- This superb pressing boasts nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) sound from first note to last, right up there with our Shootout Winner – fairly quiet vinyl too
- Big, lively and rich, with present breathy vocals, this pressing will show you an Allnighter that sounds a whole lot better than most audiophiles might suspect, especially those who have played any of the solo albums by Don Henley from the Eighties
- 4 1/2 star: “Frey breaks with the old Eagles sound on his second solo album, much of which has a bluesy, rocking feel. Includes the hits “Smuggler’s Blues” and “Sexy Girl.””
These Nearly White Hot Stamper pressings have top-quality sound that’s often surprisingly close to our White Hots, but they sell at substantial discounts to our Shootout Winners, making them a relative bargain in the world of Hot Stampers (“relative” being relative considering the prices we charge). We feel you get what you pay for here at Better Records, and if ever you don’t agree, please feel free to return the record for a full refund, no questions asked.
This vintage MCA pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely 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 sitting in the studio with the band, 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 The Allnighter 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 as late as in 1984
- 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 studio space
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.
What We’re Listening For on The Allnighter
- Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
- Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren’t “back there” somewhere, lost in the mix. They’re front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
- 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, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
- Tight punchy bass — which ties in with good transient information, also 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 instruments.
- Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing — an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.
TRACK LISTING
Side One
The Allnighter
Sexy Girl
I Got Love
Somebody Else
Lover’s Moon
Side Two
Smuggler’s Blues
Let’s Go Home
Better In The U.S.A.
Living In Darkness
New Love
AMG 4 1/2 Star Rave Review
Frey breaks with the old Eagles sound on his second solo album, much of which has a bluesy, rocking feel. Includes the hits “Smuggler’s Blues” and “Sexy Girl.”
Wikipedia Information
The Allnighter is the second solo studio album by Glenn Frey, the guitarist and co-lead vocalist for the Eagles. The album was released in mid 1984 on MCA in the United States and the United Kingdom, two years after Frey’s modestly successful debut album, No Fun Aloud and four years after the demise of the Eagles. It was and still is Frey’s most successful solo album throughout his whole solo career, having reached #22 on the Billboard charts, and releasing two Top 20 singles with “Smuggler’s Blues” and “Sexy Girl”. The album achieved Gold status by the RIAA in the US. It is generally regarded as the culmination of the smoother, more adult-oriented sound of Frey’s solo work.
The single “Smuggler’s Blues” helped to inspire the Miami Vice episode of the same name, and Frey was invited to star in that episode, which was Frey’s acting debut. The music video for the single also won Frey an MTV Video Music Award in 1985.