The Year in Music

1964 – A Great Year for Top Quality Recordings of Timeless Music

Click here to see the records currently on the site that were recorded or released in 1964.

When you look closely at all the great records that were released that year, many of which can be purchased in Hot Stamper form today, you may come to agree with us that 1964 was a wonderful year for recorded music.

Further Reading

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1961 Was a Great Year for Records

This is one of our favorite records from 1961.

To see our currently available Hot Stamper pressings of records from 1961, click here.

To read reviews of the Top Titles from 1961 that we’ve auditioned, click here. These are records that any audiophile could take great pride in owning (assuming, of courser, that he has a good pressing of the album). There are more than 50 of them. (more…)

For Rock and Pop 1970 Might Just Be the Best Year of Them All

Hot Stamper Pressings from 1970 Available Now

1970 turned out to be a great year in music. I wouldn’t want to be without any of the 17 albums listed below.

Tea for the Tillerman,

Bridge Over Troubled Water,

Moondance,

Alone Together,

Tumbleweed Connection and the Self-Titled Album,

Sweet Baby James,

After the Goldrush,

The Yes Album,

Paul McCartney / McCartney,

Stephen Stills / Self-Titled,

Van Morrison / His Band And Street Choir,

Deja Vu,

Workingman’s Dead,

Tarkio,

Stillness,

Let It Be,

Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus

and there are surely many other Must Owns from 1970 we could name if we simply took the time to list them.

Here is a more complete list of our favorite albums from 1970.

The complete list of titles from 1970 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

Note that on any given day we do not have a single Hot Stamper pressing on the site of more than a few of the albums you see listed.

All of them are getting very hard to find with the right stampers in audiophile playing condition.

The book below tells the story of four of these albums well, and comes highly recommended:

The Cars in 1979: The Year in Music

Hot Stamper Pressings of Albums from 1979 Available Now

More of Our Favorite Rock, Pop, Soul, etc. Titles from 1979

We’re big fans of this album, and a Shootout Winning Hot Stamper copy like this one will show you exactly why. It’s a favorite recording of ours here at Better Records for one very simple reason: Candy-O has got The BIG ROCK SOUND we love!

Drop the needle on Let’s Go and check out the sound of the big floor tom. When the drummer bangs on that thing, you FEEL it! It’s similar to the effect of being in the room with live musicians — it’s the difference between hearing the music and feeling the music. That difference is what you get from our best Hot Stamper copies when you turn them up good and loud and let them ROCK your world.

A New Wave Classic

What other New Wave band ever recorded an album with this kind of demonstration quality sound? The sound of the best copies positively JUMPS out of the speakers. No album by Blondie, Television, The Pretenders or any of their contemporaries can begin to compete with this kind of huge, lively, powerful sound, with the possible exception of the Talking Heads’ Little Creatures.

It Rocks!

If you have big dynamic speakers and like to rock you cannot go wrong here. Neil Young albums have the Big Rock sound, and if you’re more of a Classic Rock kind of listener, that’s a good way to go. 

For a band with skinny ties, leather jackets, jangly guitars, synths and monstrously huge floor toms that fly back and forth across the soundstage, Candy-O is the girl for you, no doubt about it.

1979 – The Year in Music

1979 sure was an interesting year. The Wall, Breakfast in America, London Calling, Off the Wall, Get the Knack, Damn the Torpedoes, Armed Forces, Spirits Having Flown, Tusk, The B-52s, Rust Never Sleeps, Rickie Lee Jones, and our bad boy here, Candy-O — the variety is remarkable.

Even more remarkable is the number of albums recorded in ’79 that sound fresh and engaging to this day, more than 35 years after they were released. I could sit down in front of my speakers today and play any one of them all the way through.

Try that with your ten favorite albums from ’89, ’99 or ’09.