Live Albums

Shelly Manne & His Men / At The Blackhawk, Volume 2

More of the Music of Shelly Manne

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from first note to last, this early Contemporary stereo pressing will be very hard to beat
  • This is West Coast Jazz at its best, and if anyone can capture the realism of a live jazz club, it’s the engineers and producers at Contemporary
  • Each instrument here sounds right – the piano is weighty and percussive; the drums are punchy; and the brass has lovely leading edge transients
  • 4 stars: “These lengthy performances (“Vamp’s Blues” is over 19 minutes long) give trumpeter Joe Gordon, the cool-toned tenor-saxophonist Richie Kamuca, pianist Victor Feldman, bassist Monty Budwig and the leader/drummer a chance to really stretch out. Fine 1950s bebop.”

Wonderful sound and music! This is West Coast Jazz at its best. The sound is superb — airy, open, and spacious with a stunningly good bottom end. You won’t believe how alive the bass sounds — the depth and definition are out of this world! Each instrument here sounds just right — weighty, percussive piano; punchy drums; and lovely leading edge transients on the brass. Contemporary got live nightclub jazz sound down to a “T” here.

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Journey – Captured

More Live Recordings of Interest

  • Journey’s 2-LP live album debuts on the site with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on all FOUR sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Guaranteed to be a huge improvement over anything you’ve heard, these pressings are big, punchy, and full-bodied – Steve Perry’s leads really soar
  • Spaciousness, richness and freedom from grit and grain are key to the best pressings, and here you will find all three
  • “‘Separate Ways’ and ‘Faithfully’ were still a few years away, but the band had plenty of hits by this time and they blast through them all, including a blistering version of ‘Any Way You Want It.’ The band [is] in rare form and vocalist Steve Perry uses Captured as his coming out, while the thousands of diehards sweating in the blistering sun give the album an underlying hum of energy that tops even Perry’s.” 

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The Weavers At Carnegie Hall, Vol. 2 Is Bad News in Mono

Hot Stamper Pressings of Live Recordings Available Now

We recently did a shootout for this famous Weavers album. These are just a few of the things we had to say about our shootout winner in the notes:

“Tubey and 3D and weighty”…”very full and detailed vox”…”sweet and tubey and present”…”so much space and bass.” Both of these sides are rich and full, Tubey Magical, and tonally correct from top to bottom. The sound is big and open, with the performers front and center (as well as left and right).

Our notes for the early red label mono pressing we played noted that it was “crude, congested and awful.” There are plenty of mono pressings on Vanguard with excellent sound, but this is not one of them.

Here is an extract from the stamper sheet showing the sonic notes and the stamper numbers of the mono pressing we played.

Crude and congested vocals? On a Weavers record? What could be worse?

We didn’t even bother to play side two. Why waste any more time on such an awful sounding record?

When the voice is wrong, you my friend have yourself a completely worthless piece of vinyl.  (Other titles that get the voice wrong and therefore should be avoided by audiophiles of all stripes can be found here.)

The world is full of old records that just sound like old records. We’ve suffered through them by the tens of thousands. (Yes, you read that right. We play thousands of records every year, and we’ve been doing it for more than two decades . They add up!)

Our website, as well as this blog, are devoted to helping audiophiles find pressings that don’t sound anything like the millions of run-of-the-mill LPs that were stamped out with little regard for sound quality for more than seven decades.

Even a million dollar stereo can’t make the average record sound good, and the more accurate and revealing the system, the more limited and lifeless the average record will show itself to be.

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Little Feat – Waiting For Columbus

More Little Feat

  • A vintage copy of Waiting For Columbus with seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on all FOUR sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Some of the best sounding live rock and roll sound you will ever hear outside of a concert venue (particularly on sides one, two, and four)
  • If you want to understand the unique appeal of the band, there’s no better place to start than right here
  • One of our all-time favorite live recordings and their single best release – a true Masterpiece
  • 4 1/2 stars: “There’s much to savor on Waiting For Columbus, one of the great live albums of its era, thanks to rich performances that prove Little Feat were one of the great live bands of their time.”
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” but with less of an accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Waiting for Columbus is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but should.

This is an amazingly well-recorded concert, and what’s more, the versions the band does of their earlier material are much better than the studio album versions of those same songs in every case.

Fat Man In A Bathtub on this album is out of this world, but you could easily say that about a dozen or more of the tracks on this double album. Which simply means that you will have a very hard time listening to any of the studio versions of these songs once you’ve heard them performed with the kind of energy, enthusiasm and technical virtuosity Little Feat brought to this live show. (I saw them twice with Lowell and they were amazing both times.)

This is some of the best sounding live rock and roll sound you will ever hear outside of a concert venue. In fact, on a great copy, it’s just about as good as live rock’n’roll sound gets.

Here is a link to take you to more letters, commentaries and reviews for Waiting for Columbus.

