Arista

Whitney Houston – Whitney

More Whitney Houston

  • A vintage Arista pressing (one of only a handful of copies to hit the site in close to three years) with surprisingly natural sound for an 80s release, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades from first note to last – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Full-bodied, big, rich and solid, this album has the kind of analog sound we did not expect to find, but were pleasantly surprised, thank goodness
  • Lot of hits here: “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”, “Didn’t We Almost Have It All,” “So Emotional” and “Where Do Broken Hearts Go”
  • 4 stars: “Whitney Houston became an international star with this album. It sold more than ten million copies around the world, yielded a string of number one hit singles across the board…”

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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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My Romance – Forget the Vinyl, Just Buy the CD

More of the Music of Carly Simon

This album from 1990 contains lovely music, for the most part, but the CD-like sound is just not going to cut it. I had played the album ten or twenty years and liked it just fine, but the last time we dropped the needle on it we realized the sound was unacceptably processed, especially the vocal.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of heavily-processed recordings we like.

But for this album, covers of some of Sinatra’s most iconic songs, we felt the sound was completely wrong for the material.

Our advice: If you like the album, you might as well just buy the CD.

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The Outlaws – Outlaws

  • These superb sides each rating a solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER give you Top Quality Country Rock sound from first note to last
  • Big, rich and meaty, this pressing shows you just how well recorded their Classic Debut album really is
  • There Goes Another Love Song and Green Grass & High Tides (at almost ten minutes!) sound surprisingly good here
  • “The Outlaws’ debut blew a fresh blast of rock & roll onto a scene increasingly dominated by synthesizers and dance music. It will leave the listener singing along and dreaming about the good ol’ days.” (You got that right)

The sound of the typical copy can best be summed up in one word: brittle. When the sound is thin or hard the fun factor of this country rock drops to zero. Green Grass & High Tides sounds great on the radio, why not on vinyl?

We sure can’t blame Artisan, the original cutting house: all the copies we played — good, bad and otherwise — were originals and mastered by them.

Could it be the Arista vinyl? It could. It could be a lot of things, but speculating about them doesn’t really get us or you anywhere, so I’m going to stop doing it and just say we played a big pile of records and heard a lot of copies with mediocre sound.

This Is Our Sound

It’s easy to spot the good ones. They’re big and rich, never thin nor harsh. They open up on the top end and go down deep on the bottom. They’re smooth and full-bodied in the midrange. The guitars ring out. The energy of the performance drives the music the way you want it to.

In short, the best copies demonstrate what’s good about All American Analog Recording from the mid-’70s, the kind of sound the Doobies had for Toulouse Street, Linda Ronstadt for Simple Dreams and Steely Dan for Pretzel Logic. If you prefer the recordings of Diana Krall, Patricia Barber and Jennifer Warnes, this may not be your sound, but it sure is ours.

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Bob Weir – Heaven Help The Fool

More Bob Weir

More Grateful Dead

  • This outstanding pressing boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from start to finish
  • A surprisingly well recorded album, this pressing is simply bigger, bolder and richer than most of the other copies we played
  • ” … showcases the special flavor that Weir added to Jerry [Garcia]’s genius, where 2 identities blend effortlessly. “
  • “Jazzy in places, soft and smooth in others. Out of the ordinary for the Grateful Dead’s co-founder, but easier for the uninitiated to absorb without losing the trademark oddity that Weir has always displayed. Top-notch stuff.”

What separated the best copies from the also-rans was more than just rich, sweet, full-bodied sound. The better copies make Bob’s voice more palpable — he’s simply more of a solid, three dimensional, real presence between the speakers. You can hear the nuances of his delivery much, MUCH more clearly on a copy that sounds as good as this one does.

Keith Olsen produced and co-engineered here, which should go a long way toward explaining why the sound is so good. He is of course the man helped make Fleetwood Mac’s 1975 album such a sonic blockbuster. (more…)

The Kinks – Misfits

More of The Kinks

  • With seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on both sides, this was one of the better copies we heard in our recent Misfits shootout
  • Quite a bit richer and tubier than most of what we auditioned, qualities that helped the acoustic-guitar-based tracks work their magic 
  • The big hit here was Rock and Roll Fantasy and it sounds every bit as good as you hope it would
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The Kinks became arena rockers with Sleepwalker, and its follow-up, Misfits, follows in the same vein, but it’s a considerable improvement on its predecessor…Misfits is a moving record that manages to convey deep emotions while rocking hard. The Kinks hadn’t made a record this good since Muswell Hillbillies.”

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Jennifer Warnes – Shot Through The Heart

  • Shot Through The Heart makes its Hot Stamper debut here with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound from start to finish
  • You get clean, clear, full-bodied, lively and musical ANALOG sound from first note to last
  • 4 stars: ” Jennifer Warnes took charge of the recording of [this] her second Arista album, co-producing it and writing three songs, including the title track… On her own, her taste was impeccable… She proved an adept producer, achieving a smooth pop/rock sound… With session stars like Andrew Gold aboard, Warnes succeeded in making what sounded like the great lost Linda Ronstadt album.”

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Grateful Dead – Go to Heaven

  • With Triple Plus (A+++) Shootout Winning sides or close to them, this copy had some of the best sound we have ever heard for Go to Heaven – exceptionally quiet vinyl too 
  • Bill Kreutzmann noted, “If you go back and (re)listen to it, you’ll find that time has been very kind to Go to Heaven. It plays better now than it did back then. That’s still no excuse for the cover, though – all six of us, dressed all in white disco suits against a white background.”
  • Classic Rock Review wrote, “While this may be a far cry from the group’s lauded stage improvisation, it made for an enjoyable studio album which holds up decades later…. It still sounds good today and shows that this band had some vast talent away from the stage.”

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Grateful Dead – Shakedown Street

 

  • This original Arista LP earned Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades – you’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this one does – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Midrange magic that’s no doubt missing from whatever 180g reissue has been made from the tapes (or, to be clear, a modern digital master copied from who-knows-what-tapes)
  • Grateful Dead fans and completists will surely want to add this to their collection – it’s As Good As It Gets
  • “The rough-edged blues of “I Need a Miracle” and the Caribbean-tinged “Fire On the Mountain” would become set list staples, and their Latin-flavored version of The Rascals’ ’60s rock classic “Good Lovin'” is one of the band’s most beloved covers.” Amazon

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