{"product_id":"king_livew_2609-1","title":"King, Albert - Live Wire - Blues Power - White Hot Stamper","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e*NOTE:\u003c\/strong\u003e This record was not noisy enough to rate our M-- to EX++ grade, but it's not quite up to our standards for Mint Minus Minus either. If you're looking for quiet vinyl, this is probably not the best copy for you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is one of the all time great live Blues albums. \u003ci\u003eThis Is Blues Power!\u003c\/i\u003e\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 maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat The Best Sides Of This Blues Rock Album 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:%221968%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1968\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. \u003ci\u003ePlaying the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above,\u003c\/i\u003e and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.\n\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eBill Halverson\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"\/search?q=tag:%22bill-halverson%22\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHalverson\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e was the engineer on this album as well as a slough of other favorites of ours here at Better Records, Classic Rock Albums that we know to have \u003ci\u003epotentially\u003c\/i\u003e amazing sound. We're talking Deja Vu (from the next year, 1970, and surely his engineering masterpiece), Steve Stills' first album (1971), the first Crosby\/Nash album (1972), and the live material on Cream's various releases from Wheels of Fire to Goodbye (1968-1969).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt has been our experience, and possibly yours, that one has to work very hard to find good sounding pressings of most of the albums he recorded. But that should take nothing away from the extraordinary engineering skills he employed in recording them.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUntil we found the right pressings of his albums, we had no idea what a brilliant job he had done recording so many of the records we've known and loved from the 60s and early 70s. As unlikely as it would seem, it's only been within the last ten years or so that the best pressings of Deja Vu, Goodbye and Wheels of Fire were randomly discovered during our regular shootouts. Sure, we'd played them by the score, but the fact is that the right copies had managed to elude us, for decades.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe better copies of the albums mentioned above have superb, Demo Disc sound, especially Deja Vu and Goodbye, both of which can be mind-blowing when you find the right copy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eWhat We're Listening For On Live Wire - Blues Power\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 would 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.)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThose 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"King, Albert","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67610986185000,"sku":"king_livew","price":599.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0257\/3415\/2295\/files\/king_livew.jpg?v=1790532376","url":"https:\/\/better-records.com\/products\/king_livew_2609-1","provider":"Better Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}