SEALED Audiophile Joni 180g LP Play THE BLUE GAME

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Buy this record and you too can play  The Blue Game! This is a Factory Sealed Rhino 180g LP, a record the audiophile community was much more impressed with than we were. We wrote a very long story about it which we call "How to Play Blue, The Game (Not the Album)"

A while back (3/07) we remarked in an emailing that we would not be carrying the new 180 gram Rhino pressing of Blue. We noted: "I won't belabor its shortcomings. Let's just say I think you can do better. Down the road when we've had a chance to do a shootout amongst all our best copies, we will be offering something more to our liking. I recommend instead -- and this is coming from a die-hard LP guy, someone who disconnected his home CD player over two years ago and only plays the damn things in the car -- that you pick yourself up a nice used copy of the gold CD Hoffman mastered for DCC. It's wonderful."

Some people are already upset with us over this decision, actually going so far as to question our motives, if not our sanity. Without a doubt we feel this will end up being the single most controversial stance we've ever taken. I predict that a great number of audiophiles are going to get really upset over our criticism of this new pressing. We are going to get emails like crazy asking us to explain what on earth could possibly be wrong with such a wonderful sounding LP. The writers of these emails will no doubt extoll its virtues relative to the other pressings they may have heard, and, finding no other reasonable explanation, they will feel impelled to question both the quality of our playback equipment and -- yes, it's true -- even our ability to recognize a good record when it's spinning right on our very own turntable.

Some of these individuals may actually be our customers. Obviously we don't want them to be upset over our decision. We would much prefer to be honest and forthright; after all, it's the hallmark of our operation. We're the guys in this dodgy business that pride ourselves on giving it to you straight. Letting the chips fall where they may. Criticising the hell out of the naked emperors who write for the audiophile rags. Imploring you to listen critically for yourself and not buy into the hype.

Audiophile Garbage

We're those guys, the ones dedicated to finding you truly Better Records, not just the same old crap that other people want you to think are better records: the 180 gram remasters and Japanese pressings and References and Cheskys and TAS List titles and Stan Ricker half-speeds and Fragiles and For Dukes and Dafos's and Morph the Cats, etc., etc., etc. Screw all that crap. We sell it but we sure don't think you should be buying it.

We're those guys, never ones to shy away from controversy, especially if it actually fulfills some purpose, like getting you away from audiophile garbage and into some real music with honest-to-goodness high-fidelity sound.

Just Asking for Trouble

But does criticizing and refusing to carry Blue really do anybody any good? Aren't we just asking for trouble? Wouldn't it be easier for us to just take your twenty five bucks and say that the new Blue is better than the average domestic copy and leave it at that, the less said the better? Who needs the headaches?

Think of all the emails that will come flooding in because of our anti-Blue stance. People will want answers. They will consider it our duty to explain the contrarian position we have adopted. It won't be good enough to just say we think you can do better. Do better how? Exactly what will get better when we do better? Exactly what's not good enough about the one I already bought? And if you can't tell us what's wrong with this one, how will we know how to go about finding a copy that you think communicates the musical values of Blue better?

Oh dear. Yes, I see your point. It is a bit of a problem, no question about it.

Not to worry. In the best can-do American spirit, we're going to turn these vexing lemon-flavored questions into satisfying and edifying audiophile lemonade. We're going to build strong bodies twelve ways, just you watch.

You Call That Fun?

How you say? Easy. We're going to do it with the new and exciting Joni Mitchell Blue Game. It's fun for the whole family! (Actually it's not. Your family will want nothing to do with it, and even most audiophiles are not going to want to play. But it's such a goofy-sounding turn of phrase we had to leave it in.)

Instead of us telling you what's right and wrong with the new Blue, you're going to tell us. Doesn't that sound like fun? No? No matter, we can come back to it later.

You may have noticed that there is a great deal of commentary on the site about what we listen for, what we like, how to become a better listener, how to tweak your system, how we do these laborious shootouts to find you Hot Stampers, and on and on, ad infinitum and for some people ad nauseum. "We do the work so you don't have to", right? Well in this game, you do the work so we don't have to. Now that's what we call a fun game!

The game basically involves you doing for Blue what we do for three or four different titles each and every week: Hot Stamper shootouts. It's our bread and butter. It's our claim to fame. We spend more time doing these crazy comparisons than everything else we do around here combined. They're time-consuming and exhausting, but they're also fun. Discovering amazing pressings of your favorite music is fun. Since our shootouts almost always involve our favorite albums (we get to pick them, so why pick anything else?), we get to hear pretty much nothing but our favorite music played over and over. On top of that we usually get to hear it sound better than we ever thought it could.

And then you get to buy the record and you get to hear it sound better than you ever thought it could. See why we spend so much time on these shootouts? Because everybody wins. We love 'em and you love 'em. (As an added benefit they also build strong bodies twelve ways.)

