Labels We Love – Warners

Little Feat / Time Loves A Hero

Little Feat Albums with Hot Stampers

Little Feat Albums We’ve Reviewed

  • Time Loves A Hero is back on the site for only the second time in years, here with seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades throughout this vintage pressing
  • Credit Donn Landee (and Ted Templeman too) with the rich, smooth, oh-so-analog sound found on the better sides
  • 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
  • The blog has plenty of commentary on the Nautilus pressing, a record I admit to liking way back when, but no Hot Stamper would ever be as anemic and thin as that remastered record is, not when played back on the high-quality equipment we run today
  • “‘Old Folks Boogie’ beats anything on the last two albums…and “Rocket in My Pocket” is a Lowell George readymade like you didn’t think he had in him anymore.” – Robert Christgau

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Peter, Paul & Mary – A Song Will Rise

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  • A Song Will Rise is back on the site for only the second time in thirty-two months, here with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER throughout this early Gold Label stereo pressing
  • Side two was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be amazed at how big and rich the sound is
  • This copy is doing just about everything right – it’s clean, clear, dynamic and present with a lovely bottom end and lots of space around the instruments
  • Tubey Magic is key to the sound of the best pressings, and we guarantee our Gold Label originals have the kind of Tubey Magic that no modern pressing of the last 40 years has been able to offer the discriminating audiophile (with top quality playback)
  • “The fifth album, A Song Will Rise, appeared in March 1965. It was, in a sense, the last of a quartet of albums that made up the early Peter, Paul and Mary sound. Again employing two-acoustic-guitars-and-acoustic-bass instrumentation, it featured a combination of recent cover tunes, songs associated with the groups’ predecessors, such as the Weaver’s ‘Wasn’t That A Time,’ and a collection of revised traditional songs.”

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George Benson – Breezin’

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More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Guitar

  • Superb sound throughout this vintage pressing, with both sides earning Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • Tubey Magical richness and plenty of note-like bass are two of the important qualities that separate the winners from the also-rans, but smooth, grain-free, present vocals for “This Masquerade” are a big part of the best pressings too, so make that three important qualities
  • This copy will blow the doors off your old copy or any MoFi pressing — guaranteed!
  • It’s got all the elements this smooth masterpiece needs to come to life today, almost 50 years later if you can believe it
  • You hear right into the music, something that is only possible on the most transparent copies – exactly the quality that the modern Heavy Vinyl reissue cannot reproduce
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • If like us you’re a fan of jazz guitar, this is a killer album from 1976 that belongs in your collection.

This album features the huge hit “This Masquerade” and lots of other strong material as well. Benson is at the top of his game, with blazing guitar lines accompanied by his scat vocals at many times. No one else ever did music like this so well again, in our humble opinion.

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James Taylor / Gorilla – A Soft Rock Favorite from 1975

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This is soft rock at its best, made up primarily of love songs, and helped immensely by the harmonically-gifted backing vocals of Graham Nash and David Crosby.

Rolling Stone notes that “With Gorilla, Taylor is well on his way to staking out new ground. What he’s hit upon is the unlikely mating of his familiar low-keyed, acoustic guitar-dominated style with L.A. harmony rock and the sweet, sexy school of rhythm and blues.”

If you are not a fan of the mellow James Taylor this is not the album for you. I just happen to be such a fan.

Taylor’s sixth album contains consistently engaging, well-produced, well-written, memorable, singable (or hummable) songs that hold up to this day. (more…)

Joni Mitchell – Blue

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Reviews and Commentaries for Blue

  • Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) or BETTER sides, we guarantee you’ve never heard Joni’s 1971 masterpiece sound this good – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Side two was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be amazed at how big and rich the sound is
  • This copy is only a half plus shy of our Nearly White Hot Stamper pressing, which sold for 1199 just recently
  • We lucked into a couple of quiet copies this time around, but in our experience that is something we would not expect to happen very often, but we’re glad it did in the case of this wonderful pressing
  • Full-bodied and balanced with the kind of smooth, natural musicality that’s difficult to find for Blue
  • A Better Records Top 100 title that belongs in any audiophile music collection worthy of the name
  • 5 stars: “Sad, spare, and beautiful, Blue is the quintessential confessional singer/songwriter album. Forthright and poetic, Joni Mitchell’s songs are raw nerves, tales of love and loss (two words with relative meaning here) etched with stunning complexity…”
  • Everything changed for us in 2007 with the release of the Hoffman/Gray-mastered Rhino pressing of Blue, a record that made us ask ourselves, “Why are we selling records that we would not want to own or listen to ourselves?”
  • It was truly a kicked-by-a-mule moment for all of us here at Better Records, and I am glad to say one kick was all it took to get the rocks out of my head

The best copies bring out the breathy quality to Joni’s voice, and she never sounds strained. They are sweet and open, with good bass foundation and transparency throughout the frequency range.

The best pressings (and our better playback equipment) have revealed nuances to this recording — and of course the performances of all the players along with it — that made us fall in love with the music all over again. Of all the tough nuts to crack, this was the toughest, yet somehow copies emerged from our shootouts that made it easy to appreciate the sonic merits of Blue and ignore its shortcomings.

Hot Stampers have a way of doing that. You forget it’s a record; it’s now just Music. The right record and the right playback will bring this music to life in a way that you cannot imagine until you hear it. That is our guarantee on Blue — better than you ever thought possible or your money back.

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Elvis Costello / Spike

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More Reviews and Commentaries for the Brilliant Music of Elvis Costello

  • With KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it throughout, this copy is one of the BEST we have ever heard
  • This early import pressing showed us a Spike we never knew existed until a few years ago – there was so much energy and presence that it just came jumping out of the speakers and simply refused to mind its manners. Elvis should be proud. Why don’t more records sound like this?
  • “Any King’s Shilling” on side two, with its authentic Irish instrumentation (fiddle, uilleann pipes, Irish harp, bodhran), has Demo Disc Quality sound of the highest order
  • One of the best batches of songs Elvis (and his buddy Paul McCartney) ever wrote – the combination of such good sound and such good music makes this the last of the great Elvis records for us audiophiles
  • If you’re a fan of Elvis’s, this is a Top Title from 1987 that belongs in your collection

Spike checks off a number of important boxes for us here at Better Records:

Fleetwood Mac – Mirage

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Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Fleetwood Mac

  • Most copies are washed-out, recessed, and lack weight, but this one will show you just how right this music can sound
  • The producing-engineering team of Ken Caillat and Richard Dashut return to provide top quality Rumours-like production
  • The album spent five weeks at Number One, probably on the strength of the amazingly fun single “Hold Me.”
  • If you’re a fan of the band, a killer copy of their 1982 release might just need a home in your collection, and is the last Fleetwood Mac album that we would recommend to anyone but the most diehard fan
  • The albums to come later — Tango in the Night (1987). Behind the Mask (1990), Time (1995) and Say You Will (2003) — have never been offered as Hot Stamper pressings, a fact that is unlikely to change
  • Like Tusk, this is a Digital Recording that sounds great on vinyl

Mirage is a surprisingly good album if you can find the right copy.

The mids and highs can be really silky and sweet. The whole album has a glossy sound, clearly the influence of Lindsay Buckingham and his production team. The sound of Fleetwood Mac in this period is their doing, and with a phenomenal run of success that’s rarely been seen in pop history, it’s hard to argue with either their approach to the material or the sound. It strikes us that they used every track on the multi-track recorder and then some. (more…)

James Taylor / Mud Slide Slim

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More Reviews and Commentaries for Mud Slide Slim

