Last Record Store Day Sony/Legacy released four mono LPs: Miles Davis's Miles Ahead and Porgy and Bess, The Fabulous Johnny Cash (released by IMPEX last year in stereo) and Cheap Thrills by Big Brother and The Holding Company featuring Janis Joplin.
A reader alerted me to the fact that some online sites are selling a variety of "Pink Moon" reissues including one from the aptly named "Phantom" label. Be careful!
It's time to put to bed a long standing record myth: that UK Decca and UK-pressed London records are different pressings, even if they have the same matrix numbers, mother numbers and stamper numbers. This myth has persisted for a very long time, fed by people who claim to hear differences between such records even when the information in the lead-out groove area is identical.
The stereo mix of Pet Sounds issued on SACD by Mobile Fidelity and on vinyl by Capitol a few years ago is interesting and was well done, but Brian mixed it and intended it to be listened to in mono, which is how it was originally released back in 1966.
"Non-fill" refers to a pressing defect that occurs when the molten vinyl does not flow fully to produce a well-formed groove. It occurs most often on a 180g record's outer edge and is caused by the vinyl's beginning to harden prematurely.
Call me crazy (and you wouldn't be the first!) but when I spend $25 or $50 on a 180 gram reissue, I want to know the source used and who did the cutting, plating and pressing. Don't you? But we don't get that vital information as often as we'd like, do we?
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