Top Artists – David Sanborn

Bryan Ferry – Boys and Girls

More Roxy Music

  • You’ll find excellent Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides of this classic Ferry album from 1985 
  • This copy was big, full and lively with plenty of presence and bottom end weight
  • On this record, bigger bass and punchier drums make all the difference in the world
  • “Instead of ragged rock explosions, emotional extremes, and all that made his ’70s work so compelling in and out of Roxy, Ferry here is the suave, debonair if secretly moody and melancholic lover, with music to match…”

Excellent sound and quiet vinyl on both sides! If you’ve spent any time with this album, you will be blown away by how great both sides of this copy sound.

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Bonnie Raitt / The Glow – Our Shootout Winner from 2012

More of the Music of Bonnie Raitt

After a nearly two year hiatus, finally, a Top Copy makes it to the site. Side one here is nearly White Hot (A++ to A+++), which means it finished just a half step behind our shootout winner. It’s got that big, rich, solid ANALOG Val Garay (James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt) sound that we go crazy for here at Better Records (where the records are still made from analog tapes, even if it’s only because there aren’t any other kind to make them from!).

And side two is nearly as good, earning Two big Pluses for itself for Bonnie’s-in-the-room-with-you presence and huge Disappearing-Speaker-Effect presentation. It may not have all the space within the soundstage as the best we played. but it’s as wide and as tall as any. Either way, it certainly is impressive. On big speakers, you are there.

The Glow’s best material can be found in the deeper cuts — I would point potential listeners in the direction of Your Good Thing (Is About to End) on side one — with an amazing sax solo (he holds the patent in perpetuity) courtesy of David Sanborn, and (Goin’) Wild for You Baby at the end of side two. Once you get past the more radio-friendly lead-off tracks on both sides, the quality of the writing and performing improve markedly. (more…)

Young Americans Turned Me on to David Sanborn

More of the Music of David Bowie

This is a very old commentary. 

This is one of my favorite Bowie albums. Nobody seems to care about it anymore. They dismiss it as disco junk, but it actually has some of his best music on it. I especially like the song Win. David Sanborn’s saxophone sounds like it’s coming from 60 feet behind Bowie, a nice effect.

I Got Turned On to David Sanborn

This was the record that turned me on to David Sanborn. After hearing this album, and reading that he was responsible for the amazing sax work found here, I went out and bought a bunch of his jazz albums. They were uniformly awful I’m sorry to say. It was years before he actually made a good one, Backstreet, which is still a personal favorite.

By the way, that’s John Lennon on guitar for Across the Universe and Fame.

This part we would no longer agree with in 2023:

A Great Copy But No Demo Disc

This recording will never win any awards for sound. It’s good but it ain’t that good. Sonically I’d put it somewhere between Ziggy Stardust (amazing) and Station to Station (decent but problematic). If you want to hear Young Americans at its best, this copy will let you do that, but I doubt you’ll be demonstrating your stereo to others with this.

I have an original British pressing of this album which is quite a bit smoother. In fact, it’s a bit too smooth and loses some of the energy found on the best domestic copies like this one. There are always trade offs in audio and this appears to be one of them.

Live and learn is our motto, and progress in audio is a feature, not a bug, of record collecting at the most advanced levels. (“Advanced” is a code word for having little to no interest in any remastered pressing marketed to the audiophile community. If you want to avoid the worst of them, we are happy to help you do that.)

Further Reading

If you’re searching for the perfect sound, you came to the right place.

Listening in Depth to Young Americans

More of the Music of David Bowie

Presenting another entry in our extensive listening in depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of the album.

Here are some albums currently on our site with similar track by track breakdowns.

This is one of my favorite Bowie albums. Nobody seems to care about it anymore. They dismiss it as disco junk, but it actually has some of his best music on it. I especially like the song Win. David Sanborn’s saxophone sounds like it’s coming from 60 feet behind Bowie, a nice effect.

Side One

Young Americans  
Win

My favorite track on the album, an undiscovered gem in the Bowie catalog.

Fascination
Right

Side Two

Somebody up There Likes Me

One of the best tracks on the album. Sanborn is out of his head on this track. Another gem that never gets enough credit.

Across the Universe 
Can You Hear Me

This is one of the best tests for side two. It’s the rare copy that gets those soulful background voices to sound clear and clean. They often sound squawky, veiled, or thin.

Grain and smear are big problems with mass-produced vinyl like this. It takes a very special pressing to show you that those problems are in the vinyl, not on the tape.

Fame

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