RCA Rock, Pop, etc.- Reviews and Commentaries

Young Americans Turned Me on to David Sanborn

More of the Music of David Bowie

This is a very old commentary. 

This is one of my favorite Bowie albums. Nobody seems to care about it anymore. They dismiss it as disco junk, but it actually has some of his best music on it. I especially like the song Win. David Sanborn’s saxophone sounds like it’s coming from 60 feet behind Bowie, a nice effect.

I Got Turned On to David Sanborn

This was the record that turned me on to David Sanborn. After hearing this album, and reading that he was responsible for the amazing sax work found here, I went out and bought a bunch of his jazz albums. They were uniformly awful I’m sorry to say. It was years before he actually made a good one, Backstreet, which is still a personal favorite.

By the way, that’s John Lennon on guitar for Across the Universe and Fame.

This part we would no longer agree with in 2023:

A Great Copy But No Demo Disc

This recording will never win any awards for sound. It’s good but it ain’t that good. Sonically I’d put it somewhere between Ziggy Stardust (amazing) and Station to Station (decent but problematic). If you want to hear Young Americans at its best, this copy will let you do that, but I doubt you’ll be demonstrating your stereo to others with this.

I have an original British pressing of this album which is quite a bit smoother. In fact, it’s a bit too smooth and loses some of the energy found on the best domestic copies like this one. There are always trade offs in audio and this appears to be one of them.

Live and learn is our motto, and progress in audio is a feature, not a bug, of record collecting at the most advanced levels. (“Advanced” is a code word for having little to no interest in any remastered pressing marketed to the audiophile community. If you want to avoid the worst of them, we are happy to help you do that.)

Further Reading

If you’re searching for the perfect sound, you came to the right place.

On Ziggy, Avoid the Simply Vinyl and EMI 100 LPs

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Bowie Available Now

The Simply Vinyl version of Ziggy Stardust sounds just like the EMI that came out in the 90s. Neither are very good.

Flat, compressed and badly lacking in Tubey Magic, the right CD probably sounds better than either of these Heavy Vinyl pressings.

Even as recently as the early 2000s, we were still impressed with many of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings. If we’d never made the progress we’ve worked so hard to make over the course of the last twenty or more years, perhaps we would find more merit in the Heavy Vinyl reissues so many audiophiles seem impressed by.

We’ll never know of course; that’s a bell that can be unrung. We did the work, we can’t undo it, and the system that resulted from it is merciless in revealing the truth — that these newer pressings are second-rate at best and much more often than not third-rate and even worse.

Some audiophile records sound so bad, I was pissed off enough to create a special list for them.

Setting higher standards — no, being able to set higher standards — in our minds is a clear mark of progress. Judging by the hundreds of letters we’ve received, especially the ones comparing our records to their Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered counterparts, we know that our customers see things the same way.

(more…)

Let’s Dance – Analog Only

More of the Music of David Bowie

I have never heard a CD in my life with this kind of tubey magical richness and sweetness. That medium never does justice to the sound of recordings like this one, in my experience anyway.

People who exclusively play CDs have forgotten what that sound is; that’s why they can happily live without it.

I sure can’t. At present this sound is exclusively the domain of analog and likely to remain so well into the future.

Hearing a top copy of Let’s Dance is truly a special experience; the damn thing is amazingly well recorded, especially considering it came along well after the Golden Age of Rock Recording (the ’60s and ’70s, don’t you know). The sound is analog at its best; rich, full and super-punchy.

Omar Hakim

In addition, the musicianship is Top Notch and then some. Omar Hakim’s drumming is powerful, energetic, and performed with military precision. The guy is out of his mind on this album.

The combination of Nile Rodgers and the Legendary Stevie Ray Vaughn on guitar makes for a tasty, intricate mix of subtle rhythm work and searing leads. Or is that soaring leads? Hey, on this album it’s both.

Listening in Depth to Young Americans

More of the Music of David Bowie

Presenting another entry in our extensive listening in depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of the album.

Here are some albums currently on our site with similar track by track breakdowns.

This is one of my favorite Bowie albums. Nobody seems to care about it anymore. They dismiss it as disco junk, but it actually has some of his best music on it. I especially like the song Win. David Sanborn’s saxophone sounds like it’s coming from 60 feet behind Bowie, a nice effect.