  • An amazing copy of JT’s classic followup to Sweet Baby James with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on both sides
  • This early Green Label pressing demonstrates the Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records almost never reproduce
  • Some of old JT’s strongest material: “You’ve Got a Friend,” “You Can Close Your Eyes,” “Hey Mister, That’s Me up on the Jukebox” and more
  • The sound of most of the tracks on the better pressings is raw, real and exceptionally unprocessed
  • 4 stars on Allmusic – it destroys the recent reissue, which lacks the texture and warmth you get in abundance on these killer originals
  • If you’re a James Taylor fan — and what audiophile wouldn’t be? — this title is clearly one of the best releases of 1971 and a true Must Own for the audiophile

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Captain Beefheart – Clear Spot

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More and Pop Rock Masterpieces

  • Clear Spot returns to the site with outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides of this vintage import pressing – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Big, rich, energetic, with plenty of analog Tubey Magic, this is clearly the right sound for this music
  • An exceedingly difficult album to find in with sonics this good and vinyl this quiet, which is the main reason it’s been years since we’ve been able to offer it
  • Produced by Ted Templeman, Clear Spot is one of Beefheart’s most accessible albums and, IMHO, his best – this is his masterpiece
  • 4 stars: “The sound is great throughout, and the feeling is of the coolest bar-band in town, not to mention one that could eat all the patrons for breakfast if it felt like it.”
  • This is our pick for the Captain’s best sounding album. Roughly 150 other listings for the best recording by an artist or group can be found here on the blog
  • This is a Must Own album from 1972, one that deserves a place in any audiophile’s collection

Two outstanding sides for this masterpiece of bent rock. It’s not easy to find great sound for this album — that’s why you seldom see it up on our site. There are a whole lot of problematic pressings out there, but when you find one that really gets it right the sound is nothing short of SUPERB.

Ted Is The Man

The producer, Ted Templeman (Doobie Brothers, James Taylor), brought his mainstream talents to bear on this music, and when the Captain’s free-form tendencies smashed into Templeman’s conservatism the result was this musical supernova — out there, but not too far out there. (Play Trout Mask Replica sometime if you miss that feeling from your old hippie days of being on acid. With that music drugs are entirely superfluous.) I don’t know how many audiophiles like Captain Beefheart, but if you’re ever going to try, this is the place to start.

I’ve been listening to this album for decades, all of my adult life. It never grows old and it never grows tired. I also have the CD in the car and return to it regularly.

I’ll be disappointed if few of you are willing to give this one a chance, but probably not too surprised. Great stereo equipment offers the listener a window on the wonderful world of music. Why do so many audiophiles keep that window open just a crack?

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James Taylor – Sweet Baby James

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Reviews and Commentaries for Sweet Baby James

  • An early Green Label pressing with outstanding sound for this inarguable JT masterpiece, earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on both sides
  • All that lovely echo is a dead giveaway that this pressing has resolution far beyond that of the others you may have heard (and of course the Rhino Heavy Vinyl), particularly on side two
  • Top 100 and 5 stars: “Sweet Baby James launched not only Taylor’s career as a pop superstar but also the entire singer/songwriter movement of the early 70s that included Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Jackson Browne, Cat Stevens, and others…”
  • If you’re a James Taylor fan, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this title is clearly one of the best of 1970 and a true Must Own for the singer-songwriter-loving audiophile

Vocal reproduction is key to the better sounding copies of Sweet Baby James, as it is on so many singer-songwriter albums from the era.

To find a copy where Taylor’s vocals are front and center — which is exactly where they should be — but still rich, sweet, tonally correct and Tubey Magical is no mean feat. Only the better copies manage to pull it off.

Out of the dozen or more Green Label early pressings we play every year, relatively few have the full complement of Midrange Magic we know the best copies can have. As a rule of thumb, the hotter the stamper, the better the vocal reproduction on that copy.

Hot Stamper sound is rarely about the details of a given recording. In the case of this album, more than anything else a Hot Stamper must succeed at recreating a solid, palpable, real James Taylor singing live in your listening room. The better copies have an uncanny way of doing just that.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but less than one out of 100 new records do, if our experience with the hundreds we’ve played over the years can serve as a guide.

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