Top Artists – Joni Mitchell

Wild Things Run Fast – A Personal Favorite

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

One of our favorite Joni Mitchell albums.

A Desert Island disc for me and one of the few good reasons to listen to new music in the 80s. 

My personal Must Own Joni Mitchell list includes:

  1. 1968 Song to a Seagull
  2. 1971 Blue
  3. 1974 Court and Spark
  4. 1982 Wild Things Run Fast

WTRF is a TAS list Super Disc with many good qualities, but you’d never know it from the typically lean, bass-shy pressing you might find on your turntable.

Also, since this record can be a little cold sounding — it’s a modern recording after all, and 1982 is sadly nothing like 1972  — filling it out and warming it up is just what the doctor ordered.

John Golden (JG) mastered the originals. The best of them prove that he did a great job at least some of the time. (To find “the best of them,” aka Hot Stampers, read on.)

You can count on the fact that our Hot Stamper pressings will be unusually rich and full-bodied, with lovely warmth and presence.

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Joni Mitchell / Shadows and Light

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

  • A superb copy of Mitchell’s second live album with solid Double Plus (A+++) grades or BETTER on all FOUR sides of these vintage Asylum pressings
  • The sound is full-bodied, lively and dynamic, with wonderful immediately to Joni’s remarkably present and breathy vocals
  • If you’re a fan of Joni’s more experimental work from the mid to late 70s, this album is a Must Own
  • “…it serves as a good retrospective of her jazzy period from 1975-1979. As expected, she assembles a group of all-star musicians including Pat Metheny (guitar), Jaco Pastorius (bass), Lyle Mays (keyboards), and Michael Brecker (saxophone) who give these compositions more energy than on the studio recordings.”

Four outstanding sides! We recently had a huge shootout for this famous double album and this copy blew our minds with Double Plus sonics (or better) and reasonably quiet vinyl from start to finish. In the high-stakes game of Better Records Double Album Poker, that’s a full house, man. This one gives you the kind of you are there immediacy and transparency that put you front and center for a late 70s jazzy Joni Mitchell show. Not too many copies will do that.

Joni’s voice is breathy and present with real texture, and the three-dimensional imaging gives the music a real sense of space — just like you’d get at a concert. This helps convey the intimacy of the songs and the performances, and isn’t that what we audiophiles got in this crazy hobby for in the first place?

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If It’s Made from the Real Master Tape, Shouldn’t Blue Sound Better than This?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

UPDATE 2026

I wrote the commentary you see below way back in 2006. I wanted to give our customers an incentive to critically listen to the new Rhino pressing of Blue, a Heavy Vinyl reissue we actually gave out for free with every Hot Stamper of the album we sold.

We wanted our customers to try and answer the question I had posed in my review as to what aspect of the sound was improved in the new pressing, relative to the vintage copy they would have just purchased from us.

For those of you who have been reading our commentaries about modern remasterings, you know that rarely do we find any area of their sound that could be considered in any way “improved.”

As you will see from our commentary below, no less a personage than Michael Fremer had said at the time that the Rhino pressing “has far greater presence and physicality and is more immediate, dynamic, detailed and especially transparent.”

As hard as it may be to believe, I actually agreed with him about one of those qualities.

I’ve broken down his list below. If you have one of our Hot Stampers and the Rhino reissue, play them back to back and try to hear what is better about the reissue. Which of the following does it have more of compared to even the best vintage pressings?

  • More presence,
  • More physicality (whatever that is),
  • More immediacy,
  • More dynamics.
  • More detail,
  • More transparency

I had posed this question on the blog over the course of many years and never got anything approaching a serious answer.

I was going to reveal what quality I thought it was at some point, but I have since decided that it is better left for the reader to figure out for himself rather than have me tell him. What do you learn from being given an answer? Nothing, or next to nothing, so why do it?

Similarly, the Heavy Vinyl Led Zeppelin II and Brothers in Arms reissues are very good sounding records, with obvious shortcomings which I had hoped my readers would be able to spot and write to me about. None have to date, or at least none have told me what they are, which works out to be more or less the same thing.

I will have a great deal more to say on this subject down the road, one that is critically important for audiophiles regardless of their experience. For now let me leave you with what Steve Hoffman had to say about the work he did on Blue. (You can find the quote on Joni Mitchell’s website.)

