Customer Reviews

Live in the Air Age

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is PROG rock at it's best. These guys rode the college radio air waves of 1977-78 along with Crack the Sky, Genesis, and Gentle Giant. Great hooks, guitars everywhere kind of sound, understandable but non-sensical lyrics, top notch musicianship. Along with Crack the Sky, BeBopDeluxe were the heaviest sounding prog rockers thanks to Bill Nelson's guitar histrionics. Great, Great, Great but you had to have been there. If you weren't, you might not get it. Anyway, minus a couple of songs, this is a greatest hits live package whether it was meant to be or not.

This is probably Be-Bop Deluxe's best album. I boughtz it on impulse in the late 80's and back then was floored by the energy of the recordings. Here Bill Nelson clearly is at the crossroads between the art-rock found on the previous albums and the more new-wave approach he would embrace on his solo albums a few years later. While the sound on some of the original Be Bop Deluxe albums has aged somewhat, the live album is quite extraordinary. Take Shine which is simply fantastic jazz fusion or blaziing apostles with its hard rock approach...stunning.

It took a while for this group to find its feet. Rotating personnel in the early days and a bit too much homage to Mr. Z. Stardust prevented Bill Nelson and his cohorts from really breaking out. By their brilliant 1976 album, Modern Music, they had worked out the bugs. Live! in the Air Age takes Be Bop Deluxe to a whole new level: Older material such as "Sister Seagull" and "Adventures in a Yorkshire Landscape" is so charged with energy that it charges out of the speakers in three well-defined dimensions, while obscurities such as "Shine" and "Mill Street Junction" reveal the new territories this great band had yet to conquer. Unfortunately, they made only one more album -- the synthesized wonderful new direction of "Drastic Plastic" in 1977 -- before punk and the touring treadmill convinced Nelson to opt for a more hermetic existence. (Sound-on-Sound by his Red Noise, and Quit Dreaming and Get on the Beam are brilliant slabs of entirely committed performance.) By now, Nelson has released as many albums as Zappa ever did, and the wander through the catalogue has its share of caveat emptor. But this album is five-star for both the Be Bop convert and the unfamiliar listener looking for an example of the great places the legacy of Hendrix left others to expand.

"Live in the Air Age" (not "Life") is the finest live album produced by this amazing group. Although ignored by the press and most music fans, Be Bop is an outstanding example of progressive rock in the late 70's. If you have any appreciation of Mick Ronson, Phil Manzanera, Jeff Beck, Bill Spooner and Roger Stein, or Frank Zappa, you owe it to yourself to become one with Be Bop's Bill Nelson. Sadly, the 70's was a period of transition for music listeners. Disco (REAL musicians) was in the offing and glam was on the way out, so a lot of folks missed some of the greatest bands that ever recorded...including Be Bop Deluxe and The Tubes.

As a side note: the White Vinyl edition of "Live in the Air Age" is much softer than the black vinyl edition, and as a result is subject to more damage from normal use than the black vinyl. PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE record the white vinyl content onto cassette (or CD) as you continue to enjoy the sophisticated, timeless work of Be Bop. To continue to play the white vinyl version is to continue to degrade the medium...and the delicious music contained on that rare disk.

"Live in the Air Age" continues and expands on the Bowie tradition of merging robots and space travel with humanity. As a bonus, Be Bop Deluxe recorded some of its finest performance ever on these disks (it's a two-record set). If you enjoy future-looking themes and outstanding rock'n'roll, get a copy of "Live in the Air Age".

To be without it is to be without a seminal piece of guitar-god history. Budding guitarists: if you limit yourself to Nirvana or any new band recorded since 1980, you owe it to yourself and your dignity to check out these guys.

Also: do not miss "What Do You Want From Live" by The Tubes. Although they aren't glam (like Be Bop), they totally rock!!

I owned a promo copy of this double album set pressed in white vinyl. Sadly, it was lost in a move across the country.

It is still one of the finest live albums ever produced from one of the most overlooked bands in history.

I have not heard this music in 20 years. Yet the guitar solo on Adventures in a Yorkshire Landscape still echoes in my head. If only they would re release it.

Put Be Bop Deluxe on that list of artists who delivered their recorded material with far more subtle firepower and atmospheric in concert than they did in the studio. By this point, they'd left their earlier, overtly glam influence almost completely behind, concentrating on the style and repertoire they'd refined with "Modern Music," "Futurama," and "Sunburst Finish," and in concert the quartet - led by the deceptively bristling Bill Nelson (as lyric and as melodious a guitarist as the 1970s got) and fortified by a superlative keyboards-bass-drums array, including and especially the underrated bassist Charlie Tumahai) - got downright expansive, even when staying within the original parameters of the material. You'll hear few more embracing instrumentals from the era than "Shine" (this version absolutely buries the studio take which has shown up on the remastered "Sunburst Finish"), and few more soaring guitar exercises than "Sister Seagull," Life In The Air Age," or "Maid in Heaven." Put this together with the subsequent, posthumous "BBC Radio 1 In Concert," and try convincing yourself these guys belonged anywhere else except live, in the air age or elsewhere. You'll fail.

Oh the white vinyl is sweet...the problem is that it is softer than the black vinyl, and is subject to damage due to repeated playing...and we have been repeating the playing a LOT!

