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The Beatles – Please Please Me (German)

More of the Music of The Beatles

  • Killer sound for the Beatles’ debut studio album, with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or very close to it throughout this vintage import pressing
  • Both sides have exceptional presence, clarity and size – it’s bigger, bolder and richer, as well as more clean, clear and open than all others we played
  • 5 stars: “Decades after its release, the album still sounds fresh [and]…it’s easy to get wrapped up in the sound of the record itself without realizing how the album effectively summarizes the band’s eclectic influences. There’s a love of girl groups, vocal harmonies, sophisticated popcraft, schmaltz, R&B, and hard-driving rock & roll, which is enough to make Please Please Me impressive, but what makes it astonishing is how these elements converge in the originals.”

Folks, if you’re looking for a killer copy of the first Beatles release, here it is! Big and lively with superb presence and energy, this is exactly the right sound for this music. The album itself is nothing short of amazing. It captures more of the live sound of these four guys playing together as a rock and roll band than any record they ever made afterwards. (Let It Be gets some of that live quality, too, and makes a great bookend for the group.)

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Fleetwood Mac – Tango in the Night

More of the Music of Fleetwood Mac

  • Here is a vintage Warner Bros. pressing with a KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side one
  • Most copies are washed-out, recessed, and lack weight, but this one will show you just how right this music can sound
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more richness, fullness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market.
  • “Without question, “Family Man” and “Caroline” are among the best songs ever written by Buckingham, who consistently brings out the best in his colleagues on this superb album.”

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Squeeze – Babylon and On

More Rock and Pop

  • Boasting INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides, this vintage UK pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Babylon and On you’ve heard – very quiet vinyl too!
  • We shot out a number of other copies and the midrange presence, bass, and dynamics on this outstanding copy placed it head and shoulders above most other pressings we played
  • I put Squeeze right up there with Elvis Costello and Peter Gabriel in the pantheon of British Pop Music of the era
  • I’m a huge fan of their earlier work, as well as two from their later days, this title and the amazing-to-this-day Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti (1985) – all of them get played regularly and enjoyed immensely

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Eric Clapton – August

More of the Music of Eric Clapton

  • Clapton’s 1986 release makes its debut on the site, with STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound throughout this vintage Duck pressing – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more richness, fullness, vocal presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market.
  • “Phil Collins and Eric Clapton joined together for a second collaborative effort with the November 1986 release August. They shared producing chores as Collins pop sensibilities combined with Clapton’s blues/rock foundation to provide a solid and satisfying listening experience… It remains a good effort by one of rock music’s guitar gods.”

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Pitchfork’s Review of the 2012 Roxy Music CD Box Set

More of the Music of Roxy Music

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of Roxy Music

Tom Ewing has written a beautiful piece here about one of my favorite bands of all time.

This career-spanning box set to mark Roxy Music’s 40th anniversary is often startling, usually wonderful, and more affecting than expected. It’s also fascinating as the story of a gradual hardening of an elegant, enigmatic persona, of Bryan Ferry’s transformation from art-school pop star to self-made sphinx.  

In their 1970s heyday, Roxy Music enjoyed enormous critical and commercial success, but even so, they and their art-school rock were admired more than trusted. American critics snipped at leader Bryan Ferry’s arch romanticism, while the Brit press considered the models Ferry squired and the suits he doffed and dubbed him “Byron Ferrari”. Almost everyone affirmed that the band were great, while disagreeing as to when, exactly. For some, the great achievement was 1982’s farewell, Avalon– impeccably designed pop for weary grown-ups. Others went a decade further back, to the early, playfully experimental albums Roxy released when Brian Eno was in the band, playing androgyne peacock to Ferry’s tailored lothario. Whether you see their development between those points as progress or cautionary tale, it’s easy to let this contrast define the band.

This box set of remasters to celebrate the band’s 40th anniversary– not lavish, but thorough and reasonably priced– is an opportunity to break free of narrative and see what sets every phase of Roxy Music apart. The answer is Bryan Ferry, one of rock’s great, sustained acts of self-definition. In classic 70s style, like Bowie or Bolan, Ferry invented a pop star. A sybarite with a plummy, awkward croon, gliding through his own songs like they were parties he’d forgotten arriving at. A flying Dutchman of the jet set, doomed to find love but never satisfaction. Having worked his way into character over an album or two, he simply never left it, becoming more Bryan Ferry with every record and every year, whether performing or not.

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Bill Evans – Explorations

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bill Evans Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This is a very old review. The last time we sat down to play some OJC copies of this recording we were underwhelmed. There may be some great sounding pressings out there, but we did not have any on hand and don’t want to commit the resources that would be needed to find them.

Our old commentary follows.

Outstanding sound throughout with both sides rating a solid Double Plus (A++) or close to it

The sound here is, above all, natural – the tonality is correct, and the recording sounds right for Riverside circa 1961

4 1/2 stars: “Explorations proves that the artist was worth waiting for no matter what else was going on out there. Evans, with Paul Motian and Scott LaFaro, was onto something as a trio, exploring the undersides of melodic and rhythmic constructions that had never been considered by most… an extraordinary example of the reach and breadth of this trio at its peak.”

