5 comments about Turned On.

1. This is very good live recording. This is, however, a horrible live ALBUM. Why? Because Mr. Rollins, in one of his more obnoxious fits of whimsy, decided that the entire show should be written to CD as one track. That means if you want to hear one of the last songs, you will have to fast-forward through 50-60 minutes to get to it.
   
   Thank god we have software like Easy CD Creator, which let us edit audio files, and do things like split up tracks... now I have a nice 15-TRACK CD ... much much more enjoyable.
   
   A couple of the songs here a bit too dirge-like, but overall the track selection is good. The live versions of "What Have I Got" and "Hard" in particular are awesome.
   
   The best live Rollins is found on "Do It." But this is definitely worth purchasing if you find it used for 6 or 7 bucks. Rollins Band were one of the best live bands I ever saw.



2. This is a great live document of a band that is clicking on all cylinders; truly transcendent. In addition, it contains the only "live" version of "Out there" (the Live in Australia CD is a "Live in studio" effort) and a truly awesome version it is. The version of "Down and away" is preceded by the unreleased in any form "Mask" and an amazing "Turned inside out" follows. As a matter of fact, this 15 minutes or so (Mask, Down and away and Turned inside out) is, in my opinion, the most astonishingly honest and brutal self-assessment on record. A great, essential document, you'd be a fool to miss it



3. Make no mistake about it, I've seen it myself and I can tell you that the Rollins Band live (either edition) is a great show.
   Why on Earth then should they take a show when the band was not in top form, in front of a virtually dead Vienna audience, give it a sub par mix courtesy of Theo Van Rock and issue it as the band's live album?
   Even less appealing is that this is basically "The End Of Silence" tour and the long dirge quotient is running very high (playing "Down And Away" and "Turned Inside Out" back to back is never a good idea). Take all of this and add to it the extremely frustrating fact that the CD is recorded as one long track and the results can't be anything other than the disaster it is. Much better live shows from this era can be found on the original releases of "Lifetime" and the "Do It" EP, all later live work leaves this one in the dust as well.
   For die hards and completists only.



4. for the record TURNED ON is not the earliest recordings of the ROLLINS BAND. they released HOT ANIMAL MACHINE, HENRIETTA COLLINS..., LIFETIME, and HARD VOLUME prior to it. the band containing ex-GONE members, sim and andrew put out albums from LIFETIME on. the first two were done with chris haskett and some foreign diplomats of hard rock. the TURNED ON album, tears you up. the emotional outpouring from the band themselves through their instruments and the release of henrys life through his throat can bring a grown man to his knees. for all of those who dont know the album was recorded on one track to be listened to at one time in order for the listener to experience the ROLLINS BAND live without actually being there, well, thats what HENRY told me, anyway. if you are in search of genre defying, deaf defying, heart and soul and fingers and blood music, give this album a spin...its garaunteed to warp your axle.



5. My only complaint is that the whole show is one track. Other than that this is Rollins at his best. The show is tight and has plenty of improvision on Henry's part. I wish there was more material like this avalable.

5 comments about Document and Eyewitness.

1. Aside from Wire's John Peel sessions, this is Wire's only release that includes a large amount of unique content. The latest live albums (On The Box, etc.) are really more what you would expect from such a release: more aggressive performance to accommodate the missing use of live electronic instrumentation, poorer sound quality, and so on. Well, the live performances on D&E are no exception to poor sound quality, but this time Wire keep a fair amount of electronic influence in their work; not just guitars and percussion here, which makes this all the more valuable in my opinion. This release, to me, is more suited to be considered the 4th Wire album over Newman's A-Z (for one Newman wrote nearly all the tracks on that album on his own, so why would they be referred to as Wire songs?)
   
   I also don't understand what some people consider to be issues with this release. You do hear a lot of experimental work, which I love, and if you're a Wire fan so should you, but there are also a great deal of more conventional songs, like 'Go Ahead' and 'Relationship'. Basically, you get to hear at least a dozen tracks that haven't been recorded in the studio (some of these tracks were re-recorded by Newman for solo work, and I know that 'Underwater Experiences' was an earlier demo). One thing I don't get is why 'Heartbeat' is just thrown in with the mix, as it was from a different performance altogether; just doesn't fit well, despite its being a good track.
   
