Why Aren’t These Albums More Popular?

This list contains more than a hundred well recorded albums with outstanding music and top quality sound that deserve more respect from the audiophile community.

Many of them are personal favorites. All of them deserve a listen, and we make that possible with our 100% money back guarantee.

Poco – Self-Titled

More Country and Country Rock

  • Poco’s Masterpiece of Country Prog Rock returns to the site for the first time in years, here with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them from start to finish
  • These are just a few of the things we had to say about this stunning copy in our notes: “very rich bass and vox”…”jumping out of the speakers”…”full, breathy and 3D”…”lots of space”…”huge and open and tubey”…”dynamic guitar”
  • Big, rich, energetic, with an abundance of Analog Tubey Magic, this original Yellow Label Epic pressing has exactly the right sound for this music
  • A bonafide Desert Island Disc and 4 stars on the AMG: “These songs represent the group’s blend of country and rock at its finest and brightest, with the happy harmonies of ‘Hurry Up’ and ‘Keep on Believin” totally irresistible. Jim Messina’s ‘You Better Think Twice’ is a perfectly constructed and arranged song, one that should have been a huge hit but mysteriously never found its place in the Top 40 pantheon.”
  • When it comes to rock and pop music in 1970, our picks for the best of the best, numbering less than 30 titles, can be found here.

Poco’s second album is an unusual blend of country-rock, with some long, jazzy instrumental breaks that center around Rusty Young’s pedal steel, which doesn’t sound like any pedal steel guitar you’ve ever heard. It’s played with a wah-wah pedal and, if that wasn’t enough, the resulting sound is sent through a Leslie organ speaker.

We know it sounds crazy, but it really works. There is nothing else like it on record, nothing that we’ve ever heard anyway.

Country Prog Rock

Most of side two is taken up by a single track, “Nobody’s Fool / El Tonto de Nadie, Regresa.” It’s a suite in which the band stretches out instrumentally in a somewhat proggy way, although one could make the case that Bluegrass music is all about “stretching out instrumentally.”

The extended forays are held together by the brilliant pedal steel playing throughout. I have the feeling that Jim Messina, who left the band shortly after this album was released, was the guiding force behind breaking out of the 3-minute pop song format that Poco began with. Whoever may be responsible, they deserve credit for making what is in our minds one of the best Country Rock / Country Prog records of all time.

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Jackson Browne – The Pretender

More Jackson Browne

 More Asylum Label Recordings

  • ou’ll find STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this this vintage Asylum pressing
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this killer copy in our notes: “weighty and rich”…”vox jumping out of the speakers”…”smooth and full and present”…”3D and rich”…”lots of bass”
  • The best pressings are Rock / Pop Demo Discs – they’re so rich and full-bodied they make most of the competition sound positively anemic
  • Five Stars in Rolling Stone, one of their Top 500 Albums, and a true classic from 1976
  • One of the best sounding records Jackson Browne ever made, along with his debut – this is the pressing that backs up everything we say and more
  • If you’re a Jackson Browne fan, this title from 1976 is surely a Must Own
  • Asylum in the Seventies was known for its especially smooth recordings, but plenty of other labels produced smooth recordings, and here is a link to some of our favorites
  • These superb vintage pressings are quite different from the ones they are making these days, which have taken the concept of “smooth sounding analog” and stretched it well past its limits, resulting in a great many pressings that are far too smooth to be taken seriously

As I’m sure you know by now, especially if you own a few copies, most pressings of The Pretender don’t sound like Demo Discs. In fact, most copies of this record are mediocre at best — thin, grainy, and flat sounding.

This copy is none of those things. And it positively kills the famous MoFi pressing.

Problems to Watch For

Some of the more common problems we ran into during our shootouts were slightly veiled, slightly smeary sound, with not all the top end extension that the best copies have.

You can easily hear that smear on the guitar transients; usually they’re a tad blunted and the guitar harmonics don’t ring the way they should.

These problems are just as common to the original Asylum pressings as they are to the later LPs. Smeary, veiled, top-end-challenged pressings were regularly produced over the years. They are the rule, not the exception.

