Top Artists – Billy Joel

Billy Joel – The Nylon Curtain

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  • With two outstanding Double Plus (A++) sides, this pressing of Joel’s 1982 release is excellent from top to bottom  
  • The sound is tonally correct, open and spacious with plenty of hard-rockin’ energy for the more uptempo tracks
  • Allentown, Pressure, Goodnight Saigon, Laura, She’s Right On Time – some of Joel’s biggest hits are here
  • “Since this was an album about Baby Boomers, he chose to base his music almost entirely on the Beatles, the pivotal rock band for his generation. Joel is naturally inclined to write big melodies like McCartney, but he idolizes Lennon, which makes The Nylon Curtain a fascinating cross between ear candy and social commentary. ” – Allmusic

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Listening in Depth to 52nd Street

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Billy Joel Available Now

We heard some amazing sound coming from the grooves of 52nd Street, but let’s give credit where credit is due — the recording and mastering engineers involved with this album. Jim Boyer and Ted Jensen can both take great pride in the SUPERB work they have done here.

The first two tracks on side one really tell you everything you need to know about the sound of the side. It’s all about balance.

Big Shot

Big Shot is a big, balls-out rock song that packs a lot of punch. Typically the problem you run into is compression. When you get too much compression, the top end becomes pinched and shrill. You can hear this on Billy Joel’s vocals in the verses and in the guitar solo during the outro. Most copies make those squealing guitar notes rip your head off. The best copies give you a full-bodied Billy Joel; if he doesn’t sound right, what’s the point? Next!

Also, listen to the cymbal crashes throughout the song. They should really sound like cymbals and not like someone making explosion noises through a walkie-talkie. (Believe me, this analogy hurts me too, but they can really sound god-awful on some pressings.) (more…)

Songs in the Attic – CBS Half-Speed Debunked

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Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Billy Joel

Sonic Grade: F

Records with too much bass and especially too much top end can’t be turned up loud.

The louder you play them the worse they sound.

Try playing the average MoFi at a loud volume. All that extra 10k starts to make your brain hurt.

The CBS half-speed of this album is like that. It’s frustrating — the music makes you want to turn it up but the sound says forget it.

Not the good pressings. They sounds BETTER when you play them loud.  

Listening in Depth to Songs in the Attic

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Billy Joel Available Now

Since the opening track of this record is one of the keys to knowing whether it’s mastered and pressed properly, once you get past the sibilance hurdle on track one, the next step is to find out how the challenges presented by the rest of the tracks are handled.

If you are interested in digging deeper, our listening in depth commentaries have extensive track by track breakdowns for some of the better-known albums we’ve done shootouts for.

Side One

Miami 2017

This is usually the brightest cut on the first side, commonly found with some sibilance problems. On the high-res copies the sibilance is lessened, and the sound of the sibilance itself is much less transistory and spitty, with more of a silky quality, which is simply another way of saying it’s less distorted.

Of course one wouldn’t want the sibilance to be lessened by having a dull top end, but few of these pressings are dull. Most of them suffer from a brightness problem. The best copies keep the sibilance under control and balance the upper mids with extended highs. Without extension on the highs the sound will tend to be aggressive.

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Our First Hot Stamper Shootout for Songs in the Attic

More of the Music of Billy Joel

We played about a dozen different copies of this record this week (11/01/07), and some of them were OUT OF THIS WORLD! The comments we made recently about Revolver are equally true for Songs in the Attic.

Both records are exceedingly difficult to reproduce, and both have come a long way sonically since our last shootout.

Notes from 2007

Over the course of the last year things have changed for the better. We’ve come up with a number of much more sophisticated and advanced cleaning techniques (which we will talk about at a later date so stay tuned). The ruler-flat, super-clean and clear Dynavector 17d replaced the more forgiving, less accurate 20x. The EAR 324 we acquired at the beginning of 2007 was a BIG step up over the 834p in terms of resolution and freedom from distortion slash coloration. And the third pair of Hallographs had much the same effect, taking out the room distortions that compromise transparency and three-dimensionality. With the implementation of a number of other seemingly insignificant tweaks, each of which made a subtle but recognizable improvement, the cumulative effect of all of the above was now clearly making a difference. The combination of so many improvements was nothing less than dramatic.

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Listening in Depth to Turnstiles

More of the Music of Billy Joel

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Billy Joel

On side two Prelude/Angry Young Man were key test tracks. The biggest, richest copies with the most space were the ones that consistently brought out the best in the songs and individual performances of the players.

Summer, Highland Falls is a great test — listen for breathy vocals, a full piano, a clear snare drum once it comes in and, most importantly, an energetic performance. You will need all four to score well in one of our shootouts. 

Note that the first track on side one has a tendency to be a bit brighter than those that follow.

Those of you who’ve been with us for a while know that we are big fans of Songs in the Attic, the live album Joel released in 1981 after The Stranger, 52nd Street and Glass Houses all went to the top of the charts.

More than half of the songs on SITA come from this very album: Say Goodbye to Hollywood, Miami 2017, Summer, Highland Falls, Say Goodbye to Hollywood and I’ve Loved These Days. These are the songs from his fourth album that Joel felt were unfairly overlooked and most wanted you to hear.

We were favorably impressed with just how good the sound can be on a great pressing like this (quite a bit better than Songs in the Attic for sure). We’ve played a ton of copies of this one over the years but most copies left us unmoved. Here you get real weight to the piano — essential for any Billy Joel album — and big, punchy drums.

Note that the orchestra was recorded at the famed Columbia 30th Street studios.

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