More of the Music of Andrew Gold
Hot Stamper Pressings on the Asylum Label
Andrew Gold’s debut is a good example of a record most audiophiles have never heard. The more open-minded among you — especially those who love a well-crafted pop song with Demo Disc sonics — might really benefit from giving it a chance, the way I did all the way back in 1975. I read the Rolling Stone review and went right down to my Tower Records and picked up a copy, and boy am I glad I did. I’ve played this album many hundreds of times and never tired of it.
If you know the “Asylum Sound” — think of the Tubey Magical analog of The Eagles’ first album and you won’t be far off — you can be sure the best copies of Andrew Gold’s first three albums on Asylum have plenty of it.
Tubey Magical acoustic guitar reproduction is superb on the better copies of this recording. Simply phenomenal amounts of Tubey Magic can be heard on every strum, along with richness, body and harmonic coherency that have all but disappeared from modern recordings (and especially from modern remasterings).
The guitars on this record are a true test of reproduction quality. Most of the pressings of this record do not get the guitars to sound right. And when the guitars are perfection, the voices and all the other instruments tend to be right as well.
Let’s face it: they just don’t know how to make acoustic guitars sound like this anymore. You have to go back to nearly 50-year-old records like this one to find that sound.