Comments: | Big Music is basically KTS. Absolutely nothing new here.
Yet another release of the John Peel broadcast, this one is
very close if not identical in sound quality to the Swingin'
Pig version. The booklet is multi-fold with psychedelically
enhanced photo of Dave, Nick and Roger in various states of
performance. -ANON
Excellent sound quality. Not a very inspired performance.
Atom Heart Mother is the orchestra version and is horrendous
when compared to the band only version. This is the first
performance of the song under the official title of AHM. The
cd lacks the between song commentary by John Peel that is on
my taped source. Given that half this disc is taken up by
the orchestrated AHM, this title is not really worth getting,
unless you like the orchestra version of AHM. -Scott
Though the back cover claims "Live in Europe 1971", this is
almost certainly a (digital?) copy of TSP's Libest Spacement
Monitor disc from the Paris Theatre, Sept. 16, 1970 (with the
tracks re-arranged and an incorrect back-cover date). As such
it has the same breathtakingly clean sound, courtesy of the BBC,
and is easily the cleanest-sounding RoIO I have heard (though
overall I prefer "One of These Days"). There are only a few
minor blemishes -- an 8-second dropout of one channel on CWTAE
(which is present on LSM but not native to the original source
material -- cf. "Total Eclipse", where it is mistakenly listed
as part of "Top Gear" -- so perhaps someday some enterprising
RoIO maker could "patch" the hole [hint, hint] ;-); a "scritch"
sound five minutes or so into AHM; and an oddly fuzzy timbre,
like an radio not quite in tune, to Roger's guitar (but not his
vocals) on If (on which Dave also has some sort of guitar
trouble). But these only stand out because of the extremely
high quality of the sound (an *unequivocal* Sup), and you have
to listen pretty carefully to hear the vinyl mastering. The
speed is perfect and the hiss is just about nonexistent. While
perhaps the performance is less inspired than some (though I
don't agree with Scott that AHM is "horrendous"), the
performance is technically excellent, and Embryo and GitC/CWTAE
are very strong (Dave doesn't miss any high notes!). In a
nutshell, this could easily have been a legit release. Every
time I play this disc for a friend, when I tell them it's a
RoIO, their jaws drop :-) Assuming you don't have LSM or a
comparable source, snap this cookie up (especially as I've seen
it selling for as little as $19). -- MT
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