Elvis Costello took a quantum songwriting leap on his third album and with a generous six weeks in the studio following a world tour with new songs written, came up with intricate arrangements and sonically sophisticated production that while complex, was not detrimental to the intense propulsion of the music.

The third and final part of The Rolling Stones discography

This Rolling Stones discography written for issue 4 of The Tracking Angle, may have gathered some moss, but it still has some valuable information for Stones LP collectors (Photo shows Decca UK FFSS Their Satanic Majesties Request

This Rolling Stones discography written for issue 4 of The Tracking Angle, may have gathered some moss, but it still has some valuable information for Stones LP collectors
(Photo shows American distributed UK pressed FFRR edition of Out of Our Heads)

Ideally, LPs should be played with the pickup stylus remaining tangential (ie, at a 90° angle) to the groove—just as the lacquer from which the LP was ultimately stamped was cut in the first place. Over the years, many attempts have been made to accomplish this. Back in 1877, Thomas A. Edison's original machines tangentially tracked his cylinders, but Emil Berliner's invention of the flat disc put an end to cylinders altogether. In the 1950s, a number of companies marketed so-called "tangential" trackers that used dual arms, based on conventional pivoting arrangements, to change the angle at which the headshell was mounted as it moved across the LP side. In 1963, Marantz introduced the SLT-12, which used a plastic pantograph to move the stylus across the record surface. Garrard's Zero 100 pivoting arm controlled its independently pivoting headshell with a bar that extended from the main bearing of the tonearm.