1976-best

These are the albums with some of the best sound and best music that were released in 1976.

Bob Seger / Night Moves – His 1976 Masterpiece

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Hot Stamper Rock Masterpieces Available Now

  • A KILLER vintage pressing with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound throughout for Bob Seger’s breakthrough album (the 8th time’s the charm)
  • A big step up over every other copy we heard – richer, fuller, more dynamic, more lively and just plain more fun
  • Knock the album if you like, but there’s no denying it’s one of Seger’s best and certainly a ’70s classic – every song’s a hit, and deservedly so
  • 5 stars: “One of the universally acknowledged high points of late-’70s rock & roll. And, because of his passion and craft, it remains a thoroughly terrific record years later.”
  • If you’re a Seger fan, or perhaps a fan of mid-’70s Classic Rock, this title from 1976 is surely a Must Own.
  • The complete list of titles from 1976 that we’ve reviewed to date can be found here

Vintage covers for this album are hard to find in clean shape. Most of them will have at least some amount of ringwear, seam wear and edge wear. We guarantee that the cover we supply with this Hot Stamper is at least VG, and it will probably be VG+. If you are picky about your covers please let us know in advance so that we can be sure we have a nice cover for you.

It’s not easy to find killer pressings of this album — it took us plenty of fruitless shootouts before we figured anything out. Most copies out there are thin and dry, which is no way to hear these classic ’70s tracks. We brought in copy after copy that made us think, “I swear this sounds better on the radio!”

Finally, after pulling together a ton of copies from different eras, we started to realize that there were indeed vinyl pressings of Night Moves that sounded right… but they are few and far between, the exception and not the rule so to speak. This copy is one of the better ones we played in our most recent shootout, no question about it.

Knock this album if you like, but there’s no denying it’s one of Seger’s best and certainly a ’70s classic. It may not have the audiophile appeal of Tea For The Tillerman, but it’s a blast when it sounds this good.

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Bach – The Musical Offering / Münchinger

More of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

  • A superb Decca stereo pressing with Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides
  • This recording is from 1976, more than a decade later than the one we recently offered on London from this conductor — the sound holds up though
  • Engineered by the brilliant James Lock at Schloss Ludwigsburg palace in Germany, you can feel the cool air of the recording venue
  • Karl Münchinger understands this music and makes it come alive – the Decca engineers are of course a big help too

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Crack The Sky – Animal Notes

More Recordings Engineered by Shelly Yakus

Other Well Recorded Albums that Should Be More Popular with Audiophiles

Both sides are big and rich in the same way that all the best Classic Rock albums from the ’70s are. It has plenty of rock ENERGY; here the sound jumps out of the speakers like practically no other copy we heard.

At the levels it was playing at it was nothing less than a thrill to hear the album I’d known for so long sound so much better than I remember it from back in the day. (Stereo has come a long way since 1976, that’s for damn sure.)

To my mind, speaking as both a fan and an audiophile, both the first two Crack the Sky albums succeed brilliantly on every level: production, originality, songwriting, technical virtuosity, musical consistency and, perhaps most importantly for those of you who have managed to make it this far, Top Quality Audiophile Sound.

This is simply a great album of adventurous, highly melodic Proggy Arty rock. If you like the well known bands that made the classic albums cited below there’s a very good chance you will like this much less well known band’s second album also. Especially if you have the taste for something different — I know of no other album quite like it. It may have been strongly influenced by many of the ’70s Classics of both Prog and Art Rock, but it is stylistically unique.

This is Big Production rock that pulls out all the stops and then some, with a massive Beatlesque string section, horns, synths, backward guitars and every other kind of studio effect that they could work out.

Much like Ambrosia’s debut (another poorly understood band on a small label), such an ambitious project was clearly an effort to make a grand musical statement along the lines of Tumbleweed Connection, Sgt. Pepper, Crime of the Century, Close to the Edge, The Original Soundtrack or Dark Side of the Moon — all albums I suspect this band played countless times in hopes of recreating some of that magic themselves once in the studio. I am of the opinion that they succeeded marvelously.

