LIVE AND LET LIVE

The best release of Twelfth Night's Geoff Mann era is without a doubt Live and Let Live, documenting the two farewell shows for Geoff at the Marquee. With a track list drawing on their best material, it's an entertaining enough listen, though Mann's vocal approach can take a bit of getting used to.

Geoff feels the need to tell us that war is bad and love is good, as though these were sentiments which would be novel and new to us, and some may find the techniques he uses to offer us these facts is overly didactic and heavy-handed. Furthermore, there's a fine line between Gabriel-like theatricality and embarrassingly corny whimsy, and which side of the line Mann occupies will vary for listeners. crosses it too often for my liking.

Still, this is a matter of personal tastes and fans of early neo-prog would probably find a lot to like here. The album has been released in various configurations; by far the best is the 2012 Definitive Edition, which fills out the entire setlist of the farewell shows, almost entirely with recordings from the two nights in question. (The only exception is a rendition of The Collector from a week prior - evidently the tapes on the night simply failed to adequately capture the relevant performances.) The sound quality on some of the added tracks is a bit shaky - but eh, if you just want the original album tracks that's what playlists are for, and none of the sound issues are so severe as to be fatal. Moreover, in one delicious little set you get pretty much the cream of what Geoff Mann-era Twelfth Night had to offer.