ASIA

Where they belong!

Watching this concert for the first time, I'm surprised to see how good the band was in the live arena. The energy and passion for music was definitely there and Steve Howe, Geoff Downes, and Carl Palmer were on fire! There is a great dynamic going on between them that doesn't come through as well on the studio albums. On vocals we have here Greg Lake and not John Wetton, which I'm sure will surprise many as this is the only thing Lake did with the band leaving as quickly as he entered. Lake brings his own style to these songs and sings them very well even if he doesn't always remember the correct words. They have an enthusiastic audience as well which is an important factor, letting the band feed off the energy of the crowd.

In addition to the full songs from the first two studio albums, the rarest of which is Eye To Eye, we get Howe's wonderful acoustic solo piece Sketches In The Sun (which would later end up on the GTR album some years later), and the most interesting Downes solo spot I've heard in which he performs on a plethora of keyboards including his keytar (which resurfaces on Heat Of The Moment). He has quite an interesting keyboard rig spread out over the stage so that he needs to run back and forth between his various instruments that include organs, pianos, and Moog synthesisers. Palmer gets to play his traditional drum solo as well, and even if it would be rather dull on an audio-only recording, it is rather fun to watch the man in action - he is quite a show man, juggling his drum sticks and taking his shirt off without ever interrupting his drumming (to the voices of many screaming Japanese ladies!)

I would say that this live concert video is generally better and more interesting than the studio albums on which the tunes originally appeared. Asia is an 80's band, but in the live arena they still maintained traces of their roots in 70's Prog. A positive surprise for me. Don't miss this one (whole concert can be seen on YouTube and has also been released on audio CD).

Rock 'N' Roll Dream

This live album was recorded on the tour in support of my favourite Asia studio album of all time, 1992's Aqua. Aqua was the first album to feature John Payne on vocals and Payne and Downes formed a stable musical partnership that remained the core of the band for many years to come. Payne is a very good vocalist with his own voice and he sings both the new and the older songs well. The sound is not perfect, but it is better than many other Asia live albums (and there are incredibly many of them on the market - too many, I would say!). The present album is certainly among the better Asia live albums, and it might be the only one that does not feature the tedious Heat Of The Moment!

Four numbers from Aqua are performed here. There is a guest appearance by Steve Howe performing the superb and captivating instrumental Aqua pt. 1 (that opened the Aqua album). Geoff Downes performs a keyboard solo including an instrumental version of his old hit with The Buggles, Video Killed The Radio Star. I much prefer this instrumental version. The rest of the set consists of a few tunes from the pre-Payne era including two numbers from Astra in Go and Rock 'N' Roll Dream, both great and the latter is rarely performed. Only Wildest Dreams goes back to the (over played) debut.

I like this live album. One of its values lies in that the set list is not as predictable as many other of the band's live albums and includes some rarely played numbers.

This album deserves more attention. It was an album by prog legends, like Carl Palmer, Steve Howe, John Wetton and Geoff Downes. But this project was their commercial take. That cheesy hard rock, something like Whitesnake meets prog rockers. And that's a good job.

As any commercial album, it have the hits, the good underrated tracks and the horrible times. Prog fans use to despise Asia. But I really like the riffs and passages at, unfortunattley, the greatest hits from the album, like Heat of The Moment, Wildest Dreams and Only Time Will Tell. I like their album covers too.

This will be the perfect soundtrack to travel with your wife and sons. Joy for the whole family. Have fun!

While it would be easy for many listeners to dismiss Asia as washed up prog dinosaurs whose best days are behind them, this listener simply cannot do that. "XXX" is a brilliant piece of crossover-prog that recalls the best days of Asia and U.K. while lyrically being more advanced.

It is quite obvious that the symphonic prog leanings of their first album have been disposed of in favor of a leaner, more spare sound not unlike that of U.K. In fact, on some of the album's best tracks, "Tomorrow the World", "I Know How You Feel" and "Face in the Bridge", the vocals and keyboards compare favorably to U.K.'s eponymous debut while retaining the majestic and unmistakeable fretwork of Steve Howe. Furthermore, "No Religion" and "Al Gatto Nero" manage to be hard rocking while balancing a prog sensibility with strong pop hooks.

Offsetting the harder tracks are the ballads...the haunting "Ghost of a Chance", the plodding "Faithful" (the weakest track on "XXX") and the mid-tempo ballad "Bury Me in Willow" which would have been a huge hit if it had been released in the 1980s. While the latter song is really good, it does serve as a reminder that Asia is a band from another era.

