1980-best

Joni Mitchell / Shadows and Light

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

  • A superb copy of Mitchell’s second live album with solid Double Plus (A+++) grades or BETTER on all FOUR sides of these vintage Asylum pressings
  • The sound is full-bodied, lively and dynamic, with wonderful immediately to Joni’s remarkably present and breathy vocals
  • If you’re a fan of Joni’s more experimental work from the mid to late 70s, this album is a Must Own
  • “…it serves as a good retrospective of her jazzy period from 1975-1979. As expected, she assembles a group of all-star musicians including Pat Metheny (guitar), Jaco Pastorius (bass), Lyle Mays (keyboards), and Michael Brecker (saxophone) who give these compositions more energy than on the studio recordings.”

Four outstanding sides! We recently had a huge shootout for this famous double album and this copy blew our minds with Double Plus sonics (or better) and reasonably quiet vinyl from start to finish. In the high-stakes game of Better Records Double Album Poker, that’s a full house, man. This one gives you the kind of you are there immediacy and transparency that put you front and center for a late 70s jazzy Joni Mitchell show. Not too many copies will do that.

Joni’s voice is breathy and present with real texture, and the three-dimensional imaging gives the music a real sense of space — just like you’d get at a concert. This helps convey the intimacy of the songs and the performances, and isn’t that what we audiophiles got in this crazy hobby for in the first place?

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Talking Heads / Remain In Light

More of the Music of Talking Heads

  • Here is a vintage Sire pressing with solid Double Plus (A++) grades from start to finish – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Everything we were hoping for from this music is here and more — richness, sweetness, great energy, big time presence, weight down low, punchy drum sound and so on
  • Both of these sides are also open and transparent with lots of space around the different parts
  • The sonics have extraordinarily high-resolution, which lets you hear all the detail and texture of the crazy synths
  • 5 stars: “Even without a single, Remain in Light was a hit, indicating that Talking Heads were connecting with an audience ready to follow their musical evolution, and the album was so inventive and influential, it was no wonder.”

It takes an exceptional pressing to get all the elements correct — the funky bottom end; the processed, multi-tracked vocals; the Brian Eno production weirdness and so on.

This is a brilliant album but a typically problematic record. Most copies get some things right but fail in other areas. There are smeary copies that can’t deliver the punchy bottom you need, grainy copies that make the vocals painful to listen to, and plenty of copies that are just too dark or flat sounding for anyone to enjoy. Note that the first track on both sides will sound the worst. The sound gets better, though, as you get further into the album.

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Ambrosia / One Eighty

More of the Music of Ambrosia

  • Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) sides or close to them, this copy of Ambrosia’s 4th studio album will be very hard to beat
  • The sound is lively, punchy, and powerful (particularly on side one) – with all due respect, it should murder whatever copies you may have
  • Analog at its Tubey Magical finest (also particularly on side one) – you’ll never play a CD (or any other digitally sourced material) that sounds as good as this record as long as you live
  • “The ballads are the album’s redeeming feature. They are all lovingly crafted and boast strong, often complex melodies that keep them from getting too sappy or sentimental… The album’s finale, “Biggest Part of Me,” is the best… It combines rich Beach Boys-styled harmonies with a heartfelt lyric to create a rich slice of blue-eyed soul that gave the group a number two hit single…”
  • As is sometimes the case, there is one and only one set of stampers that consistently wins our shootouts for One Eighty.  Click on this link to see other titles with a single set of stamper numbers that always come out on top

This is smooth, rich analog at its best. Easy on the ears as we like to say.

This is clearly the poppier side of Ambrosia, containing two of their highest-charting mainstream hits, “Biggest Part of Me” (#3) and “You’re the Only Woman” (#13). I, myself, of course prefer the proggy first two albums, falling as they do into the broad category of Art Rock where my favorite albums by Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Roxy Music, Supertramp, 10cc, later-period Beatles, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Traffic and so many others from the last forty-plus years can be found.

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Peter Gabriel Names a Third Record After Himself

More of the Music of Peter Gabriel

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on both sides of this vintage UK copy – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • Finding clean, quiet, early pressings of this album has been especially difficult for some time now and it doesn’t seem to be getting any easier
  • A Must Own for Gabriel fans, this album is widely considered his breakthrough work as a solo artist
  • Listen closely and you’ll recognize Phil Collins’ now-signature (but at the time revolutionary) drum sound on several of the tracks, including “Intruder,” one of the best tracks on the album
  • 5 stars: “Generally regarded as Peter Gabriel’s finest record, his third eponymous album finds him coming into his own, crafting an album that’s artier, stronger, more song oriented than before.”
  • If you’re a fan, this is a Peter Gabriel classic from 1980 that belongs in your collection.

With this, his third release, Gabriel established himself as a true force in the rock world. (more…)

Alberta Hunter / Amtrak Blues

More Soul, Blues, and R&B

  • A vintage pressing (one of only a handful of copies to hit the site in years) with solid Double Plus (A++) grades from start to finish
  • The sound is absolutely wonderful – Alberta is uncannily present and real on this copy
  • Both of these sides are open, clear and lively as any record you’ve heard in a very long while
  • 4 stars: “Alberta Hunter’s second recording since launching her remarkable comeback (she was 83 when this album was cut) finds the veteran blues singer (a survivor of the 1920s) still in surprisingly strong form and full of spirit.”

