1977-best

The Doobie Brothers – Livin’ On The Fault Line

More of The Doobie Brothers

More Recordings Engineered by Donn Landee

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  • With INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it on both sides, this copy one of the BEST we have ever heard – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • The best songs here can hold their own with anything from Minute by Minute and Takin’ It to the Streets
  • A sophisticated, soulful pop album from the Michael McDonald era with far too many great songs to list
  • 4 stars: “Some of the most challenging and well-developed music of the band’s career.”
  • These are the stampers that always win our shootouts, and when you hear them you will know why – the sound is big, rich and clear like no other
  • We’ve discovered a number of titles in which one stamper always wins, and here are some others

If you’re a fan of this brand of sophisticated, soulful pop music, this is as good an album as any from the Michael McDonald era. We think the best songs here can hold their own with anything from Minute by Minute and Takin’ It to the Streets. And with Hot Stamper sound, now you can actually enjoy the album as an audiophile quality recording

Who in his right mind thought this record could sound this good? Not us! We’ve been buying copies with different stampers for years with virtually nothing to show for it. That’s why you haven’t seen a Hot Stamper hit the site for so long until now.

That shrunken, flat, two-dimensional, lifeless, compressed, murky, dark sound you’re so used to hearing on Doobie Brothers albums may be the rule, but this pressing is the exception. The average copy of this record is such a letdown, it’s hard to imagine that too many audiophiles would have taken it seriously over the years. They should — the band cooks on practically every track, with strong songwriting that holds up to this day.

Why go to all the trouble to find great sounding copies? Because this is a good album! Side one is strong from start to finish, and side two has its own share of top quality material and musicianship. If you don’t know the album, this is your chance to rectify that oversight.

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Fleetwood Mac – Rumours (Import)

More Fleetwood Mac

Reviews and Commentaries for Rumours

  • Here is a British import pressing of Fleetwood Mac’s magnum opus with seriously good Double Plus (A++) grades throughout
  • Tubey Magical analog – the sound is open, spacious and transparent, with a huge three-dimensional soundfield
  • A Better Records Top 100 title – when you hear it sound as good as it does here, you’ll know why we’ve long considered Rumours an Audiophile Demo Disc
  • If you own the album on two 45 RPM discs (you know the one), allow us to send you a copy that will beat the pants off that modern mediocrity – this one
  • 5 stars: “Each tune, each phrase regains its raw, immediate emotional power—which is why Rumours touched a nerve upon its 1977 release, and has since transcended its era to be one of the greatest, most compelling pop albums of all time.”
  • A list of Must Own rock from 1977 would have to have this album on it, somethere near the top I would think

When you hear a good copy of Rumours, it’s very easy to understand why this is one of the best-selling pop music albums of all time. Just about everyone knows how great these songs are, but I bet you didn’t know they could sound like this!

It’s tough finding Hot Stamper copies of this album. With over 75 sets of stamper numbers for each side, it’s an extremely taxing project, even for us. (more…)

Peter Gabriel – Self-Titled No. 1 (Car)

More Peter Gabriel

  • With two INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sides, this British pressing was giving us the sound we were looking for on Peter Gabriel’s solo debut album
  • Rich, smooth, sweet, full of ambience, dead-on correct tonality – everything that we listen for in a great record is here
  • Features his autobiographical lead single and radio staple to this day, “Solsbury Hill”
  • Clearly the hardest of the first five PG records to find with good sound and decent vinyl, which is why these seldom make the site
  • None of our top copies did not have condition issues or ticky vinyl – for this album it is best to assume the vinyl won’t be quiet; it helps to avoid some of the disappointment that inevitably comes
  • Speaking of which, there are some bad marks (as is sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs) on “Down the Dolce Vita,” but once you hear just how amazing sounding this copy is, you might be inclined, as we were, to stop counting ticks and pops and just be swept away by the music
  • 4 1/2 stars: “…much of the record teems with invigorating energy (as on ‘Slowburn,’ or the orchestral-disco pulse of ‘Down the Dolce Vita’), and the closer ‘Here Comes the Flood’ burns with an anthemic intensity that would later become his signature in the 80s.”

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Kenny Loggins – Celebrate Me Home

More Loggins and Messina

  • With a STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side two mated to an outstanding Double Plus (A++) side one, this vintage pressing is practically as good a copy as we have ever heard (and one of the few to ever hit the site)
  • Here are just a few of the things we had to say about this incredible Triple Plus side two in our notes: “breathy and transparent”…big and tubey”…”extended up top”….”so 3D and rich!”
  • Both sides here are rich, full and Tubey Magical with a massive bottom end and lots of space around the instruments
  • It’s also one of the only Loggins solo albums we’ve ever liked; it’s a favorite from back in the day
  • 4 stars: “Loggins is in good form throughout the record, and if even only the title track entered his readily-acknowledged canon, this has a fine, sustained mood: a soft late 70s vibe that makes it a nice artifact of its time, as well as one of his stronger records, as illustrated by its platinum status — something it achieved without any blockbuster singles.”

