Favorites – Rock-Pop

If I still had a record collection, these 250 or so titles would be in it. That’s no longer in the cards because all of my records went into shootouts long ago, from whence they either went to good homes as Hot Stampers or got sold off or traded in.

Paul McCartney – McCartney

More of the Music of Sir Paul McCartney

  • INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it brings McCartney’s Apple debut to life on this vintage pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • It’s practically impossible to find copies of this album that sound any good, let alone this good
  • The musicality, energy and presence are right on the money, not to mention that the studio space is huge
  • On the more resolving audiophile systems of today, the ambience, three-dimensionality and transparency of the best originals are aspects of the sound that only the highest quality vintage vinyl pressings are capable, in our experience, of reproducing
  • Record Collector highlighted “Every Night,” “Junk,” and “Maybe I’m Amazed” as songs that “still sound absolutely effortless and demonstrate the man’s natural genius with a melody.”
  • A Top 100 pick and Paul McCartney’s one and only Masterpiece – a Must Own when it sounds this good
  • Marks 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
  • This is our pick for Paul McCartney’s best sounding album. Roughly 100 other listings for the Best Sounding Album by an Artist or Group can be found here.
  • A Must Own Title from 1970, a great year for rock and pop music

The best tracks here have the quality of live music in a way that not one out of a hundred rock records do. The music jumps right out of the speakers and fills up the room.

The album sounds like it’s recorded live in the studio, but of course that’s impossible, because Paul plays practically all the instruments himself! It just goes to show how good a multi-track studio recording can sound when done well.

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Gary Wright / The Dream Weaver – One and Done

More of the Music of Gary Wright

  • Outstanding sound throughout this vintage Warner Bros. pressing, with both sides earning Double Plus (A++) grades – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Big, rich and full-bodied with lovely texture to the synths and relatively little grit – these are all qualities critically important to the sound of the better copies
  • One of only a handful of copies to hit the site in nearly two years – pressings with this kind of sound are tougher to come by than you might imagine
  • 4 stars: “Backed with only drums and a wide assortment of keyboards, Gary Wright crafted instantly recognizable tunes such as the title cut and ‘Love Is Alive,’ which caught on and remain staples of classic rock stations around the U.S. … Dream Weaver hasn’t lost any of its magic over time.”
  • If you’re a Gary Wright fan, or perhaps a fan of mid-70s synth-pop, this title, a personal favorite of mine from 1975, is surely a Must Own.
  • In our opinion, Dream Weaver is the only Gary Wright record you’ll ever need. Click on this link to see more titles we like to call one and done

Keyboards and More Keyboards

An all-keyboard pop record like this was a rarity at the time. The only other instruments besides drums (and one track with guitar) are keyboards. Every song is layered with multi-tracked clavinets, organs, and Moogs – it was a remarkable feat in 1975 to create an album with nothing but keys. Listen to the title track, the most dynamic song on the record, and you will hear just how well all of those stacked keyboards and synths work together. (Steve Winwood’s Back in the High Life borrowed a page or two from Gary’s solo debut here.)

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The Band – Music From Big Pink

More of the Music of The Band

  • Both sides of this vintage copy of The Band’s 1968 Masterpiece boast superb Double Plus (A++) sound
  • Even one Mint Minus Minus side is rare these days, and two are close to impossible, so consider this copy pretty darn quiet for a Super Hot Big Pink
  • Forget all those vague, veiled, lifeless, ambience-free Heavy Vinyl pressings – this is the Big Pink that The Band recorded!
  • Remember when you used to play the same record over and over, never taking it off the turntable for days at a time?
  • Well here it is – this pressing captures the music in a way that will make repeated plays the joy they used to be
  • 5 stars: “…as soon as ‘The Weight’ became a singles chart entry, the album and the group made their own impact, influencing a movement toward roots styles and country elements in rock. Over time, [the album] came to be regarded as a watershed work in the history of rock, one that introduced new tones and approaches to the constantly evolving genre.”

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Fleetwood Mac – Self-Titled

More of the Music of Fleetwood Mac

  • This vintage copy of the band’s self-titled release boasts very good Hot Stamper sound from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • It’s richer and fuller than the average copy, with notably more presence, and that will be especially true when you compare it to whatever godawful Heavy Vinyl pressing may be currently available
  • This is true of even our lowest-priced, lowest-graded copies – they are guaranteed to sound much better than any pressing you can find on the market today, as well as any pressing you may already own
  • A Rock and Pop Top 100 title – their best recording bar none
  • 5 stars: “Fleetwood Mac is a blockbuster album that isn’t dominated by its hit singles, and its album tracks demonstrate a depth of both songwriting and musicality that would blossom fully on Rumours.”

Until we started doing these shootouts, I had no idea this album was recorded so well. There are layers and layers of subtle instrumental textures and recording effects throughout this album that I never even knew were there.

We wish more copies in our shootout had that “jump out of the speakers” sound we knew was possible from our previous shootouts of the album. When finally one did, boy did it ever. 

Many of the notes you see below are the same as the ones we made for the last two shootouts we did. If you have a big speaker system and have taken advantage of the audio revolutions we discuss throughout the site, this is the kind of record that can help you chart your progress. When a record like this blows everything you’ve ever heard out of the water, you are definitely on the right track.

