I was working on a Roger Nichols obit. He wrote "We've Only Just Begun" for The Carpenters and so much more. The album on the left was produced by Tommy LiPuma, arrangements by Marty Paich among others, engineered by Larry Levine and Henry Lewy, Bruce Botnick involved along with Randy Newman and Van Dyke Parks. Was going to be interesting.Then Sly Stone died. So I started writing him into it. Such an interesting guy. Aside from all that everyone knows... Read More

Heritage Auctions now does record albums. That's cool. But what they are doing in this area is anything but!For instance they are auctioning an "early pressing" of Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced? Fair enough! But it's a sealed copy so they don't know if it's a more collectible "Tri-color steamboat" original, or an orange Warner-Reprise or a later Warner Communications copy, or where it was pressed OR ANYTHING. You... Read More

Rhino's "High Fidelity" series released last week a reissue of Television's classic "Marquee Moon" cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio, using the original analog master tape. The reissue sounds great! Far better than the original pressing in terms of bass response, transient clarity and all of the audiophile "check marks" but, I argue, it's not likely what Tom Verlaine intended at all! That's partly due to the fact... Read More

The comment feature is back up. For now, it's the slower format we attempted to replace with something faster, which created a problem. So please post comments. However, hit the button once and wait for it to post rather than hitting it repeatedly, which will repeatedly post your comment. Thanks! The photo shows the first Mobile Fidelity reissue of Music From Big Pink (MFSL 1-039) mastered 1/2 speed by the late Stan Ricker on the Ortofon cutting system, released... Read More

Long after the Western world moved to digital downloads and streaming, CDs reigned supreme in Japan; only now is Japan widely adopting music streaming. Western collectors value Japanese CDs for their nicer packaging and apparent sonic superiority, but even in Japan, imported American and European CDs are cheaper than their locally-made counterparts. To encourage domestic purchases, Japanese labels often add bonus tracks and/or nicer packaging, but they also flaunt their specialized, supposedly superior CD manufacturing technologies.