In the 70s I was a huge fan of those albums too. (Still am of course; check out our Top 100 if you don’t believe me. They’re all in there.) I played them more times than I can remember, with Crack The Sky’s albums spending plenty of time — in heavy rotation you could say — on the turntable in those days.

Fun tip: Listen for the Elton-John-like piano chords on the first track. Can you name that song? (Hint: it’s on Tumbleweed Connection.)

Crack the Sky

I freely admit this band is not for everybody. AMG is correct that the album is not exactly sweetness and light. Of course Dark Side of the Moon isn’t exactly a treatise on positive thinking either. It seems to have held up rather well.

If after listening to the album you feel Crack the Sky is not to your liking, feel free to send it back for a full refund. We want you to be happy with every Hot Stamper purchase you make. Every one is guaranteed to satisfy or we will gladly take it back, no questions asked.

Want to find your own killer copy?

Consider taking our moderately helpful advice for how to find your own shootout winners.

Shootouts for this album should be carried out:

How else can you hear this record to sound the way it should?

Based on what were the winners of our most recent shootout, Animal Notes should sound its best:

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Duke Ellington – The Ellington Suites

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More Big Band Jazz

  • The Ellington Suites finally returns to the site with Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or very close to it throughout
  • Lively, dynamic, transparent, spacious and musical throughout – you won’t believe how good this Jazz Classic from 1976 sounds
  • We guarantee there is dramatically more richness, fullness and presence on this copy than anything you have ever heard, and that’s especially true if you made the mistake of buying whatever godawful Heavy Vinyl pressing is currently on the market
  • “Ellington devoted special attention to The Queen’s Suite, which in the end hewed closely to his original sketch. Its six episodes were inspired by natural phenomena encountered in his travels. . .”

I know of no other Pablo record with sound so rich, full, and warm. This one destroyed a big stack of copies we’d been collecting for years in order to do this shootout. Unless you have a good-sized batch, ten or more, you will have a tough time finding one with sound anywhere near this amazing.

The Queen’s Suite, which takes up side one, was recorded in 1959 and sounds amazing. As you can imagine, this has one of the best Ellington bands ever assembled, with players like Clark Terry, Paul Gonzalves, Harry Carney, Johnny Hodges… the list of jazz giants goes on and on. If you enjoy the classic albums by Mingus on Atlantic, you’re gonna love this work. The sound is excellent as well, spacious and transparent with tight bass and an extended top end.

Side two has material performed by Ellington in the early ’70s, which though not as good musically, is still very enjoyable. On this copy, it sounds amazing, with incredible transparency and immediacy. The overall sound is airy and open with lots of breathy texture to the horns and woodwinds.

1976 Grammy Award Winner for Best Jazz Performance by a Big Band! (more…)

AC/DC – Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

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Reviews and Commentaries for the Music of AC/DC

  • You’ll find KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides of this stunning copy of the band’s 1976 release
  • We learned something in this shootout about the Australian pressings that surprised us and may be of interest to you
  • These sides have plenty going on down low, real meat on the bones, all the life and energy you could ask for – pretty much everything that the average copy was lacking
  • 5 stars: “… it captured the seething malevolence of Bon Scott, the sense that he reveled in doing bad things, encouraged by the maniacal riffs of Angus and Malcolm Young who provided him with their most brutish rock & roll yet.”

Here’s what we wrote about the last Australian pressing we had on the site:

“This is a SUPER RARE Minty looking EMI Australian Import LP. We dropped the needle on this one and heard EXACTLY what we were looking for: loud grungy guitars; tight, punchy bass; and vocals so front and center the boys are practically in the room with you. There is NO QUESTION this bad boy is made from the original master tape. You can be sure the domestic pressings aren’t. The heavy vinyl pressing is no doubt made from a dub since almost everything made these days is.”

Well, folks, it’s not exactly a We Was Wrong situation, but we didn’t realize that master tape or not, the best domestic pressings rock harder and just plain sound better than the best Australian copies. The typical domestic copy sucks, but when you get hold of a seriously Hot one they are KILLER.

The better Aussie pressings give you incredible Master Tape clarity, but I’m more interested in hearing a copy that rocks my socks off with the kind of ballsy power you know these guys project when they play live. I can’t tell you if it’s a case of having better mastering equipment or better mastering engineers here in the States — we can’t know that stuff, we can only guess at it — but I can tell you with certainly that this blows the doors off most other pressings.

