[gmku]

I'm sorry, this gets a bit dweeby audiophile-ish, but I have to share. I bought an original pressing of Horses by Patti Smith the other day. I was excited enough to find a clean copy with a hardly-worn cover showing the original white type for Horses and all that. Then I get home and play it, and I was floored. It's a VG-plus copy, meaning that once in a while you hear a click or two, 2-3 per side, and there's just a bit of surface sound between tracks. Generally very, very clean, and hardly looks played.

But it's not just the clean vinyl. That's common enough. The real treat is the sound of the pressing itself.

I have several copies of Horses, including another original that I bought in 1975, a CD I picked up in 1989, an early 80s reissue (the reissues have Horses in black type), and I've never before heard all the music have such presence. In a number of tracks, I can hear the room ambience, not just sort of the echo in the studio but the "impression" of the space around Smith and the band. Almost like you can hear the air around the drum sticks flying. It's hard to explain. I've heard of "hot stamper" pressings before, and I'm not sure I own a lot more, maybe a white album copy. It's when for whatever reason the stamping of the vinyl is so clean and exact that the resuliting pressing bears an almost master tape quality, like one generation from being in the room with the band.

For another comparison, if you've ever had swimmer's ear and had a doctor irrigate your ears and notice how bright and resonant sounds are afterwards, it's a little like that--the difference between a run-of-the-mill pressing and a "hot stamper." Like a layer has been removed.

I know it sounds crazy. I've been a fan of this album for years and I've never heard it sound like this before. And this isn't even 180 gram vinyl or anything, just a regular first pressing from 1975.

What strikes me as just as crazy is that at my age my hearing can still detect this kind of stuff!