Top Producers – Mike Chapman

The Knack – Get the Knack

More of The Knack

  • A killer copy of The Knack’s debut LP (one of only a handful to hit the site in nearly three years) with a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to an excellent Double Plus (A++) side one – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • While doing this shootout, one thing that took us by surprise was how common it was for pressings to be slightly to seriously bass shy — on this album you lose a lot of points for not having enough bass
  • No such problems here, though: “monster drums and bass” was just one of the superlative notes we had on this Shootout Winning side two
  • With plenty of punchy low end, the music comes to life on this pressing like you’ve never heard before
  • Wall to wall live-in-the-studio rock sound to rival Back in Black and Nevermind — “My Sharona” is on this amazing Triple Plus side two, and it rocks
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Get the Knack is at once sleazy, sexist, hook-filled, and endlessly catchy — above all, it’s a guilty pleasure and an exercise in simple fun.”
  • This is clearly the Knack’s best sounding album. Roughly 100 other listings for the best sounding album by an artist or group can be found here
  • In our opinion, Get the Knack is the only Knack record you’ll ever need. Click on this link to see more titles we like to call one and done

This monster Power Pop debut by The Knack is an amazingly well-recorded album, with the kind of wall to wall, big beat, live rock sound that rivals Back in Black and Nevermind — if you’re lucky enough to have a copy that sounds like this! (If you’re not, then it doesn’t.)

“My Sharona” is simply stunning here. You just can’t record drums and bass any better!

And let’s not forget the song “Lucinda.” It’s got exactly the same incredibly meaty, grungy, ballsy sound that Back in Black does, but it managed to do it in 1979, a year earlier.

Mike Chapman produced this album and clearly he is an audiophile production genius. With a pair of Number One charting, amazing sounding Pop albums back to back — Blondie’s Parallel Lines in 1978 and this album early the next year — how much better could he get?

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Blondie – Ideal for Testing Our Favorite Quality in a Record

More of the Music of Blondie

Reviews and Commentaries for Parallel Lines

At the risk of being definitive about things that are better left ill-defined, I would say that the Number One quality we look for in a pressing is the element of Life or Energy.

We can put up with a great many shortcomings, including even some tonality problems, but when a record fails to convey the spirit and enthusiasm of the musicians, it’s pretty much over. When it comes to the importance of energy in the pressings we audition, this commentary on Zuma may be of some interest.

Some pressings of other titles notably lacking in energy can be found here.

I became a giant fan of this album the moment I heard it, but the sound always left something to be desired. So many copies were thick, smeary, opaque and compressed. The music was cookin’ but the sound always seemed to be holding it back.

And like an idiot I’m sure I traded my original domestic pressing in for the MoFi when it came out in the early ’80s, the kind of dumbass audiophile move I made again and again until I finally wised up.

It took us until 2016 to make the breakthrough discovery we needed to make in order to find the best pressings.

Further Reading

Blondie – Eat To The Beat

More Blondie

More Women Who Rock

  • Outstanding sound for the band’s followup to Parallel Lines, with both sides of this original pressing earning Double Plus (A++) or BETTER grades – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Turn it up as loud as you want – the top end and vocals are balanced, smooth and tonally correct, not gritty or edgy
  • The drums and bass of “Die Young Stay Pretty” are as real sounding as if you were standing five feet from the band
  • It’s an amazingly punchy, lively Demo Disc for Big Speakers that Play at Loud Levels
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The British… made Eat to the Beat another chart-topper, with three major hits, including a number one ranking for Atomic and almost the same success for Dreaming.”

This is Mike Chapman’s Big Beat Sonic Masterpiece — yes, the sound is actually bigger and better than the sound on Parallel Lines — akin to the debuts of The Knack and The Cars, and every bit as huge and punchy as either.

Eat to the Beat lives and dies by its energy, its bass and above all by its transient snap. The drums and bass of “Die Young Stay Pretty” are amazing. On the best copies it’s hard to imagine that song sounding any better. The drums and bass are massive in their attack. It’s the very definition of punch.

If you’re a fan of big drums in a big room, with jump out of the speakers sound, this is the album for you.

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Parallel Lines – We Broke Through in 2016

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Reviews and Commentaries for Parallel Lines

Can this kind of music get any better? This album is a MASTERPIECE of Pure Pop, ranking right up there with The Cars first album. I can’t think of many albums from the era with the perfect blend of writing, production and musicianship Blondie achieved with Parallel Lines.

As expected, if you clean and play enough copies of a standard domestic major label album like this one, sooner or later you will stumble upon The One, and boy did we ever.

This side two had OFF THE CHARTS with presence, breathy vocals, and punchy drums. It was positively swimming in studio ambience, with every instrument occupying its own space in the mix and surrounded by air.

There was not a trace of grain, just the silky sweet highs we’ve come to expect from analog done right. 

Gone is the compressed muck of the MOFI (and most domestic pressings, to be fair). In its place is the kind of clarity, transparency and pure ROCK AND ROLL POWER previous pressings only hinted at. I became a giant fan of this album the moment I heard it back in 1978, but the sound always left much to be desired.