So how do you play?

It's easy. And fun! (Actually, that may not be true for many of you. A fairly sizable contingent of the audiophile public likes to flip the old system on, crack open a beer and throw on a favorite record or two for a relaxing evening of musical merriment. All that tweaky stuff and intensive listening is for the birds. If you're one of those guys, you might as well stop reading right now. This game is not about relaxing. This game is about learning to hear better, the end result of which (we hope) will be a better understanding of records and audio, and the added enjoyment that follows from that understanding. If audio ignorance is bliss in your world, okay by me. If, on the other hand, you find that the more you know about this hobby the more you actually enjoy doing it, and the more you get out of it, then this is the perfect game for you. This game is designed to sharpen your listening skills, and we can all use our listening skills sharpened, can't we? Yes we can.)

Playing the Joni Mitchell Blue Game is pretty much like doing one of our shootouts, but on a smaller scale. Although we might play twenty or thirty copies of a record to find the handful that will make it to the site, we don't expect you to. Cleaning and playing that many copies of a single album would be a job, and I'm guessing you already have a job and don't need another one, am I right?

Five LPs

But you have to have enough copies to be able to find at least one or two pretty good ones -- not Hot Stampers necessarily, but Very Good or Pretty Good Stampers let's say. Five strikes us a nice number of copies to start with. You will need five domestic, non-audiophile, copies of Blue to get started -- reisssues, originals, promos, whatever you can find that's clean and you think might sound good. The vinyl can be noisy; that's not what we're listening for. We want to find good sounding copies, no more. no less. (Imports of Blue rarely sound any good, so let's leave them out, shall we?)

Send Us Your Stampers

Step two: send us the stamper numbers of each copy so we can play along. We have lots of Blues, many of the same stampers you will have. We want to know which copies you are playing so we can follow along as you are evaluating them.

You Can't Play Without the Disc Doctor

Next, Disc Doctor them all. Record cleaning machine or no record cleaning machine, you can't play this game without Disc Doctor. If you don't use the stuff, you are wasting your time (and ours) trying to figure out which pressing is going to sound better. The one with the least amount of crud in the grooves might sound the best, but that's not the one that's mastered the best or pressed the best. All the crud must be removed before the latter two qualities can be evaluated. Disc Doctor. There is no alternative and there is no substitute.

Now start playing the records! Get out a yellow pad and use a separate page to take notes for each individual pressing. If you have two copies with the same stampers, more's the better -- they won't sound the same, and noticing and noting exactly what the differences are is what gets your ears tuned. Note exactly what sounds right and wrong, better and worse, about any sound on any song, then go to another copy and listen for exactly the qualities or shortcomings you just noticed.

This will take a while, but eventually you should have at least one side one you like, and at least one side two, and they probably will not be on the same slab of vinyl, although there's no reason they can't be.

Send us the stampers for those two sides. Tell us what you like and don't like about whatever songs you played.

The New Blue

Now listen to the new 180 gram Blue. Compare the same songs on the domestic copies you liked the best to those same songs on the new Blue.

This is where we may join in the "fun". We're guessing that if you do all this work, you will hear what's better about the domestic pressings of Blue compared to the new 180 gram LP. If, however, you don't like your domestic copies better, we have a few specific qualities we would like you to listen for in some of the songs. This may help you to recognize certain qualities we heard in our domestic copies that were lacking in the new remaster.

What and Why

We're convinced that if you have good equipment, and even passable pressings of Blue, you will agree with us as to which LP gets Blue better. But it's up to you to hear what's better, and to know why it's better. Why the sound of one version "works" and the other one doesn't. This is what makes it a fun game. It's no fun if we just tell you what we think. Then it becomes just another opinion, not a whole lot different from any other opinion. The audio world is full of them.

But if you really make the effort to listen for yourself, to get down in the trenches and do the real back-and-forth, pain-in-the-ass work, then you will have a very special kind of opinion, one that is pretty rare in the audiophile world. You will have an informed opinion. You didn't read it somewhere. Nobody told you what the answer was. You came up with your own answer. You heard the differences with your own two ears. Who cares what anybody else thinks? Take your beat-up antiquated analog pressing of Blue over to your friends' houses and play it for them so that they can see why it's better too. Spread the word. Make the world safe for old records. We're behind you 100%.

Unless you disagree with us and prefer the new Blue, in which case we can only conclude that you are deaf or have bad equipment.

Just kidding! But seriously, it's one of those two if you like the new one.

 

The Never-ending Story of Blue

We've written three separate commentaries for Blue, four if you count the first one written way back in what seems like a lifetime ago, 2005: Hot Stamper Shootout Stalled 2005!.

