Top Artists – Little Feat

Waiting For Columbus Gets the Bernie Treatment Care of Rhino Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Little Feat Available Now

A Hot Stamper pressing of this amazing sounding album, a title we regret to say we have in stock only rarely, might be described this way:

Some of the best sounding live rock and roll sound you will ever hear outside of a concert venue. If you want to understand the unique appeal of the band, there’s no better place to start than right here.

It’s one of our all-time favorite live recordings and their single best release – a true Masterpiece.

I have lately been listening to this album in its entirety at the gym (playing the standard cassette over headphones) and enjoying the hell out of it. As good as their best studio albums are, and I count myself as big a fan of the band as there is, Waiting for Columbus is surely the pinnacle of their recorded output. It is as close to perfect as any live album I know.

(The Last Record Album is my personal favorite of their studio albums, but since nobody seems to want to buy it at the prices we charge, I regret to say we had to stop doing shootouts for it years ago. We were losing too much money that way.)

But Bernie Grundman’s version is just another one in a very long line of disastrous recuts, the kind of crap he has been churning out for the last thirty years. It’s all but unplayable on modern high quality equipment. (If it’s not on your system, you might consideer the idea that you still have plenty of work left to do, audio-wise.)

As you can see from the notes below, record one may be passable, but record two is NFG. How is it possible to turn such a wonderful recording into such a ridiculously bad sounding pressing? Even Mobile Fidelity did a better job with the album, and they’re one of the most incompetent remastering outfits that the audiophile world has even known.

We’re frankly at a loss to understand any of it.Bernie Grundman used to make good sounding records. We know that for a fact, having played them by the hundreds. Apparently those days are gone, and, based on this album and plenty of others, there is very little chance of them returning.

Notes on the Sound

  • Artificial top end, especially disc 2, which is just awful.
  • Big and loud but hi-hat and vox are so thin and spitty.
  • Disc 1 is not as bright.
  • Sloppy but rich bass.
  • More or less tonally correct/relaxed vox but it’s veiled and small.
  • Judging from other recent BG cuts we’ve played, I’m guessing disc 2 closer to intended sound.

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Little Feat – Waiting For Columbus

More Little Feat

  • A vintage copy of Waiting For Columbus with seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on all FOUR sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Some of the best sounding live rock and roll sound you will ever hear outside of a concert venue (particularly on sides one, two, and four)
  • If you want to understand the unique appeal of the band, there’s no better place to start than right here
  • One of our all-time favorite live recordings and their single best release – a true Masterpiece
  • 4 1/2 stars: “There’s much to savor on Waiting For Columbus, one of the great live albums of its era, thanks to rich performances that prove Little Feat were one of the great live bands of their time.”
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” but with less of an accent on morbidity and more on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Waiting for Columbus is a good example of a record many audiophiles may not know well but should.

This is an amazingly well-recorded concert, and what’s more, the versions the band does of their earlier material are much better than the studio album versions of those same songs in every case.

Fat Man In A Bathtub on this album is out of this world, but you could easily say that about a dozen or more of the tracks on this double album. Which simply means that you will have a very hard time listening to any of the studio versions of these songs once you’ve heard them performed with the kind of energy, enthusiasm and technical virtuosity Little Feat brought to this live show. (I saw them twice with Lowell and they were amazing both times.)

This is some of the best sounding live rock and roll sound you will ever hear outside of a concert venue. In fact, on a great copy, it’s just about as good as live rock’n’roll sound gets.

Here is a link to take you to more letters, commentaries and reviews for Waiting for Columbus.

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Letter of the Week – “I’ve come to expect my socks to get blown off every time.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Little Feat Available Now

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

Hey Tom, 

Stop putting records I want on your site. I’m finding them very difficult to resist. I’ve come to expect my socks to get blown off every time.

The recent Dixie Chicken was no exception, by the way. I dropped the needle on side one and knew within a couple of seconds, “Oh yeah, this is the shit!” My socks were across the room, needless to say.

Robert B.

Robert,

So very glad to hear it.  Such a great album but so hard to find in good condition on the original Green Label.

Here is what we had to say about a recent Hot Stamper pressing of the album.

The All Music Guide (and lots of other critics) think this is Little Feat at their best. With tracks such as “Two Trains,” “Dixie Chicken,” “Fat Man in the Bathtub” and “Roll Um Easy,” who’s gonna disagree?

I guess I am. I prefer Waiting for Columbus and The Last Record Album, but cannot deny that Dixie Chicken is probably the best of the albums that came before them.

Thanks for your letter.

