1969-must-own-rock-pop-etc.

The Who – Tommy

More of the Music of The Who

  • Superb sound throughout this vintage UK import copy, with all FOUR sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • Side three and side four were sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • Both of these early Black Label British Track pressings have the rich, spacious, Tubey Magical sound that has the power to immerse you in the story of a deaf, dumb and blind boy named Tommy
  • Top 100, and clearly our pick for the best sounding album The Who ever made – when you play a copy that sounds as good as this one we think you’ll have no problem seeing our point
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…Townshend’s ability to construct a lengthy conceptual narrative brought new possibilities to rock music.”
  • This is a Must Own Who Classic from 1969 that belongs in every right-thinking audiophile’s collection
  • It’s our pick for the band’s best sounding album. Roughly 150 other listings for the Best Recording by an Artist or Group can be found here

I know of no other Who album with such consistently good sound — song to song, not copy to copy, of course. Just about every song on here can sound wonderful on the right pressing. If you’re lucky enough to get a Hot Stamper copy, you’re going to be blown away by the Tubey Magical guitars, the rock-solid bottom end, the jumpin’-out-of-the-speakers presence and dynamics, and the silky vocals and top end.

Usually the best we can give you for The Who is “big and rockin,” but on Tommy, we can give you 60s analog magic that will all but disappear in the decades to follow.

Acoustic guitar reproduction is key to this recording, and on the better copies the harmonic coherency, the richness, the body and the phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard in every strum.

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Fleetwood Mac – The Pious Bird Of Good Omen

More of the Music of Fleetwood Mac

  • Seriously good sound throughout this original UK Blue Horizon pressing, with both sides earning Double Plus (A++) grades – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • The early pressings take the cake on this one, but try to find one in audiophile playing condition – it takes us many years to get one of these shootouts going
  • Both of these sides are remarkably big and rich, with correct tonality, punchy energy and wonderfully breathy vocals – this is the way early Fleetwood Mac is supposed to sound
  • One of the top Fleetwood Mac compilations – I have it on CD and have never tired of the music
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…makes for a terrific laid-back stroll through some of the best British blues music ever made.”

If you’re a fan of Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac — and who in his right mind wouldn’t be? — then you can’t go wrong with this record. “Need Your Love So Bad,” “Albratross” and “Black Magic Woman” are all featured here.

Speaking of “Black Magic Woman,” the better copies of Pious Bird reproduce the bass-heavy drumming on that track much better than the Greatest Hits album we also recommend. It’s very unlikely that you can find better sound for that classic than right here on this very copy.

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Led Zeppelin / Self-Titled

More Led Zeppelin

  • A truly excellent import of Zep’s amazing debut with outstanding sound from first note to last
  • Arguably the biggest, clearest and most Tubey Magical Zeppelin album ever recorded, thanks to the engineering genius of Glyn Johns (and production genius of Jimmy Page, who paid for the whole thing out of his own pocket)
  • Just look at the track list – the lucky owner of this LP will be hearing those songs come to life like never before
  • The band’s first album is a permanent member of our Top 100 and a Big Speaker Demo Disc like you will not believe
  • 5 stars: “Taking the heavy, distorted electric blues of Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Cream to an extreme… But the key to the group’s attack was subtlety: it wasn’t just an onslaught of guitar noise, it was shaded and textured, filled with alternating dynamics and tempos.”

For the real Led Zep magic, you just can’t do much better than their debut — and here’s a copy that really shows you why. From the opening chords of “Good Times Bad Times” to the wild ending of “How Many More Times” (“times” start the album and end it, too, it seems) this copy will have you rockin’ out!

Both sides have the BIG ZEP SOUND. Right from the start we noticed how clean the cymbals sounded and how well-defined the bass was, after hearing way too many copies with smeared cymbals and blubbery bass.

When you have a tight, punchy copy like this one, “Good Times Bad Times” does what it is supposed to do — it really rock! With this much life, it’s lightyears ahead of the typically dull, dead, boring copy. The drum sound is perfection.

Drop the needle on “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” to hear how amazing Robert Plant’s voice sounds. It’s breathy and full-bodied with in-the-room presence. The overall sound is warm, rich, sweet, and very analog, with tons of energy. “Dazed and Confused” sounds just right — you’re gonna flip out over all the ambience!

“Communication Breakdown” sounds superb — the sound of Jimmy Page’s guitar during the solo is shockingly good.

