Asylum

Linda Ronstadt – Lush Life

More Linda Ronstadt

More Nelson Riddle

  • A vintage copy of Ronstadt’s 1984 release with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this stunning copy in our notes: “big and weighty”…”huge and rich and dynamic vox”…”3D and jumping out of the speakers”…”big bass”…”silky and huge”
  • Getting the strings to sound sweet and rosiny, not smeary and hard, is no mean feat, but it’s the kind of thing the best Hot Stamper pressings are guaranteed to give you on any of Linda’s American Songbook period albums
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, but once you hear just how killer sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • “What’s New illustrated that Linda Ronstadt was no longer interested in contemporary pop, and since it was a surprise success, there was no reason not to repeat the formula on Lush Life. Working again with Nelson Riddle, Ronstadt runs through several pop standards — ‘When I Fall in Love,’ ‘Sophisticated Lady,’ ‘Falling in Love Again,’ ‘It Never Entered My Mind’…”

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The Eagles – One Of These Nights

More Eagles

 More Country and Country Rock

  • INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound brings the Eagles’ first Number One album to life on this early Asylum label pressing
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this amazing copy in our notes: “big and rich”…”vox silky and relaxed”…”tubey and great detail!”…”huge and rich and weighty”
  • On a copy such as this one, the soaring guitar solo of the title track really comes alive – assuming you have it turned up good and loud
  • “Lyin’ Eyes” and “Take It To The Limit” sound the way they should – we guarantee you have never heard them sound remotely as good as they do here
  • A top quality side two is not easy to find on this album – they are consistently one half to one full grade lower than side one – but not this side two, which won the shootout and is certainly as good as we have ever heard
  • There are some bad marks (as is sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records) on “Take It To The Limit,” but once you hear just how incredible sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and just be swept away by the music
  • 4 stars: “…a lyrical stance — knowing and disillusioned, but desperately hopeful — had evolved, and the musical arrangements were tighter and more purposeful. The result was the Eagles’ best-realized and most popular album so far.”

This is one of the toughest Eagles albums to find with good sound, which is why only a small handful ever make it to the site. This album may never sound quite as good as Hotel California or the self-titled debut, but there are some wonderful songs here and a Hot Stamper pressing like this brings them to life in a way most pressings cannot begin to do.

The better copies are richer and sweeter. When you turn them up, they really come to life. When you play the better sides at rock music volumes they really rock. When a copy is cut really clean, as the best ones are, the louder you play them the better they sound. They’re tonally correct at loud levels and a bit dull at what we would call “audiophile” levels. That’s the way it should be.

Here is the one comment which really gets to the point of the better pressings: “guitar solos rise above.” The big solo on the title track just soars on this copy like we’ve rarely heard in the past.

This is the guitar sound that Bill Szymczyk achieved with the band that Glyn Johns had not. Of course, Johns had never tried; he saw them as a country rock band. The Eagles saw themselves as a rock band, it’s as simple as that.

Also note on side one that the loud choruses and huge guitars on the second track, “Too Many Hands,” hold up on this side one amazingly well. It’s a great test track as well as the first, providing positive confirmation that what you will hear for the song “One of These Nights” — the size and the power — will carry all the way through this side one.

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Tom Waits – Blue Valentine

More Tom Waits

More Singer-Songwriter Albums

  • Blue Valentine returns to the site for the first time in years, here with killer Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades from start to finish – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Both of these sides are remarkably rich, full, sweet and warm
  • The strings have wonderful texture, the voice is exceptionally present and breathy – you’d be hard pressed to find a better sounding copy
  • “Two welcome changes in style made Blue Valentine a fresh listening experience for Tom Waits fans. First, Waits alters the instrumentation, bringing in electric guitar and keyboards and largely dispensing with the strings for a more blues-oriented, hard-edged sound. Second … he expands beyond the musings of the barstool philosopher who previously had acted as the first-person character of most of his songs. These are not radical reinventions, but Waits had followed such a rigidly stylized approach on his previous albums that for anyone who had followed him so far, the course correction was big news.”

Both sides have a wonderful bottom end — check out all the weight to that rich, meaty bass. Many copies we played had a tendency to sound somewhat dull, but this one has all the extension up top you need.

Drop the needle on “Romeo Is Bleeding” for some of the best music on here. When you’ve got the kind of bass definition that this copy offers, the sound for that song can be killer, as it is here.

