1974

Herrmann – Citizen Kane (The Classic Film Scores of Bernard Herrmann)

More of the Music of Bernard Herrman 

  • An original RCA Red Seal pressing with solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER on both of these TAS-approved sides
  • On this outstanding copy you will hear deep bass notes; incredible dynamics from every area of the stage; masses of strings playing at the top of their registers with abandon; huge drums; powerful brass effects, and more
  • Every sound an orchestra can produce is found on this record, and then some – it’s the very definition of Demo Disc sound
  • These wonderful works, undoubtedly some of the greatest Bernard Herrmann composed, should be part of any serious orchestral collection
  • 5 stars: “… the best of the entire series by conductor Charles Gerhardt and the National Philharmonic Orchestra… every track is worthwhile and memorably played.”
  • If you’re a Bernard Herrmann fan, and what audiophile wouldn’t be?, this title from 1974 is clearly one of his best

The ‘Citizen Kane’ Suite on this album is to die for — big, bold, dynamic sound like few records you own. It’s a real Desert Island Disc for me. (The CD, by the way, is actually quite good. I have it in the car and play it often.)

The Concerto Macabre for Piano and Orchestra (from “Hangover Square”) is superbly well-recorded and a brilliant piece of music as well.

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Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – So Far

More Crosby / More Stills / More Nash / More Young

  • Boasting INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades on both sides, this copy is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other So Far you’ve heard
  • The two tracks exclusive to this album, “Ohio” and “Find the Cost of Freedom,” are amazingly well recorded – both have Demo Disc quality sound on this amazing side one
  • Huge, rich and energetic, this pressing brings the gorgeous harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young to life like nothing you have ever heard
  • We don’t imagine we’ll be tracking down too many copies that sound this good so if you’re a fan, scoop this one up!
  • If you’ve made the mistake of buying any Heavy Vinyl pressing containing any of these songs, this record will show you just exactly what you’ve been missing
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • If I were to compile a list of my favorite rock and pop albums from 1974, this album would definitely be on it
  • Not many compilation albums offer top quality sound, but this one does, and these are some others

When you get hold of a pressing as good as this one, the sound is so correct it makes a mockery of the phony EQ and just plain bad mastering and pressing of the Heavy Vinyl and Half-Speed mastered versions.

The MoFi and the Classic 200g LP of Deja Vu are both clearly wrong in important ways. This record will make it clear exactly what’s wrong with them, assuming you have the critical listening skills to recognize the differences. If you are on this site, chances are very good you do.

Once you hear this Hot Stamper pressing, you will never be able to enjoy those audiophile pressings again, of that we are quite confident. (more…)

Bob Dylan & The Band – Before The Flood

More of the Music of Bob Dylan

  • With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on all FOUR sides, these vintage UK Island pressings could not be beat
  • Dylan and The Band team up for exuberant versions of many classics from each of their repertoires – a copy like this lets you appreciate just how wonderful the performances are
  • “Dylan reworks, rearranges, reinterprets these songs in ways that are still disarming, years after its initial release… “
  • “Without qualification, this is the craziest and strongest rock and roll ever recorded. All analogous live albums fall flat.”
  • There are some bad marks (as is sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs) on “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” but once you hear just how killer sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and just be swept away by the music

One of the great Live Classic Rock albums of all time in stunning Hot Stamper form!

The version of “Ballad Of A Thin Man” that closes out side one is simply monstrous. Live rock and roll just don’t get much better than that, my friends!

We played a ton of these and found that many copies were too boring to earn our Hot Stamper grade. Some lacked energy, even more never opened up, and most of them were too thin-sounding. We had to play a huge stack of copies to come up with a few good ones, and on a double album like this, that’s a ton of work.

Finding, cleaning and critically evaluating a dozen-plus copies is a lot of work on a single album, so you can imagine how time-consuming it is when we have to double those efforts just for one album.

These ’70s LPs have the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern pressings barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing any sign of coming back.

