More Sting and The Police
- This outstanding copy of Sting’s epic double album boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on all four sides AND exceptionally quiet vinyl
- Sting and his jazzy pals work through a good portion of his extensive catalog, including both Police songs and solo tracks
- “Sting really got carried away with the idea that his supporting crew for Dream of the Blue Turtles was a real jazz band, and technically, he was kind of right … the loose, rather infectious performances show what Sting was trying to achieve with his debut.”
Sting said to Bring On The Night and who were we to argue? We finally collected enough of these import pressings to get a proper shootout going, and the best copies really impressed us.
The best copies like this one give you more transparency and separation between the various bandmembers. Many copies had a sterile/dry quality, but this one remains rich throughout with more analog warmth.
This vintage A&M pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records rarely even BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn’t showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to “see” the performers, and feeling as if you are listening to the concert live, this is the record for you. It’s what vintage all analog recordings are known for — this sound.
If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it — not often, and certainly not always — but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.
What the best sides of Bring On The Night have to offer is not hard to hear:
- The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
- The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1985
- Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
- Natural tonality in the midrange — with all the instruments having the correct timbre
- Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional space of the venue
No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.
The best sides tended to have the same qualities. They were huge, open, clear, transparent, rich, tubey and natural.
And of course, they rocked, with startling dynamics, massive amounts of bass and a full-bodied midrange. The better the pressing the more the instruments jumped right out of the speakers. Live in your listening room was the sound we were after, and this copy delivers like nothing you have ever heard.
What We’re Listening For on Bring On The Night
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- The Big Sound comes next — wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
- Then transient information — fast, clear, sharp attacks for the guitars, horns and drums, not the smear and thickness common to most LPs.
- Tight, note-like bass with clear fingering — which ties in with good transient information, as well as the issue of frequency extension further down.
- Next: transparency — the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the players.
- Then: presence and immediacy. The musicians aren’t “back there” somewhere, way behind the speakers. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would have put them.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
TRACK LISTING
Side One
Bring On the Night / When the World Is Running Down You Make the Best of What’s Still Around
Consider Me Gone
Low Life
Side Two
We Work the Black Seam
Driven to Tears
The Dream of the Blue Turtles / Demolition Man
Side Three
One World (Not Three) / Love Is the Seventh Wave
Moon Over Bourbon Street
I Burn for You
Side Four
Another Day
Children’s Crusade
Down So Long
Tea in the Sahara
AMG Review
Sting really got carried away with the idea that his supporting crew for Dream of the Blue Turtles was a real jazz band, and technically, he was kind of right. He did pluck them straight out of Wynton Marsalis’ backing band (thereby angering Wynton and emboldening his anti-rock stance, while flaring up a sibling rivalry between the trumpeter and his saxophonist brother Branford — a veritable hat trick, that), and since he was initially a jazz bassist, it seemed like a good fit… the loose, rather infectious performances show what Sting was trying to achieve with his debut.