"Live in the Air Age" is one of the best Be Bop Deluxe albums ever. Bill is in terrific form, on the guitar, and the rest of the band is as tight as The Tubes. If you are looking for a Bill Nelson spectacular, this is his best live recording with Be Bop. Also check out his solo work ("On a Blue Wing", et al).

Sadly, we have not found anything of extreme value in the rest of the Be Bop ouvre (except "Sunburst Finish", of course) that showcases Mr. Nelson's talents as well as "Live in the Air Age".

STOP PLAYING THE WHITE VINYL VERSION, if you have it!!! When there are no more vinyl pressings (within the next ten years or so), this album will be as sought-after as the Dead Sea Scrolls!

We love Be Bop Deluxe! Send us some email: stupidscript@hotmail.com, if you love 'em, too.

Be-Bop Deluxe's music was characterized by a sophistication, lush layering, and attention to detail that seemed to demand reams of overdubs. How could one guitar, one set of keyboards, one bass and one drumkit pull this off in real time? The answer: with the same keen wit and creativity that guitarist/composer Bill Nelson displays in everything he does. BBD know exactly where the true heart and core of each song is, and this is what they play here. The somewhat leaner arrangements make the considerable virtues of Nelson's songwriting stand out even more. The overdrive of live sound gives the band more punch than they ever had before, and Nelson has simply never played better, before or since. Listen to him here and you'll wonder why he isn't up there with Hendrix and Clapton as "the first guitarist-name on everyone's lips". The crowning achievement of a band too far ahead of its time...

I kept hearing this great song being played on AFR in The Phillipines in 1977. The song was entitled: "Maid in Heaven" and the band playing this was called Be Bop Deluxe. It was a short but very snappy rock song and I couldn't get this fantastic tune outta my head. A few months later I spotted a live double LP that had a strange title: "Live! In The Air Age" and a chair, a star and a silver robot from a very old and silent film graced the cover of this record. On the back panel, it was there as track number ten: "Maid in Heaven" was one of the selections of this double live record.

As 1977 was the year I was listening to albums such as: "Caress of Steel" by Rush, "Look into the Future" by Journey "Rainbow Live" by Rainbow and: "Point of No Return" by Kansas. The opening song on this disc: "Life In The Air Age" was quite different from the music that I was finding comfort in that year. Afro-Caribbean beats are quick to shift into electronic forms of sound and quirky lyrics that made little sense to a guy used to his hard rock breaking his windows when played a bit too loud. Some songs on this strange record changed form and style many times in the course of a brief four minutes. These guys were playing something so far ahead of the rest of the pack and so inventive that I wasn't even close to understanding just what I was listening to with my early visits of these two Lp's on my turntable. I wasn't ready yet to absorb and enjoy the music that was years ahead of seventies rock bands. The Be Bop Deluxe was playing the music of the mid 1980's almost ten years BEFORE it was to be copied by other British and then American bands.

I played this record a few times and thought: "Maid in Heaven" is great but, the other nine songs that appear before it are all over the map and go in some weird directions. I did notice that there was some mighty guitar playing found on this. The guitar solo on: "Adventures in a Yorkshire Landscape" was as majestic or finer than anything performed by Carlos Santana. This was a amazing band, I could hear that in their playing. I did want to explore more of this music ("Axe Victim" was purchased a few years later upon my return to California.) But, in 1977 I went back to spinning records from Montrose and Uriah Heep in the place of the Be Bop Deluxe and it returned to the back end of my record collection.

In 1991 a strange thing happened in a record shop in Rhode Island. Again that robot from: "Metropolis" was there on the cover of: "Live In The Air Age" in all it's glory in the bin (now a CD import from England) and I at least now knew that so much of the music I had listened to in Scotland between 1985 and 1988 on BBC radio was a mere copy (or tribute) to the music that the Be Bop Deluxe had already produced in the early to mid 1970's. I was ready at last for this great music and I bought this CD and entered the Air Age at last (a mere 14 years later!) and I have never had to look back since.

There is 53 minutes of great live music on this disc that shows that a band so far ahead of the bell curve cannot be ignored forever. This is a great live CD and so very unique as a rock album as it's always going to sound fresh and new whenever you discover it.
FIVE STARS !!!

Back in the U.K., Be Bop Deluxe were a huge deal. Led by the great guitar playing of Bill Nelson, these guys made some of the best progressive rock of the seventies. Unfortunately, these guys never achieved the success that bands like Queen and Supertramp did.

If you want to start listening to Be Bop Deluxe, start here. 1977's superb live album 'Live In the Air Age' is the record to listen to if you want to get to know Be Bop Deluxe. The band, I think, are an essential live act.

This showcases their ability to create prog rock. 'Life In The Air Age' is one of the best prog songs of the seventies, in my opinion, and 'Fair Exchange' is just incredible. The guitar work on 'Sister Seagull' is just incredible!

Overall, if you like David Bowie, Queen and Supertramp, than you must hear Be Bop Deluxe. These guys were huge in Britain, but in America, they never really hit it big, and that's a shame, because these guys are a great prog band.

This is highly recommended for any prog rock fan. You will love this album if you like progressive rock. Nelson's voice and guitar playing are incredible.

Highly recommended. This is the one Be Bop Deluxe album you must own. Buy it with 'Postcards from the Future: Introducing Be Bop Deluxe,' and you have a great collection of their finest material.

ENJOY!!!