Customer Reviews

Live in Buffalo

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

 

 

Made in UK in 2003, Serial# VPTMQ-005-CD, Playing Time 78:40

As much as I thought that the "Dragon Attack" CD had nothing going for it (unless you're a completist), this release MUST find its way into anyone's ASIA library that is somewhat serious about collecting this band...

Recorded in Buffalo, New York on May 3, 1982, the performance of the original line-up (Downes, Howe, Palmer, Wetton) has been captured here MAGNIFICENTLY; I personally think it's a top-notch quality, especially if you compare it to "Dragon Attack", "Live In Hyogo", "Quadra" and "Enso-Kai". Every instrument can be heard clearly, and the mix-down has just the right balance, including Wetton's vocals (at least, to my ears.)

There are no liner notes or pictures in this package, but what a concert!!!; the track listed as "Claps" is in fact an acoustic performance of maestro Howe containing "Clap" and "Ram"; and of course, the almost-12-minutes-long version of "Here Comes The Feeling" features Mr. Palmer's mind-boggling drums solo.

Unfortunately, the last track on disc 1 ("Only Time Will Tell") fades out about 3 seconds too soon. This concert could have fitted on a single disc (and hopefully bring the price down).

In my opinion, this CD is the best one I've heard from their first tour, and I've heard many. This one is not for completists only: it belongs in every collection of all ASIA afficionados!

I've been waiting for this for a long time: a soundboard recording from original Asia lineup. The first album is played with solos from Steve Howe, Geoffrey Downes and Carl Palmer. Also very interesting version of "midnight sun" which appeared on their second then unreleased album. The recording itself is very rough soundboard recording but it's very good quality. Negative points are: poor editing and lack of information on tray. Highly recommended! I'll hope there is more soundboard stuff coming from this line up.

Ok, first The Bad:

The quality is OK. A little mastering, and the rumbly bass and high-end hiss could have easily been eliminated (I know this for a fact since I did it myself on my home studio). Wetton's voice is a little ragged, and the backing vocals are always off-key. The beginning of "Heat" is inexplicably lopped off. The packaging is chintzy, and the whole thing would have fit on one CD.

The Good:

WHEEEEEEEE!!! We finally have the original (and for most of us, the ONLY) line-up of Asia in a live soundboard recording. The musicianship is incredible -- you can hear most parts clearly, and Geoff and Steve's soloing (and Carl too) is stellar. The performance is exuberant most of the time.

Get this disk -- you'll love it.

Fans of the original lineup can finally enjoy one of the first concerts from the 1982 tour. The sound quality (considering the source) is superb...especially in their renditions of "One Step Closer", "Without You", and "Wildest Dreams"...raw and powerful. This CD is the only live, original lineup recording to own...the others are insulting at best.

Quirks include John Wetton forgetting the lyrics (but recovering nicely) during the intro "Time Again", the fade out at the end of "Only Time Will Tell", and the missing beginning to "Heat of the Moment" (song starts in the second verse)...but fans should easily overcome these shortcomings.

So we finally have a soundboard recording from the first Asia tour! This one comes from Carl Palmer personal archive, and it is an excellent soundboard tape transferred onto cd. Only a slight hiss is audible but it sounds really excellent for its age. Here are included all the earlier Asia classics like Heat Of The Moment, Only Time Will Tell and Sole Survivor. The performance is very raw and powerful, with Carl Palmer in great form. This show is highly recommended to every Asia fan, hoping that in the future many other recordings of the same quality and from the same era (1982-83) will be released.

If you like the first ASIA album and think it was somewhat in a class by itself compared with ALL the ASIA releases, then this is practically a "must have".

First off, this rocks. The band seriously puts in an energetic, almost punk-ish performance (as punk-ish as a bunch of prog rockers could get). The enthusiasm and energy is palpable. My only exposure to "live Asia" has been the MTV performance with Greg Lake, the "Live in Moscow" DVD (which was fairly unimpressive and "by the numbers" for me), and the newest "Live in Tokyo" (although a somewhat geriatric performance from 2007, a very decent performance none-the-less).

