One reason many d-2-d LP’s are so musically tepid is the musicians’ fear of making a mistake, which requires scrapping the lacquer and starting anew. The cost of doing that runs into thousands of dollars. That’s why Sax and Mayorga used the best studio musicians, who are used to working under the intense pressure of studio recording, which can be very intimidating to non-studio players. Bands actually break up while making their first recordings, finally hearing what they actually sound like. Such was the case for Russ Kunkel, who went on to become a very successful studio drummer (James Taylor, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, Carly Simon, Jackson Browne, Stephen Stills, Lyle Lovett, etc.). The other members of the band he moved to L.A. with continued to toil in obscurity.
The Thelma Houston Sheffield is a little brash, some thinking there is overload taking place somewhere in the chain (the cutter head or electronics, the mic pre-amps, or perhaps even the mics). The Sheffield Drum Record suffers no such imperfection; just clean, extremely dynamic drumsets played by Keltner and Elvis’ drummer Ron Tutt. Keltner’s playing is good, but Tutt choked a little. ;-)
I don’t own Flamenco Fever or the L.A. 4 discs, having grown weary of using mediocre music as source material for speaker evaluations before finding copies. Time is too precious to me now to waste on just good sound---I turned 70 last week. Plus, I'm done evaluating loudspeakers.
