Editorial / Letters to the Editor

There Is No “Magic Bullet” in Hi-Fi

There Is No “Magic Bullet” in Hi-Fi No Magic Solutions I’ve spent some time on the audio chat fora over the years. Many popular threads these days are devoted to cheap improvements that can be made using audiophile “tweaks” or repurposed non-audiophile products. These can be applied to isolate gear, enhance the signals or connections or otherwise address some perceived problem that, once solved, offers to raise the level of music reproduction. It’s like a cheap solution to upgrade your system: from audiophile fuses, special wires (beyond simply having a high-quality... Read More

Change is Good- From Proto-Metal to Spiritual Jazz

Change is Good- From Proto-Metal to Spiritual Jazz Spiritual jazz is something I started to focus on in just the last couple years. More recently, I’ve been writing pieces about obscure private or small label offbeat jazz- the material fits under various genre headings, including soul jazz, free jazz and other categories that aren’t always fully descriptive of the music. This isn’t as much an editorial choice as it is a reflection of my recent listening interests: the level of musicianship is high, and the production quality is often good, in part because the performances... Read More

Editor’s Note: Turntable Set Up Issues and a Forum?

Editor’s Note: Turntable Set Up Issues and a Forum? Turntable Set-Up Issues With the arrival of a new tonearm and tone arm pod, I’ve been juggling two tone arms, with the added mass of the arm support pods (each of which weighs about 30 lbs). Balancing this weight on the Minus K isolation platform is a little tricky. One basic step is optimizing arm position for ease of use and pivot to spindle distance. Other, more routine set up steps—alignment, null points, and anti-skate are par for the course. However, the lateral tracker doesn’t involve null points or... Read More

Fixing Certain Features on the Site

Fixing Certain Features on the Site UPDATE: August, 2018 IF YOU ARE REGISTERING TO GET UPDATES AND/OR TO COMMENT AND DO NOT RECEIVE AN EMAIL FROM WORDPRESS TO VALIDATE YOUR REGISTRATION, PLEASE CHECK YOUR SPAM/JUNK MAIL. BREAKING NEWS: As of Friday, August 10, 2018, it looks like all functionality to the site, including Letter to the Editor and Comments, is fully operational. My thanks to Tom Ossa and his team. BH. As this site has grown, I have tried to improve it, and add certain features. Alas, some of them don’t perform as intended and need to be... Read More

Taking a Wider View On Your Listening Choices

Taking a Wider View On Your Listening Choices If you take music seriously (and I’m not talking about pinky lifting pretension here)- you can take garage bands or punk as seriously as original Blue Notes, you know your taste. It is seldom dictated by the mainstream trends, marketing, or popular culture of the moment. Sometimes, popular music isn’t just fluff either and can prove enduring as well, see, e.g. “The Letter”. Chances are, you had some epiphany at some point- probably as a teenager—and recognized that there were certain things you liked, in preference to the... Read More

Sonics vs. Music on LPs

Sonics vs. Music on LPs With apologies for the “click bait” title, I had an epiphany the other day playing the main system for a visitor. I usually try to find music that is both interesting and well recorded. There is no shortage of such records, but as I find myself plunging deeper down the rabbit hole of obscurities, lost bands and forgotten albums, I realized how much of a gap there in sound quality between some of these musical gems and the spectacular sound you get on the great audiophile quality records. Ideally, you’d get both— interesting music and... Read More

Opening the Door to Comments!

Opening the Door to Comments! When this site launched, it did not include any facility for user comments. I didn’t want to bother moderating comments, and had enough work just assembling content. But now, almost two years into publishing TheVinylPress, I’m willing to experiment a bit, so some articles will now include a comments feature. If you want to post a comment, you will have to register. (Registration and login links are at the bottom of the page in the “black bar”). Initial comments may be put into a queue until you are validated as a user. And, at... Read More

From the Editor- Ian Anderson Interview

I’m thrilled to publish an interview with Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull on TheVinylPress. Anderson is a deeply reflective, articulate man who was willing to share some of his thoughts on his extraordinary style of music-making- particularly the early, seminal albums during a period of dramatic change in popular music– a transformation in which Anderson played a vital role. Anderson gives us a first hand perspective on this watershed period that reshaped popular music forever. We owe a debt of gratitude to this gifted and deservedly legendary composer and artist. Here is... Read More

