LIVE IN NEW YORK - OFFICIAL BOOTLEG

The Flower Kings

Symphonic Prog

3.71 | 29 ratings

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Squire Jaco

I hate to do this to one of my favorite bands, but this ain't the best of these guys.

Featuring the line-up of Roine Stolt, Tomas Bodin, Hasse Froberg, Jonas Reingold and Zoltan Czorsz, this certainly has a very live, jam-band type of feel to it, complete with minor sound adjustments being called out at the beginning of the first song. The music and the sound quality are pretty good throughout, with the very big (for me) exception being that the bass is almost indiscernible. That's a mortal sin when you have one of the very finest bass guitar virtuosos in all of rock!

The original 60-minute studio version of "Garden of Dreams" from their Flower Power album was pure ecstasy. This live version is 47 minutes of various sections of the suite, played in different order, and filled with a lot of jamming. I like it - not as much as the original (with Jaime Salazar on drums and Michael Stolt on bass, by the way), but there's enough new music on this piece that it makes the purchase of the cd worthwhile.

"In The Eyes of the World" is reproduced almost exactly as per the studio version, with very nice harmonies. Tracks 3 and 4 ("drum and bass solos") are, unfortunately, a waste of ten minutes of disc space, as one of the best rhythm sections in all of rock fails miserably here to move me. What a letdown. (Dang! I just wish they would have engineered that rich Rickenbacker bass more clearly!)

Another great job with "I Am The Sun", again pretty faithful to the studio version. And this closing track ends with Roine introducing the members of the band in his best Swedish-inflected English, which is kind of neat to hear.

This is certainly not an ideal sampling of The Flower Kings' best work; but for the TFK completist, this is a nice addition of some alternative takes to round out your collection. You get over 65 minutes of music even if you skip tracks 3 and 4. Eh...

Squire Jaco | 3/5 | 2020-8-25

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