LIVE IN GLASGOW

An OK live album from the band's very first tour with Steve Hogarth on vocals. H sounds extremely nervous in some of his between-song patter - which he keeps to an absolute minimum - and he doesn't quite begin firing on all cylinders until Easter. In addition to that, the sound quality at points in the recording is rather shaky - apparently the last two tracks are actually from a show a few days later in Bradford, due to the Glasgow tapes of said songs being of a completely unacceptable standard, but even then the Bradford songs aren't brilliantly well-recorded. The band have in fact reissued this one as part of the Front Row Club, their range of archival live releases which often carry with them a mild health warning concerning their variable sound quality.

It should be noted that the expansive Official Bootleg Box Set Vol. 2 contains a complete 1990 show from the same tour. Not only is the show presented unedited and in markedly superior sound quality to this one, but because it's from a little later in the tour H sounds much happier and more confident as the band's frontman. With such a great show from the Seasons End tour readily available, Live In Glasgow feels particularly inessential. This is one for the fanatics only, so on that level the relegation to the Front Row Club seems to me to be the right call on the band's part.