This is a really wonderful album; Joni just laid it all out there for the world to hear. Brave, especially back in the day & I feel that this new version is the true giant killer.

Unlike the original 1970’s pressings, this new version was mastered without ANY added compression whatsoever, making it a true problem child in cutting (of our own making) but I wouldn’t have it any other way. After many spoiled lacquer masters and one too many Altoids, it was finished to everybody’s satisfaction.

The effort was worth it. The ebb and flow of the music is totally intact. Parts were cut, plated and pressed at Record Tech (RTI) and the actual 1971 Reprise master tape (as recorded and mixed at A&M Recording Studios) was used in disk cutting, bypassing the usual/”EQ’d and Compressed Cutting Master” completely.

Unlike the DCC, most of the songs on this vinyl version were cut without ANY equalization at all so this will be the closest you will ever be able to get to the sound of the true master tape of Blue. It was exciting to work on and I’m sure it will please y’all.

Steve Hoffman, mastering engineer

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Listening in Depth to Blue

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

Presenting another entry in our extensive listening in depth series with specific track by track advice to help you evaluate your copy of Blue.

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

Our Overview

The better pressings (which tend to be the ones mastered by Bernie Grundman in his glory days) bring out the breathy quality to Joni’s voice, and she never sounds strained either. They are sweet and open, with good bass foundation and transparency throughout the frequency range.

The best pressings (and today’s better playback equipment) have revealed nuances in this recording — and of course the performances of all the players along with it — that made us fall in love with her music all over again. Of all the tough nuts to crack, this was the toughest, yet somehow copies emerged from our shootouts that made it easy to focus on the sonic merits of Blue and ignore its shortcomings.

Hot Stampers have a way of doing that. You forget it’s a record; it’s now just music. The right record and the right playback will bring Joni’s music to life in a way that you cannot imagine until you hear it.

That is our guarantee on Blue — better than you ever thought possible or your money back.

Side One

All I Want

This is a do-or-die song for side one. When Joni sings “traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling,” she really pushes on the last couple of them, and even the best copies have a hard time dealing with it. When a copy of this record comes in, that first line often tells me that there is no hope for side one.

If an LP can get through that first line properly, it’s at least a ‘B’ and more often than not a truly Hot Stamper.

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Not that Long Ago Blue Was a Nut We Just Could Not Crack

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

This commentary was written in 2006 or thereabouts.

Allow me to tell you about a Blue shootout I tried to do at a friend’s house. The system he owns has some nice equipment in it (the EAR 864, a $4200 tube preamp, for one) and can sound very good — if not wonderful — on certain program material.

But it’s the kind of audiophile system that is easily overwhelmed by difficult to reproduce material. On my copy of Blue his stereo was a complete disaster: grainy, shrill, thin, flat, harsh, compressed, unmusical, no real extension at either end; in short, no magic, tubey or otherwise.

My copy of Blue, which had earlier in the day sounded so good at my house, now sounded so bad at his that I could hardly recognize it as the same LP.

Pieces of the Puzzle

Of course it was the same LP, and by the time I got home the pieces of the puzzle had all fallen into place. It takes a very special stereo to overcome the shortcomings of even the best domestic pressings of Blue in order to reveal the beauty of this music.

The new one isn’t better. It’s just easier to play on the average audiophile system.

Do you have one of those? Most audiophiles do; that’s what being average means. If you’ve been in this hobby for less than five years it’s almost certain you do. I would say a decade of serious dedication to home audio would be the minimum needed to acquire the knowledge and skill to build a truly hi-fidelity system.

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Letter of the Week – “Are Hot Stampers the only way to get my system to sound this good?”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steve Winwood Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

Yesterday I was marveling at the bottom-end and overall clarity of my new Stevie Winwood album. I think it’s right up there with Miles of Aisles, which sounded so good it made my wife cry (seriously).

But as always, I came up with a dark thought: Are Hot Stampers the only way to get my system to sound this good?

I have VERY few personally-selected LPs that can compete with a Hot Stamper. Even though I usually buy the “Budget” stampers, it looks like a future of hundred-buck-plus albums for me.

Gordon R.

Gordon,

Yes, our records are expensive, there is no denying that fact. I think you would agree they are worth what we charge, which is typically much more than a hundred dollars each these days. The average record on our site runs about three times that much.

