REAL LIVE THING

This live CD packet seemed to heat up some emotions when released, but I personally welcomed it as a wonderful addition from the live stages to contrast the three legendary studio albums. These three discs of great psych jamming was available already in 2005 with quite cheap prices, saw it being sold at Helsinki for 25 euros or so. For me personally live music usually works much better than studio recordings, and I also checked out the bonus live materials on their re-released studio albums when given possibility. I think there is much better playing going on in these three CD's than on the bonus tracks of remastered studio albums. Here is present their true, interactive playing, and it's great to listen how well Petri played guitar and sang simultaneously on stage. I understand some of the negative feedback of the albums production very well though. There are no liner notes from where these recordings are taken from. What annoys me even more is that there are some weird fades on disc two (did the DAT run out?), and there are some edits on disc three which try to create illusion that the tracks would be form a one show. This is untrue, as many of them are from different occasions and one can hear it from the big alterations of the sound texture. This kind of "truth altering" is also present for example on King Crimson's "The Great Deceiver" box, but at least Mr. Fripp explained what he has altered and why. I think that the sound quality is decent, as you can hear the instruments well, but these are purely digital recordings, and I believe some people find even poor analog recordings better that good digital ones. If I should recommend only one album of this band to a person who hadn't yet heard Kingston Wall, I would recommend this, as it has the main work of their career in one package, shows their live playing skills, and is even quite cheap.