This killer copy shows you just how good this record can sound, which is surprisingly good, considering how many copies of the album are just plain awful. Finally, most of the grit, grain, and transitory opacity have fallen away, leaving in its place the rich, full-bodied and Tubey Magical ’70s sound one would expect.

As obvious as it may sound (especially to anyone on this site), the master tape is a whole lot better than the average copy of the record would have you believe. This copy is proof positive. Without a doubt this is one of the best pressings of the album we have ever heard.

The better copies take top honors for rhythmic energy and real frequency extension both high and low. Most copies have no real top end; if you own one give it a listen and we think you’ll agree with us.

Great bass, plenty of Tubey Magic, clarity and richness — practically no other copy in our shootout could do what this one was doing.

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The Three / Self-Titled (45 RPM)

More Jazz Recordings Featuring the Piano

  • Amazing sound throughout this Japanese import pressing, with both sides earning KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them
  • The transients are uncannily lifelike – listen for the powerful kinetic energy produced when Shelly whacks the hell out of his cymbals
  • My favorite piano trio jazz album of all time — every one of the tracks is brilliantly arranged and performed
  • 4 stars: “One of Joe Sample’s finest sessions as a leader” – with Shelly Manne and Ray Brown, we would say it’s clearly his finest session, as a leader or simply as the piano player in a killer trio
  • Some of the other records we’ve discovered with top jazz piano sound can be found here
  • More amazing sounding piano recordings, of every kind of music, can be found here

If you want to hear the full six tunes recorded by The Three at that famous Hollywood session (which ran all day and long into the night, 4 AM to be exact), our 33 RPM pressings are your best bet.

If you want absolutely amazing, mind-blowing, you-are-there sound, a Hot Stamper 45 is the only way to go.

The music is so good that I personally would not want to live without the complete album. The Three is, in fact, my favorite piano trio jazz album of all time. Very one of those six tracks is brilliantly arranged and performed (if you have the right takes of course; more about that later).

This album checks off a number of important boxes for us here at Better Records:

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James Taylor – JT

More of the Music of James Taylor

  • This outstanding copy of Taylor’s breakthrough album from 1977 boasts excellent sound on both sides
  • It’s a superb recording – a member of our Top 100, in fact – but it takes a pressing like this to show you just how BIG and LIVELY it can sound
  • The big hits “Your Smiling Face” and “Handy Man” both sound great here – thanks Val Garay!
  • This and Sweet Baby James are the man’s best recordings, and his best albums too, but he has so many great albums that it almost seems unfair to him to point that out
  • 4 stars: “JT was James Taylor’s best album since Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon because it acknowledged the darkness of his earlier work while explaining the deliberate lightness of his current viewpoint, and because it was his most consistent collection in years.”
  • If I were to compile a list of my favorite rock and pop albums from 1977, this album would definitely be on it

The good copies really rock on songs like Honey Don’t Leave L.A. or I Was Only Telling A Lie, yet have lovely, delicate vocals on ballads such as Another Grey Morning or There We Are (two of our favorite songs on the album).

Just turn up the volume and play the opening to Honey Don’t Leave L.A. — this is James Taylor and his super-tight studio band at the peak of their powers. Russ Kunkel hits the drum twice, then clicks his sticks together so quickly you can hardly notice it, then goes back to the drums for the rest of the intro.

On the best copies, the subtleties of his performance are clearly on display. Until the right copies came along, we had never even noticed that stick trick. Now it’s the high point of the whole intro.

Here are more of our favorite records with exceptionally punchy bass.

And here are more of our favorite records with exceptionally punchy drums.

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Electric Light Orchestra – Out Of The Blue

More Electric Light Orchestra

More of our favorite Art Rock Records

  • These early Jet pressings of ELO’s seventh studio album boast solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER from start to finish
  • Side three was sonically very close to our Shootout Winner – you will be shocked at how big and powerful the sound is
  • All four sides are notably smoother and richer than most of what we played, with much less of the grit and congestion that plagues the average copy
  • “Out of the Blue was of a piece with its predecessor, A New World Record, as the most lavishly produced album in the group’s history… [It] was massively popular and did become the centerpiece of a huge worldwide tour for the group which earned them status as a major live attraction for a time.”
  • If you’re an ELO fan, this classic double album from 1977 is surely a Must Own
  • If you are new to the music of ELO and want to learn more about our pick for their best album, click here

SR Over 2

The record is actually mastered by none other than Mr. MoFi himself, Stan Ricker, at Half-Speed if you can imagine that.

