nash_songs

Listening in Depth to Songs for Beginners

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Graham Nash Available Now

Presenting another entry in our extensive listening in depth series with advice on what to listen for as you critically evaluate your copy of Song for Beginners.

(Here are some other albums currently on our site with similar track by track breakdowns.)

This is one helluva well recorded album. Most of the credit must go to the team of recording engineers, led here by the esteemed Bill Halverson, the man behind all of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young albums. Nash was clearly influenced by his work with his gifted bandmates, proving with this album that he can hold his own with the best of the best.

Some songs (We Can Change The World, Be Yourself) are grandly scaled productions with the kind of studio polish that would make Supertramp envious. For me, a big speaker guy with a penchant for giving the old volume knob an extra click or two, it just doesn’t get any better.

Others (Sleep Song, Wounded Bird) are quiet and intimate. Their subtlely is highlighted by the big productions surrounding them. This is that rare album in which every aspect of the production, from the arrangements to the final mix, serves to bring out the best qualities in the songs, regardless of scale.

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Graham Nash – Songs for Beginners

More of the Music of Graham Nash

  • This vintage pressing boasts very good Hot Stamper sound on both sides
  • We guarantee there is more space, richness, presence, and performance energy on this copy than others you’ve heard or you get your money back – it’s as simple as that
  • Arguably the best of the solo CSN albums and a founding member of our Top 100 Rock and Pop List
  • 4 1/2 stars: “From the soaring “I Used to Be a King” through the gossamer “Simple Man” to the wah-wah-laden “Military Madness,” the record is filled with gorgeous melodies, flawless singing, and lyrical complexities that hold up decades later.”

When you hear Chicago here you will not believe how cinematic the sound is! It’s everything we love about analog and then some.

Most of the credit must go to the team of recording engineers, led here by the esteemed Bill Halverson, the man behind all of the Crosby Stills Nash and Young albums. Nash was clearly influenced by his work with his gifted bandmates, proving with this album that he can hold his own with the best of the best. Some songs (We Can Change The World, Be Yourself) are grandly scaled productions with the kind of studio polish that would make Supertramp envious. For me, a big speaker guy with a penchant for giving the old volume knob an extra click or two, it just doesn’t get any better.

Others (Sleep Song, Wounded Bird) are quiet and intimate. Their subtlety is highlighted by the big productions surrounding them. This is the rare album in which every aspect of the production, from the arrangements to the final mix, serves to bring out the best qualities in the songs, regardless of scale. (more…)

What Track Here Would Be Right at Home on David Crosby’s First Album?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Graham Nash Available Now

Our last shootout for this album took place in 2021. I wish we could keep the record in stock but finding the right stampers these days is not easy.

Still, as a favorite album of mine, I listen to the album regularly, just not on vinyl. Both the standard CD and the cassette I have sound right to me, sounding very much like the original record.

Recently I was playing the album and heard a song that sounded an awful lot like it might have been produced by the same team that recorded David Crosby’s first album, If Only I Could Remember My Name.

If you’re up for it, listen to the Crosby, then play the Nash and see if you can spot it. Feel free to leave your impressions in the comments section below.

Digging Deeper

Songs for Beginners is one of those albums that made me want to dig deeper into audio. After every improvement I managed to make to the system, Songs for Beginners would be one of the records that I would play (at very high volume) to see what changes I had brought about.

All the best changes — the ones I kept — always made the album sound better than I had last heard it. Over the course of decades the sound became amazingly good, a true Demo Disc that belonged in the company of Tea for the Tillerman or Dark Side of the Moon.

Back in the 70s and the 80s, not so much later as I had found plenty of other tough test discs by then, it helped me dramatically improve the playback quality of my system, which, to be honest, had a very long way to go, although I sure didn’t know that at the time. I thought it sounded great.

Early on in the history of our track by track breakdowns, written in order to aid listeners in testing their stereos and the other copies of the record they might own, we did a breakdown for the album which you can read here.