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Average White Band / Self-Titled

More Soul, Blues and R&B

  • This vintage Atlantic pressing of this classic White Soul album boasts seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Big, rich, and open (particularly on side two) – we guarantee you have never heard this album sound even remotely as good as this copy does
  • “Pick Up The Pieces” is rockin’ like it should, finally, but really, there’s not a weak track on the album
  • 4 1/2 stars: “AWB embraced soul and funk with so much conviction that it was clear this was anything but an ‘average’ white band.”

We’ve been playing this record for years, but until finding a very Hot copy back in 2007 we had no idea what a sonic monster it could be. We didn’t have enough clean copies around to do a full shootout at that time for a very good reason — we’d never heard this record sound particularly good before. The typical copy tends to be smeary, with sour horns and not very much energy.

The overall sound on both of these sides is lively and energetic with superb transparency. The bass is deep, rich, and tight — just what this funky music demands. The brass sounds wonderful — it has just the right amount of bite and you can really hear the air moving through the horns.  It’s smooth, sweet, airy, open, spacious and alive.

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Jackson Browne / Late for the Sky – Lovin’ that Rich, Smooth Asylum Sound

More of the Music of Jackson Browne

  • With solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from start to finish, this copy is guarantee to blow the doors off any other Late for the Sky you’ve heard
  • This one was bigger and bolder, with more Tubey Magical richness on Jackson’s voice, than most of what we played
  • We love the rich, smooth, natural sound that Asylum was known for, and this copy has a healthy dose of each of those qualities
  • It’s getting harder and harder to find these in good condition these days – the man has a lot of fans, and they prefer to hear him on vinyl
  • 5 stars from AMG, and Rolling Stone calls it the “quintessential Browne album,” saying the “… open-ended poetry achieves power from the nearly religious intensity that accumulates around the central motifs; its fervor is underscored by the sparest and hardest production to be found on any Browne album yet… as well as by his impassioned, oracular singing style.”
  • If you’re a fan of the man, this title from 1974 is clearly one of his best, and one of his best sounding. (more…)

Rick Wakeman – Journey to the Center of the Earth

More Proggy Rock

  • Rick’s sophomore release debuts on the site with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides of this original British A&M import pressing
  • The sonics here are big, full, and rich with an abundance of energy, beautifully showcasing the diverse contributions of Wakeman’s synthesizers
  • Forget the dubby domestic pressings (or whatever crappy new reissue is around) – this the only way to hear the master tapes’ huge, lively and Tubey Magical qualities
  • Marks and problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • 4 stars: “Journey to the Centre of the Earth is one of progressive rock’s crowning achievements.”

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America – Holiday

More of the Music of America

  • The band’s fourth studio album appears on the site for only the second time ever, here with INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them from top to bottom
  • Big, spacious and present, with boatloads of the Tubey Magical richness these recordings need in order to work
  • Produced by George Martin and engineered by Geoff Emerick, it’s the recording debut of America’s longtime drummer, Willie Leacox
  • “With ‘Tin Man”s wonderfully polished soft pop ease and the wispiness of ‘Lonely People,’ the band was able to recapture the same formula that put early hits like ‘A Horse with No Name,’ ‘I Need You,’ and ‘Ventura Highway’ in the Top Ten …this album as a whole ascertained that the group was definitely showing their true potential once more.”

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Chet Baker – She Was Too Good To Me

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Trumpet

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them on both sides of this vintage CTI pressing
  • This is the kind of spacious, low-distortion, dynamic and energetic sound Rudy Van Gelder was getting in the early 70s (particularly on this side one) – if you think he was better in the 60s, you need to play some of these recordings from the 70s that show off just how good his work could be
  • “Baker began his comeback after five years of musical inactivity with this excellent CTI date. Highlights include ‘Autumn Leaves,’ ‘Tangerine,’ and ‘With a Song in My Heart.’ Altoist Paul Desmond is a major asset on two songs and the occasional strings give variety to this fine session.”

We guarantee you have never heard this album — or any later Chet Baker album — sound as good as this one does.