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The Beatles – Abbey Road

More of the Music of The Beatles

  • This vintage UK copy of The Beatles’ last and arguably greatest album boasts two seriously good sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Quiet vinyl is rarely in the cards for Abbey Road, but here it is, and on a great sounding copy too
  • The stereo to play The Beatles magnum opus didn’t exist when the record was made, but it does now
  • If you’ve heard the disastrous new Half-Speed mastered remix LP, or the remastered Heavy Vinyl from a few years back, then you surely know that nothing comes close to a real, vintage, analog Abbey Road
  • This pressing might just give you a new appreciation for one of the Greatest Rock Albums of All Time
  • 5 stars, a permanent member of the Top 100, and a true rock and pop Demo Disc
  • 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.

Abbey Road Magic

Those of you who follow the site (or do your own shootouts) know that it’s much tougher to find great copies of Abbey Road than it is for MMT or Please Please Me. Most of the copies we’ve played just aren’t good enough to put on the site. For whatever reasons — probably because this recording is so complicated and required so many tracks — Abbey Road is one of the tougher nuts to crack in the Beatles’ catalog.

We’re wild about this album, and here’s a copy that will show you exactly why. Both sides are big, rich, sweet and present with lots of energy, wonderfully breathy vocals, and huge dynamic guitars. You don’t hear too many copies with a massive bottom end like this bad boy. A copy with this kind of transparency really allows you to hear INTO the soundfield and appreciate every last detail — quite a privilege for the lucky person who takes this one home.

This is the final statement from The Beatles. To take away the power of their magnum opus by playing it through inadequate equipment makes a mockery of the monumental effort that went into it. Remember, the original title for the album was Everest. That should tell you something about the size and scope of the music and sound that the Beatles had in mind.

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Creedence Clearwater Revival – Green River

More Creedence Clearwater Revival

  • Amazing sound throughout this early Fantasy pressing of CCR’s Roots Rock classic, with both sides earning INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Plus (A+++) grades
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this incredible copy in our notes: “big and tubey and 3D”…”jumping out of the speakers”…”huge and rich and open”…”great energy and weight”…”crazy bass and snare”…”massive and tubey”
  • An essential Must Own for every Classic Rock collection, this LP includes some of the band’s biggest hits: “Green River” and “Bad Moon Rising,” “Lodi,” “Wrote a Song for Everyone,” and plenty more
  • Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs, but once you hear how incredible sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting stitches and just be swept away by the music
  • 5 stars: “If anything, CCR’s third album Green River represents the full flower of their classic sound initially essayed on its predecessor, Bayou Country. One of the differences between the two albums is that Green River is tighter, with none of the five-minute-plus jams that filled out both their debut and Bayou Country, but the true key to its success is a peak in John Fogerty’s creativity.”

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Jethro Tull – Stand Up

More Jethro Tull

More British Blues Rock

  • A Stand Up like you’ve never heard, with solid Double Plus (A++) grades throughout this vintage UK import – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • This is a true Tull Classic – my favorite by the band – and a very tough record to come by with this kind of sound and surfaces that play this well
  • Both of these sides give you richness, Tubey Magic, clarity and resolution few copies can touch, including most Pink Label Island pressings, especially the early ones
  • “Stand Up! has great textural interest, due, in part, to a more sophisticated recording technique, in part to the organ, mandolin, balalaika, etc., which Anderson plays to enrich each song. The band is able to work with different musical styles, but without a trace of the facile, glib manipulation which strains for attention.”

Need a refresher course in Tubey Magic after playing too many modern recordings or remasterings? These UK pressings are overflowing with it. Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience, dead-on correct tonality — everything that we listen for in a great record is here. We must give thanks to the brilliant engineer Andy Johns.

This record is the very definition of Tubey Magic. No recordings will ever be made that sound like this again, and no CD will ever capture what is in the grooves of this record. There is of course a CD of this album, quite a few of them I would guess, but those of us with a good turntable could care less.

Tubey Magical acoustic guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this recording. Simply phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum, along with richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern recordings (and especially from modern remasterings).

If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all-analog recordings are known for — this sound.

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Led Zeppelin / Led Zeppelin II

More of the Music of Led Zeppelin

  • An incredible copy of Zep II with killer sound from start to finish – this one is guaranteed to rock your world like no other!
  • The sound is freakishly good – we created a Top Ten list just to put this album on it
  • Years ago we gave up on everything but these killer RL (and SS) pressings, because nothing else can hold a candle to them
  • With copies selling for $1000+ on ebay, sometimes $3000+, we’re forced to pay big bucks for Zep II these days, but if any album is worth it — to us and our customers — it’s this one
  • A Must Own Zep classic from 1969 that belongs in every right-thinking audiophile’s collection
  • It’s our pick for the band’s best sounding album. Roughly 150 other listings for the Best by an Artist or Group can be found here.

At least 80% of the copies we buy these days — for many, many hundreds of dollars each I might add, more than a grand on occasion — go right back to the seller. The biggest problem we run into besides obvious scratches that play and worn out grooves is easy to spot: just play the song “Thank You” at the end of side one. Most of the time there is inner groove damage so bad that the track becomes virtually unlistenable.