If you love this band as much as we do here at Better Records — Back in Black being a Top 100 Title — and have the kind of system a record like this demands, we ask only one small favor: please give your neighbors a heads up so they can be prepared for the sonic assault that is to come. And one more thing: For those about to rock, we salute you. (more…)

Tom Petty – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

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  • You’ll find outstanding Double Plus (A++) sound from first note to last on this superb copy of the Tom and the band’s debut album – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • The sound is present and punchy with excellent bass, freedom from grain and real rockin’ energy
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Petty & the Heartbreakers feel underground on this album, at least to the extent that power pop was underground in 1976… the highlights — ‘Rockin’ Around (With You),’ ‘Hometown Blues,’ ‘The Wild One, Forever,’ the AOR staples ‘Breakdown’ and ‘American Girl’ — still illustrate how refreshing Petty & the Heartbreakers sounded in 1976.”

This is the classic first album, with two of their best songs: Breakdown and American Girl. It’s straight ahead rock and roll, with sonics to match. This is not purely an audiophile album. But when you find a copy with Hot Stampers, the elements start to work together, and the good far outweighs the bad. If somebody tried to EQ this album differently, they’d probably end up taking away some of the Raw Rock Energy. (more…)

Tchaikovsky / Symphony No. 1 ’Winter Dreams’ – Muti – Reviewed in 2009

EMI Postage Stamp pressing with EXCELLENT SOUND and a remarkably energetic and nuanced performance.

This is the first recording of this symphony that I’ve ever liked. Muti gets it!

And the sound is actually quite good for EMI in this period, 1976.

Stuart Eltham is the recording engineer and he is to be commended for getting some real dynamics and power into the grooves of this record.

Herrmann – Conducts Psycho and Other Film Scores

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Bernard Herrmann Records We’ve Reviewed

More Recordings on the London Phase IV Label

  • An incredible sounding copy of this London Phase 4 title with both sides earning Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades
  • Especially noteworthy is the ’Psycho Narrative For Orchestra’, at 14 minutes the longest piece here – written purely for string orchestra, the string tone is Right On The Money, with biting violins and cellos that growl like the real thing
  • This London recording is yet another brilliant showcase for one of the great orchestral colorists, Bernard Herrmann
  • The London Phase IV recording approach allows powerful orchestral works such as these to explode right out of your speakers and into your listening room
  • Features works from Citizen Kane, Snows of Kilimanjaro, North by Northwest, Mysterious Island, Vertigo, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, The Three World of Gulliver, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, The Devil and Daniel Webster, and Psycho

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Bob Marley & The Wailers – Rastaman Vibration

  • Strong Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides, excellent from start to finish
  • Big and rich, with the kind of full-bodied sound that this music needs to work its magic
  • Big bass is of course key to the best copies – this one has the deep punchy bass we love on Marley’s music
  • 4 Stars in Allmusic and Marley’s first Top Ten Album

When a record like this sounds right it’s not hard to what “right” is — the music just works. Up against the other copies we had on hand this one was pretty much doing it all.

What are the criteria by which the album should be judged? Pretty much the ones we discuss in most of our Hot Stamper listings: energy, presence, frequency extension, transparency, Tubey Magic, texture (also known as freedom from smear), rhythmic drive, tonal correctness, fullness, richness, and on and on down through the list. (more…)

James Taylor – Greatest Hits, Now with Aphex Aural Excitement!

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More Personal Favorites

  • JT’s superb Greatest Hits collection finally returns to the site with solid Double Plus (A++) sound on both sides  
  • Outstanding size and weight with rich, clear sound and good space up top, thanks to Lee Herschberg’s engineering skills
  • Three tracks are unique to this pressing, and those three make it a Must Own for JT fans
  • 4 1/2 stars: “… examples of Taylor’s undeniable warmth and facility for folk/country-tinged pop… a good sampler of Taylor’s more popular early work.”

From the opening acoustic guitar notes, you can tell this Hot Stamper pressing is a lovely sounding record. Believe me, it took us a long time to find a pressing this good – most copies of this record sound like CARDBOARD. (more…)