About Burgers (Speakers Corner) by Hot Tuna:
The exploration of psychedelic depths did not appear to suffice the founders of Jefferson Airplane – Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady – when searching for their musical salvation. So why not amalgamate their hippy-like simple lifestyle and folksy music with the formation of a second band called Hot Tuna, emotional yet not so synthetically hotted-up? Even in the very first number, "True Religion", whose airy, bubbling folksy finger-picking soars up into powerful waves of rock, the message of this first studio album comes over loud and clear. Growling bass melodies and the representation of a life on the road ("Keep On Truckin’") conjure up a down-to-earth country feeling, with an off-key fiddle tune ("Let Us Get Together Right Down Here") accentuating the rough yet cordial get-together. The purely instrumental "Water Song" is a stroke of genius – this humming, buzzing guitar mix doesn’t only demonstrate the players’ instrumental dexterity but also their keen sense of melody and ear for sound colouring. No matter whether gruff Hillbilly, cool blues rocker, or square and nostalgic former hippy – they’ll all love this album. Just think: for whom else does Hot Tuna still go on tour ...?
Musicians:
- Jorma Kaukonen (guitar, vocal)
- Jack Casady (bass, vocal)
- Papa John Creach (violin, vocal)
- Sammy Piazza (drums, percussion, vocal)
- Nikki Buck (organ, piano)
- Richmond Talbott (vocal, guitar)
- David Crosby (vocal)
Recording: 1972 by 'The Unknown Engineer' at Wally Heider Studios, San Francisco
Production: Fisohobay Production
About Speakers Corner
At the beginning of the 90s, in the early days of audiophile vinyl re-releases, the situation was fairly straightforward. Companies such as DCC, Mobile Fidelity, Classic Records and, of course, Speakers Corner all maintained a mutual, unwritten ethical code: we would only use analogue tapes to manufacture records.
During the course of the present vinyl hype, many others have jumped on the bandwagon in the hope of securing a corner of the market. Very often they are not so ethical and use every imaginable source to master from: CDs, LPs, digital files, MP3s – or employed existant tools from the 80s and 90s for manufacturing.
A digital delay is gladly used when cutting a lacquer disc because tape machines with an analogue delay have become quite rare and are therefore expensive. When cutting the lacquer, the audio signal is delayed by one LP revolution against the signal, which controls the cutter head, and for this a digital delay is very often employed. Of course, the resultant sound signal is completely digital and thus only as good as this delay.
We should like to emphasise that Speakers Corner Records on principle only uses the original master tape as the basis for the entirely analogue cutting of lacquer discs. In addition, the pressing tool is newly manufactured as a matter of principle. We have one digital recording in our catalogue (Alan Parsons / Eye In The Sky“), but even in this particular case we used the analogue tapes for cutting.
We only employ existing tools for manufacturing if an improved result is not forthcoming, e.g. the title Elvis Is Back, which was mastered by Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray, or several titles from our Philips Classics series, which in any case Willem Makkee cut from the original masters at the Emil Berliner Studios in the 90s. It goes without saying that we only used the mother and that new tools were made for our production.
To put it in a nutshell: we can ensure you that our releases are free from any kind of digital effects – excluding the exception above – and that the lacquer discs are newly cut.
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