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Old 02-04-2019, 11:52 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Atlanta, Georgia
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Default The Black Crowes - The Discography - The Audiophile Reviews

After taking a bit of a break with my trip up to the NW to see Marc and Ed, I though I'd continue along alphabetically with a band near and dear to the Atlanta area as well as to my memories of my high school years, The Black Crowes. I've always loved these guys, I still remember the first time I heard them.....I was in 9th grade and there was something about their raw rock n' roll sound that reminded me of some of the classic bands of the 60's and 70's, most notably the Rolling Stones. Shake Your Money Maker is a great record, IMO there's not a weak song on the entire album, every song is well put together and fun to listen to from the classic cover of Hard to Handle to the wonderful ballad Seeing Things (probably my favorite song on the album). The issue with this album has always been the sound quality though, from the original CD all they way up to the reissues....I have the redbook CD reissues from somewhere in the middle 2000s and they sound like a loud mess. I've never heard any of the originals on vinyl since they insanely expensive on the second hand market due to being produced in limited quantities in vinyls dark days. I took a chance on the newer vinyl reissues to see how they would stack up, so let's see what their debut album sounds like.

The Black Crowes - Shake Your Money Maker, 1990, American Recordings
Review version - 2017 vinyl reissue, mastered by Greg Fulginiti @ Artison Sound




From Wikipedia: When the album came out in February 1990, critical reception was mostly favorable: Rolling Stone gave the album three out of five stars, and its readers and critics voted the Black Crowes 'Best New American Band' in 1990 the band appeared on the cover of the magazine's 605th issue (May 1991) following their firing from the ZZ Top tour in March that year. The issue's interview of Chris and Rich Robinson compared the band to 1970s acts, with journalist David Fricke explicitly citing Faces and The Rolling Stones and Rich Robinson mentioning Aerosmith. AllMusic gave the album four out of five stars, praising Rich Robinson's guitar playing and Chris Robinson's "appropriate vocal swagger". Entertainment Weekly gave it a B+ and stated, "The Black Crowes are to the early Rolling Stones what Christian Slater is to the young Jack Nicholson: a self-conscious imitation, but fine enough in its own right. Authentic bluesmen these Crowes will never be, but their sheer energy earns 'em the right to trash it up."

1. Twice as Hard - It's loud. That's for sure. It seems the mastering engineer did find some of the bass that was lost in the redbook CD but it's by no means front sand center. Chris Robinson's vocals are fairly smooth for a raucous rock song like this, his vocals are somewhat lost in the mix, but if you expected some type of audiophile vocal recording, you're listening to the wrong album. What this song does have is a great sense of pace and rhythm, it's just too bad the mix is so dense....this is the kind of song I'd love to hear on a MOFI remix.

2. Jealous Again - This song showcases well what type of sound you're gonna get, a very clean, crisp but thin sounding recording. One thing that stands out here is the lack of a soundstage......most of the music doesn't reach out beyond the boundaries of the speakers. Not much deep bass to speak of here either. So far this is a very plain jane redbook CD recording pressed to LP (it does sound better than those loud CD remasters though)

3. Sister Luck - This is a slower track and so far the best showcase of Chris Robinson's vocals. His voice is front and center in the mix with just a hint of glare. Rich Robinson's guitar sounds very clear in the right channel, especially when you hear him on a solo, still, not going to win any sound engineering awards.

5. Seeing Things - This is such a fantastic song I really wish it sounded better...it's not terrible, but just too thin of a recording. It's very crisp and detailed, this song has the best separation of instruments on the album so far, the guitars, vocals and background piano are well defined. You also get background singers during the chorus that can be clearly heard which give way to a pleasant sounding keyboard part in the right channel. You can really feel Chris Robinson's passion as he progresses through this one, it's just fantastic. This is perfect example of a song that would be an audiophile staple with the proper remastering.

6. Hard To Handle - An Otis Redding cover and the song that most know off this album which reached number 1 on the Billboard Rock charts. This song has pretty much no bass....I've always wondered why. You do get some nice guitar work from brother Rich though, but overall other than being popular, this doesn't really light up the audiophile system.

8. She Talks To Angels [DEMO]- Apparently, this song is loosely based on a "goth girl" that Chris was acquainted with in Atlanta who was "into heroin", so there's that . Very nice acoustic guitar opening on this one, on an accurate system you can clearly hear it coming exactly half way between the right speaker and the midpoint. Chris' vocals are big and bold, definitely the best they've sounded on this album. The drums seem a bit more front and center on this song as well, they actually sound pretty lifelike, the cymbals have quite a bit of natural shimmer to them. The main problem is there's hardly any depth to this recording....it's just a very flat mix with limited dynamics. This is really still not the best demo song by any stretch, but the nature of the song and how it's recorded makes it by far the best sounding song on the record. Acoustic guitar and Chris Robinson's vocal here is the highlight, not to mention is a freakin' great song.

So this is the Crowe's debut.....a crazy good album that kind of sounds like crap on a high end system, but the thing is it didn't take away the enjoyment of it just one bit. Listening to this, I still wonder whatever happened to that awesome original Black Crowes tshirt I wore constantly and lost never to be found again. I also regret not seeing them in concert in 1991, I was out of town with my parents while 3 of my high school friends saw them in Atlanta and said at the time it was the best concert they had been to. So what does it do for your expensive speakers and amplifiers? Not a whole lot unfortunately, the primary thing is the utter lack of bass on this recording which lends it to a very lean sound. The vinyl reissue sounds better than the redbook CD remasters from years past but that's about it. I certainly wouldn't pick this album to demo anything off of with the exception of "She Talks To Angels", but it would be hard not to enjoy that song on anything including a clock radio. Listen for fun, but at your own risk . I've always thought they hit a real home run with this record.

Audiophile Rating: 3/10 (overall sonics)
Demo Rating: 10% 1/10 (number of cool demo tracks/tracks on album)
__________________
Library: Speakers: Avalon Acoustics Isis, Subwoofers: (2) REL Acoustics 212SE Amplification: D’agostino Momentum preamplifier, D’agostino S250 stereo amplifier Digital: dCS Rossini CD/SACD transport, dCS Rossini DAC/streamer/master clock. Analog: Brinkmann Taurus table, Lyra Etna Lambda, Audio Research Ref. Phono 3

Last edited by audioguy3107; 02-05-2019 at 01:03 AM.
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