This one that you are reading: How to Play Joni Mitchell Blue.

The next one discussed Fremer's risible review as well as my experience hearing the record poorly reproduced at a friend's house: Joni Mitchell Blue, The Plot Thickens .

And the last was a response to the findings of the lone customer to date who has taken up the challenge: The first rule of Blue Club is you do not talk about Blue Club .

Finally, there is the letter we received from a customer who questioned our "agenda": For Pete's Sake, What's Wrong With Blue?

We Weren't Ready in 2005

That first aborted attempt at a shootout for Blue failed because we had neither the specialized cleaning techniques and machinery that we use now, nor the equipment required to play such a challenging recording. We pointed out at the time that our notes contained comments such as "soft, lacks bass, grungy, grainy, thin, hi-fi, bright, so-so, aggressive, hard, thick, groove damage, highs worn away, lacking in bass and extreme top, gritty, swooshy, bad vinyl."

No doubt that's what we were hearing. We also found comments such as "perfection, wonderful, lovely, sweet, transparent, as good as it gets, Joni's right there, one of the best, wow."

So there was hope, even way back in 2005. But no Blue to sell. Until now.

A Blue Worthy of the Name This is an excerpt from our recent Hot Stamper shootout.

The copy of Blue we are offering today is one of the few that sounded good before. Now it sounds really good. It got much quieter after applying some of our new cleaning techniques, and the sound became even warmer, richer, sweeter and more transparent.

But There's So Much More

Both sides sound wonderful -- rich, sweet, and delicate. The warmth, breath, and presence of Joni's vocals take this copy to a place light years beyond the typical copy, not to mention any reissue. The guitars sound amazing, particularly on side two, and the piano has weight without hardness. There's tons of energy and lots of ambience, plus real depth to the soundfield -- you really hear INTO this copy. Try that with our Rhino LP.

The best pressings (and better playback equipment) have revealed nuances to this recording -- and of course the performances of all the players along with it -- that made us fall in love with the music all over again. Of all the tough nuts to crack, this was the toughest, yet somehow copies emerged that allowed us to appreciate the sonic merits of Blue and ignore its shortcomings. Hot Stampers have a way of doing that. You forget it's a record; it's now just Music. The right record and the right playback will bring this music to life in a way that you cannot imagine until you hear it. That is our guarantee on Blue -- better than you ever thought possible or your money back. TRACK COMMENTARY All I Want Key Track

This is a do-or-die song for side one. When Joni sings "traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling" she really pushes on the last couple of them, and even the best copies have a hard time dealing with it. When a copy of this record comes in, that first line often tells me that there is no hope for side one. If an LP can get through that first line properly, it's at least a 'B'; it might even be a Hot Stamper.

My Old Man Key Track

The piano on this track needs to sound solid and have good body. That tells you if there's any weight to the pressing. Notice that her voice is much smoother on this track as well. If the whole album sounded like this it wouldn't be so hard to find a good sounding copy.

Little Green Track Commentary

The vocal here needs to be breathy; Joni likes to get breathy during some of the more emotional moments in the song. She's very powerful when she gets quiet, and no track illustrates that better than this one. If you have a copy that brings out the raw heartbreak in this song, it doesn't matter what else might be wrong with it; you have a copy worth keeping and cherishing.

Carey
Blue Key Track

This is a tough track for side one. Joni really pushes her vocal on this one. Since it's at the end of the record, where inner groove distortion is most problematical, where even the best cutting engineers have trouble with high frequencies at high levels -- when you add up these factors, you have some real hurdles to overcome. The best copies "survive" this track. Everything before this song on side one can sound awfully good. This song we try to just get through.

California
This Flight Tonight
River
A Case of You Key Track

Something happens at the beginning of this track which is interesting from an audiophile slash recording point of view. See if you can hear it on the copy you own. If you think you know what it is, drop me an email. It takes an exceptionally good copy and exceptionally good equipment to bring it out. You can be sure that no one in the control room ever heard it.

The Last Time I Saw Richard

This link will take you right to it on our site.

To see our Recommended 180g Rock, Pop, and Blues albums, click here. (Note that Blue is not among them.)

This is a factory sealed record, long out of print. This record cannot be guaranteed against defects of any kind once opened. This item is only sold "as is".

 

My name is Tom Port. I also sell on Ebay under the name Humorem (2411 feedback rating, a member since 1998). I have been selling audiophile LPs and CDs for twenty years.

I started another "company" on Ebay called dccblowout because in 2002 I bought the remaining stock of DCC Compact Classics, the audiophile label that filed Chapter 11 in that year.

Please visit our Ebay store for all your audiophile needs. We also have a website under the name better dash records where we sell the best sounding analog recordings in the world.  If you are looking for the ultimate in audiophile sound, please take a moment to check out our site.

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