Alive 1990

Artist: Curved Air
Label: Import [Generic]
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Format: Live
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 1

UPC: 604388471126
EAN: 0604388471126
ASIN: B00004UFD6

Release Date: 2000-11-28

Alive 1990

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Tracks:

Twenty Years on (Intro)
It Happened Today
Stretch
Hide and Seek
Marie Antoinette
Melinda (More or Less)
Situations
Young Mother
You Know
Propositions
Vivaldi
Everdance
Backstreet Luv

Album Description

The definitive line-up regrouped for a performance at the Town And Country club in London, featuring the most popular material from their first three albums including, 'Vivaldi', 'Marie Antoinette', 'It Happened Today' and 'Back Street Luv'. Standard jewel case.

Album Details

Featuring the 20 Year Reunion Performance. Includes the Most Popular Material from the Band's Three Top 10 Albums plus a 4-Page Booklet with a Photo of the Band at the Show.

Customer Reviews:

Reissued at a cheaper price as Live 1990.......2006-05-19

I GIVE THIS A LOWER RATING DUE TO THE MARGINAL SOUND QUALITY. IT'S NOT HORRIBLE, BUT COULD BE BETTER.

I must admit that I have never seen Alive 1990. But from what I read about it, I believe it is the same recording as Live 1990 that was just released and at a bargain price.

This was a reunion concert featuring four of the original members, Kristina, Darryl Way, Florian Miska-Whatever and Francis Monkman. When Monkman was originally with the group he mainly played keyboards. Here he is both guitarist and keyboardist and very good at both. I believe there is a guest bassist on at least one track.

The sound quality of the first track, Twenty Years On is horrible. It is an audience recording. Moving into the second track, the sound suddenly gets better. For the rest of the CD, the sound quality is pretty good but not perfect. Dynamic range is pretty good, but there is some distortion. The mix is OK but can be bad in spots.

This is not the worst sounding CD. It is certainly better than notorious live CD's like Black Sabbath Live At Last, King Crimson Earthbound or Epitath and Hawkwind Early Daze. It is even better than Gong, Live in Sherwood Forest. And I actually think it is better than the typical Dave Matthews live CD.

Another reviewer has complained about the group sounding unpracticed and sloppy. I disagree. I think they sound looser and livelier. They also had a looseness in concert that added new excitement to the material. I think that the sloppiness is do to the poor mix and not the peformance of the band.

I really like the music and performance on this CD. Instead of the group acting like some dinosaur band, playing the songs just like on the studio albums, the group changes things around and makes things interesting. However, some people just love that perfect reproduction of the studio versions (which explains why all those Eagles reunion tours are so popular).

As a fan of Curved Air, I always preferred the looser, spacier but harder material from Francis Monkman. I didn't like the art rock compositions from Kristina and Way as much. I found songs like Marie Antoinette and Vivaldi to be stiff and teious at times. I think those songs are so much more enjoyable on this live CD, played in a looser style, than on the original studio albums.

I like this CD more than Curved Air Live, maybe because it just has more music on it. However, I prefer the version of Propositions on the earlier album. I think it is the wildest and best thing they have done. On this CD, they have taken the keyboard solo and put it in Young Lover.

If you like the guitar playing on this, you might want to check out Francis Monkman Jam or Phil Manzanera's 801 Live.

I wanted so much to like this.......2005-06-21

Back in the 70s I saw and enjoyed curved air several times. I own and have a love-hate relationship with the original Curved Air live. I have heard some of their earlier studio work and enjoy that, too, with some reservations. Most notably my problem with this early work is poor production quality and overuse of Mellotron and other early synths.

The musicianship was excellent, the songs were wonderfully imaginative and thoughtfull and beatifully layered and arranged. Great music spoiled by age in other words.

