Customer Reviews

Greatest Hits Live

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I have been a fan of Level 42 for many years, and when I saw that they released this Greatest hits Live CD, I had to have it. I was aware that the only remaining member performing was the irreplaceable Mark King, but the track listing made me feel that it would be a good CD anyway. As it turns out, Mark King and the songs were the only factors that squeezed a 3 star rating out of me, and it would have been 2.5 if I had that option.

The first problem I had, although it was relatively minor (worth -0.5 stars), was the missing original members. Don't get me wrong, Gary Husband (drums), Nathan King (guitar & vocals)and Lyndon Connah (keys & vocals) are fine musicians and are capable enough of filling in for Phil Gould, Boon Gould, and Mike Lindup, respectively. And being a "drum enthusiast" myself, I enjoyed Husband's job on both "Staring At The Sun" and "Guaranteed". But those guys will never be Phil, Boon and Mike- at least when it comes to playing L42 songs. As I said though, this was still a relatively minor problem for me.

The BIGGEST problem I had (worth -2.0 stars) was the mediocre sound of the music. It sounded like a very good bootleg-quality recording. The drums (snare in particular) sounded weak to me, and in general, it sounded like the whole recording needed to be juiced up a lot, like perhaps the show was recorded straight from the mixing board and sent straight to CD without any of the post-production work that is often done on "live" recordings. Also, I personally like crowd reactions to songs and performers on live recordings- nothing overbearing, just something to add a little flavor to the whole live experience. Totally absent here. Every song started with a quick fade in and ended with an even quicker fade out, so no crowd reaction is heard. And except for a couple of times Mark King acknowledged the (obviously unmiked) crowd, you would almost think they played in an empty hall, which I doubt.

All that said, if you are a L42 fan, you still have to get this because there are some good songs here to listen to- some of which I have never heard performed live- and Mark King, not surprisingly, carries the whole thing with his quite capable bass playing and vocals. But if you like good sound, don't look for it here. Their 1985 live set, "A Physical Presence", is a much better quality recording in my opinion, plus it has the original members lively contributions. Or, maybe I'm just too picky! Get it and judge for yourself!