Thanks for posting this.
I read LJC fairly regularly, so not much in this article surprises me. Many (if not most) serious jazz collectors are only interested in originals, and while LJC does celebrate some recent reissues, there’s a clear preference for earlier pressings. Generally speaking, my own experience makes it hard to disagree: I can’t think of many instances in which I’ve preferred a newly mastered Blue Note album to an original. I was excited to get a clean copy of Art Blakey’s The Freedom Rider when VMP did it a few years back, but my battered mono original plays much better than it looks and totally smoked it.
The thing LJC doesn’t really dig into, though, is the absurdity of the pricing, and the reality of the situation for most people is they can’t afford to spend $500 for a copy of Kind of Blue, let alone multiple albums at that price. Also, nice copies of many albums on that list oyf well-recorded jazz can be found for far less than Better Records is charging. So to me, it’s less about snake oil than it is about catering to a narrow and extremely wealthy demographic. Modern reissues may not match original pressings in sound quality, but at least they make the music available at an affordable price. I consider myself lucky in that I started buying vinyl before used prices really exploded, but even so, there are any number of albums I wouldn’t have if not for recent reissues.
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