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Frank Sinatra and Count Basie – Sinatra At The Sands

More Frank Sinatra

  • These original Blue and Green Reprise Stereo pressings were doing just about everything right, with all FOUR sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them
  • Truly one of the greatest live albums of all time, recorded late at night in the big room at the Sands Hotel in Vegas
  • This is Basie and Sinatra in their natural habitat and in their prime, putting on the show of a lifetime
  • On the right system, this is about as close as you get to hearing Sinatra singing live in your listening room, with the added realism of a live Vegas show (particularly on sides one, two, and four)
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Basie and the orchestra are swinging and dynamic, inspiring a textured, dramatic, and thoroughly enjoyable performance from Sinatra … the definitive portrait of Frank Sinatra in the 60s.”

This double album presents Sinatra and Basie at the height of their powers, in a setting especially conducive to both men’s music, the big room at the Sands Hotel in Vegas. If you missed it — and I’m sure most all of us did — here’s your chance to go back in time and be seated with the beautiful people front row center. This two-disc all tube-mastered analog set is practically the only way you’ll ever be able to hear the greatest vocalist of his generation — in his prime, no less — fronting one of the swingingest big bands of the time.

The presence and immediacy here are staggering. Turn it up and Frank is right in front of you, putting on the performance of a lifetime.

The sound is big, open, rich, and full. The highs are extended and silky sweet. The bass is tight and punchy. And this copy gives you more life and energy than most, by a long shot. Very few records out there offer the kind of realistic, lifelike sound you get from this pressing.

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Emerson, Lake and Palmer – Pictures at an Exhibition

More Emerson, Lake and Palmer

  • An original UK Island pressing of this ELP Classic live album with a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a seriously good Double Plus (A++) side one
  • Both of these sides are amazingly Tubey Magical and exceptionally spacious, with a massive bottom end and plenty of Rock and Roll (and classical) energy
  • Pictures at an Exhibition is yet another in the long list of recordings that really comes alive when you turn up your volume
  • “…it worked on several levels that allowed widely divergent audiences to embrace it — with the added stimulus of certain controlled substances, it teased the brain with its mix of melody and heavy rock, and for anyone with some musical knowledge, serious or casual, it was a sufficiently bold use of Mussorgsky’s original to stimulate hours of delightful listening.”

This British Island LP has real weight and heft, so when Emerson lays into the organ, it’ll rattle the walls. It has that big, fat, rich, smooth sound that we love here at Better Records. It’s warm and full, not thick and sludgy. It’s on the right end of the “tubey-transistory” spectrum.

Listen to how GIGANTIC the organ is that plays the fanfare opening of the work. Honestly, I have never heard a rock album with an organ sound that stretched from wall to wall like this one does. It sounds like it must be seventy five feet tall, too.

No, I take that back. The first ELP album has an organ that sounds about that big, but that’s a studio album. How did they manage to get that kind of organ sound in a live setting without actually having to build one inside the concert hall?

The domestic copies are a bad joke as you may have guessed.

You might think that you could just pick up any old Brit pressing to get this kind of sound, but that has not been our experience. Many of them are thick, dull, smeary, veiled, congested and/or just plain lifeless.

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Paul McCartney – Unplugged

More Paul McCartney

  • A true Demo Disc and superb sounding import pressing with solid Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • A strikingly intimate document of a live show, fronted by one of the greatest performers in history, Sir Paul McCartney
  • You get more extension up top, more weight down low, and more transparency in the midrange, than on most other copies we played
  • 4 stars: “… it remains one of the most enjoyable records in McCartney’s catalog. McCartney is carefree and charming, making songs like ‘Be-Bop-a-Lula’ and ‘Blue Moon of Kentucky’ sound fresh.”

Superb sound for this amazing recording! On the better copies, the sound is warmer, richer, and sweeter, or in a word, more analog sounding. You get more extension up top, more weight down low, and more transparency in the midrange. It’s surprising how veiled and two-dimensional so many copies can be, considering that this is a live recording (by the legendary Geoff Emerick himself) with not a lot of “messing around” after the fact.

Finding The Best Sound

This isn’t your typical rock record that sounds crappy on eight out of ten copies. Most copies of Unplugged sound pretty good. We did hear quite a few that had a somewhat brittle quality to the top end, with no real extension to speak of. It wasn’t ever a dealbreaker, but the copies with a silky openness up there are much more enjoyable — and, unfortunately, fairly uncommon.

There are copies that lack warmth, copies that never fully come to life, and copies that are a bit dark. Some that we auditioned didn’t seem to get the breath in the vocals, and others lacked weight to the piano. Again — not one of the pressings we played sounded bad, but many of them definitely sounded dry, boring and lifeless.

Just for fun, check out Linda’s percussion and tambourine work in the right channel of the first track on side one, “Be-Bop-A-Lula.” Since that’s one of our test tracks, we had the opportunity to hear her ‘contribution’ to the song about twenty times or so, and it became a source of — to be charitable — ‘entertainment’ in its own right as the shootout progressed.

