Customer Reviews

Live in Koln

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4 star:		(1)
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This album is terrible! The sound quality is very poor. I've listened to bootlegs with better sound quality. How Geoff Downes and the new Asia let this album be sold to the public is beyond me.

Yeah, it's an audience recording. Yes, it's two discs. But this really is a treat if you can find it cheap or used. Because no one...not Asia, not Wetton solo...nobody...has ever pulled off a better recording of "Sole Survivor" than the one that is contained on Live In Koln. Aziz Ibrahim's guitar screams and whines, Michael Sturgis' drum fills blow away any enemy in sight, Downes' keyboards are on fire, and Payne, coupled with a rowdy and wild German audience, are dark, painful, angry bearers of the song's mantra. "...Just keep on burning, right to the end." Keyboard/acoustic versions of "Summer" and "Sad Situation" are good too.

Well, not learning my lesson after buying "Live in Osaka," I payed good money and put it in thinking that they'd learned their lesson about audience recordings... Nope! As with "Live In Osaka" the performances are well done and it has a nice offering from my favorite Asia album, Aria... the sound is wee bit better than "Live In Osaka," but other than that, this one is also for collectors only...

When I heard other reviews about this cd I was reluctant to buy it. However I love Asia and had to have it. When it arrived I was not dissappointed. Although the sound is not the best, this disc is everything that I want a live recording to be. Many live albums are recorded on a sound board, making it difficult to hear the audience. This makes it sound as if you were really there.