   I don't want to spoil the atmosphere of the album by explaining much of the music, but I will comment that it crosses between more aggressive Chairs Missing-era and something not quite Wire (mainly because without having come from the studio it's hard to picture what the final production qualities would be like).
   
   And yes the final two tracks are from their Our Swimmer EP (can't really call it a single because it wasn't promoting anything, it just was). These two tracks are quite different from what you hear on E&D, and for that matter, Wire's other albums. I would've really enjoyed getting to hear more than just these two songs from this new style that they developed.
   
   But this album is still valuable even for people who aren't fans of live recordings (a lot of time the audience is just too noisy and compromises the music, but in this case the audience was so baffled by what they heard you really don't hear much of them.) I did take one star off because it isn't perfect, but still great.



2. Live albums are usually nothing more than cheap giveaways that you already have heard in their studio life and are usually much better. Everybody knows that you'll get the same tracks with the crowds cheering the performer on for more more MORE. So why should you buy this? Well the fact of the matter is that it's everything a usual live album is NOT. Yes that's right - this is NOT your usual live album. First of all many of the tracks here are new. Secondly the band are practically hated mainly because there isn't 12XU which eventually comes up in fractured form ( not a bad thing ). Their MC is the one that helps the fans get what they want because it's his " request spot " despite being called a fat.....well you know - can't say it here for obvious reasons. And in the mix there's a few snippets of conversations from an interview. And at the end there's two studio tracks which are OK but dilute the whole experience of the concert(s) completely

   I guess it's one for the diehards but everyone should try this live album for the chaos within because if not you'll be missing out. Oh and you can't resist the bottle being thrown in the middle of a song with the reply " Who's a clever boy then! "




3. The single best line ever written about Wire's DOCUMENT AND EYEWITNESS comes from an article A.D. Amorosi wrote for MAGNET magazine (August/September 2000 issue): "...a violent live album that makes the Stooges' METALLIC KO seem like a Phish jam." And while one can hear the bottles being thrown on this album as well (literally: on "Instrumental (Thrown Bottle)"), unfortunately Flipper tactics had not yet come into their own so Wire chose to throw dada instead at their dense and impatient audience. Amid screams for PINK FLAG material, the audience never once allow Wire to demonstrate their amazing chameleon-like capability to never do exactly the same thing twice (like Coil and Madonna after them). Read: they never got it. This CD is split into four parts: part one is a relatively calm excerpt recorded live in London in July 1979 performing tracks from what ultimately would have been the follow-up to 154 but which never happened. The opening sonic slaughter of "Go Ahead" (which absolutely destroys the studio version) has to be heard to be believed, drumming mistakes and all. Part two is an excellent version of "Heartbeat" performed in Montreux when Wire opened for Roxy Music (sort of like when Prince opened for The Rolling Stones), much to the chagrin of Roxy's audience. Listen for the whistling. Part three is an excerpt of Wire's last concert for five years: The Electric Ballroom in London on 29/2/80, opened by D.A.F. (and documented by them on DIE KLEINEN UND DIE BOSEN, also on Mute) who were at a starvation-amphetamine meltdown peak. Wire perform an avante-garde/dada performance perfectique, goading the audience with their music and sarcasm, not really indicating if they mean any of it or not. An examination of this document by headphones reveals the absolute apall of the audience, who came to hear "12XU" (which Wire gratefully disembowel) and not the outre art-attack of such pieces as "ZEGK HOQP". By the end, the concert boils down to merely being one big pissing contest. Brilliant and exceptional. Part four is the band's last, posthumous single ("Our Swimmer" b/w the exceptional "Midnight Bahnhof Cafe") added as a bonus and near pre-cursor to what was to come in 1986 with SNAKEDRILL (see "A Serious of Snakes" for the link, "Drill" for the mood). A worthwhile purchase for the casual fan and an absolute must for the die-hard.