Fortunately, if you want more records that sound as good as our Hot Stampers do, we tell you how to find your own.

We recently added some sections to our site for our “less expensive” titles:

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Joni Mitchell – Ladies Of The Canyon

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

  • This vintage Reprise pressing boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last
  • Ladies of The Canyon is a very strong album for Joni, with some of her most well known, seemingly timeless songs: “Morning Morgantown,” “For Free,” “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Woodstock,” “The Circle Game” and more
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more space, richness, 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
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Yet another essential listen in Mitchell’s recorded canon.”
  • If you’re a fan of this lady, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this title is clearly one of the best of 1970 and a true Must Own for the audiophile

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Letter of the Week – “Miles of Aisles, which sounded so good it made my wife cry (seriously).”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Steve Winwood Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

Yesterday I was marveling at the bottom-end and overall clarity of my new Stevie Winwood album.

I think it’s right up there with Miles of Aisles, which sounded so good it made my wife cry (seriously) .

But as always, I came up with a dark thought: Are Hot Stampers the only way to get my system to sound this good?

I have VERY few personally-selected LPs that can compete with a Hot Stamper. Even though I usually buy the “Budget” stampers, it looks like a future of hundred-buck-plus albums for me.

Gordon R.

Gordon,

Tears of joy I hope!

The right record can indeed be powerful and moving, enough to bring tears to one’s eyes.

I wrote about having powerful emotional experiences in a commentary that answers the question: “why would you want to go into a room and just play a record by yourself?”

Alas, finding those very special records is hard to do and not cheap, whether we do it or you do it.

We’re glad to know that a hundred dollars can still buy a good record. We have 119 of them in stock at that price as of this writing, and almost as many for $75 and under.

Many of them punch well above their weight sonically because they have condition issues or are titles that are may not be as popular as others we offer. Either way, many of them are great records that deserve a home, preferably a home with a nice turntable. Won’t you help?

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What We Listened For on Blue

Hot Stamper Pressings of Joni Mitchell’s Albums Available Now

We recently auditioned the Mobile Fidelity One-Step pressing of Blue and made some notes regarding the sound. (You can read them in full here.)

We focussed on the quality of their pressing’s vocal reproduction, for the simple reason that a Joni Mitchell album that gets the vocals wrong is a Joni Mitchell album that no music lover and certainly no audiophile would ever want to play.

Notice that only the vocals are mentioned in the notes — not how deep the bass goes, not how high the highs are, not the tone of the piano, not the pluck of the lap dulcimer, not the black background, not the soundstaging — none of those things that audiophiles — including us! — like to talk about endlessly in our reviews so that everyone will know how attuned we were to every aspect of the recording.

For this album that kind of listening is unnecessary.

When the voice is wrong, the sound is wrong. What more do you need to know?

And when the voice is wrong on a Joni Mitchell record, you have a worthless piece of vinyl no matter how much you may have paid for it.

Other titles that get the voice wrong and therefore should be avoided by audiophiles of all stripes can be found here.

We’ve written quite a bit about the album, having played copies of it by the score, and you can find plenty of our reviews and commentaries for Blue on this very blog.

There is currently at least one Hot Stamper pressing on the site for those of you who really love the album and are willing to pay a premium-and-then-some price for it.

For everybody else, here is how to go about finding your own killer copy of Blue.

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Commitment Issues We All Must Face

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This commentary about a very special 2-pack was written close to ten years ago. We think it’s every bit as true today as it was then.

The long and the short of it is simply that when it comes to collecting high quality vinyl:

There are no easy answers and there are no quick fixes.

To those of us who have been doing this for a long time, the above is obvious, a core insight that comes from playing thousands upon thousands of records and listening to them critically.

(The fact that the modern audiophile reviewer class has yet to appreciate this basic concept goes a long way in explaining how inadequate and error-prone their approach to records and audio has always been. Some of them may still be living in 1982, but I’m glad to say we’re not. Our business could not exist in 1982. Many of the technologies on which it is based had not yet been invented.)

Once you stop looking for easy answers and quick fixes, you will then be free to build a truly wonderful stereo system and acquire a superb sounding record collection to play on it. It will, naturally, and to some of you surprisingly, comprise virtually nothing but vintage vinyl.

The album under discussion today is Joni Mitchell’s Song to a Seagull. Our commentary begins:

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