cars_candy

The Cars – Candy-O

More of The Cars

Hot Stamper Pressings of New Wave Recordings

  • You’ll find solid Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides of this excellent copy of The Cars’ New Wave classic (one of only a handful to hit the site in nearly three years)
  • We guarantee this is some of the best sound you’ll ever hear on any Cars album – Roy Thomas Baker‘s production makes this one jump out of the speakers like few recordings we’ve heard (and not many of them are from 1979, that’s for damn sure)
  • An underrated album by the band – we consider it a Must Own, along with their brilliant debut, two records that belong in any audiophile’s rock and op collection
  • 4 1/2 stars: “As it stands, it may be one of the best second albums ever made, full of great songs, inspired performances, and sporting a still-perfect sound. If this had been the Cars’ debut album, people might consider it a classic. Coming after The Cars, it has to be rated a little lower, but not by much.”
  • If you’re a Cars fan, or maybe just somebody looking for a killer Demo Disc to play, this title from 1979 surely deserves a place in your collection

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It’s 2007 and We’ve Just Discovered a New Wave Record to Beat Them All

Hot Stamper Pressings of New Wave Recordings

This review/commentary was written in 2007.

As far as we know, this is the only New Wave rock record with DEMO DISC sound ever made. We’re talking huge amounts of dynamic energy, tons of bass, a luscious midrange, all topped with a sweetly extended high end. I always knew there were superb sounding copies of this album, but I honestly had no idea they any could sound like this. There is only one copy that earned our coveted Triple Plus designation for both sides, and this is it. As Good As It Gets.

One other copy received a Triple Plus on side one, but this copy was still a step up from it. We hold the line at three pluses but three doesn’t begin to tell the whole story. This record is really just plain off the charts.

On our two day journey through this shootout we discovered that Candy-O only offers two things on its menu*:

1) Open Top Sandwich – extended and open top end with not enough bass 
2) Topless Tacos – driving solid punchy bass with not enough top end extension

But here’s Today’s Special:

Delicious Combo Platter – a sampling of the highest highs, the deepest punchiest bass, and the most open transparent mids, all beautifully laid out on a slab of vinyl, a veritable feast for the ears. Ahem.

(*all items come with free side of shipping when ordered from our mailer.)

What other New Wave band ever recorded an album with this kind of DEMONSTRATION QUALITY sound? It positively JUMPS out of the speakers.

No album by Blondie, Television, The Talking Heads or ANY of their contemporaries can begin to compete with this kind of sound.

[UPDATE: Not true, this one does.]

The Cars very own first album is excellent, but it doesn’t have this kind of LIFE and ENERGY. No way, no how.

If you have big dynamic speakers and like to rock, you can’t go wrong here. Neil Young albums have the Big Rock sound, and if you’re more of a Classic Rock kind of listener, that’s a good way to go. We’re behind you all the way, just check out the commentary for Zuma.

For a band with thin ties, leather jackets, jangly guitars, synths and monstrously huge floor toms that fly back and forth across the soundstage, Candy-O is the girl for you, no doubt about it.

2007 was a long time ago. It was the year we made many breakthroughs.

In fact, we made more breakthroughs in that year than in any other in the history of the company, including this singularly important break with the past.

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The Cars in 1979: The Year in Music

Hot Stamper Pressings of Albums from 1979 Available Now

More of Our Favorite Rock, Pop, Soul, etc. Titles from 1979

We’re big fans of this album, and a Shootout Winning Hot Stamper copy like this one will show you exactly why. It’s a favorite recording of ours here at Better Records for one very simple reason: Candy-O has got The BIG ROCK SOUND we love!

Drop the needle on Let’s Go and check out the sound of the big floor tom. When the drummer bangs on that thing, you FEEL it! It’s similar to the effect of being in the room with live musicians — it’s the difference between hearing the music and feeling the music. That difference is what you get from our best Hot Stamper copies when you turn them up good and loud and let them ROCK your world.

A New Wave Classic

What other New Wave band ever recorded an album with this kind of demonstration quality sound? The sound of the best copies positively JUMPS out of the speakers. No album by Blondie, Television, The Pretenders or any of their contemporaries can begin to compete with this kind of huge, lively, powerful sound, with the possible exception of the Talking Heads’ Little Creatures.

