LIVE IN LA

Oh Yes!

Following the release of Can't Look Away, his first solo album since he had joined Yes, Trevor Rabin went on tour to promote the album. On that tour in 1989 this live album was recorded, though it wasn't released until 2003. In addition to songs from Can't Look Away, the solid set list also includes some songs from the two Yes albums that Rabin had contributed to up to that time. From 90125 we get Changes and Owner Of A Lonely Heart and from Big Generator he has chosen Love Will Find A Way. The latter two songs have never been big favourites of mine, but Changes is a great selection. Moreover, snippets of both Make It Easy (a song that was first written and recorded in 1981 but remained unreleased until 1991 when it appeared on the YesYears box set) and Lift Me Up (a song that would later appear in full form on the Union album but was probably not yet completed at the time of this live recording) can be heard here. I love the riff of Lift Me Up which is played at the very opening of this concert leading into the first full track Cover Up. The Make It Easy excerpt is also really strong and introduces Owner Of A Lonely Heart here just like it would do on the Union tour later. The set list is rounded off by a song taken from an earlier Rabin solo album in Heard You Cry Wolf. All of the songs performed were written or co-written by Rabin.

I think that Can't Look Away is a very good album and all the songs they play from it here are very good. The title track is expanded to some 12 minutes and the instrumental Sludge is performed differently from the studio version. The latter sounds almost Prog Metal in this live rendition! The band that backs Rabin up here consists of Lou Molino III on drums, Mark Mancina on keyboards, and Jim Simmons on bass. Rabin himself shines on guitars and vocals.

This is a very good live album and personally I would say that it is better than any of the live recordings that I've heard from Rabin-era Yes (I'm thinking here of 9012 Live and Union Live). It is a real shame that Rabin didn't continue to play live (after he left Yes the second time around) as he had a very good thing going here. I still hope that he would again form a band around himself as strong as the band that he had when this live album was recorded and once more tour the world performing songs from his time in Yes and his best solo material. A set list similar to this one but with further songs added from Union and Talk could really be great.

Live In LA is a perfect companion to Can't Look Away and a good addition to a Yes fan's collection

In mid 1991 a concert from TREVOR RABIN was broadcasted in one Stereo FM Radio Station in my city. It was the time (since maybe 1987) when very good Rock music concerts were broadcasted by at least three different Stereo FM Radio Stations in my city. I recorded some parts of that broadcast from Rabin`s concert in one cassette which unfortunately does not work anymore. The set list of that concert was very similar to the one which this "Live in L.A." album has, but the radio broadcast also included "Promises", another song from Rabin`s "I Can`t Look Away" album which unfortunately was not included in this live album. I can`t say if the concert which was broadcasted in the radio was the same concert which was released in this live album, but both are very energetic performances by Rabin and his band from his 1989 solo tour to promote his "I Can`t Look Away" studio album which was released in the same year.

This live album has several songs from that 1989 studio album, plus one from his "Wolf" album and three songs ("Changes", "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and "Love Will Find a Way") which Rabin previously recorded with YES in the albums "90125" and "Big Generator". Rabin really had a hard time trying to reach some high notes which were originally sung by Jon Anderson in "Owner of a Lonely Heart", leaving some parts of the song to be sung by the audience. "Cover Up" has as an intro an instrumental part which was later included in YES`s "Lift Me Up" song from the "Union" album in 1991.

From the songs which he originally recorded for his "I Can`t Look Away" album, "Sludge" is a heavy instrumental piece of music with some Prog Rock and Jazz-Rock inlfuences with very good drums by Lou Molino III, and the title song from that album is played with a very good final part which includes an extended lead guitar by Rabin. The rest of the songs are mostly good songs with a mixture of good Pop Rock music with some Prog Rock influences. "Sorrow" has some South African musical influences with some Pop Rock arrangements which made me remember a bit some of Paul Simon`s music from his album "Graceland".

The recording and mixing of the album is good. But only four musicians are credited, with Rabin and two of his musicians singing, But sometimes the backing vocals sound "so good" that sometimes I think that Rabin used some pre-recorded tapes or backing vocals samples to fill the sound, or that the backing vocals were really sung by uncredited backing singers (something that I really don`t know), but it is more likely that Rabin used pre- recorded tapes or backing vocals samples for the additional backing vocals. Anyway, this is a vey good live album that shows Rabin and his band playing very well in concert. It really is a shame that his "I Can`t Look Away" album was not very successful in the charts. I think that Rabin really had a lot of potential to be more successful as a soloist. Maybe the constant pressures from major record labels to have Hit Singles and Hit albums disappointed Rabin a bit as a soloist and as member of YES to make him dedicate his later musical career to compose soundtrack music for a lot of films, a thing which made him very successful (and maybe happier) in that field and being more comfortably away from the more demanding Pop Rock music market.

My first exposure to this concert was via a 1990 Westwood One in Concert double album with excerpts from a Chris Rea concert on one LP and excerpts from Rabin's December 13, 1989 show on the other. The 2003 Voiceprint CD had ten tracks (a few of which were medleys of two songs), totaling 65 minutes; the 2014 Varèse Sarabande reissue (which I'm reviewing here) adds "Solly's Beard" from an unknown date on the same tour. Interestingly, neither includes the song "Promises" which was included on the Westwood One show.

Anyway, I was a little disappointed upon my first listen to the LP. The songs were familiar to me: "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and "Love Will Find a Way," plus four tunes from Rabin's recent solo LP Can't Look Away - - which I assume was being promoted via the Westwood One show. The problem? Rabin and company (Lou Molino (drums), Mark Mancina (keyboards and backing vocals), and Jim Simmons (bass and backing vocals)) were obviously playing along to prerecorded tapes. The female vocals on the first two tracks ("Cover Up" and "Sorrow (Your Heart)") are lifted directly off of Can't Look Away, while there are at least three Trevor Rabin's singing on the third song, "Love Will Find a Way." (At one point, at the end of the first verse, there's an error, as the live Rabin sings "I don't need to be," while the prerecorded ones are singing "It's so hard to be." This raises the possibility that the keyboardist was triggering samples, in which case my "prerecorded tapes" assumption is incorrect.) Later, when the crowd sings the verses on "Owner of a Lonely Heart," it sounds like four or five tracks of the same four or five people singing in the studio (including Rabin himself). And somehow they all knew all of the lyrics! Plus it was evident even in 1990 that some of the synth parts were MIDI sequences.

Despite my complaints, when I had the opportunity 25 years later to buy the CD, I shelled out the cash.

The songs on Live in LA that weren't on the Westwood One record are "Heard You Cry Wolf," from Rabin's 1981 album Wolf; "Changes;" from 90125; and three songs from his then-current album: "Can't Look Away," an medley of "Etoile Noir" and "Eyes of Love," and "Sludge," which includes an interpolation of Gentle Giant's "Just the Same."

Come to think of it, the album might've been called Just the Same rather than Live in LA - - it's a collection of too-faithful renditions of most of Rabin's best 1980s material. On much of the album the instrumentation, in addition to the vocals, is note-perfect; I'd be willing to believe that any imperfections were fixed in the studio. But I guess that this has to be looked at as a promotional item as much as a live album: it was meant to be heard once on the radio to entice you to go to the store and buy Can't Look Away. And actually, that's my suggestion too.