So, to hear the original Wetton, Howe, Downes, and Palmer line-up from back in 1982, when they were all still capable of pulling off a quite-rocking performance, I was way pleased. Howe executes his licks with almost carefree elation, Wetton's seemingly-almost-shot voice stays strong the entire concert, and the keys and drums nail their end, keeping everything up-tempo and rocking. Compared to the "Live in Tokyo" performance where they're 25+ years older (and understandably slower), this performance is phenomenal. It's just a very nice snap-shot of a band at the top of their game, enjoying the success and vibe of their well-written and well-performed songs.

BUT, for someone looking for an A+ performance, you won't find it on these 2 CD's. You can hear the parts clearly enough (vox--including Steve Howe's backing vocal "attempts"--bass, guitar, keys, drums, etc), but Wetton's voice isn't perfect (he dorks up the lyrics in the first song), the mix is decent but not perfect, and as a whole, this definitely isn't a professionally-produced, quality album. Despite those negatives, it's a very nice trip back in time with a band that had the number one selling album for 1982, and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying riding high on the "heat-of-the-moment" (pardon the pun).

A couple more negative points though: from the song list, there are a couple badly edited tunes, where the intro is abrupt or the outro is chopped off. Not enough to detract from the whole 2-CD set, but enough you'll likely notice.

So, don't expect awesome sound quality (especially if you're spoiled by so many "supposed live" performances that have been "fixed" and overdubbed in post-production), but DO expect very acceptable sound quality and an incredibly energetic performance from a group of proggers in their prime, whose chemistry was too easily torn apart and tainted by ego, aspirations of pop/rock stardom, and the invasion of 80's pop and hair-metal rock.

I personally rate this a 5+ for the performance (I'm forgiving of the glitches, seeing the rawness as a positive thing), and a 3 for the overall quality of the recording and CD production.

I can't believe this thing was available back in 2003 and I just discovered it a few weeks ago.

I live in Buffalo and I'm a big prog rock fan; so when I saw this CD at the library, I knew I had to give it a free listen. But make no mistake - this CD under-delivers on many levels.

I always wanted Asia to be a great band - it had my favorite guitar player (Steve Howe), a top-shelf drummer (Carl Palmer), and a proven bass player/vocalist who was up to the task (John Wetton). But there was always a bit too much "pop", simplicity and repetition in their music to totally engage me. Hey, progressive rock is mostly about "different", complexity and change, right? Asia was a progressive-pop band (akin to the later albums of Todd Rundgren's Utopia) that made good music, but didn't really pioneer much of anything.

Same with this CD. There's little here that's new or better than the studio versions of the songs. Palmer's long drum solo got boring after a while. Steve's acoustic solos can be found on other Yes recordings, and done much better there - here, the recording quality is so bad that it sounds like he's playing tuned rubber bands at times. (Honestly, I remember hearing better fidelity from my old Kenner Close'n'Play!) O.K., it WAS cool to hear Steve express his pleasure at playing in Buffalo again! But the so-called "keyboard solo" by Geoff Downs was underwhelming to say the least, and reinforced my suspicion that he was sort of the weak link in this group of otherwise great prog virtuosos.

I guess if one loves a band too much, they can blindly overlook some shortcomings on almost any CD by that band, and that's just fine for those people. However, the OBJECTIVE reality of this CD's value comes creeping in on many other's existing reviews: namely, the production quality is sub-par (to the point of being annoying at times); the vocals and harmonies are often off-key (you really shouldn't have to wince this much during 79 minutes of music!); this is clearly a single disc album that was issued on 2 discs for some reason; the packaging and liner notes are scant; and the performance just doesn't add much to the studio versions. This is for Asia completists only.

Asia did make a solid 5-star progressive-pop CD with their first studio album. I love it. But they never improved upon it, and never stretched out into new territory. Perhaps this 1982 live recording exposes some of the weaknesses that kept this potential supergroup from going from "good" to "great".

Support your local library. (And in this case, save some cash!)

I value interesting music that is played and recorded well. This cd's rating was based on:

Music quality = 7.8/10; Performance = 5/10; Production = 4/10; CD length = 7/10.

Overall score weighted on my proprietary scale = 6.5 ("2-1/2 stars")