UK Charity (Thrift) Shop CD Hunting

The lyrics of Dirty Laundry are also depressingly still relevant 40 years later.

I'd never thought of a similarity to Let's Dance. Now I'll have to listen again.

EG.

 

Early 1990s CDs seem to vary quite widely in terms of loudness depending on who was mastering them - some were as quiet as most 1980s CDs and a few were almost as loud as modern ones (The Spaghetti Incident by Guns N Roses for example). It seems as though noticeable compression/limiting was in use on more than half of major label releases by US artists by about 1992, though it took until about 1994 to become the norm for CDs by British, Canadian and European artists in my experience. Check the DR score of a CD from the year 1991 by an US artist and you will most likely see a score of 10 or 11; check one by a British artist from the same year and it is more likely to score 12 or 13. Likewise the average American artist CD from about 1993 tends to have a dynamic range in the area of 8-10 whereas British CDs from then tend to be more likely to score in the range of 10 to 13, about where US mastered CDs from 1991 were, and in some cases higher. There was a nosedive in the dynamic range of most releases by British artists in about 1994 and British/American releases from any given year have been of about the same average loudness/dynamic range since (8 or 9 is fairly average for 1994-1996; 7 for c.2000; 6 for c.2005 and today 4 or 5 commonly seems more typical).

The patchy nature of the modern loudness war in its late 1980s/early 1990s beginnings meant that some artists such as The Tragically Hip released one CD that was on the loud side for the era, in their case Road Apples, and then another (Fully Completely) a year later that was largely unaffected by the loudness war due to a different engineer being responsible for the mastering. It's a similar story with James, whose album Seven was on the loud side for the time (though by no means terrible) but which the followup was quieter. Both Seven and Road Apples were, I believe, mastered in 1991. Seven came out in early 1992 but I believe production on it had finished by the end of the previous year.

I tend to buy old CDs due to their higher dynamic range than the newer remasters on streaming platforms, and so generally skip anything mastered after about 1994. Releases up to 1990 are usually guaranteed not to be brickwalled (with a very small number of exceptions), while I generally check the Dynamic Range Database site for releases of potential interest from about 1991 to 1994 which was I view as the main introductory transition period for brickwalling.

There were a reasonable number of early 1990s CDs that managed to be quite loud with only the use of compression and not brickwalling, and I find these tend to sound better than one from the same era that had a brickwall peak limiter applied. Most of the CD masters that used compression alone (without brickwalling) remind me a bit of the way vinyl single masters often sound, and both tend to score around DR11.

 

I was ripping a 1992 CD by Swing Out Sister last night (mainly to make sure it wasn't a PDO disc starting to bronze) and was surprised at the DR of 13. So yes, even in 1992 there were occasions when the mastering was similar to the 80s.

EG.

 

I recently picked up the full set of 1993 Beggar’s Banquet Gary Numan/Tubeway Army twofers and the DR levels are positively 80s, all 13s and 14s.

They sound great when cranked, and Telekon is the only version on CD with the original vinyl mixes. Highly recommended, if you can find them - I had to use Discogs.

 

Found myself at my local Salvo's (Salvation Army) store late this morning.
Haven't ventured here for ages.
The Beatles '1962-1966' (1993-2010?) haven't checked it out yet.
Bananarama (The Very Best Of) (Collectors Edition) (2002) two disc.
Garth Brooks 'Double Live' (2006) 2 cd/dvd, could have this already.

 

Vic Chesnutt – About to Choke (1996). This was 50p. Never heard anything by him before. Any good?

 

Have been getting more into Thin Lizzy of late. Bought this today for 25p. 1991 cd of third album (1973)

The credits read :Anthony Hawkins re-mastering. Hope the sound quality is as good as that on the ‘This Is The Moody Blues’ cd he also remastered.

 

Some nice finds in Preston this morning, 99p each:

Nancy Wilson - Welcome To My Love
Petula Clark - Live
Michael Nyman - Live
Barclay James Harvest - Gone To Earth (with bonus tracks)
Vangelis - Heaven And Hell

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First photo is finds from my 2 day London (South West) trip. I had expected to pick up more but a lot of charity shops seem to have stopped selling CDs. Eel Pie Records no longer sells CDs either! Particularly pleased with DIY on Soul Jazz (post punk comp) and Native North America Vol.1 though. If anyone lives near Hammersmith the Amnesty bookshop still has a lot of really interesting CDs at 3 for £1 (ask to see the boxes they have in back).

Then yesterday I dropped back into the Berkeley (Gloucestershire) charity shop where I previously picked up some hard rock and they had some more for me to investigate - nice.

 

Impressed. The Big Star and Queensryche particularly.