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Eric Clapton – E.C. Was Here

More of the Music of Eric Clapton

  • Outstanding sound for this UK import pressing (only the second copy to hit the site in years), with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • Forget the dubby domestic pressings – here is the energy, the dynamic power, the low end WHOMP, and the Clapton-live-in-your-listening-room presence you’ve never experienced on the album before, guaranteed
  • “E.C. Was Here makes it clear that Clapton was and always would be a blues man. The opening cut, “Have You Ever Loved a Woman,” clearly illustrates this, and underlines the fact that Clapton had a firm grasp on his blues guitar ability, with some sterling, emotionally charged and sustained lines and riffs… [the album] remains an excellent document of the period.”

Check out Clapton’s superb arrangements and performances of two of the best songs from his short-lived Blind Faith period: “Presence of the Lord” and “Can’t Find My Way Home.” They’re two of the highpoints on an album filled with good material that does not seem to get the credit it is due. I bought this album when it came out in 1975 and never really got into it. Of course I had an inferior domestic pressing and a stereo that couldn’t have done the album justice anyway, but in my defense I would have to say that there really wasn’t any such stereo system on the face of the earth; we still had a long way to go.

Eric Clapton has made very few consistently good albums, considering his career is going on 50+ years. Slowhand, Unplugged, and his first album come to mind. After that it’s pretty slim pickin’s. Now you can add this one to the list. This concert album shows Clapton at his bluesy best.

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Peter Frampton – Frampton Comes Alive

The Music of Peter Frampton Available Now

  • All FOUR sides of this vintage copy were giving us the big and bold sound we were looking for, earning seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Mixed and mastered so that the guitar solos soar the way they do in live music – what a thrill it is to hear them finally sounding the way they should (particularly on sides one and three)
  • An excellent copy like this one is a potent reminder of why we all went so crazy for this album back in the 70s – at least I did anyway
  • 4 1/2 stars on Allmusic, which agrees with us that many tracks here are “much more inspired, confident, and hard-hitting than the studio versions.”

On the better copies, the guitar solos are the loudest parts of some of the songs, which, as everyone who’s ever been to a rock concert knows, is exactly what happens in live rock music. Fancy that.

Not many live albums are mixed to allow the guitar solos to rock the way these do. (Other records with exceptionally dynamic guitar solos can be found here.)

Since Frampton is one of my favorite players, hearing his work get loud on this album is nothing less than a thrill. It’s hard to turn up the volume on most copies — they tend to get aggressive in a hurry — but that simply doesn’t happen on our hottest Hot Stampers. They sound right when they’re loud.

A Reminder

It’s ridiculously hard to find good sound for this record. Most copies are thin, dry and transistory. And it’s time-consuming to clean and play as many copies of this double album as it takes to find enough Hot Stampers to make the endeavor worthwhile. When this album doesn’t have the sonic goods, it’s nobody’s idea of a good time.

A great copy like this one will remind you — we hope — what made everybody so crazy for this music back in the 70s.

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Jimi Hendrix – Hendrix In The West

More Jimi Hendrix

  • Hendrix in the West is back on the site for only the second time in over three years, here with incredible Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound throughout this early UK import pressing, just shy of our Shootout Winner – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • This is a fun live album with stellar performances by Jimi – the best of his many posthumous releases
  • The awesome version of “Little Wing” is just killer on this copy – it’s Jimi’s best performance of the song
  • 4 stars: “…it’s a hodge-podge, made of live tracks largely from 1969 and 1970. But it’s a bunch of great live tracks, including some real rarities… In the West is a great sampling of Hendrix’s late-period live material (and his sense of humor) making its long awaited appearance.”

We’re still surprised at how well recorded the album is. It takes a pressing like this to really show you the live Jimi Hendrix magic Eddie Kramer got onto tape. Drop the needle on “Little Wing” and you are going to be floored.

The size and space here are really something, miles beyond most. The resolution and clarity of the open live sound of this copy bring out all the instrumental textures and details of the recording like few we played. More importantly, the extended top keeps the highs from getting hard or harsh the way they do on so many pressings we’ve played.

As these performances are culled from different concerts, the sound varies a bit from track to track, but every track on here sounds good and the best tracks sound amazing.

Almost Famous

It’s hard to understand why this album isn’t more widely known. The performances are great and the sound is excellent for a vintage live recording.

Naturally not every copy sounds as good as this one. We heard a lot of pressings with too much grit and grain, and many that badly lacked presence. When I play a live album, I want to feel like I am there at the show (and to do that I set the volume accordingly, of course) but with most copies that just isn’t possible.

Thanks to Eddie Kramer’s amazing engineering, this album will have Jimi playing live in your listening room, and what a thrill it is to hear it all these years later (and on dramatically better equipment).

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