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Little Feat / Dixie Chicken

More Little Feat

  • Here is a vintage Green Label pressing (only the second copy to hit the site in more years than anyone can remember) that was doing just about everything right, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades
  • You get lovely extension up top, good weight down low, as well as remarkable transparency in the midrange, all qualities that were much less evident on the average copy we played
  • It’s the rare copy that’s this lively, solid and rich… drop the needle on any track and you’ll see what we mean
  • No Burbank label copy earned a better grade than 1.5+, and even most of those fell short, not to mention the truly awful later label
  • 5 stars: “It all adds up to a nearly irresistible record, filled with great songwriting, sultry grooves, and virtuosic performances that never are flashy. Little Feat, along with many jam bands that followed, tried to top this album, but they never managed to make a record this understated, appealing and fine.”

Hot Stamper sound on both sides — yes, it is possible, and this very copy is Proof with a capitol “P.” Most copies of this album sound like cardboard, especially the later pressings on the Palm Tree and tan labels. To get the best sound, you need originals of this album, and Warner Brothers Green Label originals are getting pretty darn hard to find as more and more collectors and audiophiles are coming to the realization that the unending stream of Heavy Vinyl reissues flooding the market leaves a lot to be desired. (Our desire for them is at zero, as we no longer bother to order the stuff.)

Folks, this is no Demo Disc by any means, but the later pressings strip away the two qualities that really make this music work and bring it to life: Tubey Magic and big bass. This copy has both in spades.

Listen to how breathy and transparent the chorus is on the first track. Now layer that sound on top of a fat and punchy bottom end and you have the formula for Little Feat Magic at its funky best. This is the sound they heard in the control room, of that I have no doubt, and it is all over this copy.

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Letter of the Week – “Better Records deliver that energy, tone, dynamics and big analog sound that ‘is not coming back'”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Little Feat Available Now

Our customer John wrote to tell us how much he likes his Hot Stamper pressings.

Just have to say–as with most (all) the things you’ve written about–the better one’s system gets the better these Better Records sound. It’s incredible HOW MUCH BETTER. It took me four years of careful changes with a lot of help to get my system really, truly cooking.

Of course, even before that it was clear that your Better Records were way better. But now that gap is so much bigger.

There’s the true, analog sound and then there are remasters (and average early/original pressings). Remasters just sound, well, remastered.

But Better Records deliver that energy, tone, dynamics and big analog sound that “is not coming back”.

(I’m not poo-pooing the remastered stuff–though some is pure crap–because it’s the reality of loving music and this hobby.)

But when you listen to the right recording on the right system, it’s almost a different medium. It’s crazy how good it can sound.

John

Dear John,

Ain’t it the truth!

Thanks for your letter.

Best, TP

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Mobile Fidelity’s Approach to Mastering – I Have a Theory

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Little Feat Available Now

I have a theory about why MoFi’s mastering approach tended to work for the Waiting for Columbus album when it failed so miserably for so many others. It goes a little something like this. 

Back in their early days, MoFi tended to add bass and treble to practically every record they mastered, regardless of whether or not the master tape they were using needed a boost.

A little extra sparkle up top and a little extra kick down low was what the audiophile public seemed to want.  We call this the smile curve and lots of audiophile records have a case of it.

Truth be told, I was a member of that group and I know I did.

Fortunately for them, Waiting for Columbus is an album that can ofteny use a little at both ends. Rarely did The Mastering Lab supply it, making the original domestic pressings somewhat bass-shy and dull on the extreme top. The MoFi clearly corrected the poor EQ choices The Mastering Lab had often made. 

UPDATE 2024: Poor EQ Choices?

Or perhaps it could have been one or more of the following:

  • Perhaps the band liked it better that way.
  • Perhaps The Mastering Lab found it easier to cut that way.
  • Perhaps the cause of the records lacking extension on both ends comes from some other factors that cannot be known.

Or, if you don’t like those three, just make up some other reasons that sound plausible, or ones that fit in with other ideas you may have, even though there is probably not an iota of evidence to support any of it.

This is the way of the audiophile record collector — theories galore, but not much experimental evidence to back them up (or falsify them as the case may be). We are more inclined to the No Theory approach to finding good records, which you can read about here. We believe it has served us well and can do the same for you.

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Waiting For Columbus – We Broke Through in 2017

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Little Feat Available Now

Way back in 2009 we had this to say about a Hot Stamper pressing we listed:

This German import pressing of Waiting for Columbus is much better sounding than the typical Mastering Lab-mastered copy.