Yes, the bass isn’t as tight as it would have been using real time mastering, and there is the kind of “fake richness” to the low end that you hear on many audiophile records (and practically nowhere else), but Jeff Lynne likes some artificiality in the sound of his albums, so whatever Stan Ricker brought to the table it seems Mr. Lynne was fine with it, otherwise we assume he would have had it mastered by somebody else.

Does the album need the deeper, more articulate bass it would have if someone else had mastered it using a real-time cutter? It doesn’t seem so to us. Note-like bass with its fundamental frequencies intact is always a nice thing to have on a recording, but can anyone say this music would be noticeably better for it with better bass? Again, Mr. Lynne must not have found the bass wanting enough to have the album recut by some other mastering house. Could it be a matter of trade-offs? No matter which side you are on, it’s all just speculation. You always have the option of listening to the album on CD and seeing if the bass is better there. That would be the only practical test that I can imagine having any value. And to do that test you have to play the CD, something nobody really wants to do, right?

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Crosby, Stills and Nash – CSN

More David Crosby

More Stephen Stills

More Graham Nash

  • This copy of CS&N’s “comeback” album boasts a KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a superb Double Plus (A++) side two
  • The sound is big and relatively rich, the vocals breathy and immediate, and you will not believe all the space and ambience – which of course are all qualities that Heavy Vinyl records have far too little of, and the main reason we have lost all respect for the bulk of them
  • Includes CS&N classics “Dark Star,” “Just A Song Before I Go,” and “Fair Game”
  • 4 stars: “It has held up remarkably well, both as a memento of its time, and as a thoroughly enjoyable musical work.”

Most copies of CSN are unbelievably flat, harsh, thin and opaque, which means simply that our approach is the only one that offers any hope of success in finding good sound on this album.

With a large enough batch of copies, cleaned using the best fluids, on the best machines, it is possible to find two sides this good. Without a pretty big batch of well-cleaned pressings, your chance of success is hardly worth calculating. Even with the best intentions, frustration is likely to set in long before a Hot Stamper has much chance of being found.

Most copies have a tendency to sound dry, so look for one that’s rich and full-bodied. Most copies are opaque and flat so look for those with transparency and ambience. Most copies are lean down low and dull up top; try to find the ones with bass and real top-end extension.

And of course you need to find a copy that gets the voices right. CS&N’s albums live or die by the quality of their vocals, a subject we have discussed on the site at length.

You think the first CS&N album has problems in the sound department? Of course it does; in 1969 lots of rock records had recording problems. But CSN was released in 1977. By 1977, there were scores of talented rock engineers producing top quality multi-track recordings. Our Top 100 is full of their best work.

One would have thought that CS&N, the ultimate perfectionists (according to their press accounts), would have hired the best and sweated out every detail in the studio in order to produce a recording the equal of Rumours or The Cars debut (even if the songs themselves, to be honest, weren’t quite the equal of their earlier work).

Alas, CS&N chose the Albert brothers, whose most famous album is Layla. Can you hear the sound of Layla in your head? That’s more or less what this album sounds like. There are better and worse Laylas — we’ve done the shootout many times — and of course, there are better and worse CSNs.

The problem with the sound cannot be “fixed” in the mastering, and here’s how we know: on either side, some songs have the breath of life and some don’t. That’s a recording problem. It sounds like too many generations of tape were used on songs like “Shadow Captain” and “Dark Star,” among others.

But “Just a Song Before I Go” on side two can sound wonderful: rich, sweet, present and surrounded by lovely studio ambience.

So we listen for the qualities of a specific song that help us pinpoint what the best do well and the rest do poorly and grade accordingly, on the curve.

Animals will never sound like The Wall. You do the best you can with what you’ve got.

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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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Talking Heads – Talking Heads: 77

More of the Music of The Talking Heads

  • A vintage pressing of Talking Heads’ debut album (one of only a handful of copies to hit the site in years) with excellent Double Plus (A++) grades from top to bottom
  • Big and open with lots of layered depth to the soundfield, and sonics that positively jump out of the speakers
  • The sound here is so analog — warm, rich and smooth with the kind of fullness and life that are hard to come by for this music
  • The sound of the best pressings is raw, real and exceptionally unprocessed
  • 5 stars: “Talking Heads threw you off balance, but grabbed your attention with a sound that seemed alternately threatening and goofy. The music was undeniably catchy, even at its most ominous, especially on ‘Psycho Killer,’ Byrne’s supreme statement of demented purpose. And that made Talking Heads: 77 a landmark album

If I were to compile a list of my favorite rock and pop albums from 1977, this album would definitely be on it

We’re huge Talking Heads fans at Better Records, but we’d never tried to shoot out this album before 2011 because the copies we had played to that point were no great shakes. And that trend of mediocity only continued in the ensuing decade since, alas.

We’d forgotten how amazing this album can sound on the best pressings. I’d even say that it’s a sonic step up from Fear Of Music and Remain In Light, probably tying with More Songs About Buildings and Food and Little Creatures for top Talking Heads honors.

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