It Rocks!

If you have big dynamic speakers and like to rock you cannot go wrong here. Neil Young albums have the Big Rock sound, and if you’re more of a Classic Rock kind of listener, that’s a good way to go. 

For a band with skinny ties, leather jackets, jangly guitars, synths and monstrously huge floor toms that fly back and forth across the soundstage, Candy-O is the girl for you, no doubt about it.

1979 – The Year in Music

1979 sure was an interesting year. The Wall, Breakfast in America, London Calling, Off the Wall, Get the Knack, Damn the Torpedoes, Armed Forces, Spirits Having Flown, Tusk, The B-52s, Rust Never Sleeps, Rickie Lee Jones, and our bad boy here, Candy-O — the variety is remarkable.

Even more remarkable is the number of albums recorded in ’79 that sound fresh and engaging to this day, more than 35 years after they were released. I could sit down in front of my speakers today and play any one of them all the way through.

Try that with your ten favorite albums from ’89, ’99 or ’09.

 

The Cars – The King Is Dead, Long Live the King

Hot Stamper Pressings of New Wave Recordings Available Now

This is a commentary from many years ago.

As you may remember from our last go around with The Cars’ debut, we proclaimed that new White Hot Stampers had been discovered, and indeed they had. These, dear reader, are the very ones of which we spoke, and let me assure you, they are every bit as good. They just plain blow the doors off our previous favorites, which is both shocking and wonderful.

The King is Dead, Long Live the King!

Talk about jumping out of the speakers, the energy level of this copy is completely OFF THE CHARTS. You’ve probably heard these songs a million times, but you’ve NEVER heard them sound like this. Both sides have FREAKISHLY GOOD SOUND — dynamic, spacious and ALIVE!

Sides One and Two

Side one is OUT OF THIS WORLD! The material is superb — just check out the first three tracks: Let The Good Times Roll, Best Friend’s Girl, and Just What I Needed — how many albums start off with that kind of a bang? Each of those tracks sounds amazing — if you’ve got big speakers and a phono stage capable of resolving musical information at the highest levels, put this record on, turn it way up and get ready to hear some serious DEMONSTRATION QUALITY SOUND.

The guitars are meaty and grungy beyond belief, the synths have so much texture, and the drums are some of the punchiest you’ll ever hear. The overall sound is rich, full, present, dynamic and ALIVE! We rate side one an A+++ — it’s As Good As It Gets (AGAIG!)

Side two is every bit as good — super transparent, with amazing presence — the best we heard for ANY SIDE TWO — not to mention generous amounts of ambience. Moving In Stereo sounds SUPERB here — just listen to that floating synth and the full-bodied vocals. The top end is Right On The Money; check out the superb extension and the silky quality the cymbals have.

Candy-O Blew Our Minds

When we did our Candy-O shootout back in 2007, we had never before heard Demo Disc sound on a new wave record. Times have changed, though, and we owe much of that change to our EAR 324 Phono stage, which is capable of resolving at a much higher level than anything we had before. That super high resolution has allowed us to find the magic in the grooves that we always hoped was there.

And now we KNOW it is. Just listen to all the texture to the synthesizers or the character of the distortion on the guitar. Roy Thomas Baker (the man behind Queen) engineered this album, and he did a stellar job — it’s an amazing sounding recording, and a pressing like this gives you entree to all of that magic.

The DCC Gold CD is pretty darn good, one of Steve’s best, but it can’t begin to compete with this kind of seriously Hot Stamper vinyl.

Power Choruses

The hottest of the Hot Stampers did one easily recognizable thing better than the Also-Rans, and it was apparent pretty much from the get-go. The multi-multi-multi-tracked choruses on the best copies don’t strain (a very common problem), they are bigger and more powerful, they stretch from wall to wall, and the voices that make them up are separated much more than on other copies. I won’t say you can make out all the players — there are dozens of tracks overdubbed together don’t you know — but you can make out some of the voices. At least you can if you have the kind of high resolution front end that we do. Big speakers help a lot too, giving space for each voice to occupy. What small driver speakers do to an album like this is a travesty, but that’s a horse we have already beaten savagely in more than enough places on the site, so we’ll leave that problem for the listener to solve.