Canned Heat: In Depth

I’m very pleased to publish three interrelated articles about Canned Heat, a blues band with a roster of incredible talent, and deep and significant roots in the rediscovery of the blues in the early ‘60s: a band that played the Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock and is still “on the road” after 50 years. So much of what the band did in the late ‘60s is now taken for granted: driving rock boogie, the mix of country or rural blues with rock, a serious effort to preserve the elements of long forgotten blues motifs (including many eclectic and more obscure blues styles that... Read More

LISTENING TO RECORDED MUSIC: A RUMINATION

The Internet has democratized many things, including the ready availability of music and information about it. It has also changed how we listen to music: from hardware to software to new formats and delivery platforms. Despite my preference for things analog, I support these changes if only because they give artists (performers and songwriters) the ability to reach more audiences and hopefully, in the process, to make some return on their work. One of the chief complaints about mass-market music delivery is that as technology has improved, sound quality (and... Read More

The Island Book of Records 1969-70

You have an article by Bill Hart discussing the pink label era of Island Records. Neil Storey, former Head of Press of Island Records has collated interviews of al the artists and people concerned in make the pink albums between 1969-70, along with memorabilia and gig ads of the time. As in Bill’s piece, it includes, King Crimson, Traffic, Free, Jethro Tull, Clouds, Fairport Convention, Fotheringhay, Spooky Tooth, Cat Stevens, Bronco (Jess Roden), Emerson Lake and Palmer, and of course NIck Drake with photographer Julian Lloyd allowing us to reprint his exclusive images. Photgrapher Brian Cooke has also given us his pictures of the 17-year-old lead singer of The Mandrakes, Allen Palmer, who became Robert Palmer. The book is vinyl sized, over 400 pages, over 1000 images and will be out in the USA in March, amazon are al ready listing it for reservations But your readers should know international orders can also be bought, with 30% off if ordered direct from the publishers Manchester University Press. All the information about The Island Book of Records 1969-70 is on this site theislandbookofrecords.com, including the instructions of getting 30% off. If you need any further information or visuals please contact us.

Roger Nielsen

The expertise Mr. Hart freely shares in his thoughtful reviews and compelling articles through The Vinyl Press should be required reading for any serious collector. Besides publishing informative interviews with recording artists like Ian Anderson, the record reviews in The Vinyl Press provide an important guide to filling those obscure niches every collector has. Any worthwhile LP collection should include examples of the excellent but underappreciated recordings by artists such as Bloodwyn Pig, Captain Beyond and Terry Reid – albums that likely never would have entered my ken without The Vinyl Press. Thank you, Mr. Hart, for providing the trustworthy music reviews that have enriched my own collection immensely. Please continue enlightening your readers about shamefully overlooked artists – for example Cowboy, or 15-60-75 (The Numbers Band), or the Squalls, or Randall Bramblett. Now, if you could only help me find affordable copies of “The Sacred Mushroom” and John Martyn’s “Solid Air” …

Roots of Canned Heat: Compilation of 78s from Heat Members’ Collection

Looking forward to your Canned Heat assessment. I saw the original lineup (Frank Cook et al.) several times at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles, a folk/blues club near my home, as well as at the Monterey Pop Festival, and enjoyed the heck out of them.

I wanted to alert you to an out of print LP compiled by Bob Hite and (I believe) Alan Wilson for the Liberty label: an anthology of obscure R&B 78s from Hite’s collection, called “Rhythm and Blues: The End of an Era.”

http://www.rootsvinylguide.com/ebay_items/rhythm-n-blues-vol-1-uk-liberty-1969-rare-compilation-r-b-album

There are so many absolute classics on this LP, I still marvel at the lineup. This LP was crucial to my teenage development as a fan of postwar R&B, and I’ve always been grateful to the pre-Canned Heat, manic-collector side of Bob Hite that made this anthology possible. Dunno if it was going to figure in your coverage, but wanted to alert you just in case…

Jonathan King

11 Fingers!

Nice to see your mention of “Stand Up” by Jethro Tull. One of my favourite albums too. But no mention of Ian Anderson’s 11 fingers on the cover!

Regards,
John Hutchinson

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