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Eagles – Eagles Live

More of the Music of The Eagles

  • These vintage pressings of the band’s first live album boast solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on all FOUR sides
  • This copy is remarkably spacious, full-bodied and natural, with a nicely extended top end, plenty of space around the instruments and vocals, and few of the problems that plagued many pressings we played (discussed below)
  • The album provides a balanced document of the band’s musical history – four tracks were recorded in 1976, the rest in 1980
  • Problems 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
  • That said, this title in particular is almost always noisy, which is why you will rarely find it on our site — most of what we buy is just too noisy to sell

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Dvorak / Violin Concerto – A Killer Philips Recording

More of the Music of Antonin Dvorak

  • Stunning sound throughout this Philips import pressing of Dvorak’s Classical Masterpieces, with a Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) side one mated to a solid Double Plus (A++) side two – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • The orchestral passages are rich and sweet, the violin present, its harmonics gloriously intact
  • We audiophiles are fortunate indeed that a violinist of Accardo’s skill and taste recorded this piece for Philips at a time when their recording technology was still capable of capturing the sound of his violin in rich, warm, sweet, clear analog
  • A superb performance from Salvatore Accardo, not only competitive with the best we have heard, but superior – we know of none better
  • These links will take you to some of the orchestral “sleeper” recordings we’ve discovered with Demo Disc sound

Yes, it was still possible to record classical music properly in 1980, though not many labels managed to pull it off. (Londons from this era are especially opaque and airless. We find them as irritating and frustrating as most of the Heavy Vinyl releases being foisted on the audiophile public today.)

This is still analog, with the better copies displaying much of the Tubey Magic of 50s and 60s vinyl without as much compressor distortion (the Achilles’ heel of so many of the great recordings from the Golden Era).

Accardo is an accomplished performer of the works of Paganini, but those recordings are on DG and we would not expect them to be of acceptable audio quality for our customers. We will investigate further of course, as Paganini’s works for violin are some of the most sublime in the repertoire.

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The Pretenders / Self-Titled

More of the Music of Women Who Rock

  • Killer sound throughout this early UK pressing of the band’s debut LP, with both sides earning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • Here are the full-bodied mids, punchy lows, and clear, open, extended highs that let this Pretenders Classic come to life, and beat the pants off the dubby domestic pressing, and anything else you care to put up against it
  • One of engineer Bill Price’s better efforts behind the boards, and Chris Thomas’s production is state of the art
  • Problems 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
  • 5 stars: “Few rock & roll records rock as hard or with as much originality as the Pretenders’ eponymous debut album. A sleek, stylish fusion of Stonesy rock & roll, new wave pop, and pure punk aggression, Pretenders is teeming with sharp hooks and a viciously cool attitude.”

Price and Thomas

Bill Price engineered and Chris Thomas produced. You may remember them from the Sex Pistols’ debut and The Clash’s London Calling, two amazingly well-recorded albums. Wish we could find them; as I said, dealing with English record sellers is more often than not unpleasant and expensive, in equal measure.

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The Jam – Sound Affects

More New Wave

  • A Sound Affects like you’ve never heard, with excellent Double Plus (A++) grades throughout this vintage Polydor domestic pressing
  • Yes, you read that right – the early and later imports we played were by far the worst sounding pressings in our shootout
  • Both of these sides have energy and presence that positively jumps out of the speakers, two of the qualities that we prize most highly in our Hot Stampers, and two of things among many that Heavy Vinyl does so poorly
  • 5 stars: “From beginning to end, the songs are pure, clever, infectious pop – probably their catchiest – with ‘That’s Entertainment’ and the should-have-been-a-single ‘Man in the Corner Shop’ standing out.

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Queen – The Game

More of the Music of Queen

  • This copy of Queen’s hit-filled release from 1980 boasts outstanding Double Plus (A++) grades or close to them from start to finish – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • One of our top picks for amazing Queen sound – few of their recordings can touch it for energy and size (particularly on this side one)
  • Plenty of hits here, including “Another One Bites The Dust” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” which both sound excellent here
  • 4 1/2 stars: “… the striking difference with this album is that it finds Queen turning decidedly, decisively pop, and it’s a grand, state-of-the-art circa 1980 pop album that still stands as one of the band’s most enjoyable records.”

On this killer copy you get solid bass, Tubey Magic, breathy vocals and big, bold sound!

Compared to a lot of the copies we played, these sides have more energy, bigger bass and even more present and breathy vocals. This is without a doubt some of the best sound we have ever heard for Queen, no ifs, ands or buts about it.

The quality of bass on this record is often superb. The best copies were Demo Discs in that regard. You have probably never heard Queen sound this good.

Take it from us, the guys who play nothing but vintage vinyl all day: not many Queen records sound as good as The Game.

The Game Rocks

The Game rocks. It’s everything we want in a good Queen record. Credit must, of course, go to their engineer, a fellow who goes by the name of Reinhold Mack. This is his first album for Queen and he really nailed it. Mack also worked with Electric Light Orchestra and those are some wonderful sounding Big Production Rock recordings.

We’re big dynamic speaker guys here at Better Records and we love the “big sound.” (Wish we could find more clean, top quality copies of ELO’s albums. With few exceptions, most of their titles are hard to come by. You don’t see many on our site for precisely the same reasons that you don’t see much Queen on our site.)

The Game is clearly one of the two best sounding records Queen ever made. Do you see a lot of Queen albums going up on the site? The demand is there, but where is the supply?

There’s a good reason for their scarcity as Hot Stampers. As much as people might love to hear some top quality pressing of Queen on vinyl, we just can’t seem to find many that do their brand of multi-layered Big Production Rock justice.

No need for Brit vinyl on The Game, thank goodness. This domestic pressing has the sound of a Master Tape, no doubt about it. The sound is superb throughout, not a claim we can make for many Queen records.

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