4 Men With Beards Label has Bad Pressings

Most of the Scorpio issues of Warner/Elektra/Reprise albums in recent years have been pretty decent and are basically Rhino product distributed by Scorpio. They do not get the careful attention to detai that the Because Music Matters Rhino issues, but they're generally fine midline reissues.

Stuff that is not through WEA is another matter and is all over the place.

 

FYI- 4 Men and LITA both have a common thread - a fellow by the name of Pat Thomas, who may have been one of the "4 Men" and is now working for LITA as an A&R Consultant.

Two of the other four men are Russ Tolman from the band True West and Filippo Salvadori. I think Salvadori is the only one still involved with the label.

 

And more importantly, do these gentlemen still have beards??

Arnie

 

Are there two versions. bought a copy early on and it sounded disappointing though slightly better than CD. I would recommend the AP 45 rpm or original UK Philips.

I gave up on 4MWB after reading all the negatives but also have three early titles - The two Judee Sill albums and Shoot out The Lights. The Sill albums sound very good and SOTL betters my Hannibal pressing. It does sound like after a promising start they got sloppy just to get licenced product out from any (cheap) source.

 

I thought Pangaea sounded really good, although I have had problems with 4 men before ( Iggy Pop'sThe Idiot is awful ).

Speaking of Iggy has anyone seen Runt Distributions American Caesar release or better yet heard it?

 

I was told by 4MWB that the "Academy In Peril" was a flat transfer from the master. They then got back to me to say the copy warners sent had Dolby A applied to their transfer. So that one isn't from cd.

 

At the age of 56, the years are slipping by me. If I am not mistaken, the original (which was a gatefold), came out in about 2001. I was very impressed with it.

 

Had the gatefold. Original and AP versions blew it away so it went on ebay.

 

OK. Good to know. Can't believe my ears were so fooled, but there it is.

Do you prefer an orig. U.S. or a UK Philips?

 

It's actually also a play on words, and equally means "For men with beards".

"For hipsters, by hipsters" in other words!

 

Their Ernie Graham reissue sounds fantastic

 

I've never had a bad scorpio pressing per se, but for example I had their pressing of Silver Apples - S/T. I found an original pressing later and compared the two and they were like night and day (and I'm not necessarily talking audiophile night and day, just regular night and day - easy to hear the difference). The scorpio was and is fine, but in this instance the original was just light years better, particularly the dynamics it was just way more open, tons more separation, yet warmer and clearer.

 

I just picked up Big Star 3rd. I avoid 4MWB, but most of the reviews have said that this album was good. The source material sounds good, but the pressing is awful. This is the noisiest new vinyl I have ever purchased. It crackles and pops like a record that is scratched to hell. This will be the last album from them I ever purchase.

 

A few years ago I purchased John Cale's "Paris 1919" on the 4MWB label. I thought it was OK - then I found a UK original copy which blew the 4MWB reissue out of the water (naturally). Recently I decided to play the reissue on my vintage turntable with a Shure M75 cart (conical stylus) and I was surprised at how decent it sounded. It helps that this pressing is also not off-center (one of my main gripes with 4MWB vinyl).

 

I have the 4MWB pressings of Clube d'Esquina from Milton Nascimento & Lo Borges and One Year by Colin Blunstone. The Nascimento pressing is first rate- flat, centred and quiet. It's easily the sonic equivalent of the Abbey Road remastering on my CD copy. The packaging was top rate too, a thick gatefold sleeve with good print quality and faithful colour. No complaints there. The Blunstone issue isn't up to the same standards, there is some surface noise but not so bad that it intrudes on the music. Blunstone's vocals sound great. The packaging is average.

I would say that my limited exposure to 4MWB has been favourable, certainly nothing to call the cops over and much better than some Back to Black pressings I have. My new copies of Scott I, II,III and IV were filthy when I opened them, an absolute disgrace packaging wise.

 

The best route IMO for Paris 1919 on a budget is the European mid-price reissue LP on Warner/WEA. It was in print for years, from the mid 80s until at least 1991, so presumably shouldn't be too rare or pricey. It doesn't sound like an original, but it sounds pretty great. Used to see them at record fairs as recently as 2011 for around £5.

 

I am now very reluctant to buy reissues,,, we are all for the most part being conned, with very few exceptions, it seems,,,
I always kept thinking my copies of the first modern lovers record and chris bell's 'i am the cosmos' sounded not quite right ....
Then, after years of researching i now learn most re-issues are bad news.

I no longer purchase anything from 4MWB or simply vinyl or vinyl lovers or anything,,,

It is ridiculous

Here is an article you will all love ,,, spread the word so these people stop lying to us, undervaluing an artists arduous labour in getting things done perfectly and damaging the current state of music further .

http://www.analogplanet.com/content/reissue-labels-avoid-and-some-best-proceed-caution

 

I have owned two LPs by 4MWB: Ice Cream For Crow by Capt. Beefheart, which sounds ok, and Shoot Out the Lights by Richard and Linda Thompson, Side 2 of which was way off centre.

 

Mine sounds good too. Very quiet vinyl.

 

I won't buy another 4MWB release. I've been burned twice now - their release of Big Star's 3rd is bad, but the Chris Bell album is atrocious. Better off getting the CD releases of both.

 

I should probably elaborate: I like to do high res digital transfers of my vinyl. This entails a careful cleaning regimen (Spin Clean and VPI 16.5 with AIVS cleaning fluids), transferring over at 192/24 (using an Apogee Quartet audio interface), and then spending hours with a good set of cans on, going through the recording with Adobe Audition to manually clean up any noise. It's a lot of work, but the end result is that I get a really great sounding recording with the warm characteristic vinyl sound a love but the convenience of computer-based playback (I'm using an Oppo BDP-105D as my DAC).

I've been doing this for about 6 years now. Occasionally I come across records that are so bad that I have to resort to doing things like fading between tracks to eliminate the distracting thump of an off-center spindle hole...or throwing up my hands and just finding another pressing or just sticking to the CD version. These records are usually thrift store hopefuls. The 4MWB records I've come across so far are like this...the pressings *suck*. And to make matters worse, even through all the noise you can hear that the mastering sucks worse. The Chris Bell record sounds awful...like a bad FM broadcast.

 

I just picked up the 4MWB of John Fahey's Dance Of Death, and the truncated intro of "Worried Blues" that appears on the CD issue is faithfully reproduced on the vinyl.

Now, of course, this is not evidence that the vinyl was sourced from CD, in and of itself. But clearly, no one did the work that they could have done to get the tape with the intact version of the track, which we know exists. It doesn't inspire confidence.

And the noisy pressing sucks, btw.

I had good luck before with some of the other early Fahey titles on 4MWB, which weren't bad at all. My luck ran out. I'll definitely be thinking twice before buying anything with their name on it again.

 

A long time back I bought Marquee Moon & all 4 Scott Walker albums on 4MWB. Sadly they were all pressed bad. A real shame I obviously wanted to like the albums & label. One thing I will acknowledge at least they held the flame when getting new vinyl was difficult.

 

I have several 4MWB LPs. They are a very inconsistent label -- some of their releases sound very good (Gnidrolog: Lady Lake, released 2014), some average, some just poor. I would be very cautious now about buying one of their LPs.

 

The more recent the pressings , the better the QC seems to be. Beware of earlier releases.