Welcome - About Live and Loud!

Live and Loud! began as a fortnightly internet radio show in 2012 taking old unreleased live concert recordings I could find and working to repair and improve them - fixing tape hiss, noise, tape drop out, clicks, speed variations, defects - before improving the sound quality by EQing the sound to bring out the instruments as clearly as possible. These are now made directly available to download for free to reach as many fans of the music as possible.

Depending on the quality of the original recording, these can often be made to sound almost like commercial recordings - but of course I can't guarantee that for every show. What I can guarantee is it will sound far better than the original files available which have been floating around the internet and on bootleg recordings for many years.

Almost all are either "soundboard" recordings (taken directly from the mixing desk used at the gig on the night) or old FM radio recordings. A few gigs, if they are of special historical importance, make an appearance even if they were recorded from the audience - these can also be made to sound better than ever.

Do your ears a favour and listen on headphones or good speakers to get most benefit - laptop speakers will always sound pretty poor by comparison.

All shows still available are listed, including a link to download the remastered show for free. If you want to support the site with a small donation, you can receive the shows as either separate MP3s or FLACs (your choice) - head over to the Rewards for Donations page and see how you can get a lot for very little!

If you want to email me, an email link is in my profile in a link in the side panel.

And finally... These are great fun to listen to but DO NOT replace original releases - support these artists and buy their music. There is nothing you can go and buy in a regular record store here. If a gig is made available as a regular release, then it will be removed (as a couple have been already).

Sunday, 4 October 2015

The Show Is Returning

Funny how these things work out... While I've been planning a new home for regular Live and Loud! shows, I found out that Radio Happy, where they have all been broadcast up to now, is going to be back on the air in a few weeks. So after a quick discussion with the station boss, it was agreed that Live and Loud! would come back on the station, and in my old time slot of Tuesday evening. So I will be doing an hour of live radio from 7pm UK time and then broadcast Live and Loud! From 8pm. Not just yet - I'll post when the shows are due to start again - but in a few weeks.

It's just over a year since the Live and Loud! archive (ie this site!) was created, and almost 10 months since the last show was broadcast. The shows have been downloaded from the archive almost 13000 times, from people in over 60 countries - really! Everywhere from Chile to Ukraine, from Finland to El Salvador. I'm very pleased it's met with such good feedback and can't wait to put new shows out there.

I have been sent a couple of shows recently in the hopes I can do something with them and I am always happy to receive gigs (or even requests for gigs) but sometimes the quality in the recordings I find or receive is just a bit too variable. The show is all about rescuing old recordings and making them as good as possible but they need to be rescuable and to be listenable to begin with.

So, for the new season I've set myself a few rules to save some time and to ensure the series is as good as possible. So these are all now out of contention, unfortunately:-

  1. Audience recordings
  2. recordings that vary widely in quality from song to song (eg muffled sound/bright sound or pitch variations
  3. any recordings with distortion
  4. any with more than 1 song that's cut short
  5. any recordings which are less than 75% of the gig (hour long old FM recordings are fine but 6 or 7 songs from a set are not)


Does mean I'll have to forego some great gigs - more than 1 early Human League set for example; a great gig by The Jam from 1979 for another - but ultimately I want the quality to be there week after week and not to have to make excuses ("it sounds a bit rough but its a rare gig so wanted to do it anyway" etc).
In the meantime - if you have any shows you'd like me to remaster - please contact me! Likewise if you have any requests, and I'll see what I can find.
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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous5 October 2015 at 02:48

    Great you have found a way to get your shows on the air again.
    Looking forward to them.
    All the best,
    CC

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous4 December 2015 at 16:45

    WOW! THANKS SO MUCH FOR ALL THE HARD WORK....NOW I WON'T HAVE TO. YOU MADE MY CHRISTMAS A LITTLE EARLY THIS YEAR.
    GOD BLESS,
    JOE

    ReplyDelete

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