So when I heard about this album I had fairly high hopes for it. The BBC were intending to record them, that's a good sign of production values and supposedly of preparedness. They had all been working since so the musicianship should be up to snuff. Recording and stage sound technology, especially for live music, had improved enormously in the intervening years. And, of course, the music was still brilliant. Everything boded well for an excellent reimagining of their heyday.

What a horrible disappointment. The band was woefully under rehearsed and loose. The bass and guitar especially seem to routinely miss cues and then drop notes trying to catch up. Complex and memorable little riffs that used to punctuate and accentuate key parts were often completely missing or vastly simplified as if the players could no longer remember or possibly still play them.

Synth and guitar appear to have some unintended distortion on them that is really grating, too.

Sonja Christina, whose voice I have criticized in the past, was the only one who seemed to have improved. Her vocal range has dropped a little. She gets more depth to her voice but loses a bit of accuracy (never her strong point) in the high notes. Also one of her songs from her solo work appears here and that is possibly the best sounding song on the album.

Taken as a whole this album sounds like a garage band with some talent trying to take on some especially challenging material which is just a little beyond their skill level and with just a little too much chemical impairment. Like the Ramones trying to play Jethro Tull

It's a terrible disappointment and a terrible tragedy for quality music to be brought so low and it makes you wonder if there weren't some very good reasons for their constant line-up problems back when they were still viable.

A gem from the archives..........2000-09-01

In 1990, the seminal progressive rock band Curved Air regrouped to perform a televised concert at the Town & Country Club for the BBC. Although this concert (and a second at the Dome, Tufnell Park) was in fact recorded off the mixing desk, the filming fell through and the project was shelved, permanently it seemed at the time. Canterbury music fans will be familiar with related reunion concerts staged during the same period by Caravan and Hatfield and the North.

Francis Monkman recently unearthed the tape, and has produced an extraordinary document of the event - a powerful album which rivals, and on some tracks surpasses, the original classic Curved Air recordings. The sound is much fuller than the studio albums thanks both to advances in recording technology and to Monkman's sequencers, which provide the bass lines and some subtle keyboard flavoring. Only Francis, Florian Pilkington-Miksa, Darryl Way, and Sonja Kristina perform on the majority of the tracks, and no overdubs were made. Rob Martin, the original bassist for the group, appears on one track, the perennial crowd-pleaser "Vivaldi." The material is drawn from the first three albums, "Airconditioning," "The Second Album," and "Phantasmagoria," plus a new song written expressly for the reunion, "20 Years On."

Some fifteen years plus had gone by since the original band had played together, and as would be expected a few missed cues and botched notes are evident. But very few. The band was tight and obviously well-rehearsed for this concert.

Highlights: The first track, "It Happened Today," is stunning. Sonja Kristina's vocal talents are at their peak as she delivers a passionate performance on part one. Part two features Darryl Way's lovely violin solo floating gently atop Francis Monkman's gorgeous keyboards. It's genuine magic. "Marie Antoinette" is the show-stopper. Gone is the bouncy pop feel from earlier performances, and in it's place is pure riffing adrenalin. This time when Sonja sings, "We are the people of France..." the effect is utterly chilling. If you don't get goosebumps listening to this, check your pulse.

Florian Pilkington-Miksa is incredible throughout, particularly on "Situations" and "Marie." An underrated talent, he clearly deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with Bill Bruford, Carl Palmer, Andy Ward, and Pip Pyle. Darryl Way, always masterful on the violin, shines on the wonderful and rarely performed "Hide and Seek," and of course on his showcase, "Vivaldi." Francis Monkman rips through "Young Mother" and "Propositions" with a vengeance. His "Everdance," one of three encores, is given a new and superior treatment - a standout track. Sonja Kristina's voice has taken on a new life since Curved Air disbanded at the end of 1976, as fans of her solo material are well aware. On this album her voice is full and deep, powerful and assured, and simply beautiful. The band finishes the set with a rather jaunty encore version of their hit "Back Street Luv," with fans in the front row shouting out the chorus lines.

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