Big Dynamic Speakers

Which means that if you have big dynamic speakers and like to rock, you can’t go wrong here. Neil Young albums have the Big Rock sound, and if you’re more of a Classic Rock kind of listener, that’s a good way to go. We’re behind you all the way, just check out the majority of the Hot Stampers on the site: CSN, Zep, Tull, The Stones — we can’t get enough of the stuff.

Still, variety is the spice of life, and the Cars really deliver the good on this new wave classic. If you love big meaty guitar chords, wild synth sounds, and HUGE punchy drums, this record may be just what you needed… so let the good times roll!

Letter of the Week – “So I put on my Better Records A+++ copy of the same title. Voila! The sound became magical.”

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stampers he purchased recently:

Hey Tom, 

I went to a ‘listening party” at a local high end audio retailer. People were invited to bring a record, have it professionally cleaned, and played back on as many as three different systems ranging from about $3,000 to over six figures for the complete system.

I brought my Hot Stamper of Clear Spot by Captain Beefheart that I got from you.

I know. That’s like cheating, right?

As usual, the record blew all listeners away.

I had one person tell me that, while the style of music wasn’t his cup of tea, it sounded so compelling he wanted more.

So I put on my Nautilus SuperDiscs (Listen To The Difference) pressing of The Cars Candy-O.

Sounds okay. But this is supposed to be a “SuperDisc”. Okay does not cut it.

So I put on my Better Records A+++ copy of the same title. Voila! The sound became magical. (more…)

The Cars Have the Big Rock Sound We Love

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Cars Available Now

UPDATE 2026

This commentary was first posted on the blog all the way back in 2018.

As I wrote, we love doing shootouts for their albums, especially the first two. Unfortunately, finding pressings with the right stampers in clean condition does not happen very often these days. Their first two albums can rarely be found on the site, and it’s not for a lack of trying.

The first two Cars albums were both in The Better Records Rock and Pop Top 100 at one time, with good reason: they’re superb recordings. The Cars have been in “heavy rotation” on my system since their albums came out in the late ’70s. We started doing shootouts for both of them right around 2006 or 2007, and they continue to be a regular feature of our Rock Hot Stamper section, not to mention some of the most fun shootouts we do in any given week.  

Before then had you ever read a word in any audiophile or record collecting publication about how amazing the originals can sound? Of course not. Most of the audiophile types writing for the stereo rags wouldn’t know a good record from a hole in the ground.

If anything, the typical audiophile probably has one or both of the disastrous Nautilus half-speed mastered versions, and, having played them, would not be inclined to think highly of the sound. We knew better than to waste our time with that muck.

Recently Mobile Fidelity has taken upon itself to remaster a selection of the band’s titles with the same flawed Half-Speed mastering approach. We haven’t played any of them and don’t intend to. We know that sound and we don’t like it.

Our point, other than to bash a record we have never played, is simply this: if you have any of those MoFi versions, we would love to send you a copy of the album so that you can hear for yourself what it’s really supposed to sound like.

Candy-O Is Yet Another Awful Nautilus Remaster

More of the Music of The Cars

Sonic Grade: F

This Nautilus Half-Speed Mastered LP, like The Cars first album they did, is pure compressed muck. Another one of the worst half-speeds of all time. 

If you are buying these modern pressings, take the advice of some of our customers and stop throwing your money away on Heavy Vinyl Pressings and Half-Speed Mastered Records.

People have been known to ask us:

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Listening in Depth to Candy-O

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Cars Available Now

This is one of our favorite recordings — a former member of our Top 100 — for one very simple reason: it’s got Big Rock Sound in spades! Drop the needle on Let’s Go and check out the sound of the big floor tom. When the drummer bangs on that thing, you will FEEL it! It’s similar to the effect of being in the room with live musicians — the difference between just hearing music and also feeling it. That’s what you get from a Hot Stamper copy.

What other New Wave band ever recorded an album with this kind of DEMONSTRATION QUALITY sound? It positively JUMPS out of the speakers. No album by Blondie, Television, The Pretenders or ANY of their contemporaries can begin to compete with this kind of sound, with the exception of the Talking Heads’ Little Creatures. The Cars very own first album is excellent, but it doesn’t have this kind of LIFE and ENERGY. No way, no how.  (more…)