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Tom Waits – Foreign Affairs

More Tom Waits

  • Foreign Affairs is back on the site after a six month hiatus, here with a KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two
  • These are just a few of the things we had to say about this incredible Triple Plus side one in our notes: “tubey sax and bass”…”vox jumping out [of the speakers]”…”sweet and rich and 3D”…”deep bass”
  • This early Asylum label pressing will put Tom Waits right in front of you, with a batch of great session players behind and to the side, all playing live in the studio
  • “Foreign Affairs is one of the most unjustifiably overlooked titles in Waits’ catalog. It holds its appeal – and sounds less dated – than many of his more popular entries.”
  • “Produced and engineered by Bones Howe, Foreign Affairs was recorded live in studio by a quintet that included West Coast jazzmen Jack Sheldon on trumpet, saxophonist Frank Vicari, bassist Jim Hughart, and drummer Shelly Manne.”

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Joni Mitchell – Hejira

More Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell – An Overview

  • Outstanding sound throughout this vintage Asylum label pressing, with both sides earning Double Plus (A++) grades
  • Most copies we played were too compressed or veiled to involve you in the music, but this one has the big, rich, clear sound of analog at its best that Joni’s spacey “beatnik jazz” needs to work its magic
  • “Joni Mitchell’s Hejira is the last in an astonishingly long run of top-notch studio albums dating back to her debut… Performances are excellent, with special kudos reserved for Jaco Pastorius’ melodic bass playing… This excellent album is a rewarding listen.”

We played a ton of copies and heard a lot to dislike. Many copies have a tendency to sound phony, a case of heavy-handed EQ in the mastering perhaps. When a copy sounds glossy, it loses its natural warmth and starts to sound like any old audiophile LP. We’re ideally looking for something akin to Blue here, and not the sound you find on Patricia Barber LPs. (Gratuitous maybe, but it feels like it’s been too long since we took a swipe at that junk. But I digress…)

Plenty of copies had natural sound but no real life or presence to speak of. It’s a sound you could live with until you heard a good one, but there’s no going back once you’ve heard what the album’s really capable of. A copy like this one gives you lots of richness and warmth without sacrificing the texture to the instruments or the breath to Joni’s voice. The percussion really comes through, the bass has more weight and the immediacy of the vocals put Joni front and center, just where she should be.

If you aren’t familiar with this album, it’s a few more steps down the path she started taking on Court and Spark. The musicians include Larry Carlton and Jaco Pastorius, so that should give you an idea about the jazz-fusion direction of the arrangements. It was a fun album to get to know and on a copy like this one, it really rewards multiple listens.

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Joni Mitchell – Court and Spark

Hot Stamper Pressings of Court and Spark Available Now

Reviews and Commentaries for Court and Spark

  • Both sides of this early Asylum pressing were doing practically everything right, earning stunning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • The sound is rich, warm and natural, with wonderful transparency, ambience and loads of Tubey Magic
  • Musically this is one of our favorite Joni albums here at Better Records, and probably her Best Recording as well
  • A proud member (along with Blue) of our Top 100 Rock and Pop albums – yes, it’s that good sounding when it’s mastered and pressed as well as this copy is
  • 5 stars: “[A] remarkably deft fusion of folk, pop, and jazz … the music is smart, smooth, and assured from the first note to the last.”
  • If I were to compile a list of my favorite rock and pop albums from 1974, this album would definitely be on it

Court and Spark deserves to be heard with all the clarity, beauty and power that our Hot Stampers reproduce so well. If there is a better sounding album with Joni Mitchell’s name on the cover, you’ll have to prove it to us.

What you hear is the sound of the real tape; every instrument has its own character because the mastering is correct and the vinyl — against all odds — managed to capture all (or almost all; who can know?) of the resolution that the tape had to offer. (more…)

Linda Ronstadt – Prisoner In Disguise

More Linda Ronstadt

More Women Who Rock

    • Prisoner In Disguise returns to the site for the first time in over two years, here with Linda’s trademark punchy, lively Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on both sides of this vintage Asylum pressing
    • Here are just a few of our notes for this killer copy: “silky and breathy vox,” “big and punchy,” “huge, rich and silky,” “tons of space and detail,” “so tubey.”
    • This is an amazing recording, but it takes a special copy like this one to reveal all the magic that we know had to have been on the tape in 1975, almost fifty years ago
    • 4 1/2 stars – “Love Is a Rose,” “Tracks of My Tears” and “Heat Wave” were hits, but Linda really pours her heart into “Hey Mister, That’s Me Up On The Jukebox”
    • Andrew Gold (so critical to the success of HLAW) is still heavily involved, along with EmmyLou Harris, James Taylor, Lowell George, David Lindley, JD Souther, and of course Peter Asher

The soundfield has a three-dimensional quality that was nonexistent on some of the other copies we played. Drop the needle on “Many Rivers To Cross” and check out the amazing sound of the organ coming from the back of the room. Only the highest resolution copies give you that kind of soundstage depth.

