More of the Music of Brewer and Shipley
Reviews and Commentaries for Brewer and Shipley
One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:
Hey Tom,
Recently bought a Tarkio Hot Stamper and what a great album it is. This record has truly great ANALOG sound. The kind of sound my CD “audiophile” friends can only dream about. This recording is a lot of fun to listen to. There is much more to it than the songs that had airplay.
Anyway, another great find from the better records crew.
Jim S
Jim,
Thanks for your letter. This is one my favorite records too. I have it on tape and that tape has been played at least 500 times.
Along with Crosby, Stills and Nash’s debut, Tarkio represents the pinnacle of what we affectionately call Hippie Folk Rock.
On the best copies, the Tubey Magical Acoustic Guitar reproduction is some of the best we have ever heard, right up there with another record Stephen Barncard recorded, If Only I Could Remember My Name. As you may have read elsewhere on the site, the guy is a genius.
When you’re at the top of one of our lists — any one of our lists — directly competing with the more than ten thousand records we’ve critically auditioned over the decades we’ve been selling records to audiophiles, that means something. All three of the records we’ve named would belong in the Hall of the All Time Audiophile Greats, if there were such a thing.
I hope to write more about what a great record Tarkio is for testing soon, so stay tuned for that. I struggled for more than 20 years with what sounded to me like overblown bass, as well as vinyl issues that I could not overcome, until a Mr. Walker came along to help me.
I’m glad to say that Tarkio has lately been sounding the way I wanted it to sound back in the day. Progress in Audio is real, but it is more often than not very, very slow. It is best measured in decades, not years.
I bought my first copy of Tarkio back in the mid-’70s. It was in a bargain bin full of sealed records at my college bookstore. The price? Two for a buck. Picked up a cheap Sergio Mendes compilation that way too. Fell in love with both and never fell out of love with either of them. It’s simply more evidence that Music Does the Driving in audio. Nothing inspires me to test and tweak my stereo like a favorite record that’s not sounding right. That’s when I know I have work to do.
Tarkio checks off some important boxes for us here at Better Records:
- It’s a longtime Personal Favorite
- It’s the Best Sounding Brewer and Shipley album we’ve ever played
- It’s this duo’s Masterpiece
- It’s part of the Core Collection of Well Recorded Rock & Pop Albums, and
- It’s an album that we think should be More Popular with Audiophiles because it’s every bit as good as we (and Jim) say it is.
Again, thanks for writing,
Best, TP