Published on Aug 19, 2004
Military intelligence. Jumbo shrimp. Alan Parsons live.
When I was a freshman in college, we did a mock promo for the
campus radio station (which was a carrier wave signal that no one
could pick up) for an Alan Parsons Project concert. The tagline was
“The band you’ve never seen, by the station you can’t hear.”
Needless to say, our station advisor (who had very little sense of
humor anyway) didn’t find it funny.
Irrelevant? Perhaps. But when a band who didn’t tour through
eleven years of recording as “The Alan Parsons Project” decides to
start touring and release a live album, it’s kinda weird. I
remember my jaw hitting the floor when I found
The Very Best Live in the record store, and I thought
someone was playing a joke. (That, or it was sixty minutes of
silence in Dolby Surround-Sound.)
Turned out to be neither; instead, it was a live album recorded
during a 1994 tour of Europe by three of the four key members of
the Project (Alan, guitarist Ian Bairnson, and drummer Stuart
Elliot) along with a few other folks who had come along for the
ride. It also turned out to be pretty darn fine stuff.
Longtime readers of the DV will know that I hate most live
albums. Live albums are almost invariably recorded badly and are
fillers designed to pad a band’s catalog. Not so
TVBL. In some cases (“You’re Gonna Get Your Fingers Burned,”
“Psychobabble”) the live version is actually better than the
original. Add to that a funky blend of two instrumentals, Eve’s
“Lucifer” and Eye In The Sky’s “Mammagamma,” and you have one heck
of a live CD.
Likewise, bonus tracks are often throwaways that should have
stayed in someone’s closet. On
TVBL, the bonus tracks range from good (a cover of Chris
Thompson’s “You’re The Voice”) to really good (a rocking,
brass-laden “When”) to what may be the best damn thing these
musicians ever did (“Take The Money And Run” — and no, it’s not
the moldy, hackneyed, desperately overplayed Steve Miller song). If
I had lots of money, I would send “Take The Money And Run” to every
record company executive employed in 1995 with a note that said
“Idiot.”
In summary, unlike your normal live CD,
The Very Best Live is indeed that. Check it out.