I never make it to the Live LP. The GH portion is just amazingly beautiful: great compositions; no punches pulled in the performances; amazing engineering and mixing. You hear Barracuda or Heartless or Magic Man on the radio for the billionth time and it’s maybe nothing in that context anymore. But, on their own, back to back, this band produced some seriously memorable stuff. Top of the line in the 1970s.
I wish they had just put out a double live LP from the Dog and Butterfly tour or earlier dates for some songs if they preferred. Powerful live band with Roger Fisher. At least there are some nice radio broadcasts from that time.
I love listening to Dreamboat Annie, the whole album. Wonderful hit songs, but even better in the context of real 70s melodic songwriting.
This. I actually don't listen to the 1st half of GH/Live ... I just care about the live stuff, because I would just listen to the individual studio albums for those songs.
‘The Road Home’ needs to be released on vinyl! Analogue Productions, MoFi, 2x45rpm, Kevin Gray, etc etc
It's a shame, no.. a crime it has never been remastered as a 1-CD set! I loved this album when it first came out, from start to finish, and have been waiting forever for it to be issued on CD in complete form! Yes, I really do miss Hit Single and Strange Euphoria! And Unchained Melody was not a huge hit for them, but did make a chart appearance [at #83 in Billboard]... The total set times out at 77:44 which could easily fit onto a single disc....
Ok... a few weeks back I stumbled across a used CD of GH/L in an FYE store in a town about an hour away from where I live. I had previously refused to buy this on CD, so my only copy since 1980 has been a worn cassette tape that is most likely around somewhere in a box of music in my storage area.. but I loved the content, so for $2 this used copy is totally worth that price. Now, I had long been aware that the missing tracks were on the Essential 3.0, but I missed grabbing a copy when it first came out all those years ago because.. well, Heart wasn't a priority back then because .. well.. let's just say I could live without Disc 2... But.. a quick search on Amazon turned up a decent used copy for a reasonable price, so... now I'm off to live the dream... I can recompile the original track listing onto a disc!! One thing I noticed, though, as I loaded all the tracks into Windows Media Player for a test run, it reports the disc length as 79 minutes, not the 78 [or really 77:44] that I expected. Sure enough, it looks like, according to Wikipedia, Rock And Roll seems to have an extra 44 seconds on the "European 10 track" version versus the "LP" version. I did notice that one of the guitar solos seems to just leap in from nowhere and was wondering if that was edited out of the original [or edited into the longer verison] or if the longer version is just a longer fade on the crowd noise at the end.. I obviously haven't done too much analysis on it yet, but may over the next couple weeks if no one here jumps in with answers... PS. Listening to GH/L again has really got me enjoying the old Heart again... maybe I'll spring for that 5pack sometime soon to help fill out the collection...
I found a 1981 repress in great condition about fifteen years ago. Listening to it now. Still sounds fantastic. Before that, I had a beater copy that I only kept around for the three tracks missing from the CD. (The first LP was unplayable.) When I got the repress, I threw out the beater copy, but saved the gatefold insert (which the repress doesn't have).