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Jason Crawford
I caught Widespread Panic in a Columbia, South Carolina bar on November 9, 1991. It was like standing in a cramped hallway with a bunch of dancing Chewbacca’s. I was with a new friend, and I think we got clearance from our folks to extend our trip to Charlotte, North Carolina on the following day to catch the Jerry Garcia Band for my first and only time ever. Or maybe we just did it without asking. Regardless, I was seventeen, and this felt like my first flash of true freedom. A spontaneous, unsupervised road trip with someone I barely knew. The first of many, in retrospect.
And, unlike the two Dead shows that I caught during this era, this show was really great. Soulful and with purpose. Jerry Garcia Band had been released just a couple of months prior as a two-disc set. The group’s only official live release up until that point. It was recorded in 1990 and has always been my favorite of Garcia’s electric recordings. Until recently, the stellar release had never been available on vinyl. Now, it is. Five records, nine sides of music, one side with an etching on it. Which has become almost as ubiquitous as the omnipresent “colored vinyl.” Whatever. I suppose we’ll just have to wait until that deal is done going down.
Jerry Garcia Band was originally announced as a Record Store Day release but was delayed due to what Garcia’s site described essentially as a poor product in comparison to the test pressings they’d initially approved. I’d waited so long for a proper vinyl release that I was actually excited by the news. Figured this meant they’d get it all the way right and was thrilled that someone was actually paying attention to quality control issues in 2021.
Alas, my optimism was misplaced. There was noticeable surface noise extending into the musical passages at the beginnings of almost every side even after an ultrasonic cleaning. That issue mostly resolved after a couple of plays, but at least one of the discs is pressed slightly off-center. Some minor warping too. I plunked down for the weightier set (there is a 150-gram and a 180-gram option), and one of my records is noticeably lighter than the others. “That Lucky Old Sun” takes up an entire defective side with noise throughout its runtime. And that’s not even the side that shows that it was “recut” according to the info stenciled in the dead wax.
So… damn. A giant swing and a bigger miss. Who’s to say this will ever be re-pressed correctly? Might be one of those all-time missed opportunities. A sensitive and dynamic performance is relegated to the bottom of the record heap. I could skip the more obviously problematic sides and just play the better ones, but I could also just play a different record that sounds good. What a waste of musicianship. We could rap all day about the ragged but right quality of Garcia’s vocals or the tension and release in Melvin Seals’ soaring organ solos, and maybe we should. But all that would best be enjoyed digitally, and I don’t write about CDs. This is a sad report at the beginning of what I’m hoping is a resurgent year, and it’s gonna sting for a while. A real kick in my tie-dyed underpants.
It’s hard to pinpoint why it seemed so difficult to find a well-made record in 2021. Supply chain issues are well-documented. We know that release schedules have been jacked up for some time, and that independent artists, especially, are being squeezed out of the vinyl scene by the larger corporations. Last time I checked, there was exactly one facility producing the lacquers needed to press records. In the whole world. Costs are up across the board. But, still. Why do the pressings suck so bad? And is it actually a pressing issue or is it something else? Who do we hold accountable? Whoever cut the lacquers, maybe? Getting a bad copy of the Jerry Garcia Band set was rough but predictable. If it’s that hard to make a decent record, what are the chances of getting five good ones within a single set?
Through it all, there are still certain engineers’ names that I look out for when shopping for new releases. And pressing facilities too. When I saw that Kevin Gray had cut an “all analog 60th-anniversary edition” of Buck Owens, I jumped. Figured it would give me a good chance to reassess Third Man Pressing’s work too. The first few that I got from them were perfectly quiet, centered, and flat. Then, I got ahold of one of the noisiest new records I’d heard in ages, and my confidence in Third Man was shaken.
