{"product_id":"hookenever_2604","title":"Hooker, John Lee - Never Get Out Of These Blues Alive - Super Hot Stamper","description":"\u003cp\u003eHooker is in the room with you on this pressing, as he should be. The sound is big, rich and lively with a huge bottom end, lots of space, wonderful transparency and real immediacy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis vintage ABC  pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records rarely begin to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn't showing any sign of coming back.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHaving done this for so long, we understand and appreciate that rich, full, solid, Tubey Magical sound is key to the presentation of this primarily vocal music. We rate these qualities higher than others we might be listening for (e.g., bass definition, soundstage, depth, etc.).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHot Stamper sound is rarely about the details of a given recording. In the case of this album, more than anything else a Hot Stamper must succeed at recreating a solid, palpable, real John Lee Hooker singing live in your listening room. The better copies have an uncanny way of doing just that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but less than one out of 100 new records do, if our experience with the hundreds we've played over the years can serve as a guide.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou may have noticed that records like this rarely make it to the site. Many don't sound good, and the ones that do usually have surfaces that most audiophiles would find unacceptable. This is an exceptionally nice copy of we're glad to say it sounds as good as it looks.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat The Best Sides Of Never Get Out Of These Blues Alive Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe most Tubey Magic, without which you have \u003ci\u003ealmost\u003c\/i\u003e nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%221972%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1972\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNatural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTransparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is, of course, the only way to hear all of the above.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eBest Practices\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you have five or ten copies of a record and play them over and over against each other, \u003ci\u003ethe process itself\u003c\/i\u003e teaches you what's right and what's wrong with the sound of the album. Once your ears are completely tuned to what the best pressings do well that the others do not do as well, using a few specific passages of music, it will quickly become obvious how well any given pressing reproduces those passages.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe process could not be more simple. The first step is to go deep into the sound. There you find something special, something you can't find on most copies. Now, with the hard-won knowledge of precisely what to listen for, you are perfectly positioned to critique any and all pressings that come your way.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat We're Listening For On Never Get Out Of These Blues Alive\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eEnergy\u003c\/strong\u003e for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThen: \u003cstrong\u003epresence and immediacy\u003c\/strong\u003e.  The vocals aren't \"back there\" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt --  \u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%22Baker-Bigsby%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBaker Bigsby\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e in this case -- would have put them.\u003c\/li\u003e \n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe Big Sound\u003c\/strong\u003e comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThen \u003cstrong\u003etransient information\u003c\/strong\u003e -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eTight punchy bass\u003c\/strong\u003e -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eNext: \u003cstrong\u003etransparency\u003c\/strong\u003e -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eExtend the top and bottom\u003c\/strong\u003e and \u003ci\u003evoila\u003c\/i\u003e, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eVinyl Condition\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMint Minus Minus  and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\nThose of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful originals.\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\nIf you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.\n                  \n\t\t\t\u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"Hooker, John Lee","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51635881378088,"sku":"hookenever","price":149.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0257\/3415\/2295\/products\/hookenever.jpg?v=1768934940","url":"https:\/\/better-records.com\/products\/hookenever_2604","provider":"Better Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}