Live and Loud!: Show 77: OMD - Live at The Electric Ballroom London

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).

Saturday, 3 September 2016

Show 77: OMD - Live at The Electric Ballroom London - 7 December 1979

A quick request. If you plan on downloading this and putting it on your YouTube channel or your own bootleg page - I don't mind. But a credit to this website where you found it, and a link back to this page would be really appreciated. It helps me gauge which artists are popular - ie more chance of other restorations coming. Don't just steal it and take the credit - as someone has already happened with this show and then tried to deny it (you know who you are). Thanks.

It's been a while since I did an OMD gig - but only because I hadn't found any recordings to do! I had a donation of quite a large number of recordings of various bands recently and I was really pleased to find this one among them.

The original recording is from the soundboard but had tape hiss and was quite tinny with virtually no bass - most of what you could hear was vocals and synths that were too bright. Gentle noise reduction and EQ helped with that. There were also a few defects that needed fixing which took a while, including correcting the pitch and repairing some dropouts. Considering the age of the recording and the bad mix on the night - Andy's voice is often far too loud - its very very listenable now; I hope you enjoy the result. At the start of Messages listen out for Andy imploring the sound engineer "can you turn the organ down?"!

At the time of this recording, OMD were more well known as Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark and they'd already signed a major record deal with DinDisc, a subsidiary of Virgin records. A new version of Electricity had been released as a single to coincide with them coming to national attention as the support act on Gary Numan’s debut UK tour which ran through September and October 1979.

Their debut album was a couple of months away at the time of this gig - the first of 2 nights, supporting Talking Heads at The Electric Ballroom. This is a rare chance to enjoy a very early version of OMD, when they were a 3 piece consisting of Andy McCluskey, Paul Humphreys...and a TEAC reel to reel tape recorder called Winston.

2019 Update
While preparing this older show as separate files for a donator to the site, I found I could now improve the sound quality further, over what I’d originally done to the recording several years ago. You can now download this new version (as of 2019) HERE as 1 new 320kbps MP3 file.

If you would like to have separate tagged MP3s, or even lossless files in FLAC format of the new version, head on over to the Donations tab to see how you can obtain these for a very small donation towards the site costs.

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Setlist
Messages
Bunker Soldiers
Mystereality
Julia's Song
Red Frame/White Light
Almost
Electricity
Waiting For The Man