Tea For The Tillerman2

After resisting for quite a few years, I finally broke down and bought the Analogue Productions pressing of the original TFTT. I hate paying fifty bucks for a single LP (this is my first time), but this recording is so insanely great (maybe the best in all of Pop music history), and there being only a couple left in stock at Acoustic Sounds (and who knows if Chad will let it go out-of print when those few copies are gone?), I decided I would regret it if I didn’t.

Though Michael Fremer (and Harry Pearson---it was on his Super Disc list) was for years singing the praises of the original UK Island LP (which I own), I always considered the high end muted (the cymbals lacking their raw brassiness, the guitar and violin strings their highest overtones and "sheen"), the bass lacking weight, punch, and power (the kick drum in particular didn’t sound "right": emasculated, like it was only 8" deep, not 14). Fremer criticized later pressings (the Mobile Fidelity for one, iirc) for "boosting" the high end, but has since learned that the original mastering engineer didn’t know the tape was Dolby-encoded, and mastered without it! That certainly explains why I found the bass and treble problematic.

Fremer says in hindsight, that the Ovation guitar Cat plays on the album doesn’t sound like it has the plastic body it actually does should have tipped him off. That even with the top and bottom rolled off the original LP sounds as good as it does speaks to the quality of the recording. Even with them mia, the original stills sounds better than almost all other Pop recordings! With it’s full frequency response restored, this pressing is a recording for the ages.