The bottom line: the band sounds in top form and this album has some of the best songwriting and lyrics that Asia has ever offered. However, this album sounds like it could have been recorded in the 1980s. In fact, if I could manipulate the time space continuum, this would have been released in lieu of 1983's "Alpha". It would have been a bigger success than even their debut...

Grade: B+

In the "desolate" of early the 80's, the announcement of a new "supergroup" with Steve Howe , Geofrey Downes (both ex YES menbers), Carl Palmer (ex EL&Palmer) and Jonh Wetton (ex King Crimsom, Uriah Heep etc... ) created to me a great expectation. I remember my first contact with ASIA when I hear in a FM radio one of the best tracks from this first album "Time Again" and I suspect instantly as the first compass of the introduction of the music due the "roar" from gongs and "frenetic" scales from guitar and keyboards that they arrived. I stayed very impressed by this track and soon buy the LP, but the first audition was somewhat boring, mainly due the strong impression in the first contact. After some new auditions I could understand the band proposition; made a more accessible and commercial progressive rock . The final result is a fusion of pop-music and progressive rock (giving biggest space to pop-music), a very good example are the first track "Heat of the moment", where the progressive "touch" is limited into the brief "interlude" in the middle of the music and the track 2 "Only Time Will Tell" with the keyboards overture and the guitar's reply and nothing more... Beside this neglect the album have another tracks with some much more progressive moments like in track 6 "Wildest Dreams" (with Howe and Palmer's great exhibition)" and track 7 "Without You" a great ballad. Due to this considerations my rate is 3 stars !!!

The second of Asia's early 1990s comeback albums and their fifth overall, 'Aria' finds the once-successful British outfit producing another slickly-produced set of earnestly-manifested pop-rock tunes for their quickly diminishing following, albeit by now the group weren't even close to the mainstream. With the international focus firmly on Nirvana, Seattle and Grunge, the music of Asia wasn't really needed in the world 1995, yet produce an album they did, under the guise of final original member Geoff Downes and recent additions John Payne(bass, vocals), Al Pitrelli(guitar) and Michael Sturgis(drums). However, despite those various changes in personel, 'Aria' sticks resolutely to the sound conjured up on 1982's hugely-successful 'Asia', the group's popular debut album that dominated North American rock radio during that summer, and the musically-similar yet commercially-disappointing sequels 'Alpha' and 'Astra' that followed in it's early-eighties wake. As a result, distinguishing between Asia records has always been a difficult task for non-aficianado's, though in spite of the group's many unattractive qualities there are at least two strong reasons why 1982's debut is a better album than this mid-nineties affair. Firstly, 'Asia' was issued during arguably the peak of North America's 'soft-rock years'(dominated by the likes of Journey, Air Supply and Foreigner) thus fitting them nicely in to the current trend; secondly, the Asia line-up of 1982 featured some of the cream of the 1970's progressive rock crop, with Downes augmented by Yes guitarist Steve Howe, ELP-drummer Carl Palmer and former King Crimson and Family bassist-and-vocalist John Wetton. That apart however, the difference between Asia albums - whether they be produced during the eighties, the nineties or even now during the 13th year of the 21st century - is pretty negligible. 'Aria', just like 'Astra' or 'Aqua' or any other of there A-word titled albums, features precious music that would interest proper, dedicated progressive rock listeners. Briefly, Asia made a bit of cash for its hard-working participants, sold a few albums and enjoyed a few months in the sun. The actual music though - which is best summed up by the hit 1982 single 'Heat Of The Moment' - has absolutely nothing in common with the sounds of Yes, ELP and King Crimson. Asia were, simply put, a progressive charade dressed up in classy Roger Dean artwork. Outside of their immediate fanbase, there won't be many who enjoy their brand of anthemic-yet-empty pop-rock. STEFAN TURNER, STOKE NEWINGTON, 2013

Different Worlds

Asia has been anthologized like almost no other band. There are no less than 12 Asia compilation albums listed here on Prog Archives, and there are probably even more out there. This excessive amount of compilations is confusing, to say the least, and I blame this situation for me missing out on this one for so long. Normally, I don't bother with compilations at all. But the present one features some tracks not available anywhere else which makes this a worthwhile compilation for me.

Anthology features 16 tracks, all of which feature John Payne on lead vocals (yes, even the "classic" 80's songs; they were re-recorded here with the Payne-era line-up). Surprisingly, the collection opens with a strong version of a non-Asia track. The Hunter was written by Geoff Downes, but for GTR (the band Steve Howe formed together with Steve Hackett in the mid 80's, after he left Asia for the first time). Unlike many others, I actually like GTR! But I never knew until now that Asia had recorded a version of this song. I like both the original version of The Hunter featuring Max Bacon on vocals, and the present version featuring John Payne.

