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Bad Company – Straight Shooter (UK Press)

More of the Music of Bad Company

  • A Straight Shooter like you’ve never heard, with KILLER Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it from first note to last – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • If you’re playing this one good and loud, you’ll feel like you’re in the room with the boys as they kick out these classic riff-driven jams
  • Take it from us, it is not easy to find a copy like this that’s doing just about everything right, with the weight, balance and energy this music needs to rock
  • 4 stars: “Vocalist and songwriter Paul Rodgers wrote two acoustic-based rock ballads that would live on forever in the annals of great rock history: ‘Shooting Star’ and the Grammy-winning ‘Feel Like Makin’ Love.'”

The sophomore jinx is nowhere to be found on this album. In fact, you could make a pretty good case that this is actually a better album than their debut. The best pressings of this Bad Company classic have ROCK ENERGY that cannot be beat. (more…)

Bad Company – Straight Shooter (Swan Song)

More Rock Classics

  • A Straight Shooter like you’ve never heard, with seriously good Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER from first note to last
  • If you’re playing this one good and loud, you’ll feel like you’re in the room with the boys as they kick out these classic riff-driven jams
  • Take it from us, it is not easy to find a copy like this that’s doing just about everything right, with the weight, balance and energy this music needs to rock
  • 4 stars: “Vocalist and songwriter Paul Rodgers wrote two acoustic-based rock ballads that would live on forever in the annals of great rock history: ‘Shooting Star’ and the Grammy-winning ‘Feel Like Makin’ Love.'”

The sophomore jinx is nowhere to be found on this album. In fact, you could make a pretty good case that this is actually a better album than their debut. The best pressings of this Bad Company classic have ROCK ENERGY that cannot be beat. (more…)

Straight Shooter’s Punchy Drums

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Bad Company Available Now

UPDATE 2026

The bulk of this commentary was written in 2009 and then amended a number of time since.

In late 2009 we had just finished a shootout for this hard-rockin’ album, our first since January of ’08, and what we were hearing this time around BLEW OUR MINDS. This record got a whole lot better over the course of the last twenty months or so. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that the drum sound on this record is right up there with the most present, punchy and realistic I have ever heard on record. 

I saw a friend’s band play recently in a small club and remember thinking how amazingly punchy the snare sounded (the sound coming from the live instrument itself and the club’s speakers) and this record has that kind of drum sound!

(Here are some other records that are good for testing the sound of the snare drum.)

There’s nothing like live music — everybody knows that — but good copies of this album get you a whole lot closer than I ever expected to get.

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Bad Company – The Making of Straight Shooter

More of the Music of Bad Company

More Recordings Engineered by Ron Nevison

FROM THE BAD COMPANY WEB SITE

Heartened by the response to Bad Company, the group hired Ronnie Lane’s mobile studio and had it installed at Clearwell Castle in Gloucestershire, England in September 1974. “That was an interesting place to record,” states Rodgers. “Where next after Headley Grange but an old haunted castle! We had been touring very hard but we were still able to come up with the goods in the end. By comparison, we hadn’t done any touring before our first record.”

Bad Company followed up their initial success with the 1975 release of the triple-platinum album Straight Shooter which contained the Top Ten smash ballad “Feel Like Makin’ Love” which also won a Grammy Award. “I loved Straight Shooter” says Kirke. “Quite a few of the songs on that album came along during the first year of our existence. A lot of the songs on the first album had been done in 1973 before we really had started, so we were always playing catch-up with new material. We wanted to record a follow up album that really validated what we had done on Bad Company.” Other tracks form the album, such as “Shooting Star” have long since become concert and radio staples. “I remember Paul was singing a few of the verses for that song in the airport as we were going over to America to start our second tour,” remembers Kirke. “He had taken his guitar on the plane with him and was tinkering around with the song on the flight over.”

(more…)