’s a record from 1988 that sounds the way we like our records to sound — like analog. We don’t really know if it is or not, or mostly is or mostly isn’t, but we’ve never really cared about those sorts of things as long as the record sounds good.

It’s our one and only criterion. Any other criterion is a sign that you’re not really listening, you’re reading.

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Little Feat / Dixie Chicken

More Little Feat

  • Here is a vintage Green Label pressing (only the second copy to hit the site in more years than anyone can remember) that was doing just about everything right, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades
  • You get lovely extension up top, good weight down low, as well as remarkable transparency in the midrange, all qualities that were much less evident on the average copy we played
  • It’s the rare copy that’s this lively, solid and rich… drop the needle on any track and you’ll see what we mean
  • No Burbank label copy earned a better grade than 1.5+, and even most of those fell short, not to mention the truly awful later label
  • 5 stars: “It all adds up to a nearly irresistible record, filled with great songwriting, sultry grooves, and virtuosic performances that never are flashy. Little Feat, along with many jam bands that followed, tried to top this album, but they never managed to make a record this understated, appealing and fine.”

Hot Stamper sound on both sides — yes, it is possible, and this very copy is Proof with a capitol “P.” Most copies of this album sound like cardboard, especially the later pressings on the Palm Tree and tan labels. To get the best sound, you need originals of this album, and Warner Brothers Green Label originals are getting pretty darn hard to find as more and more collectors and audiophiles are coming to the realization that the unending stream of Heavy Vinyl reissues flooding the market leaves a lot to be desired. (Our desire for them is at zero, as we no longer bother to order the stuff.)

Folks, this is no Demo Disc by any means, but the later pressings strip away the two qualities that really make this music work and bring it to life: Tubey Magic and big bass. This copy has both in spades.

Listen to how breathy and transparent the chorus is on the first track. Now layer that sound on top of a fat and punchy bottom end and you have the formula for Little Feat Magic at its funky best. This is the sound they heard in the control room, of that I have no doubt, and it is all over this copy.

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Letter of the Week – “The instruments fill my room like they would in a live performance.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Crosby, Stills, Nash and (Sometimes) Young

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently: 

Hey Tom, 

I have really been enjoying the Neil Young “After The Gold Rush” and CSN&Y “So Far.” They are like the “Workingman’s Dead” LP. Just a thrill to hear. The instruments on “After The Gold Rush” fill my room like they would in a live performance. Addictive.

AJ

Dear AJ,

Addiction is the name of the game!

If you’re an audiophile who is not addicted to good sound and good music, you may not be one for long.

And if you have been in this game for a very long time like I have, you have no doubt met self-identified audiophiles with systems that haven’t been improved in twenty years, and appear to be rarely used.

I like to think those are the audiophiles who own lots of audiophile records, the ones that are designed to show off stereo equipment and typically hold little interest from a musical standpoint.

The TAS Super Disc List is full of these records. We have no use for most of them and we suspect our customers don’t either.

Audiophiles with vintage pressings of real music rarely abandon the hobby in my experience.

And if you have Hot Stamper pressings, why would you ever give up on hearing music that sounds as good as our records sound?

Thanks for your letter.

TP

Cat Stevens – Mona Bone Jakon

More of the Music of Cat Stevens

  • Incredible sound throughout this UK Island pressing of Cat Stevens’s brilliant third album, with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them
  • So transparent, open, and spacious, nuances and subtleties that escaped you before are now front and center
  • When you play “I Wish, I Wish” and “I Think I See The Light” on this vintage pressing, we think you will agree with us that this is one of the greatest Folk Rock albums of them all
  • One of the most underrated titles on the site – you owe it to yourself to see just how good the album that came out right before Tillerman can be when it sounds this good
  • 4 stars: “A delight, and because it never achieved the Top 40 radio ubiquity of later albums, it sounds fresh and distinct.”

So many copies excel in some areas but fall flat in others. This side one has it ALL going on — all the Tubey Magic, all the energy, all the presence and so on. The sound is high-rez yet so natural, free from the phony hi-fi-ish quality that you hear on many pressings, especially the reissues on the second label.

Right off the bat, I want to say this is a work of GENIUS. Cat Stevens made three records that belong in the Pantheon of greatest popular recordings of all time. In the world of Folk Pop, Mona Bone Jakon, Teaser and the Firecat and Tea for the Tillerman have few peers. There may be other Folk Pop recordings that are as good but we know of none that are better.

Mike Bobak was the engineer for these sessions from 1970. He is the man responsible for some of the best sounding records from the early ’70s: The Faces’ Long Player, Rod Stewart’s Never a Dull Moment, The Kinks’ Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One, (and lots of other Kinks albums), Carly Simon’s Anticipation and more than his share of obscure English bands (of which there seems to be a practically endless supply).

Tubey Magical acoustic guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this album. Simply phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum, along with the richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern recordings (and remasterings). (more…)