If i am not mistaken, this is one of those that are actually made to come off easy. Btw, repeating again, out of love for this set: I love this set.
Funny, I listened to Pibroch again this morning on the way to work and it sounded GREAT. Maybe SW will win me over, after all The overall sound seems a little loud, though. Love the last verse on the (bonus track) title track master mix -- sounds jarringly different in a really fun way.
I nearly spilled my coffee hearing that. I can easily hear why IA muted those tracks in the final version.
I am really enjoying the live material (have only listened to CD2 so far). A few have commented that the sound quality is a little sub-par, but it sounds very good to me so far. Yeah, the audience is very distant sounding, but I am much more interested in hearing the actual music, anyway. My only slight disappointment is that, between this release, the "Bursting Out" album, the live Paris show from the "Minstrel" box set, and the 1978 Madison Square Garden DVD/CD set, the set lists are very similar. Of course, their repertoire was what it was and there is nothing that can change that now, but a bit more diversity in the repertoire would have made each of these releases a little more interesting.
They weren't the Grateful Dead, doing startling different set lists each night. With rare exception the sets of each tour were pretty static. Bursting Out and 78 MSG are the same tour for crying out loud; no surprise that they are so similar. I was surprised they even bothered to include an audio CD of MSG.
And the Paris show from 1975? The live material on the new SFTW box set is from the Songs From The Wood your, although admittedly from much later on. Both the MSG 1978 DVD and "Bursting Out" LP are from the "Heavy Horses" tour. So, between these 4 different titles, we are looking at 3 different tours. As I said, the repertoire was what it was . . . obviously there is no changing that 40 years later. My point is simply that it would have been nice if for example, their 1978 shows featured a few more songs from their then current album, which was "Heavy Horses". Besides the title track, songs like "Journeyman" or "Rover" *could* have translated well to the concert stage, and it is too bad that they felt compelled to trot out warhorses like "Aqualung" and "Locomotive Breath" at every show.
I agree that they could be a frustrating band at times re. this aspect. I was very disappointed that at the show I saw in Montreal from the tour behind "Minstrel In The Gallery", they only did ONE song from their then new album! I thought back then that it was a bit early for them to play the best-of group... OTOH they could occasionally turn up with a whole bunch of new songs, like at the first European leg of the "Roots To Branches" tour in 1995... only to play it safe again down the road, perhaps when the audience seems to be cooling off some... Anderson seems a bit sheepish to me in this regard, like he is always on the look-out for the tiniest sign of audience resentment about not hearing the entire set of warhorses each and every night...
They tended to drop any album deep cuts on subsequent tours, only to use the title tracks as later representatives. One could be cynical and think Ian did that deliberately as a cheap marketing ploy. I would have loved to have seen them do Rover, likewise I wanted to hear Mountain Men on the CoaK Tour. No such luck.
Got my SFTW yesterday and having a blast right now. I agree that the sound is a bit sub-par, but both the audio and video are of enough good quality to enloy them really. There are several reasons for the set lists of the Paris, Landover, Bursting Out and MSG shows being that similar. The Paris show was actually a Warchild tour show with MITG added. Ian says in La Grande Edition that owed to the acoustic nature of the record, it was difficult to translate it to the live show. Therefore, I think that the real shame is the lost Paris reel, which contains the Warchild songs like Warchild itself, Sea Lyon, Queen and Country. One must realize that upon release and the immediately subsequent tours, the Aqualung, TAAAB, APP, Warchild, TOTRR, SFTW and Stormwatch albums were fairly good represented in the set lists. HH had a few songs included, but not enough for me. The early european TOTRR tour has a very iunteresting setlist, which unfortunately they droped for the US Tullavision tour. We are left with the frustraing conclusion that we could have had a real TOTRR show available nowadays had they retained the european setlist in the Landover 76 show, which is lying in a private archive. It surprises me that Ian Anderson had access to this 77 Landover show but not the 76 one. Were they shot by different people? Has the 76 footage changed owners in the meantime? It is quite dissapointing that IA is so reluctant about archive live releases. I mean the SFTW liner notes state that the 77 footage and none less than eight 77 shows were multitracked!