There’s so much life in these grooves. The sound jumps out of the speakers right into your lap. This kind of warm, rich, Tubey Magical analog sound is gone forever. You have to go back to 1974 to find it!

The early 70s were a good time for Van Gelder, the engineer for these sessions. Grover Washington Jr.’s All the King’s Horses from 1973 is an amazing Demo Disc for large group. We could easily name-check a dozen others on CTI recorded by RVG that we’ve done shootouts for.

But any album only sounds good on the copies that it sounds good on, on the pressings that were mastered, pressed and cleaned right, a fact that seems to have eluded most jazz vinyl aficionados interested in good sound but axiomatic (if not tautological) here at Better Records.

The extended song structures, ranging from four to seven minutes in length, leave plenty of room for the band to stretch out.

And of course Chet sings the title track beautifully.

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Bob Dylan – Planet Waves

More of the Music of Bob Dylan

  • You’ll find INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides of this vintage Asylum pressing
  • With wonderfully rich, natural tonality, these early pressings are by far the best way to hear the album sound the way it should
  • Lots of great material on this one, not sure why it doesn’t get more respect: “On A Night Like This,” “Going Going Gone,” “Forever Young,” “You Angel You”… these are seriously good, very well-recorded songs
  • “Reteaming with the Band, Bob Dylan winds up with an album that recalls New Morning more than The Basement Tapes, since Planet Waves is given to a relaxed intimate tone…”
  • If you’re a Dylan fan, this 1974 release surely deserves a chance to find a home in your collection

This is an excellent recording, boasting not only great Bob Dylan sound, but some of the best sound for The Band that you’ll ever hear. That’s right, Dylan is backed by Messrs. Robertson, Danko, Helm, Manuel and Hudson on this album, and I don’t know when we’ve ever heard such audiophile quality sound from that crew. It’s a real treat to hear their signature styles without the cardboard-y, compressed quality we usually find on their albums.

This is not one of Dylan’s best-known or most-loved albums, but it’s definitely a good one. You can certainly tell that these are very emotional songs for him, and it really shows in the performances.

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Joni Mitchell – Miles of Aisles

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

  • This Joni Mitchell classic (the first copy to hit the site in close to five years) boasts INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on all FOUR sides of these vintage Asylum pressings – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Henry Lewy brings the analog richness, smoothness and clarity he achieved on Court and Spark to the recording – it’s some of the best live sound we’ve ever heard
  • Joni reworks some of her best-loved songs for this concert, with five tracks from Blue alone(!), and the new arrangements show us just how vital her early 70s work has turned out to be
  • There is only one pressings plant that produces shootout winning copies, and the lucky buyer of this copy will find out what it is when he opens his box of Hot Stampers
  • “It’s a strong album of her best songs performed mostly informally… Much of the material here is beautiful, replete with the patented Mitchell tension. And a word for engineer Henry Lewy—the sound is terrific, the best reproduced concert album I’ve heard.” – Rolling Stone
  • If like us you’re a big Joni Mitchell fan, then this killer live album from 1974 belongs in your collection.
  • The complete list of titles from 1974 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here.

We recently had a chance to do another shootout for this album, and when you find a great copy the sound is out of this world. Not many live albums have this kind of “you are there” immediacy. Turn down the lights, crank up the volume, and you’ll be right there in the crowd as Joni and the LA Express (Tom Scott, Robben Ford, and the crew) knock out jazzy versions of some of her best material.

The brass sounds great — you can really hear the breath moving through the horns, with the all-important bite that really brings their various characters to life.

I’d be remiss not to mention the amazing bottom end on this copy. The best sides have big, note-like bass that sets an unusually strong foundation for these great songs. You don’t usually get much bass on Joni’s studio albums, so WHOMP-aholics like myself will find a copy like this to be quite a treat.

Just check out the songs on here: “You Turn Me On I’m A Radio,” “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire,” “Circle Game,” “People’s Parties,” “All I Want,” “Woodstock,” “The Last Time I Saw Richard,” and on and on. Those are many of our very favorite Joni songs, and the versions on this album do not disappoint.

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