Date For Your Diaries...

Live and Loud! will finally return, fortnightly, back on Radio Happy on Tuesday 5 January 2016.

I can't tell you WHO will be in the first show - but coming up will be vintage and unreleased gigs by the likes of Japan, Gary Numan, Sex Pistols, Ultravox, B-52s, Kraftwerk, Big Country, The Ramones, Simon and Garfunkel and...many more.

Stay tuned for more info in the coming weeks...

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.

1 Year On - All Updated

Just a quick note to say that the archive is now fully operational again and updated - just after its 1st birthday. A year which has seen over 13500 views - thank you.

Shows 1 - 29 and 31 - 57 are once again available - and all are now available to stream or download as 320 kbps mp3s.

The odd one out is Show 30 - Jean Michel Jarre in Egypt from 1999. The remaster file is lost and so the show will need redoing. It will be - but for now, I hope you enjoy the rest of what's available - and new shows going forward.

Tentative plans at the moment for Live and Loud! to reappear via another radio station but these things take time to sort out. More news (and thus new shows) once more is known. New shows will appear - just a question of where (before they come here, of course!).

Cheers!

Upload Plan - Missing Shows...!

Ok, so...the plan is to offer download links to all the Live and Loud! shows broadcast so far. At the time of writing, Shows 46-57 are up. This is because they were only available on mixcloud for streaming before and never for download. So they're done and out of the way!

Shows 1 through 45 were all downloadable at 1 time. 29-45 were available as 320 kbps mp3s. All those before were only available as they were broadcast - as 128kbps mp3s. Well, I don't know about you but I like the better sound quality... All gigs when remastered by me (almost all, anyway) were saved at 320 - but without intros etc. Unfortunately 1 or 2 were at a lower rate to begin with, as that's the source file I was working from was at. In 1 particular case, the remaster and show has completely disappeared!

So this is the plan:
Shows 29 and 31-45 will be up next as they're all ready to go in the better quality mp3s.

Shows 1-28 will be uploaded with a brief new intro from me in 320 mp3s (except 2) for the first time, in chronological order.

Show 30 (Jean Michel Jarre in Egypt) will have to be remastered - that was the one lost.

Bit of a pain but I want to get them up as soon as possible and this seems the best way of doing it.

The Missing Shows
There are a few gaps:
Show 4 - Duran Duran 1982 - I remastered this a second time as I wasn't happy with the first. This then became Show 12.
Show 14 - Erasure - I got grief from someone who claimed to be working for Vince Clarke's management (at 1 point he faked an email claiming he WAS VC's manager...). After he'd got a copy of the show, of course. Telling me to take it down or face the consequences - so it got taken down. If you really want it, plenty of fans on Erasure forums and FB pages managed to get it before it was taken down, so ask there.
Show 20 - IAMX. This was never available for download as the files were originally made available by IAMX to fans. Seemed safer to never offer this one.

Anyway - 31-45 should be up over the next few days. Feedback has been good so far - glad people are enjoying them!

Some Statistics

So Live and Loud! shows have been available for quite some time online and in early August I took all the downloads offline temporarily as I was moving all the files to a more accessible service. So I took the opportunity to do some counting up of how popular each show had been.  I thought you might be interested too! It also shows which shows there have been up to now in 1 place. No pretty graphics or anything, just a couple of tables.

As the new downloads are made available, no doubt some of this will change but I thought this was a good point to take a snapshot from.

Shows 46 - 57 were only available to stream on Mixcloud (no doubt some found a way to download them of course!) so any totals marked * include streaming figures. Oh, and original listening figures from the original internet radio broadcast aren't available as...no-one thought to collect them!

First up, the 20 most popular artists/bands to appear so far were these...

Artist/Band	No. of Shows	Total Downloads
Ultravox	4	1275*
Depeche Mode	5	1142*
Human League	1	1000*
Gary Numan	2	468
OMD	2	360
Japan	2	282
Kraftwerk	2	271
ABBA	1	255
Yazoo	1	244
Kate Bush	1	240*
A Flock of Seagulls	1	175*
Elvis Presley	1	160
Beatles	1	142
Bauhaus	2	139
Siouxsie and The Banshees	1	136*
Queen	1	135
Spandau Ballet	1	123
Eurythmics	1	122*
Simon and Garfunkel	1	120
Squeeze	1	112

So to that list of shows then and which were the popular ones? Remember those with a * were on Mixcloud only - all others were download only.