 

Just listening to it now - Walsh and Lukather really lighting it up on the solos

 

Don't think I have ever heard any Queensryche.

 

Not a huge fan, but really like a few albums. A friend had ‘Empire’ on cassette back at school in 1990, I loved it. I later had the cassette myself then a cd of that title, I then bought ‘Promised Land’ upon release in 1994. Had ‘Operation Mindcrime’ a few years later. ‘Rage For Order’ is a cd I bought about 5 weeks ago when I saw an original mastering copy for £3.99. I though that was good value at that price.

 

Oh no! Sorry about that, hope you didn’t go massively out of your way to visit…

 

The early 1980s were a great time to buy 12" singles. I pretty much switched from 7" singles, because of the extended versions you'd get on 12", plus extra tracks.

 

ABBA Greatest Hits was one of the top selling albums in the UK during the 70s. Everyone had a copy, including my Mum and Glen Matlock (probably), so it tends to turn up regularly in charity shops, usually slashed, bashed and smashed. This one is probably the best early copy I've seen, so I didn't mind paying £3.

The cassettes were all 50p each. I'm a big fan of Fish-era Marillion and didn't want to leave them behind and thought I'd give 'Seasons End' a go. I think Queen's much maligned 'Made In Heaven' from the mid 90s, may well be the 'newest' tape I own.

 

I used to have that ABBA LP. Paid £1 for a copy that despite being as dusty as possible, cleaned up well and had clearly only had minimal play, or had been played on a decent condition stylus/properly counter-weighted cartridge.

I sold my turntable (Technics sl23 with AT-VM95ML cartridge) and all my 200 or so records earlier this year as I needed funds. Plus I was getting fed up of poor new pressings and groove wear on decent looking used LPs (but that’s a story for another thread).

I kinda miss buying common yet great LPs in charity shops. In fact; All my ABBA vinyl albums (‘Waterloo’ through to ‘The Visitors’ and Greatest Hits vols 1 and 2) were charity shop finds.

 

Wow at the complete 80s Marillion haul on cassette!

Queen is one I am looking out for, but I don't expect to find one easily.

EG.

 

The rarest pressing of ABBA's Greatest Hits is this one.



Fernando was a last minute addition to the album which is why they had to add these silver hype stickers on the first print run of the cover.

 

I have all the Fish era Marillion cassettes because that's how I was buying my albums at the time. (They're still up in the loft, along with all my other tapes).

 

I feel I can share this here, but I woke up in the middle of the night in a mild panic because for no obvious reason at all I thought about my original 1988 CD fatbox of The Thieving Magpie and whether it had the deadly foam inserts inside.

And....it did. Two lots, one in each side of the case.

But, thank God, there were booklets/posters in each side as well, between the foam and the disc.

That was too close a call....

EG.

 

Really good album!

 

I forgot I also picked up this one, played it in the car on the way from Stroud to South Wales on Friday - my 12 year old son didn't know what to make of it

 

Dodged a bullet there!

Absolutley hate those foam inserts, they nearly knackered a Swedish Polar release of ABBA The First Ten Years 2 CD Fatbox i found in a Chazza a while ago.

Luckily was able to get the majority of it off the CD's and they play with no problem.

 

Last week started well for me, with another 3 discs from my usual Monday visit to the Red Cross, all compilations for £1.

• Moody Blues - The Very Best Of (17-track comp by Polygram TV, from 1996)
• Youssou N'Dour - Hey! The Best Of (15-tracks on the Music Club label, released in 1993
• Outkast - Big Boi And Dre Present... (16-track greatest hits with 3 new, sonopress, released on Arista in 2001)

2 days following this I dropped my mother off at the Vale Of Leithen hospital for a scan, this gave me the opportunity for a quick walk along Alexandria High Street. I had spotted two shops close together near Greggs!. In the first, Marie Curie I couldn't see any CDs, so asked the assistant, who replied that "they don't stock CDs." Not a great start but a few doors away was Barnardos and I immediately spotted some racks at the end of the shop.
I left with the following two for £1 each:

• Buju Banton - Inna Heights (released on the Jet Star label in 1997, the much anticipated follow up to the classic 'Til Shiloh')
• Yeah Yeah Yeah's - It's Blitz (released on Polydor/Geffen 2009)

Pleased with these two, as it's not often I find a reggae/dancehall title and I'd been looking for the highly rated third album by the Yeah, Yeah, Yeah's for some time. I could have came away with a few more, spotting two by 'The Kingsbury Manx' but I couldn't remember anything about them, just that the name was familiar from reading about them in Uncut magazine some 20 years ago. The shelves also had a few I already have but don't see very often, eg. The White Stripes debut, The Blue Nile - High and Traffic's Mr Fantasy, the remaster with bonus tracks.

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