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).

Thursday, 11 September 2014

Introduction - What's Live and Loud! All About?

I've always enjoyed live bootlegs - unofficial recordings of bands in concert, right from when I started buying them on tapes in Camden Market in the 1980s. Fasting forwarding nearly 30 years and the idea behind Live and Loud! was to take the very best live concert recordings I could find, marry that with the recording software I use for my own music, in order to remaster these recordings, make them sound as good as possible and broadcast them. Then make them available for free. You do sometimes find people charging for these still, but there are many available now (unmastered, usually) for free on the internet if you know where to look - so why pay for them.

I should stress these are not available commercially - either from me or from the original artist - no money is made out of this at all. And if a gig IS released officially, then I don't do it. I've come across a couple of live recordings I wanted to remaster and broadcast, then found they were being released officially.

Almost every show I do is what are called either "soundboard" recordings - taken directly from the mixing desk used at the gig on the night, or FM radio recordings - somewhere the gig was broadcast on local or national radio. A few gigs, if they are of special historical importance, make an appearance even if they were recorded from the audience. Depending how bad it is, I can fix tape hiss, noise, tape drop out, clicks, speed variations - and that's before EQing the sound to bring out the instruments as well as possible.  Depending on the quality of the original recording, these can often be made to sound almost like commercial recordings. The few audience recordings still sound much better than when I originally got them - even if they're not exactly "hi-fi" (ok ok , showing my age right there, I know).

Up until it took a break earlier this year, I'd done 50 Live and Loud! shows. 50 remastered gig recordings. Each show can take several hours to put together - but if you love music, like I do (even if I don't LIKE all music), then its worth it. Live and Loud! will be back in October 2014 and new shows listed here, so it seemed a good idea to list all the shows up to now, including links where its still possible to find the remastered show online. Might take a while to get them all up here - but I hope you enjoy.

Incidentally, if you notice some shows are missing, you're right. Show 4 is missing as that was a Duran Duran show which had the wrong date on it and also got re-remastered as I wasn't happy with the first job I did on it - it reappeared as Show 12. Also Show 14 was an Erasure show which someone who said he worked for Vince Clarke's management, didn't want to be made available - although he made sure he recorded the broadcast for himself, as I remember! Anyway, although his emails were a bit dubious to say the least, we erred on the side of caution and the Erasure show is no longer available.
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