Side One

Young Americans  
Win

My favorite track on the album, an undiscovered gem in the Bowie catalog.

Fascination
Right

Side Two

Somebody up There Likes Me

One of the best tracks on the album. Sanborn is out of his head on this track. Another gem that never gets enough credit.

Across the Universe 
Can You Hear Me

This is one of the best tests for side two. It’s the rare copy that gets those soulful background voices to sound clear and clean. They often sound squawky, veiled, or thin.

Grain and smear are big problems with mass-produced vinyl like this. It takes a very special pressing to show you that those problems are in the vinyl, not on the tape.

Fame

(more…)

Another Harry Nilsson Must Own Album

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Harry Nilsson Available Now

(Which Makes Four for Those of You Keeping Score at Home)

It’s yet another triumph from one of our favorite engineers, KEN SCOTT (Ziggy Stardust, Magical Mystery Tour, Honky Chateau, Crime of the Century and many more).

This is one of Nilsson’s best albums, sonically and musically. (With Ken Scott at the board at Trident Studios the sound has to be good, doesn’t it?) Side one is amazingly good from start to finish. On the two CD set of Nilsson’s greatest hits (which is excellent, by the way) almost all of side one from this album is used, as well as the best material on side two here, which includes Spaceman and The Most Beautiful World In The World. In other words, this album has more than half a dozen of the best songs Nilsson ever wrote.

Nilsson Schmilsson and the album simply titled Harry are the other two superb Nilsson records that I highly recommend. Harry is my favorite of all his albums, maybe because it was so different from anything that I’d ever heard up to that point. A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night is also a personal favorite. It’s an album of standards done in the Nilsson style, and it’s wonderful in every way.

So those four are the ones to own. We guarantee you will love each and every one or your money back.

By the way, if the documentary Who Is Harry Nilsson (and Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him?) is on the box, you should definitely check it out. Most of us here have seen it by now and it’s a ton of fun. (more…)

Pin-Ups – Some of His Favourite Songs

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Bowie Available Now

Bowie, writing in his own hand, describes Pin-Ups this way:

These songs are among my favourites from the “64–67” period of London.

Most of the groups were playing the Ricky-Tick (was it a ‘y’ or an ‘i’?) – Scene club circuit (Marquee, eel pie island la-la).

Some are still with us.

Pretty Things, Them, Yardbirds, Syd’s Pink Floyd, Mojos, Who, Easybeats, Merseys, The Kinks.

Love-on ya!

(more…)

Of Course This Is One of the Greatest Rock Albums of All Time

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of David Bowie Available Now

Is this one of the greatest rock albums of all time?

Unquestionably. It’s the pinnacle of glam rock. Every track is superb; not a moment is less than stellar from beginning to end.

Is it Bowie’s masterpiece?

Absolutely. No other Bowie record ranks higher in my book.

Is it amazingly well recorded?

You better believe it. This is not just Bowie’s masterpiece; it’s Ken Scott‘s as well. For BIG, BOLD, wall to wall, floor to ceiling sound, look no further. The recording is swimming in rich, sweet TUBEY MAGIC. This is a sound we cannot get enough of here at Better Records.

The guitars may not sound “real,” they way they actually do in real life, but they sure sound grungy and good.

Notes from a Recent Shootout

Just drop the needle on any song. Guaranteed you will never hear that song sound better. The mastering is beyond perfection. There’s really no “mastering” to listen for — all you’re really aware of is the music flowing from the speakers, freed from all the limitations that you’ve learned to accept.

There’s no need to go track by track trying to explain why this copy is the Ultimate Ziggy. One drop of the needle will tell you everything you’ll ever need to know. All doubts will be erased within moments. We played this copy against our best other pressings and again and again, no matter what track we played, the sound here was superior.

The Tubey Magic Top Ten

You don’t need tube equipment to hear the prodigious amount of Tubey Magic that exists on this recording. For those of you who’ve experienced top quality analog pressings of Meddle or Dark Side of the Moon, or practically any jazz album on Contemporary, whether played through tubes or transistors, that’s the luscious sound of Tubey Magic, and it is all over Ziggy Stardust.

Big Production Tubey Magical British Rock & Roll just doesn’t get any better.

Ranked strictly in terms of Tubey Magic, I would have to put this album on our list of Most Tubey Magical Rock Recordings of All Time, right up there with, in no particular order:

(more…)