4. Though I appreciate all of Wire's studio-albums from the late 70's to the early 90's, I never liked their live-performances. This is because they often turned their great pop-songs into a dissonant, chaotic goulash of sound. This CD-compilation, recorded at three various locations, Notre Dome Hall, Montreux and Electric Ballroom, is completely unlistenable for "normal" people. If any unknown band had served this, nobody would have noticed, but here the critics said:"Oh Wire, this is fabulous art-school-punk!" You may call the performances on this album "experimental", but I really don't know why this gig made such waves. I only give two points, because there are two good studio-recordings thrown in at the end, they're called "Our swimmer" and "Midnight Bahnhof Cafe". But they're not worth buying this album.



5. I'd read so much about the "Electric Ballroom" gig before I ever heard it that I was very excited when I finally got this CD and popped it in my stereo. I wanted to hear what was it that made this gig really famous. I couldn't really hear anything at all, as it turns out. Seriously, I've heard 4th generation bootlegs that sound better than this, and I can't help asking myself "Why did they bother?". Not to rip on Wire or the individual members, mind you, as they are, quite simply, one the best bands that ever existed. This particular album, however, is for completists and/or masochists only.

2 comments about Live 1981 and 1986.

1. great c.d. some might say that these teenagers were musical genius's but i think that this album really shows you what punk was really about in the early 80's. raw uncut and most of all very powerful. good buy for punks in the making.



2. this cd is awesome but im really doing this so maybe ill get the 50 dollar gift certificate

1 comments about Locked 'N' Loaded 1990.

1. This CD has been one of my favorites due to the fast-paced performance of this seemingly comedic band. Its a great thing when bands will turn up the tempo for a live show - that is exactly what this is. Put on some coffee, bounce around, clean the house, and air guitar your socks off.

No comments about Peel Sessions.

5 comments about 8/27/00 - Saratoga, New York.

1. out of the 33 pearl jam bootlegs i own this and pittsburg and lisbone are my favourites.

   This show isnt so much for a new pearl jam fan as they play more less comercial songs such as in my tree, whipping, slight of hand, once and who could forget la's cover timeless meledy.

   A great preformance, exploding at the start woth 5 straight up grunge songs to get u going. And slowing right down into a groove and exceptional emotion after the encore break, A very good black by the way.

   Awsome setlist for a hardcore fan but not for the begginer. As a begginer may i suggest to you verona as it has a large range of the hits and best songs. But this cd is defanatly a winner to buy.




2. Disclaimer: Owner of all 72 official PJ bootlegs. In the massive 2000 world tour, Pearl Jam was sure to make wide variations in the set lists at every show, so you would never know what to expect. In a nice little coincidence (that only an obsessive like me would notice), this show in Saratoga and the one in Columbus four dates earlier start out with the same 13 songs in a row - "Breakerfall" through "Lukin." These two set lists finally diverge from each other at the 14th track, and they can be considered very similar shows. Columbus was one of the heaviest and most rocking shows of the first American leg of the tour. This one is also overflowing with the band's heaviest tunes, but the performance tonight is a little lackluster. There are no major mistakes by any of the band members, and everyone is competent, but this just happens to be one of the more average or non-descript performances in the tour. Maybe they were just a little tired, and every show can't be spectacular anyway. However, I will give credit to Matt Cameron, who really saves this show from the blahs; while Mike McCready livens up the finale by adding Led Zep's "Nobody's Fault But Mine" to his outro in "Yellow Ledbetter." In the stage talk department, Eddie Vedder pays tribute to the recently deceased inventor of the lava lamp, who was also a nudist apparently, and makes an awkward attempt to compare the magic of life to the gobs of gunk in a lava lamp. That would also be a great description for this bootleg - rising, congealing, swirling, definitely fun to look at, but not quite mindblowing.