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Billy Joel / Songs in the Attic

More of the Music of Billy Joel

  • Demo Disc live rock concert sound on this vintage Columbia pressing, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades
  • The sonics have so many wonderful analog qualities when you get a good copy — the hardness of the typical pressing just disappears, leaving surprisingly transparent and sweet sound on virtually every track
  • The WHOMP factor here is off the scale. There are few studio recordings that have these kinds of dynamics. We forget how compressed most of them are. It takes a record like this to show you how much life there is in live music
  • 4 stars: “Songs in the Attic is an excellent album, ranking among his very best work… even if Joel wasn’t a celebrity in the early 70s, his best songs of the era rivaled his biggest hits.”

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Fleetwood Mac – Tusk

More of the Music of Fleetwood Mac

  • A Tusk like you’ve never heard, with excellent Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER on all FOUR sides
  • Side two was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • These vintage pressings have the MIDRANGE MAGIC that’s surely missing from whatever 180g reissue has been made from the 43 year old tapes (or, to be clear, a modern digital master copy of those tapes)
  • 5 stars: “McVie and Nicks don’t deviate from their established soft rock and folk-rock templates, and all their songs are first-rate… Because of its ambitions, Tusk failed to replicate the success of its two predecessors, yet it earned a dedicated cult audience of fans of twisted, melodic pop.”
  • If you’re a fan of late-70s pop, especially the kind with a harder edge, this is a Must Own from 1979 that belongs in your collection.
  • The complete list of titles from 1979 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

This is one of the more controversial albums in the history of pop music — some people love it, others despise it, and some still don’t know what to make of it. You may not put it up there with Rumours, but when you hear these songs on a copy this good it’s easy to see why the All Music Guide gave Tusk five big stars!

Tusk suffered from high expectations and disappointed those looking for Rumours II. There is much on this album that compares to the best of Rumours but the weak material somewhat drags the album down as a whole. About three-quarters of Tusk is excellent. I made a 60-minute tape of that material and play it with great pleasure. I could tell you about lots of wonderful qualities the best tracks on the album have, but it would take too long. Sorry!

Sonically, the best sounding material ranks right up there with anything the band ever did, but there are more experimental moments such as What Makes You Think You’re The One that are never going to be tracks you demo your system with.

One high point (musically and sonically) is “Beautiful Child,” quite possibly the best song Stevie Nicks ever wrote. If you listen carefully and give yourself over totally to the sentiment of the song, and your eyes don’t well up, try opening up a vein and letting some ice water pour out. Then try it again. Repeat if necessary. If that doesn’t work just give up and go back to the Diana Krall CD you were playing.

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The Eagles / On The Border – A Must Own Country Rock Classic

More Eagles

More Country and Country Rock

  • An outstanding British SYL copy of this criminally underrated California Country Rock classic
  • If you’ve never heard one of these early pressings, you have simply never heard this album sound the way it should, mastered with the correct polarity, for one thing
  • “You Never Cry Like A Lover” and “The Best Of My Love” (their first No. 1) offer Glyn Johns magically delicious DEMO DISC quality sound
  • We’re HUGE fans of the album here at Better Records; it’s some of the most sophisticated, well-crafted, heartfelt music these guys ever made, and that’s saying a lot coming from us – we’ve been big fans for decades
  • This killer album from 1974 belongs in your collection.
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” but with less accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. On the Border is a good example of a record most audiophiles don’t know well but should.

Many of you have probably forgotten how good this album is (assuming you were ever familiar with it in the first place) probably because the typical domestic copy you would have played back in the day is fairly hard on the ears. Most pressings, even the British ones, barely hint at the kind of sound you’ll hear on this vintage UK pressing (the only kind we sell of course).

The LIFE and ENERGY of this pressing are going to knock you right out of your seat. Most copies leave you with a headache, but this one will have you begging to turn up the volume.

