This 2-pack contains the best side one we’ve ever heard! The sound is bigger, richer, tubier and livelier than we even thought possible. Side one was so amazing, such an obvious step up over every side of every other copy, we felt it deserved to be awarded our “Four Plus” (A++++) grade. One of These Nights, Too Many Hands and Hollywood Waltz will blow your mind on this side one.
- Our lengthy commentary entitled Outliers & Out-of-This-World Sound talks about how rare these kinds of pressings are and how to go about finding them.
- We no longer give Four Pluses out as a matter of policy, but that doesn’t mean we don’t come across records that deserve them from time to time.
- Nowadays we most often place them under the general heading of Breakthrough Pressings. These are records that, out of the blue, revealed to us sound of such high quality that it dramatically changed our appreciation of the recording itself.
- We found ourselves asking “Who knew?” Perhaps a better question would have been “How high is up?”
A Side One Like No Other
My notes read: ‘hi-rez, super tubey, breathy vocals with much less honk.”
Here is the one comment which really gets to the point of the better pressings: “guitar solos rise above.” The big solo on the title track just soars on this copy like we’d never heard before.
This is the guitar sound that Bill Szymczyk achieved with the band that Glyn Johns had not. Of course, it’s only fair to point out that Johns had never tried. He saw them as a Country Rock band. The Eagles saw themselves as a Rock band, it’s as simple as that.
- Reviews and commentaries for albums with soaring guitars can be found here.
Also note on side one that the loud choruses and huge guitars on the second track, Too Many Hands, hold up on this side one amazingly well. It’s a great test track as well as the first, providing positive confirmation that what you will hear for the song One of These Nights — the size and the power — will carry all the way through this side one.
When you play side two of the first disc, the disc with the Four Plus side one, you may be rather shocked at how small and opaque it is, especially in comparison to the incredible sound of side one.
Side two in general tends to have worse sound than side one on this album by one half to one full grade, if our experience is any guide.
Of course, no one in the audiophile commentariat ever seems to notice side to side differences like these, mostly because no one else does the kind of large scale shootouts that we do. If you play enough copies of the same album, these differences become very clear.
The only solution to the bad sound of side two was to include another disc with a good side two, in this case earning our Double Plus (A++) grade.
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