NOW: LIVE IN NOTTINGHAM

Recorded at Central Studios, in Nottingham in 23 June 1990, during their second concert of their "Then and Now" tour. This reunion tour was planned after a partial and more or less unofficial reunion of a line-up with Carl Palmer and John Wetton with other two musicians as "Asia" happened with a few tour dates during 1989. By 1990, they released a compilation album called "Then and Now" which also included 4 new or previoulsy unreleased tracks and with Geoff Downes, Carl Palmer and John Wetton as a trio with some guitarists in those songs. By mid 1990, this trio was augmented by guitarist Pat Thrall for a tour to promote this album, a reunion that happened until April 1991. From this tour they released a live album called "Live in Moscow" in 1992. By that time, Wetton wasn`t in the band anymore, and Downes was reforming the band with John Payne and with some help in the studio by Carl Palmer and Steve Howe. But this tour in 1990 was the first attempt from the band to start their career as a band again, without Howe, a reunion which didn`t last for a long time. The band sounds well, as in the "Live in Moscow" album, but, the same as in that album, in the songs they originally recorded with Howe in their studio albums, Howe is really missed. Thrall is a good guitarist in his own style, which is predominantly a Heavy Metal style, and almost all the time he is playing a distorted guitar, and also playing the songs without adding some parts that Howe played in the albums. Howe used more varied sounds for his guitars in Asia, but Thrall was playing with the same sound most of the time. So, while at the same time the band played very well and at the same time it is somewhat interesting to listen to the songs played in a different style by the new guitarist, at the same time Howe`s style is missed. Thrall and other guitarists that played with Asia sounded better playing the songs which Howe didn`t record with the band (" Voice Of America", "Prayin' 4 A Miracle", " Days Like These" and "Go"). Anyway, I think that this concert was good, but not better than in the Moscow concert, as they still sound not very well as a band with a new guitarist, being their second concert from that tour, but it was better mixed than the Moscow concert to be released in this album, which was released until 1997. It also was recorded in an indoor venue in comparison to the Moscow concert which was recorded at the Olympic Stadium. For collectors / fans only.