Live Albums

Hi,

Caravan and the New Sinfonia ... which had on the remastered album all the music that the LP did not have and the order of the material was done correctly ... it is a magnificent concert, when you factor in that the orchestra, originally did not want to do the encore (no extra pay!) and Pye told them to f**k off. And the orchestra folks ... kinda swallowed it and went on ... and they sounded excellent. By very far, one of the best things CARAVAN ever did.

Hi,

MAGMA, for me, is best when you see them live ... a recording is nice, but not really as far out as the experience of being there and feeling it ... the three times I saw them here on the West Coast (SF in 1999) and later twice in Portland, verified that really well ... I would not trade any of the live experiences for any live albums of theirs.

Hi,

I think they could have some excellent live albums ... IF ... large IF ... they would have been able to bottle up their QUADRAPHONIC setup. This was done, at least, at the Hollywood Bowl in 1972, and on the first shows of THE WALL, both on the film premiere before its regular release (we saw one of those shows in SF ... and it was QUAD. The live show of THE WALL, was also in QUAD in LA ... where a lot of very neat things were done in the setup ... as I mentioned before, the example, was the girl saying "look at all those guitars" in the back of the theater, and she literally walked to the front ... let's say to touch the guitars ... it was a neat moment, but something that RW ruined for his version of the shows. DSOTM, was almost too much about the movie screen and lasers ... and if it had QUAD, I didn't notice it, though the dialogue and fun stuff was all over the theater itself, in LA ... but nowhere near the quality and touch of The Hollywood Bowl show a couple of years earlier.

SW is testing some parts of his new album in very experimental locations around London ... I bet he is trying to see if he can duplicate the QUAD experience, so the music appears to be more important and less of a show ... it would become a sensory experience, as the QUAD thing was then.

But these days, the thing is getting as many people into the large venue as you can and use the cheapest lights and sound possible. When I saw KC a few years back in Seattle, their sound was fine, and nice ... but you know what? If it had the sonic boom of QUAD it would have made the whole thing even better. Instead, it was just another rock show, albeit with a much better line up and music!

I suppose the Sphere in Las Vegas is the nearest one can get to the quality of the QUAD ... and I bet SW would love to be there and design a show, although I bet that he already knows and thinks that the sound system in there is stupid, and only sounds good because there are thousands of speakers everywhere ... but I am betting that the mixing side of it is cheap and ridiculous, and you can not see it with any of the bands they have had so far. You would need a Tangerine Dream, a Pink Floyd (not just RW) and a band that is not just raising the volume to make you think this is great stuff. Like DP used to do in the old days, as well as BS.

I walked out of both of those shows, btw .. it was impossible to enjoy the shows as loud as they were. Same with the Rolling Stones ... I lasted 20 minutes there!