nash_wildt

Graham Nash’s Wild Tales and Their Mysteries Many and Deep

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Graham Nash Available Now

What hurts so many pressings of this album is a generally lifeless quality and a lack of presence in the midrange.

Were the stampers a bit worn for those copies, or no good to start with, or was it bad vinyl that couldn’t hold the energy of the stamper, or perhaps some stampers just weren’t cut right?

Maybe it’s something as simple as the pressing plates going out of alignment at some point in the cycle?

Don’t ask us. We sure don’t know. And one thing we’ve learned over the years is not to pretend to.

These are record mysteries, and they are mysteries that will always be mysteries, if for no other reason than the number of production variables hopelessly intertwined at the moment of a pressing’s creation can never be teased apart no matter how smart you are.

As we never tire of saying, thinking is really not much help with regard to finding better sounding records.

Not surprisingly, we’ve found that cleaning and playing them seems to work fairly well.

Those two things work fairly well because nothing else works at all.

(more…)

Graham Nash / Wild Tales – A Forgotten Folk Rock Classic

More Graham Nash

  • Boasting two superb Double Plus (A++) sides, this copy of Nash’s underrated sophomore solo album is doing just about everything right
  • The sound is Classic 1973 Analog – smooth, rich, warm and tonally correct, with real energy and the kind of natural sound that’s a hallmark of the better Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young recordings
  • Filling out the band: Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Dave Mason, Neil Young, David Lindley and too many others to list
  • “Nash speaks from his heart on Wild Tales and those that are willing to get past its sparse arrangements will be able to accept it for the masterpiece of folk-rock that it is.”

This is a criminally underappreciated album, and perhaps that has to do with just how poor the average copy sounds. When you get a copy like this one you cannot fail to appreciate how powerful and deeply emotional these songs are. Drop the needle on the title track or “Grave Concern” to see what we mean.

The sound has the life and energy of rock and roll. This is Graham fronting a band, and on the better copies the recording and the music both work together to make them sound like these guys have been playing together forever. This is not the Big Production that Nash’s first album was. Been there done that; who needs the headache?

A Forgotten Classic

Like Nash’s first album, no one pays much attention to this music nowadays, but Better Records is going to try to remedy that situation by making available to the audiophile public numerous copies of this album, every one of which is guaranteed to turn you into a fan. This is not new music, but it may be new music to you, so “discovering” it will be every bit as much fun for you in 2023 as it was for me in 1973.

This is not an audiophile record. It ain’t never going to make the TAS List or get a mention by anyone in the Audiophile Press. This is a record for music lovers who care about good sound. If you’re reading this, that’s you. Us too, and proud of it.

From one audiophile to another, this is a great record that belongs in your collection.

(more…)