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 richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern recordings (and especially from modern remasterings). (more…)

Carly Simon / Another Passenger

More of the Music of Carly Simon

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Carly Simon

  • An original Elektra pressing of Simon’s underrated release from 1976 with solid Double Plus (A++) grades from start to finish
  • Both of these sides are rich, full-bodied and warm, with real immediacy to Carly’s wonderfully present and breathy vocals
  • You get lovely extension up top, good weight down low, as well as exceptional transparency in the midrange, all qualities that were much less evident on the average copy we played
  • “Another Passenger is Carly Simon’s best record. The sniffs of ‘So what?’ that that assertion may provoke are exactly what Simon is confronting with this album.” – Rolling Stone
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” with an accent on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Another Passenger is a good example of a record audiophiles may not know well but we think might benefit from getting to know better

This is my personal favorite of all of Carly’s albums. It’s her most consistent work in terms of her singing and songwriting. Nothing too heavy, just well crafted and enjoyable Singer Songwriter pop. If you like the kind of albums Paul Simon used to make before Graceland, or middle period James Taylor, you should like this.

Some of her albums can be badly overproduced, with big echoey drum thwacks; thankfully this is not one of them, so we think most listeners will find that the album wears very well. I can personally attest to that fact because I have a tape of this album in my car and I’ll bet you I’ve played it two hundred times or more.

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Art Pepper / Art Pepper Today

More of the Music of Art Pepper

  • Outstanding sound throughout this original Galaxy pressing, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades
  • It has more presence, space, clarity and top end extension than most of what we played in our recent shootout
  • Big, rich and full-bodied sound was not that easy to find on the album, but this copy had plenty of all three
  • 4 stars: “Altoist Art Pepper, in the midst of a successful comeback, recorded this excellent set for Galaxy. With pianist Stanley Cowell, bassist Cecil McBee, and drummer Roy Haynes, Pepper performs a definitive version of his intense ballad ‘Patricia.’ Other highlights include ‘Miss Who,’ ‘Lover Come Back to Me’ and ‘Chris’ Blues.'”

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Dixie Dregs – Dregs of the Earth

More Rock and Pop

More Jazz Rock Fusion

  • This wild amalgamation of rock, jazz, country, prog and classical music delivers the sound we always dreamed it could with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them from start to finish
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “big and lively and spacious”…”transparent and relaxed and jumping out [of the speakers]”…”huge and rich and weighty”…”very relaxed and 3D”…”so tubey, HTF [hard to fault]” (side two)
  • Both sides are rich and smooth like good analog should be, with plenty of energy and rock and roll drive
  • This is the kind of music you may have trouble describing, but one thing’s for sure – it’s really good
  • We’re apparently not the only one who noticed how good the album is: it received a 1980 Grammy nomination for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.
  • “If you were a Dixie Dregs fan in 1980, by this time you knew just what to expect from a new album of theirs. Beautiful, majestic ballads, southern flavored rockers, a blazing bluegrass romp, at least one smokin’ prog tune, and maybe a little classical thrown in. This one does not disappoint.” – ProgArchives.com

If you want to hear what happens when five virtuoso instrumentalists manage to combine their talent for Jazz, Rock, Classical and Country (thank god there aren’t any vocals) into a potent mix that defies classification and breaks all the rules, this is the one. It reminds me of Ellington’s famous line that there are only two kinds of music: good music and bad music. This is the kind of music you may have trouble describing, but one thing’s for sure — it’s good. In fact it’s really good.

It’s rich and smooth like good analog should be. It’s also got plenty of energy and rock and roll drive, which is precisely where the famous Half-Speed falls apart, a story we are all too familiar with.

Few audiophiles know this music, and that’s a shame. This record is just a delight from beginning to end.