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We can skip to the end if the reader would like, and I’ll go ahead and say that this release is damn near flawless. Mastering is great and seems transparent to the source tapes. Buck Owens was recorded in the simplest way allowing the fiddles and harmony vocals, the pedal steel licks, and the lead guitar lines to stand out in sharp relief against the shuffling backbeats and walking bass lines. This latest reissue, by Sundazed, is in glorious mono with a delightfully three-dimensional soundstage. There’s plenty of air in the highs without attendant hiss, and the bass is solid and tight. If you’re looking for an audiophile presentation of some old-fashioned, mid-century American roots music, this is your ticket in.
And I, for one, am equally as enamored with the songwriting and performances. As was common for the era, this is a collection of previously released singles that were cobbled together to form an “album.” Simple songs about heartbreak and… that’s about it, really. The arrangements are concise and clean with quick solos and sparse instrumentation. The songwriting is equally lean with narrative lyrics relating stories so directly that it makes you think Owens could have been a player in the 21st century’s “flash fiction” movement. Or maybe the songs are true. Dude had some pain to work through, if so. And we all know that makes for the strongest Country song.
So, there’s hope in 2022, folks. You can still find a well-made record if you really try. And, in this instance, it’ll only cost you about $25. One of the best bargains I’ve found while collecting in a while. The record’s noise floor is so low that it’s almost not there. You’ll have to tolerate having your Country record pressed on “Coke bottle clear” wax, but there’s no avoiding that these days. The ship has sailed. I was starting to feel that way about collecting vinyl in general, but I’m not giving up quite yet…
So, yeah. Collecting vinyl is like sending your ears out into a figurative minefield these days. You gotta know where to look and who to trust, and even then, betrayals and switchbacks are foregone conclusions. Sounds like we’re plotting a film noir but procuring listenable records in 2022 is infinitely more difficult than that. I’ve considered folding my cards entirely until something gives. But just when you think you’re out…
My Motown collection is spotty at best. Getting my ears on a copy of the Women of Motown set by Vinyl Me, Please was the coolest thing I’ve done to remedy that. It’s brilliant, but not necessarily as representative of the label’s classic work as it could be. I mean, Tata Vega isn’t the first Motown artist that springs to mind when considering the label’s station in popular culture. But I also have some stellar Stevie and Marvin reissues by MoFi, and brilliant takes on the Temptations’ Cloud Nine and the Miracles’ Going To a Go-Go by Speakers Corner. The Temps have always been amongst my favorite vocal groups, and I made an interesting discovery while perusing the “coming soon” section of one of my trusted online retailers recently.
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There was a “Motown in Mono” reissue series that I whiffed on in 2019. I don’t remember hearing a thing about it. Which sucks because Kevin Gray remastered all five of the titles, which were all “cut from the original analog master tapes.” Holy smokes.
Again, there are supply chain issues all around. I suspect that fewer copies were pressed than would normally be the case. But I also felt comfortable making the effort to track some copies down because the 2021 releases are just repressings of the 2019 series. Which means that the skeletons of these records were put together pre-COVID. Before well-made records were as precious and rare as gasoline was to Mad Max. The represses sold out almost immediately, but I was able to track down a copy of The Temptations Sing Smokey through good old-fashioned dogged determination.
And thank goodness. It’s everything you’d hope for. It has the wedding reception-ready hits (“The Way You Do the Things You Do,” “It’s Growing,” “My Girl”), deep cuts that stand up against the more well-known material, and even some Smokey tunes that other Motown artists had more success with than the Temptations did (“Who’s Loving You”). The Funk Brothers handle the instrumentation, no further details are needed there. The fact that this is presented in mono just brings the whole thing home in the prettiest available package.
The only thing that could have thrown a stick in the spokes would have been a less than perfect pressing. But RTI knocked this one completely out of the park. Completely flat and silent in all the right places. Nothing but music to get lost in. Like wandering the halls of the finest museum by yourself. No distractions. The next most logical step for me is to track down copies of the other installments in the series by the Miracles, the Four Tops, the Supremes, and The Marvelettes. And I will. You should too.
UPDATE: Looks like these are back in stock as of January 10, 2022. All five titles from the “Motown in Mono” series. The Temptations, the Four Tops, the Miracles, the Supremes, & the Marvelettes. Don’t wait!