So many copies were thick and compressed; the music was cookin’ but the sound seemed to be holding it back.

But there are good sounding pressings, and now we know which ones they are.

Further Reading

Blondie – Parallel Lines

More Blondie

More New Wave Recordings

  • With an INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to an excellent Double Plus (A++) side one, this copy is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other version of Blondie’s One True Masterpiece you’ve heard – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • The powerful sound of this Power Pop Classic really comes through here – and that’s not a claim you can make about very many copies
  • There’s not a bad song to be found on the album, and lots of great ones: “One Way Or Another,” “Heart Of Glass (here in an extended version),” “Hanging On The Telephone,” etc.
  • 5 stars: “Blondie’s best album,” which is actually a bit of an understatement – it’s by far their best album
  • More reviews and commentaries for Blondie’s brilliant Parallel Lines
  • If you’re a Blondie fan, this breakthrough album from 1978 is a Must Own

All the Blondie magic you could ever want is in these grooves. The truly powerful sound of this Power Pop Classic really comes through on this bad boy — and that’s simply not a claim you could make about too many copies out there in record land, which tend to be flat, opaque and compressed. Not so here. This one just plain ROCKS.

Can this kind of music get any better? This album is a MASTERPIECE of Pure Pop, ranking right up there with The Cars first album. I can’t think of many albums from the era with the perfect blend of writing, production and musicianship under the guidance of producer Mike Chapman (The Knack) Blondie achieved with Parallel Lines.

As expected, if you clean and play enough copies of a standard domestic major label album such as Parallel Lines eventually you will stumble upon The One, and boy did we ever. The very best copies in our recent shootout were OFF THE CHARTS with presence, breathy vocals, and punchy drums. On top of that they were positively swimming in studio ambience, with every instrument occupying its own space in the mix and surrounded by air. (more…)

Blondie / Parallel Lines – MoFi Reviewed

More of the Music of Blondie

Reviews and Commentaries for Parallel Lines

Audiophile Versions of This Album Suck (The Life Right Out of the Music)  

I became a giant fan of this album the moment I heard it, but I always felt that the sound of my old original left something to be desired. So many copies are thick and lifeless; the music wants to cook but the sound seems to be holding it back.

The record I had in the ’70s was probably not that good anyway. Fortunately, it only took us another 35+ years to figure out how to find the best pressings.

And like an idiot I’m sure I had traded my original domestic pressing in for the MoFi when it came out in the early ’80s, the kind of dumbass audiophile move I discuss in the commentary Audiophilia 101: What Kind of Fool Was I?

As previously noted, the MoFi, one of those Jack Hunt turgid muckfests (check out City to City for the ultimate in murky MoFi sound), is incapable of conveying anything resembling the kind of clean, clear, oh-so-radio-friendly pop rock sound that Mike Chapman and the band were aiming for.

The recording has copious amounts of Analog Richness and Fullness to start with. Adding more is not an improvement; in fact it’s positively ruinous.

Is it the worst version of the album ever made?

That’s hard to say. But it is the worst sounding version of the album we’ve ever played, and that should be warning enough for any audiophile contemplating spending money on this kind of trash. Our advice: don’t do it.

Parallel Lines is bad enough to have earned a place in our Mobile Fidelity Hall of Shame.

The most serious fault of the typical Half-Speed Mastered LP is not incorrect tonality or poor bass definition, although you will have a hard time finding one that doesn’t suffer from both.

It’s dead as a doornail sound, plain and simple.

And most Heavy Vinyl pressings coming down the pike these days are as guilty of this sin as their audiophile forerunners from the ’70s and ’80s. The average Heavy Vinyl LP I throw on my turntable sounds like it’s playing in another room. What audiophile in his right mind could possibly find that quality appealing? But there are scores of companies turning out this crap; somebody must be buying it.

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Autoamerican (and Lots of Other Records) Need Their Space, Man

More of the Music of Blondie

More Records that Are Good for Testing Ambience, Size and Space

The Space in the Middle

Allow us to present a key finding we discovered while playing so many of these LPs. I’m sure you’ve noticed this effect on some of your favorite recordings as well. In this case it’s the one quality that allowed some copies to soar while others were left grounded.

About halfway through the session I noticed that the copies with the most top end extension and the deepest bass had another quality which was even more involving: they left more SPACE in the middle for every other element of the mix to occupy.

There was no CROWDING in other words. This may be the result of less compression in the mastering phase; compression tends to richen up the sound, but it has an unfortunate tendency to jam it all together in the middle as well.

Or it just may be higher resolution, so that the space around all the elements is clearly reproduced.

Or it may be equalization, so that the higher parts of the bass stay down and the lower parts of the highs stay up, keeping both from seeping into the midrange.

Who knows what it is? One thing I can tell you is this: it sure is easy to HEAR it. Big as life, with spaciousness and three-dimensionality to beat the band, the sound on this “open middle” copy simply was in a league of its own.