The piano sounds natural and weighty. The fiddle on “The Sweetest Gift” (played by our man David Lindley) is full of rosiny texture.

Emmylou Harris, dueting here with Linda, sings beautifully throughout.

All in all, you will find truly Demo Disc Quality sound on the best copies.

The acoustic guitars are tonally right on the money, neither bright nor dull, with transient information that is captured perfectly as long as the pressing itself is not smeary, which the better Hot Stamper pressings won’t be.

Listen to the opening guitar in the right channel of “The Sweetest Gift”; we used it as a test track and when that guitar is right there you know you have a copy with Hot Stampers.

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Linda Ronstadt – What’s New

More of the Music of Linda Ronstadt

  • Boasting KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides, we guarantee you’ve never heard What’s New sound this good
  • So hugely spacious and three-dimensional, yet with a tonally correct and fairly natural sounding Linda, this is the way to hear it
  • What engineer George Massenburg gets right is the sound of an orchestra, augmented with jazz musicians (Ray Brown, Tommy Tedesco, Plas Johnson, Bob Cooper), all performing live in a huge studio
  • “…the best and most serious attempt to rehabilitate an idea of pop that Beatlemania… undid in the mid-60s.”
  • If you’re a Ronstadt fan, this title from 1983 is surely a Must Own. The complete list of titles from 1983 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

With two outstanding sides, this pressing gets two critically important elements of the recording right:

The strings in the orchestra, and, for obvious reasons, even more importantly, Linda’s voice.

We guarantee that these sides give you a more natural sounding Linda than you’ve ever heard, or your money back.

If all you own is a mediocre sounding pressing or the truly awful Mobile Fidelity from 1983, you are in for a world of better sound with this pressing.

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Tom Waits – Nighthawks At The Diner

More Tom Waits

  • Excellent sound for this Tom Waits classic, with Double Plus (A++) grades on all FOUR sides of these vintage Asylum pressings – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • A superb recording, with much credit due to Waits’ constant collaborator Bones Howe, who produced and engineered
  • It’s a live-in-the-studio romp through Los Angeles with Waits playing the role of tour guide, and the results are wonderful
  • “As entertainment, Nighthawks at the Diner is one of Waits’ most thoroughly enjoyable albums … it’s hard to imagine anyone not being charmed by it.”

At its best, this album has the immediacy and energy of a real live performance, but the typical copy just doesn’t bring it to life. This one is a big step up on all four sides, with the kind of life and clarity we just don’t hear often enough.

This album was recorded live at The Record Plant back in 1975, and while I can’t be certain, it sure seems there are no overdubs or post-performance additions. There’s a touch of hardness to the vocals at times, but it was on every copy we played and it’s obviously on the tape. It’s the kind of sound we hear on Johnny Cash records and it just seems like a by-product of the microphones these guys used. It doesn’t seem to far a reach to imagine that an iconoclast like Waits might prefer an old-timey microphone sound that doesn’t soften or smooth his vocal style. (For those in search of buttery vocals, there’s usually an Al Stewart record or two on the site. This ain’t the one for you.)

We played quite a few copies and while we were absolutely blown away by the better pressings; the typical copies left us cold. When you have a copy that’s veiled and lacks presence, the magic is gone.

I’m not very familiar with the musicians that make up the backing band here, but they are a top-notch crew. The way they interact with Waits as he spins stories, songs, and even a few jokes is in the very best jazz tradition. Waits actually hooked up with the great drummer Shelley Manne to record his next album (the classic Small Change) so this is a man who clearly knows how to pick a band.

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Linda Ronstadt – For Sentimental Reasons

More Linda Ronstadt

  • An incredible copy of Ronstadt’s 1986 release with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from first note to last
  • Linda is fuller, sweeter, breathier, less spitty (some tracks more than others) and just plain less artificial here than on all other copies we played in our recent shootout
  • The final installment of the jazz trilogy that Ronstadt recorded with bandleader and arranger Nelson Riddle
  • “… it is in the hushed intensity of Mr. Riddle’s string arrangements for the album’s ballads that one senses a musician reaching deeply into his soul to make eloquent final statements… The arrangements’ emotional gravity reverberates in Miss Ronstadt’s singing…”

With two outstanding sides, this pressing gets two critically important elements of the recording right: the strings in the orchestra, and, for obvious reasons, even more importantly, Linda’s voice. We guarantee that these sides give you a more natural-sounding Linda than you’ve ever heard, or your money back. (more…)