If you can’t find a nice original, whatever you do, don’t buy the awful Classic Records pressing of the album. They ruined it.

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Song for Beginners Was Remixed and Ruined on Classic Records

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Graham Nash Available Now

I’ve listened to Nash’s first solo outing countless times over the last thirty years, even more than Crosby, Stills and Nash’s first album. As I was listening to the Classic pressing, I recall thinking “Wow, I don’t remember that sound being there; this version is so much better I can hear things I never heard before!”

Well, owners of this album (all five of you) will certainly hear things you never heard before, because some of the tracks on this album have been remixed and some of the instruments re-recorded. How about them apples.

Both the snare and the kick drum on some songs are clearly too “modern” sounding for anything recorded in 1971. For Pete’s sake, they’d be right at home on Nevermind.

Sometimes the vocal tracks are different—probably alternate takes I would think, as Graham obviously can’t sing like he did thirty years ago to even attempt a re-recording.

As you can imagine, remastering a well-known title and creating a new sound for it is a huge bête noire for us here at Better Records. This Classic Records release is like nails on a blackboard to me now.

No doubt the idea was Graham’s but it was a very bad one indeed. (If you can get hold of the original unadulterated CD, I highly recommend it. The sound is excellent.)

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Graham Nash and Better Days – The Best Reason to Get Deeper into Audio

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Graham Nash Available Now

This is one of the records that convinced me that I should enthusiastically and actively pursue high quality home audio. I realized pretty early on that I needed to devote the time, energy and money into improving my system so that I could play records like Songs for Beginners better and figure out how to get them to sound more like live music.

I had such irrepressibly deep feelings while listening to the album that I knew I had to do everything in my power to get it to sound as good as I possibly could.

Songs for Beginners is an album that made me want to become a better listener.

And the song that really did it for me on the album was Better Days.

I was originally thinking of calling this commentary “Why I Became an Audiophile,” but I quickly realized that being an audiophile — a lover of sound — doesn’t necessarily involve buying lots of expensive audio equipment or endlessly searching out recordings with the highest fidelity.

No, being an audiophile simply means you love good sound.

Where you find it — at clubs, at home, in the concert hall or the car — should make no difference to anyone.

Songs for Beginners couldn’t make me an audiophile; I already was one. It did, however, make me a more dedicated audio enthusiast. It’s precisely the kind of record that rewards the 40 50 plus years I’ve put into this hobby, trying to get it and hundreds, now thousands, of other wonderful records to sound their best.

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Songs for Beginners – Greatest “Copy” Ever

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Graham Nash Available Now

WHOA! We’ve paired up two FOUR PLUS sides to create this stunning 2-pack with mindblowing Demo Quality sound for the whole album. These A++++ sides will show you just how amazing it can sound: super full-bodied, rich, warm and natural. 

Please note that we award this very special grade so rarely that we don’t even have a graphic to represent it in our sonic grade box. The scale usually only goes to three pluses, but these two sides went up to four!

  • Our lengthy commentary entitled outliers and out-of-this-world sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how to go about finding them.
  • We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.
  • Nowadays we most often place them under the general heading of breakthrough pressings. These are records that, out of the blue, revealed to us sound of such high quality that it dramatically changed our appreciation of the recording itself.
  • We found ourselves asking “Who knew?” Perhaps a better question would have been “how high is up?”

This is an incredible recording, and on a copy like this the sound is truly stunning. When you hear Chicago here you will not believe how CINEMATIC the sound is! It’s everything we love about ANALOG, and then some.

Most of the credit must go to the team of recording engineers, led here by the esteemed Bill Halverson, the man behind all of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young albums. Nash was clearly influenced by his work with his gifted bandmates, proving with this album that he can hold his own with the best of the best.

Some songs (We Can Change The World, Be Yourself) are grandly scaled productions with the kind of studio polish that would make Supertramp envious. For me, a big speaker guy with a penchant for giving the old volume knob an extra click or two, it just doesn’t get any better than this. (more…)