Only Time Will Tell, Heat Of The Moment, Don't Cry, The Heat Goes On, and Go, are the songs that were re-recorded for this compilation to represent the John Wetton-era of the band (the three first albums; Asia, Alpha, and Astra). Personally, I don't care too much for some of these songs, in any version! But I do prefer the Payne-era over the Wetton-era in general.

Aqua, the first Asia album with John Payne on vocals, is represented here with the lovely Steve Howe instrumental Aqua Pt.1, followed by Who Will Stop The Rain? From Aria we get three tracks in Anytime, Feels Like Love, and Military Man. The latter is a great song. From Arena we get the title track and Two Sides Of The Moon, not the best songs from that album. Different Worlds was a new song at the time and released here for the first time (at least I think so), and Reality was only released on Archiva. The re-issue of Anthology has an acoustic version of Time Again as a bonus track. It's a good one!

A worthy addition to any comprehensive Asia collection!

In January 10th of 2013, it was announced that Steve Howe has left Asia once again to concentrate in his work with Yes and in his career as soloist. I still have not listened yet to the other 2 studio albums he recorded with Asia after their reunion in 2006 ("Phoenix" and "Omega"), but as in those albums the main songwriting in this album is from John Wetton and Geoff Downes, like it was predominantly in their "Alpha" album from 1983, an album which was the last the original line-up of the band recorded until their reunion this century happened. I think that maybe the old tensions in the original band surfaced again, but this time the split with Howe was managed as an "amicable" one, but after listening to this album I can say that maybe Howe felt not only restricted as a songwiter in Asia but also as a guitarist, because the main instruments in this album are the keyboards, and the songs structures don´t give very much space to Howe to play lead guitar parts as in their "Asia" and "Alpha" albums. So, the songs are full of lyrics and without very much space for solos, not even from the keyboards. The central space is for the lyrics and for John Wetton´s vocals. The songs are good, but without changes in the rhythm. So this album is very Pop Rock in musical style, with most songs being ballads, sung very well by Wetton, whose voice is still very good and powerful. Of course, every member of the band plays very well as they still are very good musicians, with a lot of experience. The recording and mixing of the album is very good. It is an enjoyable album, but some songs are predictable in their structure and they don´t leave very much space for variety.So, this is a good album done by a very good band, without question. I prefer to listen to this "old band" instead of listening to much of the "modern music" which is mostly done without "soul and feeling". These "old musicians" still have that "feeling and soul" even if the music is not very Progressive in style. Asia also announced that they have a new guitarist and they are going to carry on playing together. Good luck for them and good luck for Howe, but as it happened before, I think that without Howe the band´s sound changes drastically as his guitar playing style is very much "entangled" with the original sound of the band.

Like "Live in Buffalo" and other similar Asia ´ CDs that I added to the Progarchives database 6-7 years ago without listening to them before doing that, the status of this release is unknown, because I saw them in legit record stores in my city (at sometimes very expensive prices, being shown and sold there with an "Import" sticker on the cover) and also sold in legit Internet record stores like Amazon and others. But after listening to them I realized that they sound like being live recordings which are traded on the web among fans, categorized as "bootlegs" or "unofficial recordings". So, maybe these CDs are sold with the approval of the band by a legit record company (Voiceprint), like "semi-official albums" in legit record stores and Internet stores. Anyway, in contrast to "Live in Buffalo", which is a very good live soundboard recording from their 1982 tour, this recording sounds more like an audience recording which I have seen in some websites dedicated to list, classify and to review the live recordings of Asia, and sometimes they consider it as a soundboard recording too. It is not a bad recording. In fact, despite sounding somewhat "distant", I think that it is a good audience recording from their 1983 tour, recorded at The Centrum, in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 19-August-1983.In contrast to the "Live in Buffalo" recordings, the performances of the songs are better, with better lead vocals by John Wetton and better backing vocals by Geoff Downes and Steve Howe. The set list includes six songs from their first live album and seven from their "Alpha" album, which they were promoting in their 1983 tour, plus Steve Howe´s acoustic guitar solos, Geoff Downes´s keyboard solo and Carl Palmer´s drums and percussion solo. (In other 1983 tour dates they also played "Daylight", a song which at that time only was released as a B- side of their "Don´t Cry" single and as a bonus track in the cassette version of "Alpha"). Being a better concert performance than their 1982 Buffalo concert, it has some very enjoyable moments, maybe making it a good choice to be released on CD, but still not being as good in sound as the Buffalo concert recording or as an official professional recording. I consider it as a good companion to the Buffalo release, because together both represent Asia in their 1982 and 1983 tours with the original line-up still intact.

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.