LIVE IN BUFFALO

I always wanted Asia to be a great band - it had my favorite guitar player (Steve Howe), a top-shelf drummer (Carl Palmer), and a proven bass player/vocalist who was up to the task (John Wetton). But there was always a bit too much "pop", simplicity and repetition in their music to totally engage me. Hey, progressive rock is mostly about "different", complexity and change, right? Asia was a progressive-pop band (akin to the later albums of Todd Rundgren's Utopia) that made good music, but didn't really pioneer much of anything.

Same with this CD. There's little here that's new or better than the studio versions of the songs. Palmer's long drum solo got boring after a while. Steve's acoustic solos can be found on other Yes recordings, and done much better there - here, the recording quality is so bad that it sounds like he's playing tuned rubber bands at times. (Honestly, I remember hearing better fidelity from my old Kenner Close'n'Play!) O.K., it WAS cool to hear Steve express his pleasure at playing in Buffalo again! But the so-called "keyboard solo" by Geoff Downs was underwhelming to say the least, and reinforced my suspicion that he was sort of the weak link in this group of otherwise great prog virtuosos.

I guess if one loves a band too much, they can blindly overlook some shortcomings on almost any CD by that band, and that's just fine for those people. However, the OBJECTIVE reality of this CD's value comes creeping in on many other's existing reviews: namely, the production quality is sub-par (to the point of being annoying at times); the vocals and harmonies are often off-key (you really shouldn't have to wince this much during 79 minutes of music!); this is clearly a single disk album that was issued on 2 disks for some reason; the packaging and liner notes are scant; and the performance just doesn't add much to the studio versions. This is for Asia completists only.

Asia did make a solid 5-star progressive-pop CD with their first studio album. I love it. But they never improved upon it, and never stretched out into new territory. Perhaps this 1982 live recording exposes some of the weaknesses that kept this potential supergroup from going from "good" to "great".

This is a live soundboard recording recorded live at Kleinhans, Buffalo, NY,in 3- May- 1982. It has a good stereo mixing, and for this reason it is interesting to listen to this band during their first tour, recorded during their tenth concert played as band. Maybe it is one of the very few soundboard live recordings which were done from this band during their 1982 tour. Unfortunately the band´s performance during this concert wasn´t very good, and the main problem were the backing vocals, which are out of tune in several places, and Wetton´s lead vocals sound tired and a bit forced. There are some obvious mistakes done during the playing of some of the songs, but nobody is perfect. One of the things that this kind of "unpolished recordings" show is that musicians like these are humans after all, and it is an "honest" recording done during at a not so good concert performance. The band was on tour promoting their first album, so they played all the songs from that album, which was released in March 1982. So, they had a short set list, and they had to fill the time with some solo acoustic guitar performances by Steve Howe, one keyboards solo by Geoff Downes played after "Cutting It Fine", and a long drums and percussion solo by Carl Palmer played during "Here Comes the Feeling", and also by introducing a new song , "Midnight Sun", which was going to appear in their next album called "Alpha" until 1983, but played in a different arrangement even using some Drum Machine. I prefer the version of this song released on "Alpha".(In other concerts of this 1982 tour they also played a different version of "The Smile Has Left Your Eyes", another song which was released on "Alpha" the next year and with a better arrangement in that album). The songs in general are played with energy and show how good these four musicians are. I think that some of the criticism directed to Asia is unfair because their music, while not being entirely Progressive Rock, was a very good mixture of Progressive Rock with Pop Rock. As an historical document, this recording has its merits, even if the performance in that tour date wasn´t one of the best one could expect from these musicians. But anyway, it has some enjoyable moments.