AAA Vinyl

By now you know the drill: The Electric Recording Company finds a collectible and music-worthy title to reissue and does its fanatical-attention-to-details thing, both in the mastering from the original tape on a lovingly restored all-tube cutting system to a meticulously produced record sleeve and jacket that are in most ways difficult to distinguish from the original as described in previous ERC reviews.

Before you pay $100 for any record you have to ask yourself if you really like the music, right? Then the question becomes is this version that much better than the one you already have, assuming you already have one.

In a cross-label move similar to the Stones stereo box sets from ABKCO and UMe, Tom Petty's complete vinyl catalog will be issued in two 180gram box sets: one featuring his MCA output (1976-1991) and one covering his later Warner Brothers catalog (1994-2014).

A "Kinks in Mono" box set is due for release overseas shortly and in America on December 16th.

Here's an all-analog record subscription series you might be interested in helping.

Jamaican-born pianist Monty Alexander still tours at age seventy two. He was but thirty two when this live album was recorded at The Montreux Jazz Festival.

The German MPS label has just released five excellent jazz albums originally released in the early 1970s under the supervision of noted German audio journalist and record producer Dirk Sommer. All have been mastered AAA from the original master tapes by mastering engineer Christoph Stickel, who was responsible for the Oscar Peterson box set Exclusively For My Friends.