It’s become a common dealbreaker for the records we buy on the internet. We get them in, we play that track, we hear it distort and we pack the record up and send it back to the seller.

UPDATE 2023

This was true ten years ago, but we have since found better sources for our copies. The sellers we tend to buy from know not to send us groove-damaged, scratched copies. Something closer to 20% get returned now.

But this copy plays clean all the way to the end on both sides — assuming you have a highly-tweaked, high-performance front end of course.

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The Doors / The Soft Parade

More of the Music of The Doors

Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of The Doors

  • A Soft Parade like you’ve never heard, with seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER on both sides of this vintage Elektra pressing (only the second copy to hit the site in fifteen months)
  • Side one was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • If this price seems high, keep in mind that the top copy from our most recent shootout went for $1500
  • The sound is rich and lively, with solid brass and punchy drums – thanks, Bruce Botnick, where would The Doors be without you?
  • Full of great songs: “Touch Me,” “Runnin’ Blue,” “Wild Child,” “Wishful Sinful” and the amazingly trippy “Soft Parade” extended suite
  • “Much like a true ‘parade’ of an English fugue, the song morphs from Morrison’s a capella sermon-like intro to a Baroque ballad to a show tune-like section to the long rock outro, the music masterfully following the flowing, stream of consciousness lyric.” Hell yeah!
  • We’ve written extensively about The Soft Parade, and you can find quite a number of letters and commentaries for the album on this blog.
  • It’s my favorite by the group and one that was instrumental in helping me progress in this exasperating hobby we have chosen for ourselves.
  • As is sometimes the case, there is one and only one set of stampers that consistently wins our shootouts for The Soft Parade.  Click on this link to see other titles with one set of stamper numbers that always come out on top

This Doors pressing (either on the Elektra Gold or Big Red E Label, nothing else would qualify as a Hot Stamper) has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records rarely reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back.

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Neil Young – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

More Neil Young

One of Our Favorite Titles from 1969


  • Stunning sound throughout this vintage pressing of Neil’s second studio album, with both sides earning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • When we say “just shy of our Shootout Winner,” we want to make clear than practically no one playing this Hot Stamper pressing would ever think it could possibly get any better than this very record — it’s simply a phenomenally well-recorded album
  • The best tracks have that live-in-the-studio quality Neil is famous for (of which Zuma is the best example), with minimal processing and maximum energy
  • Includes some of Neil Young’s most beloved classics: “Cinnamon Girl,” “Cowgirl in the Sand,” and “Down by the River” just to name three
  • 5 stars: “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere was breathtakingly different when it appeared in May 1969, both for Young and for rock in general, and it reversed his commercial fortunes….”

Although not quite in the league with the best of the best — the likes of Gold Rush, Harvest, or Zuma, all titles we have a devil of a time keeping in stock — the best sounding tracks here are a rough guide for to what was to come as Neil and his producer, David Briggs, got better and better until they were As Good As It Gets by the time they got around to After the Gold Rush in 1970 (for which they seem to get no credit, outside of Better Records’ raves for the album of course).

We absolutely love the Live-in-the-Studio quality that only the best pressings of this album can give, with minimal processing and maximum energy. Man, with a good copy played back on a big pair of speakers this album can ROCK like nobody’s business. Nine minutes of “Down by the River”? A ten minute long version of “Cowgirl in the Sand”? “Cinnamon Girl”? We are so there!

This kind of musical, natural sound is not easy to come by. If you own any copy of the album you know what we mean. (more…)

Harry Nilsson – Harry

More Harry Nilsson

More Rock and Pop

  • A vintage pressing of Nilsson’s wonderful 1969 LP with excellent Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides
  • You’ll have a hard time finding a copy that sounds remotely as good as this one – it’s clean, clear, and present with boatloads of Tubey Magic
  • Full-bodied and rich, with plenty of space around the various instruments, this is the sound vintage analog can give you, and only vintage analog
  • 4 stars: “…Harry is where Harry Nilsson began to become Nilsson, an immensely gifted singer/songwriter/musician with a warped sense of humor that tended to slightly overwhelm his skills, at least to those who aren’t quite operating on the same level.”
  • This is a Must Own album from 1969. The next time you see it on the site, grab it, because it is rarely up there. Until then, buy the DCC CD. It’s excellent.

This forgotten gem sank like a stone in 1969, but time has treated this album well. It holds up to this very day. The production is superb throughout. Judging by this early album and the one before it, it appears he was already a pro in the studio, as well as an accomplished songwriter, and, most importantly, the owner of one of the sweetest tenors in popular music, then or now.

Harry checks off a number of important boxes for us:

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