   Note - I saw PJ at this same venue in upstate New York way back in 1992. Eddie mentions this occurrence, but he is incorrect in stating that PJ opened for Soundgarden that day. Actually they were both there as part of the '92 edition of Lollapalooza. Out of seven bands, PJ was second and Soundgarden was fourth. Red Hot Chili Peppers were the headliners, for you history buffs out there.




3. Hi, I saw several (8) shows on this tour, have heard all but a few of the bootleg set, and I can say that this is one of the best shows on the entire tour. The set list is great, the renditions of MFC, RVM, and Porch are especailly wonderful.



4. This was an unbelievable show. Since I was there, I just had to have the recording. I'm so glad I bought it, and you will be too. It is truely one of the best shows of the tour. The only recording that I have heard so far and believe is better (from this tour) is their last date in Seattle.



5. This show was recorded at the SPAC in Saratoga, NY on August 27, 2000. Saratoga, NY is only about 2 hours away from me and I ended up getting this CD because I thought that it's nice to have a bootleg CD which was recorded close to home. The guys from the band seemed to enjoyed themselves along with the crowd at this show. Ed Vedder really enjoyed himself. This show really rocks! It contains awesome versions of all the classics and covers as well as stuff from 'Bianural'. This CD is a must have for every Pearl Jam fans. Overall, this CD is one of the best show ever recorded in the first leg of the American tour.

2 comments about Hollywood Nights 1979-82.

1. As a long term fan of all Byrd related material, I knew the link to this was very tenuous, but with 23 tracks it seemed a good sample of what the group had become.

   This is more an introduction to John Beland than the Burritos, but since they've changed line-ups so often it's a valid addition to their history.

   Beland excels at sad songs, so it's not a record to listen to if you're depressed, but at any other time the feelings will draw you in and leave you wanting to hear more.

   My favourite tracks are "Another Shade of Grey", a great example of simplicity with 1 voice and 1 guitar on different speakers, "I swear I Don't Miss Her Anymore" & "Why Must The Ending Always Be So Sad"




2. This is, without a doubt, the very finest of all the live Burrito releasesavailable. Taken from 1990's killerlineup of John Beland on guitar/vocals,Gib Guilbeau on vocals/fiddle, SneekyPete Kleinow on steel guitar, LarryPatton on bass and Rick Lenow on drums,"Encore" is a spirited and masterfulcollection of past and present classicsperformed by the greatest country-rock band in history by one of their verygreatest lineups. This is, to date, theonly live FBB offering to include thegreat John Beland, which should be reason enough to pick this up. His leadvocal on Dylan's 'You Ain't Going Nowhere' is a particular treat. But it's all great, so make sure you have thisdisc in your collection.

1 comments about Live: Headlights, White Lines, Black Tar Rivers.

1. Since the Levellers have never really headlined in the States, the average Yank does not have a very clear idea of what a good live band the Levellers are. Sure there are bootleg concerts out there, but they are harder to find than an import album.

   Pressed in 1996, this album gives a one-hour serving of songs collected from various European stops on their 1995-96 tour to support the album Zeitgeist. The sound of the music washing over all of those bodies makes you wonder why only the Europeans know about these dudes. The crowd singing along with Sell Out, One Way and The Road are very touching indeed, while Liberty and The Riverflow can absolutely rock your teeth out.

   I've always been fond of Zeitgeist. Here there are three songs representing the album.: Hope Street, Exodus, and Men-An-Tol.

   The Levellers sound just as good live as they do on CD. Maybe even better. I got hooked on this CD when I was a college freshman, and it really felt like an album in its own right. If you think the Levellers are good, this will make you think they're great.

No comments about Orgasm Addict Live.

1 comments about Live in Japan.

1. this is the best of all the chaos uk cds ever! chaos uk is definitely the best hardcore anarchy punk rock bands ever. theyve been around for forever and are more talented than most punk bands and it shows. if you like them you would definitetly want to check some of anti-flag stuff. chaos uk is one of the best bands ever because theyre hardcore and they sing about things that matter, also their live energy is amazing you if you havent ever seen them live please get this cd to hear their live energy. get this cd i love it!