Live and Loud! Show	Downloads
Show 48: The Human League - Kant Kino, Berlin - November 1980	1000*
Show 57: Ultravox - Hammersmith Odeon, London - June 1984	686*
Show 55: Depeche Mode - Nakano Sun Plaza, Tokyo, Japan - April 1985	331*
Show 32: Gary Numan Live in Calgary, Canada - November 1980	313
Show 18: Abba, in 1981	255
Show 39: Yazoo - Live at The Dominion Theatre, London - November 1982	244
Show 52: Kate Bush - Manchester Apollo - April 1979	240*
Show 16: Ultravox at The Marquee, December 1978	238
Show 2: OMD - Glasgow Apollo 1983	233
Show 1: Depeche Mode at Hammersmith Odeon 1983	220
Show 27: Japan Live at Hammersmith Odeon - February 1981	219
Show 11: Depeche Mode - Glasgow Tiffanys 1982	216
Show 6: Ultravox at Crystal Palace Bowl 1981	213
Show 45: Depeche Mode - Live at Hammersmith Odeon - November 1984	194
Show 31: Kraftwerk Live in Paris - June 1981	192
Show 21: Depeche Mode, Live at Crocs 1981/Bridgehouse, London - 1980	181
Show 46: A Flock of Seagulls - Top Rank, Brighton, UK - May 1983	175*
Show 37: Elvis Presley - Live In Little Rock, Arkansas - May 1956	160
Show 5: Gary Numan In New York Feb 1980	155
Show 40: The Beatles - Live in Sweden 1963 and Japan 1966	142
Show 44: Ultravox - Live in Philadelphia USA - February 1979	138
Show 49: Siouxsie and The Banshees - Janus Landing, St Petersburg, Florida - August 1987	136*
Show 26: Queen Live in Houston, Texas - December 1977	135
Show 28: OMD Live at Kant Kino Berlin - December 1980	127
Show 34: Spandau Ballet Live in Rotterdam - September 1983	123
Show 47: Eurythmics - Night Moves, Glasgow - February 1983	122*
Show 36: Simon and Garfunkel Live at The Hollywood Bowl - August 1968	120
Show 33: Squeeze Live in Montego Bay, Jamaica - November 1982	112
Show 24: Mike Oldfield Live at The Sporthalle Cologne Germany - November 1982	106
Show 50: Marilyn Manson - Docklands Arena, London - January 2001	96*
Show 22: Simple Minds Live at Werchter Festival Belgium - 1983	85
Show 30: Jean Michel Jarre Live in Cairo - December 1999	84
Show 19: Blondie, In Boston, May 1978	81
Show 12: Duran Duran - November 1982	81
Show 17: The Comsat Angels, In Rotterdam, 1983	80
Show 10: Kraftwerk MOMA New York 2012	79
Show 35: Bauhaus - Live in Toronto - December 1982	77
Show 9: Blancmange at Hammersmith Odeon 1985	71
Show 38: Adam And The Ants - Live In Tokyo - October 1981	67
Show 43: Japan, the final concert - Nagoya, Japan - December 1982	63
Show 3: Bauhaus In Boston 2005	62
Show 13: The Sweet in Berlin 1976	60
Show 15: Talk Talk In Salamanca, Spain, 1986	59
Show 53: ABC - Live at The Musikhalle, Hamburg - February 1983	58*
Show 7: David Bowie In Los Angeles, September 1974	50
Show 56: The Beach Boys - Memorial Auditorium, Sacramento, California - August 1964	50*
Show 41: Pet Shop Boys - Live at Wembley - June 1991	43
Show 23: Devo Live at The Orpheum Theatre Boston USA - November 1982	39
Show 54: The Police - Roxy Theatre, San Diego, USA - May 1979	35*
Show 51: Devo - The Walker Centre, Minneapolis - November 1978	34
Show 8: Boomtown Rats at Middlesex Polytechnic 1978	30
Show 25: Teardrop Explodes Live in Guildford Civic Hall - June 1981	30
Show 42: The Police - Live at The Budokan Japan - February 1981	25
Show 29: The Undertones Live in Amsterdam - March 1980	21
Total	8186

Come On Dude, You're Late...

So! I did indeed say the shows would be back in August - but there has been a longstanding issue with the radio stream provider for Radio Happy, where the shows are originally broadcast, which has meant that....well, Radio Happy is currently more quiet than a very quiet thing on a quiet Sunday morning. No radio station = no radio shows, clearly.

So I'm looking for somewhere else to broadcast the radio shows from. An online station is interested and that's looking likely it might well be sorted out in the next few weeks. In the meantime, I'm still finding shows and very shortly I'll be doing the remastering to a whole range of great live shows from the 60s onwards. I'm also tidying up this blog a bit, so the tags/labels are down the right hand side - and complete - so you can search for stuff you might like easier. I've taken all download links OFFLINE temporarily - files are moving to a new host at the moment (it takes a while). The mixcloud links are still up for the last lot of shows.

I'm also putting together some stats to look at which shows have been the most popular, which I'll share with you all in the next post. Cheers!

So...new series of Live and Loud! coming soon. So far, its looking like it will feature some great gigs.
In no particular order yet, you can expect...

Joy Division from 1980
Kraftwerk (from 1975 and 1991)
Big Country from 1984
Queen from 1975
Slade from 1976
XTC from 1981
The B-52s from 2001
Nash The Slash (a few to choose from)
Depeche Mode (got a few here, not decided which yet)
Gary Numan, from 1983
Ultravox (a few to choose from)
Simon and Garfunkel (quite a few to choose from 1967 onwards)
The Doors from 1970
Squeeze from 1980
The Specials from 1979
Rolling Stones from 1973
Devo from 1980
The Damned from 1984
Duran Duran from 1982
Sex Pistols from 1996

and...and...probably a few others too. ;-)

So...WHEN DOES IT START? Well, I'm really not sure but it will be in August. The station www.radiohappy.eu has been offline a few weeks with a stream provider fault but if that's still unavailable, the shows will appear online and won't be held up. So...if you're on Facebook, subscribe to the Flip Martian group or facebook page - or both! to keep uptodate with broadcast dates. You can also check out www.flipmartian.com on the news page.

And just because there's a long list here doesn't mean I'm not open to requests - so if you have a band you want a gig from, contact me by leaving a comment below! And if you have any live recordings you think could benefit from being remastered, once again - leave a comment and I'll get back to you. Cheers :-)