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Alan Parsons Live / The Very Best Live | ||||
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Live album by | ||||
Released | 1994 (EU) 1995 (worldwide) | |||
Recorded | May 1994–February 1995 | |||
Genre | Progressive rock | |||
Length | 57:10 (EU) 74:40 (USA/Canada) | |||
Label | Arcade Records (EU) RCA Victor/BMG (elsewhere) | |||
Producer | Alan Parsons | |||
Alan Parsons chronology | ||||
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Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [1] |
Alan Parsons Live is the first live album by Alan Parsons, recorded in May 1994 during his European tour, and released late that year by Arcade Records in Europe. [2] RCA/BMG added three new studio tracks and changed the cover art when releasing the album in the rest of the world in 1995, renaming it The Very Best Live; stylized on the cover with "The Very Best" in a smaller font between Alan Parsons and Live. Despite the tour promoting Try Anything Once with seven songs from the album in the setlist, the live performances on the album are all songs from his years with The Alan Parsons Project. [3]
Project regulars Ian Bairnson, Andrew Powell, Stuart Elliott and Richard Cottle anchor the band with Parsons, Gary Howard ( Freudiana ) and ex-Manfred Mann's Earth Band vocalist Chris Thompson ( Try Anything Once ) providing vocals for the live tracks.
The album is notable for instrumental track "Luciferama" (a blending of "Lucifer" and "Mammagamma" that first appeared on Andrew Powell's 1983 instrumental album The Philharmonia Orchestra Plays The Best of The Alan Parsons Project, was played like this at the Project's Night of the Proms live performance in 1990 and remains in Parsons' live set to this day); "When", another Parsons songwriting contribution by Bairnson, sung by Thompson; "Take the Money and Run", the second songwriting and first lead vocal contribution to a Parsons album by Elliott; and Thompson's first non-demo studio recording of his co-composition "You're The Voice", a song first recorded and released by John Farnham in 1986.
It is also the only Parsons live album that contains a full rendition of "The Raven" with the vocoder part. The track is prefaced by the second part of "A Dream Within a Dream" (uncredited on the album; bootlegs show that the Orson Welles introduction from the 1987 remix of Tales of Mystery and Imagination was used as an opening tape, but edited out of the official release). Later performances opt for seguing "Breakdown" into the second half of "The Raven".
Despite rating the album 2.5 stars out of 5 for AllMusic, reviewer Mike DeGagne praised "When" for "being the catchiest of the trio" of the new songs, as well as the "explosiveness" of the live performances, especially on "Prime Time" and "Standing on Higher Ground", "which both sound livelier than the album versions". He further praised the "fresh and crisp" sound throughout, and concluded, "The stellar execution of the songs played live on this album proves that the group - which remained shy of the spotlight - should have toured more frequently." [3]
Mark Jenkins, reviewing the album for The Washington Post prior to a joint Parsons concert with Kansas, had equal criticism of his keyboard-oriented rock as "rather prim and a bit stiff; it betrays little of the spontaneity of live performance," yet praise for its being "less bombastic than much British art-rock" as well as "a cunning balance between mainstream and snob appeal." Jennings concluded that "slick, tame adult-rock may be out of vogue, but "Live" shows that its melodic quotient is undiminished." [4]
All songs written by Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson. [2]
1. Sirius - 2:25
2. Eye In The Sky - 4:55 Lead Vocal: Gary Howard
3. Luciferama - 4:56
4. Old And Wise - 4:49 Lead Vocal: Gary Howard
5. Psychobabble - 5:22 Lead Vocal: Chris Thompson
6. The Raven - 5:39 Lead Vocal: Alan Parsons (first verse, vocoder), Gary Howard (second verse) and Chris Thompson (finale)
7. Time - 5:08 Lead Vocal: Gary Howard
8. You're Gonna Get Your Fingers Burned - 4:18 Lead Vocal: Chris Thompson
9. Prime Time - 5:15 Lead Vocal: Gary Howard
10. Limelight - 4:40 Lead Vocal: Chris Thompson
11. Don't Answer Me - 4:13 Lead Vocal: Gary Howard (first verse), Chris Thompson (second verse)
12. Standing On Higher Ground - 5:30 Lead Vocal: Chris Thompson
All songs written by Parsons and Woolfson, except as indicated. [3]
Side 1
1. Sirius - 2:25
2. Eye In The Sky - 5:04
3. Psychobabble - 5:31
4. The Raven - 5:58
5. Time - 5:19
6. Luciferama - 5:04
7. Old And Wise - 4:52
8. You're Gonna Get Your Fingers Burned - 4:27
Side 2
9. Prime Time - 5:28
10. Limelight - 4:48
11. Don't Answer Me - 4:28
12. Standing On Higher Ground - 5:17
13. When (Bairnson) - 4:15
14. Take The Money And Run (Elliott, Powell) - 6:18
15. You're The Voice (Andy Qunta, Chris Thompson, Keith Reid, Maggie Ryder) - 5:06
The Alan Parsons Project were a British rock band active between 1975 and 1990, whose core membership consisted of producer, audio engineer, musician and composer Alan Parsons and singer, songwriter and pianist Eric Woolfson. They were accompanied by varying session musicians and some relatively consistent session players such as guitarist Ian Bairnson, arranger Andrew Powell, bassist and vocalist David Paton, drummer Stuart Elliott, and vocalists Lenny Zakatek and Chris Rainbow. Parsons and Woolfson shared writing credits on almost all of the Project's songs, with Parsons producing or co-producing all of the band's recordings.
Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe) is the debut studio album by British rock band the Alan Parsons Project. It was released on 25 June 1976 in the United Kingdom by Charisma Records and 20th Century Fox Records in the U.S. The lyrical and musical themes of the album, which are retellings of horror stories and poetry by Edgar Allan Poe, attracted a cult audience. The title of the album is taken from the title of a collection of Poe's macabre stories of the same name.
I Robot is the second studio album by British rock band the Alan Parsons Project, released on 8 July 1977 by Arista Records. The album draws conceptually on author Isaac Asimov's science fiction Robot stories, exploring philosophical themes regarding artificial intelligence. It was re-released on vinyl and cassette tape in 1984 and on CD in 2017.
Pyramid is the third album by progressive rock band The Alan Parsons Project, released in May 1978. It is a concept album centred on the pyramids of Giza. At the time the album was conceived, interest in pyramid power and Tutankhamun was widespread in the US and the UK. Pyramid was nominated for the 1978 Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical.
Eve is the fourth studio album by British rock band the Alan Parsons Project, released in September 1979 by Arista Records. The album's focus is on the strength and characteristics of women, and the problems they face in the world of men. It had originally been intended to focus on "great women in history", but evolved into a wider concept. The album name was the same as Eric Woolfson's mother-in-law.
The Turn of a Friendly Card is the fifth studio album by the British progressive rock band the Alan Parsons Project, released in 1980 by Arista Records. The title piece, which appears on side 2 of the LP, is a 16-minute suite broken up into five tracks. The Turn of a Friendly Card spawned the hits "Games People Play" and "Time", the latter of which was Eric Woolfson's first lead vocal appearance. An edited version of the title piece combining the opening and ending parts of the suite was also released as a single along with an official video.
Stereotomy is the ninth studio album by the Alan Parsons Project, released in 1985.
Vulture Culture is the eighth studio album by the Alan Parsons Project, released in 1985 via the Arista label.
Gaudi is the tenth album by The Alan Parsons Project, released in 1987. Gaudi refers to Antoni Gaudí, the Catalan Spanish architect, and the opening track references what is probably Gaudí's best known building, the Sagrada Família.
Try Anything Once is the first solo album by Alan Parsons, released in 1993. It was his first album following the split of The Alan Parsons Project.
On Air is the second solo studio album by English rock musician Alan Parsons. The album's chief creative force was the Alan Parsons Project's long-time guitarist, Ian Bairnson. Its concept revolves around the history of airborne exploration.
The Time Machine is the third solo album by English rock musician Alan Parsons.
Alan Parsons is an English audio engineer, songwriter, musician and record producer.
Freudiana is a rock opera by Eric Woolfson. It was to be the 11th album by the Alan Parsons Project, but during its development, Woolfson had creative differences with Alan Parsons. The production, released in 1990, utilizes the Project's personnel as well as many guest vocalists.
"The Raven" is the first song by the Alan Parsons Project, recorded in April 1976 at Mama Jo's Studio, North Hollywood, Los Angeles. It is the second track on their debut album, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, which is a tribute to author and poet Edgar Allan Poe. Though the song is based on Poe's poem of the same name, and is almost a verbatim recital of the lyrics of the poem, Poe is not given song writing credit. It is credited to Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson.
Crusader is the fourth album by British-Irish singer-songwriter Chris de Burgh, released in 1979 by A&M Records. The album was produced by Andrew Powell, who worked with the Alan Parsons Project on many of their albums. The musicians on Crusader also came from the Alan Parsons Project.
Eric Woolfson sings The Alan Parsons Project That Never Was is an album by the progressive rock musician Eric Woolfson, co-creator with Alan Parsons of The Alan Parsons Project, as well as main songwriter and manager of the band. Released in 2009, this was Woolfson's final album before he died of cancer in December of that year. The album includes songs that remained unreleased since the Project time for various reasons; however, as Woolfson himself remarks in the booklet, Parsons' dislike for some of Woolfson's compositions would have often caused them to be excluded from a Project album in its very early stages - such as, for example, "Steal Your Heart Away", an "unashamedly commercial" song with a conventionally sentimental lyric, which Parsons, in Woolfson's words, would have absolutely detested. "Somewhere in the Audience" and "Immortal" are slightly re-arranged and re-recorded versions of two of Woolfson's demos for his 2003 musical about Edgar Allan Poe; the final versions of these songs, sung by the musical's protagonist Steve Balsamo, are featured on the album Poe: More Tales of Mystery and Imagination. "Train to Wuxi" was the original version of "Train to Freedom", which is also included in the Poe musical and features Woolfson's one and only guitar solo.
Poe: More Tales of Mystery and Imagination is an album by Eric Woolfson. It contains some, but not all, of the songs from his musical Edgar Allan Poe.
Eye 2 Eye: Live in Madrid is a live concert performance by Alan Parsons released on both DVD-Video and Audio CD on April 6, 2010 on the Frontiers label. The show was performed with his band Alan Parsons Live Project, and was recorded live at the Plaza Mayor, Madrid, Spain, on May 14, 2004.
"Don't Answer Me" is a 1984 song by the Alan Parsons Project from the album Ammonia Avenue. It reached number 15 on the Billboard charts in the United States and was the final Billboard Top 20 hit for the group. It also reached number 58 in the United Kingdom, the group's highest chart placing in their native country. The music video was rendered in comic book style, with art and animation by Michael Kaluta.