Perhaps you know that sound from your own favorite recordings. It’s the kind of thing that turns a good pop album into a Demo Disc. (more…)

Blondie / Parallel Lines on Heavy Vinyl

More of the Music of Blondie

Reviews and Commentaries for Parallel Lines

Sonic Grade: D or worse

EMI and Simply Vinyl both released Heavy Vinyl versions of the album with little sonic success.

I remember being underwhelmed by the Simply Vinyl version, the perfect example of the smeary sub-gen sound you get when a record is made from a tape dub.

The EMI 180 was brighter and thinner and every bit as wrong in its own way. Choosing among them would have been difficult.

The best choice: none of the above. 

As is so often the case, the Heavy Vinyl Reissues are simply a disgrace.

I became a giant fan of this album the moment I heard it, but I always felt that the sound of my old original left something to be desired. So many copies are thick and lifeless; the music wants to cook but the sound seems to be holding it back.

And like an idiot I’m sure I had traded my original domestic pressing in for the MoFi when it came out in the early ’80s, the kind of dumbass audiophile move I discuss in the commentary Audiophilia 101 – What Kind of Audio Fool Was I?

Blondie – Autoamerican

More Blondie

DEMO DISC SOUND on this A+++ Hot Stamper Side One! This is one KILLER New Wave Pop Record. All the Blondie magic you could ever want is in these grooves! The truly POWERFUL sound of this Power Pop Band really comes through on this Bad Boy, or should we say Bad Girl? Whatever. This was the Hands Down Hot Stamper Winner of our latest shootout. Man, we had a ball with this one.

To be fair, consistency is the problem with this album, with some songs being absolute Pop Masterpieces (The Tide Is High on side one, Rapture on side two), but other tracks falling short of the standard set by Parallel Lines, where every track bar none was a gem of songcraft and High Gloss Pure Pop Production.

Still, what’s good is good, and the sound is STUNNING, with real Demo Disc qualities. The Right Pressing of the Right Stamper.

As expected, if you clean and play enough copies of a standard domestic major label album like this one, sooner or later you will stumble upon The One, and boy did we ever. One of our copies was OFF THE CHARTS with presence, breathy vocals, and punchy drums. It was positively swimming in studio ambience, with every instrument occupying its own space in the mix and surrounded by air. There was not a trace of grain, just the silky sweet highs we’ve come to expect from analog done right.

This is of course the premise behind Hot Stampers themselves. They are out there to be stumbled upon. You can’t tell what pressing from what era from what country is going to be The One (Keanu, are you listening?) until you actually sit down, clean and play a big pile of them. We found a source for this title sealed and managed to pick up over a dozen new copies, and those, along with some other used ones we had laying around, comprised our data pool. (more…)

The Knack – If You Like Power Pop, This Is a Must Own Album from 1979

More of  the Music of The Knack

This Monster Power Pop Debut by the Knack is an AMAZINGLY well-recorded album, with the kind of Wall to Wall Big Beat Live Rock Sound that rivals Back in Black and Nevermind — if you’re lucky enough to have a copy that sounds like this! (If you’re not then it doesn’t.)

My Sharona is simply STUNNING here. You just can’t record drums and bass any better!

And let’s not forget the song Lucinda. It’s got exactly the same incredibly meaty, grungy, ballsy sound that Back in Black does, but it managed to do it in 1979, a year earlier!

Mike Chapman produced this album and clearly he is an audiophile production genius. With a pair of Number One charting, amazing sounding Pop albums back to back — Blondie’s Parallel Lines in 1978 and this album early the next year — how much better could he get? The answer is: None more better.

Come to Life, Would You!

So many copies we played of The Knack just didn’t come to life the way the good ones do. Especially noticeable on many of the pressings we played was a lack of bass foundation and punch. When the bass comes in at the opening of My Sharona it should make your neighbors come knocking. On most copies the effect is, to be charitable, less than startling, especially if you’ve heard it sound the way it can on our Hot Stampers. Let me tell you, THEY ROCK.

Bass, Man

Dropping the needle on the average copy we kept asking ourselves where the bass was! Only the best copies let you hear the bass with all its power and glory intact. (Of course, you have to have the kind of dynamic full-range system that can reproduce that kind of power down low; we never tire of making the case for big dynamic speakers because we know what a THRILL it is to hear a record like this played good and loud on them.)

Real Studio Space

One of the qualities we heard on the more transparent copies is huge studio space around the drum kit, especially the kick. We love that “unbaffled” sound; it lets the long-delayed reflections off the back wall be heard clearly. Until we got our EAR 324 in 2007 we couldn’t get a good picture of just what was happening in the studio, but now those reflections are as clear as a bell on record after record, from The Planets to Physical Graffiti.

The advent of top quality stand-alone phono stages is, in our opinion, one of the most important revolutions in audio in recent times. Room treatments that allow that three-dimensional studio space to be recreated in your very own living room are another.

Side One

Let Me Out 
Your Number or Your Name
Oh Tara 
(She’s So) Selfish 
Maybe Tonight 
Good Girls Don’t

Side Two

My Sharona 
Heartbeat 
Siamese Twins (The Monkey and Me)
Lucinda 
That’s What the Little Girls Do 
Frustrated