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Louie Bellson / Ray Brown / Paul Smith – Intensive Care

More Direct-to-Disc Recordings

More Jazz Piano Recordings

  • Both sides of this amazing Discwasher direct-to-disc Japanese import earned STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sonic grades
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this incredible copy in our notes: “so big and roomy”…”no veil at all” (side one)…”huge and rich with a power low-end”…”very articulate and round piano”…”tubey and weighty”…”best bass, deep and note-like” (side two)
  • One of our all time favorite direct-to-discs; Piano Trio doesn’t get much better than this
  • Paul Smith is an underrated jazz player – most of his albums as a leader are forgettable (we should know, we’ve played a bunch of them), but on this album he swings and really makes music with his two bandmates
  • The playing is extremely energetic and involving, the sound is some of the best we’ve heard, and the engineering is by Phil Schier, who also recorded another favorite direct disc of ours, Friendship, and we recommend both albums highly
  • If you want a good jazz direct-to-disc, you would be hard pressed to find one better than this
  • If you’re a fan of piano trio jazz recordings, recorded direct to disc or otherwise, this is a killer record from 1978 that belongs in your collection.

This record probably doesn’t have the reputation it deserves because it came out on the Discwasher label, which to my knowledge, only made one good record, this one. The same metalwork would have been used to make the version Pausa released, and that fairly common pressing may be virtually identical to this Discwasher pressing. (more…)

Bread – Manna

See all of our Bread albums in stock

Pure Pop Albums Available Now

  • Manna returns to the site for only the second time in twenty-eight months, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER throughout this original pressing that plays about as quietly as these Butterfly Elektras ever do
  • Side two was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • Tubier, more transparent, more dynamic, with that “jumpin’ out of the speakers” quality that only the real thing (an old record) can have
  • A superb album, featuring one of the strongest rockers the band ever recorded, “Let Your Love Go”
  • 4 1/2 stars: “… this is a record that is laid-back and even tempered, which isn’t a bad thing – it results in a fine listen, especially since the group’s songwriting remains at the high standard instituted on that first Bread album.”
  • More Hot Stamper pressings of exceptionally Tubey Magical recordings
  • More Hot Stamper pressings with exceptionally Tubey Magical acoustic guitars

This original Elektra pressing has amazingly sweet and rich 1971 ANALOG sound on both sides. That big bottom end and the volume of space that surrounds all the instruments and singers are the purest and most delightful form of Audiophile Candy we know.

The acoustic guitars? To die for. Talk about Tubey Magical Analog, this copy will show you just what’s missing from modern remastered records (and modern music generally). Whatever became of that sound?

This record put Bread’s heavily Beatles-inflected Pure Pop back on the charts after their the single from their previous album, On The Waters, made it to Number One, that song of course being Make It With You. “If”, the big hit off this album, went to number five, but we like it every bit as much as that earlier chart topper. Both represent the perfect melding of consummate songcraft and pure emotion.

We used to think that only the Best of Bread album could get those two songs to sound as luscious and Tubey Magical as they do when they’re playing in our heads, but it seems we were wrong — they’re positively amazing on the best copies of Manna, and this is a VERY good copy indeed.

Common Problems

Manna has the clear signature of Elektra from the late ’60s and early ’70s. It’s unmistakably ANALOG, but that double-edged sword cuts both ways. Richness and Tubey Magic (the kind you had in your old 70s stereo equipment) often comes at the expense of transparency, clarity, speed and transient information (the things your ’70s equipment probably had more trouble with).

We heard a lot of copies that were opaque, smeary and dull up top, so the trick for us (and for those of you doing your own shootouts) is to find a copy with the resolving power and transparency that can cut through the thickness. Look for breath on the vocals (reverb too!) and extended vocal and guitar harmonics; if those two qualities are strongly evident you can’t be too far off the mark. More presence, bigger bass (the bass is HUGE on the best copies), more size, energy and space: these will help take you to the highest (Super Hot and White Hot) levels.

Bass, Man

Speaking of bass, notice how prominent, big and clear the bass guitar is on many of these songs. This is not a sound we hear nearly enough. During the shootout we were lovin’ it. The Legacy Focus in our reference system has three twelve-inch woofers per channel. They do a lovely job with this kind of big-bottom-end recording, the kind of recording for which Botnick and The Doors (and Love too, let’s not forget them) are justly famous. Where is that sound today? We sure miss it.

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