Reference Tracks 3: Scotty Coats Made Us A Playlist with Punk, Dub, and Terence Trent D’Arby

“You know, it's like, what do you get out of that listening experience? Does it fill you with joy? Cool.”

Welcome to Reference Tracks, a series from KLH where we talk to people in the music and audio business about what songs, albums and artists they listen to when testing out a stereo or speakers.

Vinyl records have always carried an environmental cost. Any time PVC production is involved, it requires oil, generates waste and—up until recently—that byproduct was simply an accepted tradeoff. The price of doing business with the format we love. 

However, the team at Good Neighbor is changing that. The company pioneered a new process for pressing records without PVC, putting sustainability and green processes at the center of an industry that’s long needed innovation in that regard. Leading the charge at Good Neighbor is Scotty Coats, VP. He is a vinyl lifer who spent decades advocating for the format at Virgin, Innovative Leisure, Stones Throw, and as a vinyl buyer at Tower Records. He knows the medium inside and out, and now he’s helping reshape how it’s made.

For Reference Tracks, we talk to Coats about his past as a live audio engineer, which Steely Dan song he’d use to test a stereo and about finding the joy in music.

KLH: One of the missions in doing this series is to move past the old hi-fi store cliche that every shop uses Aja by Steely Dan to demo the systems. I mean, that record does sound incredible, but we know enough music people to know that not everybody is immediately putting on “Black Cow” or whatever.

Scotty Coats: If I’m going Steely Dan, I’m going “Glamour Profession” off Gaucho. It has a lot of horns, disco strings, you know, and it's still in Steely Dan fashion, a perfect record.

[Laughs]. So what’s your history with being an audiophile, or trying to experience good sound?

I went to concert sound engineering school in the early ‘90s, and my instructor on the first day of class said, you know, if you guys ever want to enjoy a live show ever again, don't take my class.

KLH: Intimidating.

And you know, all of us started laughing, and some people left. Like some people were like, this is too intense, right? But he was really being honest because for a number of years, I was just listening to music in frequencies. I wasn't listening to music in composition. I was the monitor engineer, so I'd have to ring out monitors when they were feeding back. I didn't focus on the music. I was focusing on the science of the music and the science of sound.

I got to a point where I was like, “I quit.” Like, I'm done. I want to enjoy music again. I love music. So, right now, I might not be the best audiophile guy to talk to. I'm not an audiophile.

Yeah, and we don’t want to talk to just audiophiles for this, because you can still appreciate a great stereo if you don’t know anything. Do you remember the first song or recording you heard where you said, “Oh my God, this sounds incredible?”

This is a tough one, but I'm gonna say “Electric Kingdom” when I was 8 years old, 'cause I had never heard an 808 before. I had never heard electronics like that.

I got the 12 inch at Tower Records in Laguna Hills because I was a break dancer then, you know, like all the other kids in my school. And that record sonically blew my mind. I had never heard anything like that before. So I think that's probably the first record that I went, “this is different,” you know, this is not anything I've ever heard before.

 
I’m not familiar. Going to check it out right after this. When I asked you to do this, you made a playlist for the purposes of this conversation, which I love. Nobody else has done that yet. What do you listen for on your playlist? Why these songs? It’s an eclectic mix.

I’ve been eclectic my entire life. I mean like my first music love when I was seven was reggae music, reggae dub because I have an older brother and sister that went to Jamaica and they said what do you want from Jamaica? And I said I want those little records, those little small ones. I didn't know what they were called. I also love punk. I grew up skateboarding, so I love punk rock. I love dub. I just like what I like.

The first song, the rhythm and sound record, you know, like that's as deep and dubby as it gets. And if you can, you know, translate that low end on a pair of speakers the way that these guys recorded it and engineered it, then you know those speakers are good.

Your playlist really speaks to the variety you're mentioning. You've got Terence Trent D’arby on here. That record is one where it's funny to laugh at now, but that record really sounds incredible for 1987.

It really just shows his vocals and how incredible he is. And lyrically beautiful. It's an incredible tune. So, like, yeah, that was another personal favorite, but also kind of a dedication to a friend of mine who recently passed away because that was our song, we both bonded over that tune.

Condolences, man. It’s an incredible song. You've also got Freestyle Fellowship, De La Soul. What are you listening to in those songs? When you put hip-hop on, that's not necessarily a genre people use to evaluate great pressings, right? What do you listen for when you want to hear great-sounding hip hop?

I chose those because I know them so well, because I've listened to them thousands and thousands of times because I love the songs. So it's like, if I'm critically listening, I know how that record's supposed to sound. I don't want any coloring. I don't want it. I want it to match what I know.

That's what comes up in these interviews again and again. Reference Tracks are as unique as the person. Everybody has music they know better than everybody else because you've listened to specific songs more than anyone else. We think stereo testing does not have to be with the best fidelity record. It can be with what you know the best.

Yeah. And you know, it's all subjective, right? How does it make you feel at the end of the day? You know, it's like, what do you get out of that listening experience? Does it fill you with joy? Cool. Sounds good. I'm not going to argue with someone and say, oh, that just doesn't sound good.