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Michael McDonald / If That’s What It Takes – His Masterpiece of Blue-Eyed Soul

More Blue Eyed Soul

  • An original Warner Bros. pressing with very good Hot Stamper sound from start to finish
  • One of the All Time Great Jeff Porcaro Drum Exhibition Records (with the equally amazing Steve Gadd handling the other tracks)
  • Some of the best Pop Rock engineering of all time, courtesy of Lee Herschberg and Donn Landee
  • 4 1/2 stars on AllMusic – more importantly, this is a dramatically better album than anything the Doobies ever released

I’m proud to count Michael McDonald among my favorite recording artists. He made this Desert Island Disc and single-handedly turned the Doobie Brothers into a band I could enjoy and even respect. This is a Must Own if you like the later Doobies, and the kind of highly-polished but heartfelt and intelligent pop records the major labels excelled at in the 70s.

With the right pressing, the highs open up and his vocals jump out of the speakers. He’s right there. The next step is to check to see if you have punchy, well-defined bass, a key element in this rhythmically complex music. With plenty of presence in the vocals and punch down below, you have a copy that can hold its head high, with sound that really brings this music to life.

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David Bowie – Let’s Dance

More of the Music of David Bowie

  • With two excellent sides, this vintage pressing can rock with the best of them – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • It’s all here: huge amounts of solid bass, clear guitar transients, breathy, natural vocals, and jump out of the speakers presence and energy
  • A real Demo Disc on the right system – “Modern Love,” “China Girl” and the title track are knockouts when you play them good and loud
  • On a Hot Stamper pressing that sounds as good as this one does, Omar Hakim’s drumming will rock your world like nothing you have heard
  • Top 100, of course – Let’s Dance is one of the best sounding Bowie albums ever recorded – this superb pressing is proof
  • One of the best releases of 1983, although that may not be saying much, since by 1983 popular music was definitely headed downhill — Bowie himself would never again release an album as good as Let’s Dance

Bowie is without question one of the all time great frontmen and producers. This is his last good album and a Must Own for audiophiles, especially if you have big dynamic speakers. Like we say, with this one you are in for a treat.

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The Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed

More of the Music of The Rolling Stones

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides, here is an outstanding All Analog pressing showcasing the Stones at the peak of their rock and roll powers
  • “Love In Vain” is one of the best sounding Stones songs ever recorded – the acoustic guitar harmonics and the rich WHOMP of the snare prove indisputably that Glyn Johns is one of the engineering greats
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • Top 100, 5 stars – Jason McNeil wrote that Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed are “the two greatest albums the band’s (or anyone’s) ever made.” [Add Sticky Fingers to complete the ultimate Stones Trilogy.]
  • This is a Must Own album from 1969, one that should have a place in any audiophile’s pop and rock section

This is, in our humble opinion, the second or third best record the Stones ever made. (Sticky Fingers is Number One, and either this or Beggar’s Banquet comes in a strong second.) With this wonderful early domestic pressing we can now hear the power and the beauty of the recording itself, a fact that we consider the very definition of a Hot Stamper.

Killer Stones Sound

Both sides have more ambiance, more life, and more presence than you probably dreamed possible. Take the sound of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” to pick just one example. The breathtaking transparency of this copy allows you to pick out each voice in the intro. The vocals on the other songs are no less present, full-bodied and breathy.

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Brewer & Shipley / Tarkio

More of the Music of Brewer and Shipley

  • A Tarkio like you’ve never heard, with solid Double Plus (A++) sound throughout this early pressing
  • It’s the rare copy that’s this lively, solid and rich… drop the needle on any track and you’ll see what we mean
  • “Notable not just for the inclusion of ‘One Toke Over the Line’ but also for the great back porch stoned ambience of the entire recording… Not that it ever takes away from the excellent country-style playing that pops up all over the record.”

Not Really One Toke Over the Line

Please don’t assume that this album has much in the way of uptempo country rockers like One Toke Over the Line, Flying Burrito Brothers style. Nothing could be further from the truth. Practically every other song on the album is better, almost all of them are taken at a slower pace, with none of them having the “poppy” arrangement of that carefully calculated Top Forty hit. The rest of the music on the album, the music you probably don’t know, is much better than the music that you do know if what you know is that song.

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Joni Mitchell – Court and Spark

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell 

  • With STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides, this early Asylum pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Court and Spark you’ve heard
  • 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
  • It takes us about two years to get a shootout for this album going, mostly because the Asylum vinyl of the day is a problem, and also because this album is so good it tended to get played a lot
  • 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…)

A.C. Jobim – The Composer of ’Desafinado’ Plays

More of the Music of Antonio Carlos Jobim

  • With superb Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it from first note to last, this original Stereo Verve pressing is guaranteed to handily beat any other The Composer of Desafinado, Plays you’ve heard – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This side one is clean, clear and dynamic yet still full of rich, warm 1963 Tubey Magical analog sound, and side two is not far behind in all those areas
  • We love the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim here at Better Records and we think this album is his best – no serious jazz collection should be without it
  • 4 1/2 stars: “A dozen songs, each one destined to become a standard — an astounding batting average.”

We’re big fans of Jobim here at Better Records, and this pressing was one of the best from our most recent shootout. We had a wonderful time listening to a big pile of pressings — the sound (and music) were out of this world. We were shocked at just how well recorded this album is.

We consider this Jobim album a Masterpiece. It’s a recording that belongs in any serious jazz music collection.

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