Anyway, we have been very lucky with what we got in terms of live music included in the reissues: Stockholm 69, Paris 75 and Landover 77. NOt bad at all! I am really looking forward for a 78 Bursting Out show to be included in HH and I can only dream about it, a soundborad from the 79-80 tours (I suggested den Haag 1980) for Stormwatch.
Well...in the Bursting Out remaster edition, Ian literally says "to this day, a huge pile of tapes lurks in my store at home reflecting the many hours of unused material..."
So what happened to the bass on the '77 live show?! Bursting Out had that problem initially as well, pretty much fixed with the remastered 2 CD version.
I wanted Mountain Men, too! But I wanted Farm On the Freeway even more, little knowing it would become a standard.
I am not a fan of the 77 live show mix. I had to do some work on it for myself. Otherwise i would never listen to it again. That being said: The drums were a stereo track to begin with. And i suspect the bass was recorded onto that track as well. So Jakko wont have had much choices for mixing Bass/drums. And the "dull glue" might have been a necessary veil, since raising the treble on the drum track highlights how much louder than everything else the hi-hat is on the recording.
What can you expect in terms of SQ from live shows recorded in stadiums and arenas from this era? Not much I guess. While listening to BO, I always remind myself that its SQ is way better than the boots! JT, Genesis, Yes, Gentle Giant, Caravan, ELP, etc... All the 70's live lps seems to have issues with SQ but what is important is the performance. Unless very poor SQ, your ears and brain should adapt as the record goes through.
I will do a detailed review once I'm less busy but so far I can tell you this is my favorite box yet!
I'm really close to agreeing with you. I don't remember the last time I enjoyed a remaster so thoroughly. I like what SW did with the mixes and alternates. I don't usually care about bonus material much, but, there's so much great playing here. Barlow was on fire for these sessions. It all just makes for a great set. This may be my favorite Steven Wilson remix. And, if anyone isn't aware, it is the unloudest mix going these days. If you've been waiting for more people to push to keep mixes and masters from being ruined by compression, SW is doing it.
There are any number of excellent sounding live albums from the '60's and '70's; it just reflects the interest of the recorder or engineer if it turns out poorly. And in this case, it could easily have been better.
MSG 1978 was the tour where they were handicapped having Tony Williams sub for John Glascock at the last minute.
Hardly handicapped. Tony Williams was/is a well known bass player in England (Steeler's Wheel), and was also known and respected by Ian. I saw him on that tour and he fit in just fine and played great.
It would be nice, "Bursting Out" doesn't include the complete setlist: "Heavy Horses", the instrumental "Living in The Past" followed by the "A New Day Yesterday" reprise and "Wond'ring Aloud" have been omitted. If I recall correctly, "Songs From The Wood" is also edited on the album: I think they performed it the way they do it on the "Slipstream" video. Not really: same year but different tours. When Tull played at the MSG (9th October), "Bursting Out" had already been released (22nd September in the UK, 29th in the US); BU was taken from the earlier European tour from May-June. The set-list is not completely the same and some of the arrangements are also quite different, such as "Sweet Dreams" having an extended introduction and, for once, no flute. I used to be a Tull tape collector a while ago (I stopped when I started to accumulate more than what I was actually listening to) and I don't think the non-broadcast part of the show had ever been available before in non official circuits so I was thrilled when they released it. The show was broadcast worldwide and some TVs, apparently, plugged in too early, so some copies have the ending of "Heavy Horses" and the band going off stage before pretending to go back and start the show with "Thick as a Brick". This section is missing from the video bit of the official release, understandably (but it is available as audio). The official release's mix is much better than the one that was broadcast on radio and TV! Yes, it's still a great performance. In fact, before Landover was released, MSG used to be my favorite Tull video. It's now a close second. Can't go wrong with live Tull!
How can you seriously claim this without knowing the details and challenges involved with recording these specific nights and venues?