This German pressing is similar to one that came from my own personal collection, accidentally discovered way back in the early ’80s as I recall. It KILLED my domestic original, and got some things right that even my treasured Mobile Fidelity pressing couldn’t. We have been meaning to do a shootout for this album for at least the last five years, but kept running into the fact that in a head to head shootout the right MoFi pressing — sloppy bass and all — was hard to beat.

This is no longer the case, courtesy of that same old laundry list you have no doubt seen on the site countless times: better equipment, tweaks, record cleaning, room treatments, et cetera, et cetera. Now the shortcomings of the MoFi are clear for all to see, and the strengths of the best non-Half-Speed mastered pressings are too, which simply means that playing the MoFi now is an excruciating experience.

All I can hear is what it does wrong.

I was so much happier with it when I didn’t know better.

That same laundry list of improvements continued to pay big dividends, and right around 2017 or so the best original domestic Mastering Lab copies started to sound much more right to us than the German ones. 

The German pressings can be good, but the TML pressings are the only ones we would expect to win shootouts from now on.

But who knows? We might find something even better down the road. That’s what shootouts are for. (more…)

Time Loves a Hero May Be Transparent in the Midrange, But So What?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Little Feat Available Now

Sonic Grade: D

After playing a killer Hot Stamper pressing of the album many years ago, we wrote the following: 

If you own the Nautilus Half-Speed, a record we actually liked years ago even after we had forsworn those kinds of pressings, you are really in for a treat. THIS is what the band sounds like in the REAL world, not the phony audiophile world that so many of our fellow hobbyists appear to be perfectly happy living in.

Just listen to how punchy the drums are on the real pressings, a perfect example of what proper mastering does well and Half-Speed mastering does poorly.

When you listen to a top quality pressing, you feel that you are hearing this music EXACTLY the way Little Feat wanted it to be heard. I just don’t get that vibe from the Half-Speed.

I was fooled back in the day myself. The one thing these pressings have going for them is that they tend to be transparent in the midrange.

It sounds like someone messed with the sound, and of course someone did. That’s how they get those audiophile records to sound the way they do.

For some reason, some audiophiles like their records to sound pretty and lifeless with sloppy bass.

That is not our sound here at Better Records. We don’t offer records with those qualities and we don’t think audiophiles should have to put up with sound like that.

Further Reading on the subject of Half-Speed mastering

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Little Feat / Time Loves A Hero

Little Feat Albums with Hot Stampers

Little Feat Albums We’ve Reviewed

  • Time Loves A Hero is back on the site for only the second time in years, here with seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades throughout this vintage pressing
  • Credit Donn Landee (and Ted Templeman too) with the rich, smooth, oh-so-analog sound found on the better sides
  • You get lovely extension up top, good weight down low, as well as remarkable transparency in the midrange, all qualities that were much less evident on the average copy we played
  • The blog has plenty of commentary on the Nautilus pressing, a record I admit to liking way back when, but no Hot Stamper would ever be as anemic and thin as that remastered record is, not when played back on the high-quality equipment we run today
  • “‘Old Folks Boogie’ beats anything on the last two albums…and “Rocket in My Pocket” is a Lowell George readymade like you didn’t think he had in him anymore.” – Robert Christgau

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Lowell George – Thanks I’ll Eat It Here

More Little Feat

More Lowell George

  • A stunning copy and only the second to hit the site in years, here with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from start to finish
  • We’re huge fans of this album and a pressing like this lets the natural quality of the recording shine through
  • We don’t imagine we’ll be tracking down too many copies of this so if you’re a fan, scoop this one up!
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Lowell’s style is so distinctive and his performances so soulful, it’s hard not to like this record if you’ve ever had a fondness for Little Feat.”

This kind of recording quality was abandoned decades ago, but there was a time — I’m old, I remember it — when engineers actually tried to produce recordings with this kind of rich, sweet, thoroughly analog sound. 1979, the year of this album’s release, is right at the tail end of it. Why do you think so much of our Hot Stamper output covers the decade that stretched from the late ’60s to the late ’70s? Only one reason: that’s where some of the best sound can be found. (It’s a bit like Willie Sutton’s famous answer to why he robbed banks, “because that’s where the money is.”)

Which is taking the long way round in saying that this recording has a healthy dose of analog Tubey Magic, in places maybe even a bit too much, as the sound can sometimes get too thick and overly rich, like a cake with too much frosting.

The better copies keep that wonderful analog smoothness and freedom from artificiality, adding to it the life and energy of classic rock and roll. Yes, you can have it all — rich analog sound that jumps out of the speakers! Just listen to those horns on “Honest Man” — that is the sound we are looking for on an album like this.

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