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CURVED AIR - Alive 1990 (2000)
There are a couple of mysteries about this album. The first one comes with the CD booklet. My version shows a ceiling fan and a patch in the lower left corner with a fighter plane that says “Live 1990″ at the top and “the HIDE & SEEK tour 99″ at the bottom. Well, the liner notes really clear things up seeing as how there are no liner notes. Not even any credits for the band. So I pop it in and to my horror, it’s a really crappy bootleg. The first track is called Twenty Years On. Might actually be cool except for the crappy sound quality. It breaks into It Happened Today, and I am about to shut it off and go listen to something else when it finally slides quickly to a respectable sound quality for a live recording. Mystery number two is did they not get the tape running soon enough?
Well, whenever or wherever it happened, it happened to go quite well.
As best as I’ve been able to find out, it’s a reunion of most of the first lineup of the band. To be certain the presence of a few key members is obvious. Sonja Kristina is in excellent form. I’m surprised that someone who sings with such a strong vocal style still sings so well today, if not better than she did in the past. Darryl Way’s violin playing has only gotten finer over the years and together they both breathe new life into these songs. I haven’t seen Francis Monkman doing anything post Sky, he certainly takes advantage of the new keyboard technology, which again helps give these old tunes a new feel.
I feel the need to say something nice about the other musicians as well. Curved Air’s first drummer , Florian Pilkington-Miksa is back. Who’s playing bass is anybody’s guess. I see a credit for Rob Martin playing bass on Vivaldi on this site and that’s it.
I haven’t heard the live at the BBC Curved Air concert, but I do have the Live from 1975 (preformed in December 1974, I know this thanks to good liner notes). This one’s much better despite its flaws, and not a bad assortment of selections from their first three studio albums. by Slartibartfast CURVED AIR Music Online: recommended progarchives.com worldwide prog rock stores
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