AD LIVE

AD is the short lived (4 albums over three years) 1980's group founded by Kerry Livgren This is the only live release form the group who did tour extensively through the two years surrounding the first two major label releases Time line and Art of the State. Judging by the set list this comes from the latter albums tour. Certainly these was no studio doctoring as the recording has all the warts of a live performance missed notes, beats and missed harmonies. Not many thankfully and in general this band was pretty tight.

Besides a few solo parts the songs don't differ much from their studio sound overall. The songs are generally the more accessible songs from both albums and missing somethings like The Fury, Up From the Wasteland and Welcome to the War which I would have enjoyed more. There still is some good things here Warren Ham's vocals for one and his flute and sax that are really important to the overall sound. The one dated drawback of this sound is the cheesy 80's keyboards. Kerry and Mike Gleason do their best with them but you can do so much. In the keyboard solo Mike includes some of his melodies from his now out of print solo album called Voices From the Old World. These are really good. Dave Hope's bass lines are great too as are Kerry's guitar work. Some of the best things are Tonight, Lead Me to Reason, The Only Way to Have a Friend and New Age Blues

Still even though this collection of songs might introduce someone to this band who might explore them more I still think this might be just for fans of Livgren's work with Proto-Kaw and Kansas for those who haven't heard this before or people who want to hear Kerry say "Toto were no longer in Kansas". 2 stars