I stumbled across some very cheap, near-mint PRT vinyl copies of Something Else and Village Green today. Having read that a lot of people regarded the PRT CD reissues of these two as the best reissues, I decided to give them a try. The instruments don't sound too bad; pretty decent I think, but the vocals were *terrible*! Very metallic, shrill, sometimes distorted (is sibilant the correct word?). Just imagine what David Wattttttssssss ssssoundsss like... Does anyone else have any experience with these LP reissues? Did I just get bad pressings?
Why buy these when there are other, better pressings out there? Here's the deal on the Kinks: By 1975, the first six UK Kinks LP's were deleted in the UK. I say this because until 1981, all that was available in my import stores in Vancouver were Village, Arthur, Percy and Lola. Village & Arthur were both NON-gatefolds (contrary to the originals). Lola was still a gatefold. Percy was a single sleeve as it always had been. All 4 had burgundy labels when their respective originals had blue labels (except maybe Percy). In 1981, Kinks, Kinda, Kontroversy, Face, Kelvin and Something Else were all re-pressed in the UK. Kelvin and Something were in stereo, while the others were in mono. I bought the first 4 new in 1981, and have since acquired the last two. Labels are black shading to white. Vinyl is thin. Sound is FANTASTIC. ALL ANALOGUE. These are the ones to look for. You will not have to pay more than $20.00 for these records. I also bought Lola new in about 1979 and it too sounds good. I did not buy Arthur and Village because of their single sleeves. I've since found a gatefold stereo Village and am still looking for the Arthur, which, by the way comes with a cool insert. The recently pressed Castle vinyls are OK too IMO, although they are digitally sourced. They do have a degree of harshness and digital bite which the 1981 re-issues don't have. Mono mixes are used throughout, which in the case of Arthur will save you about $200.00. The label on the Lola says MONO, but that's wrong. This record never came in mono and the Castle LP does indeed play in stereo. Hope this helps.
Thanks for all that great info, Peter! It's always nice to know what to be on the lookout for... As to why I bought these...they were cheap, and they were there, with my name on them! Seriously, around here, there's not much to choose from. There are only 2-3 secondhand vinyl places, and this is actually the first time since I started hunting for vinyl about a year ago that I've come across *any* versions of these! Village Green is gatefold, BTW. Buying secondhand vinyl is a frustrating experience. Thank God for labels like Sundazed for putting out affordable, high-quality vinyl reissues. The mono Dylans, as everybody knows, are gorgeous! Freewheelin' has given me some of my best listening experiences ever...I never knew a voice could come through with such presence. But I'm digressing...I'd still like to hear if anyone else has any experience with the PRT Kinks LPs; did I get some particularly bad copies? At least I found a good copy of Neil Young's "Sleeps With Angels". This one trounces the CD.
One thing I forgot was that all of the 1970's Kinks LP's I was talking about were on the Pye label. I know nothing about PRT.
Pye. The top part of the label was black which shaded to white on the bottom part. Same as the UK 70's CBS label which was pale orange shading to yellow.
After listening some more and comparing them to the '98 Castle CDs (hardly examples of great sound), I've decided they're nothing special, but not truly horrible. The vocal problem remains, but is not that pronounced on all tracks. I'll hang onto them for now if only for the stereo mixes of these albums. I can't remember if my old Reprise CDs of these had the same kind of harsh vocals, but it's possible that the masters (or whichever copy that was used) of the stereo mix has some problems like this. Good to hear the stereo version of Something Else again; I've been missing that.
