SURPRISE This is a pretty dang good LP

Frank, you're entirely welcome and thanks to you, and others, for the return tips! This is how I am hoping this thread will continue. The "World is a Ghetto", kind of a funk/jazz/soul thing, is extremely well produced (deep, layered, and balanced) with War using a wide variety of instrumentation. Some of the tracks will really show how tight is your bass! I recall buying it new and mostly listening to the title track and "Cisco Kid", other tracks are also great, as I have found.

I was lucky to have scored twice last night in the "great music-great sonics" game, having also cleaned what is perhaps a polar opposite to the War LP:

Norman Blake: "Fields of November"; Flying Fish Records FF-004.

Have had this since 1975 and it just kinda got forgotten in a box. Amazing how much good music is buried in the grooves of so many similarly buried LP's.

Great thread.

An unexpected surprise was Ambrosia - "Life Beyond L.A."; pop-progressive (heavy on pop) best known (only known?) for the ultimate "old girlfriend" homage, "How Much I Feel".

I was surprised how good the production values are on this old '78 release. Good balance of instruments, soundfield placement, timbral reproduction and weight, eclectic variety of genre (for an LA pop outfit), an enjoyable listen. And David Pack's blue-eyed soul should have gotten more notoriety in his day.

Most disappointing for me was Gino Vanelli's "Nightwalker". I always thought if they had brought Gino's voice down in the mix and brought forward Vinnie Colaiuta's excellent drum work (he throws in more fills than a Foster City housing development on this release), this could have been a rockin' outing. But alas, just another Vegas-sounding album.

But hands down my biggest surprise was when I dusted off my old records after upgrading from a Technics table to my VPI with a good cart, and discovered this old big band album I had inherited from someone years ago and never played. I Disc Doctored it, cued it up, turned up the volume...spank me and call me Martha...I think I soiled myself.

It was the M&K Realtime release, "For Duke". I had NEVER heard anything that stunning from recorded music before.

If you haven't seen it, there are a lot of great sounding Lps on audio annex recommended recordings. http://www.audioannex.com/AAxRRs.htm

I had not seen that particular list, Dennis, but I reviewed it just now. I did agree with several of the listings that I have previously heard, but totally disagreed with several others (not the music so much as the sonics). As such, I'm not sure how much stock to place in it as a source for acquiring other LP's I have not yet heard. But, it IS comprised of the entries of "readers". As such, it is probably no different than the list being assembled here! :-O