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Listening in Depth to McCartney

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Paul McCartney Available Now

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. (More rock and pop recordings with live in the studio sound can be found here.)

Side Two

Oo You

The distorted guitar in a huge and reverberant room that leads off this side is one of my favorite “sounds” on any McCartney album. The bigger, richer and grungier the guitar sounds, the better.

Momma Miss America
Teddy Boy

This is a very tough track to get right. There is processing on Paul’s voice that some copies make a mess of, adding a kind of unpleasant resonance, which of course the better copies do not.

It’s a fairly simple arrangement: acoustic guitar, bass, voice and Linda’s backing vocals. When all of these things are in balance, the sound will be lovely. Paul’s voice, because of the processing I mentioned, doesn’t sound as natural as it does on other tracks, but it shouldn’t be irritating or disagreeable.

Singalong Junk
Maybe I’m Amazed

Another exceptionally hard track to get right. On a top copy the guitar solo will JUMP right out of your speakers. It should have the energy of LIVE MUSIC

Kreen-Akrore

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Joni Mitchell – An Overview

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

When the dust settles, Joni Mitchell may stand as the most important and influential female recording artist of the late 20th century. Uncompromising and iconoclastic, Mitchell confounded expectations at every turn; restlessly innovative, her music evolved from deeply personal folk stylings into pop, jazz, avant-garde, and even world music, presaging the multicultural experimentation of the 1980s and 1990s by over a decade. – Allmusic

Discography 1968-1991

1968 Song to a Seagull
1969 Clouds
1970 Ladies of the Canyon
1971 Blue – Top 100, TAS List
1972 For the Roses – Some of her best sound
1974 Court and Spark – Top 100, TAS List, her best sounding recording
1974 Miles of Aisles – Lovely analog sound
1975 The Hissing of Summer Lawns
1976 Hejira
1977 Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter
1979 Mingus
1980 Shadows and Light – Modern sound, a far cry from the Miles of Aisles
1982 Wild Things Run Fast – TAS List and a personal favorite
1985 Dog Eat Dog – Awful sound and music
1988 Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm – Maybe even worse
1991 Night Ride Home – Surprisingly good, but very hard to find these days and expensive to buy when you do

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Tears For Fears – Songs From The Big Chair

More of the Music of Tears For Fears

  • An incredible vintage UK pressing with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound on the first side and solid Double Plus (A++) sound on the second side
  • Rich, spacious and lively, with an open, extended top end – this is the sound you’ve been waiting for from Tears for Fears
  • More great songs than practically any other record made in the ’80s – “Shout,” “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” and “Head Over Heels” are just a few of the better known hits from this, their breakthrough third album
  • 4 1/2 stars: “It is not only a commercial triumph, it is an artistic tour de force. And in the loping, percolating “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” Tears for Fears perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the mid-’80s while impossibly managing to also create a dreamy, timeless pop classic. Songs From the Big Chair is one of the finest statements of the decade.”

This is a classic in the Tears for Fears canon, probably the album most people regard as their best. I myself prefer Seeds of Love, which should take nothing away from Big Chair — both are exceptional productions from the ’80s no matter how you look at them.

SFTBC went to Number One on the charts for a reason. There’s really not a bad song on either side and mostly absolutely brilliant ones.

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Listening in Depth to Romantic Warrior

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Return to Forever Available Now

Romantic Warrior is my favorite Jazz/Rock Fusion album of all time. As good as the music is, the sound is even better.

This is the Jazz/Rock Demo Disc that stands head and shoulders above the rest. In my experience, no record of this kind is more dynamic or has better bass. Not one.

Demo Disc doesn’t begin to do this kind of sound justice.

Simply put, not only is this one of the greatest musical statements of all time, it’s one of the great recording achievements. Few albums in the history of the world can lay claim to this kind of sonic power and energy.

But the Super Sound has a purpose, a raison d’etre. This is the kind of music that requires it; better yet, demands it. In truth, the sound is not only up to the challenge of expressing the life of the music on this album, it positively enhances it.

Just to take one example: Those monster Lenny White drum rolls that run across the soundstage from wall to wall may be a recording studio trick, but they’re there to draw your attention to his amazing powers, and it works! The drums are everywhere on this album, constantly jumping out of the soundfield and taking the music into the stratosphere where it belongs.

Side One

Medieval Overture

The grandiose opening of this record serves as an important sonic checkpoint, as well as a tipoff for the pyrotechnics to come. On the better copies Corea’s multi-layered, swirling synths occupy their own space, clearly separated from each other, not blurred and inarticulate as they are on the poorer pressings.

Also notice how much attack Lenny White’s drums have, especially in the more exposed sections. The transients are breathtakingly immediate. Run-of-the-mill copies tend to flatten Mr White, making his acrobatic playing seem two-dimensional and less-than-inspired. The best copies prove that nothing could be further from the truth.

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