More of the Music of The Eagles
- These vintage pressings of the band’s first live album boast solid Double Plus (A++) sound or BETTER on all FOUR sides
- This copy is remarkably spacious, full-bodied and natural, with a nicely extended top end, plenty of space around the instruments and vocals, and few of the problems that plagued many pressings we played (discussed below)
- The album provides a balanced document of the band’s musical history – four tracks were recorded in 1976, the rest in 1980
- Problems in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these Classic Rock records – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
- That said, this title in particular is almost always noisy, which is why you will rarely find it on our site — most of what we buy is just too noisy to sell
This vintage Asylum 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 Eagles Live 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 even as late as 1980
- 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.
Midrange Magic
What’s magical about The Eagles? Their voices of course, what else could it be? It’s not a trick question. They conquered the charts with their genius for harmony. Any good pressing must sound correct on their voices or it has no value whatsoever. An Eagles record with mediocre sound in the midrange — like many of them — is to us a worthless record.
When you drop the needle on a copy with gritty, spitty, lean, congested vocals, give up and move on. You have a bad pressing and no amount of cleaning or adjusting of the table is likely to fix it.
Size
One of the qualities that we don’t talk about on the site nearly enough is the SIZE of the record’s presentation. Some copies of the album just sound small — they don’t extend all the way to the outside edges of the speakers, and they don’t seem to take up all the space from the floor to the ceiling. In addition, the sound can often be recessed, with a lack of presence and immediacy in the center.
Other copies — my notes for these copies often read “BIG and BOLD” — create a huge soundfield, with the music positively jumping out of the speakers. They’re not brighter, they’re not more aggressive, they’re not hyped-up in any way, they’re just bigger and clearer.
And most of the time those very special pressings just plain rock harder. When you hear a copy that does all that, it’s an entirely different listening experience.
What We’re Listening For on Eagles Live
- 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.
Side One
Hotel California
Heartache Tonight
I Can’t Tell You Why
Side Two
The Long Run
New Kid in Town
Life’s Been Good
Side Three
Seven Bridges Road
Wasted Time
Take It to the Limit
Doolin’-Dalton
Desperado
Side Four
Saturday Night
All Night Long
Life in the Fast Lane
Take it Easy
5 Star Amazon Review
When it comes to live music, most bands fail. The Eagles, however, sound even better when playing live. Don Felder is in my opinion the most naturally gifted guitar player of all times. I include Hendrix and Clapton and others as comparisons. Much has been made of the well documented in fighting between members of the Eagles. This should not invalidate their achievements. Hotel California is iconic, every track in this album is epic. The Eagles, the band that shaped not just one generation but continue to do so. This is a must have for fans of the Eagles, it does not get much better than this offering.
-jerryfromkerry