Show 75: The Runaways - Live at The Agora, Cleveland, Ohio - 19 July 1976

Another band being featured for the first time on Live and Loud! This time it’s The Runaways, an all girl 5 piece group formed in 1975 in Los Angeles, California, featuring a very young Joan Jett and Lita Ford. Between 1975 and their last gig at the end of 1978, they released 4 studio albums and underwent several lineup changes but it’s the lineup that recorded the first album you can hear on this one.

That first album, called The Runaways, was released in June 1976 and in support of that the band played a number of dates in the USA - including this one, featuring not only songs from the first album but also a couple from their second which wouldn't be released until the following year. Originally broadcast on FM radio in the USA, this recording was basically sound but rather flat and with a few clicks and noises in it; its responded well to some repairs, EQ and mastering tools and really does sound superb!

The show is now available for free download HERE as 1 MP3 file.

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

Setlist
California Paradise
Cherry Bomb
Take It Or Leave it
Secrets
You Drive Me Wild
C'mon
Blackmail
Wild Thing
Don't Use Me
Rock and Roll
Is It Day Or Night?
Johnny Guitar
Dead End Justice

Show 74: Mesh - Live at The Sala Bikini Barcelona - 22 June 2002

This show is dedicated to a band we’ve not featured before on Live and Loud! - Mesh, an electronic band from Bristol. The 3 original members of Mesh first came together in 1991, released their first EP in 1994...and Mark Hockings and Richard Silverthorn are still together and, at the time of writing, are just about to release the latest Mesh album, called Looking Skyward, in August 2016. Quite some record.

Back in 2002, they had just released their 4th album, called Who Watches Over Me? and in support of that release they played quite a few live dates in the UK and Europe. And it’s an unreleased recording of one of those gigs that we have remastered for you this time, from Barcelona in Spain. The original recording was in good condition but the ending was chopped off just after the last song of the main set ended, so no encores are included, I'm afraid. The encore incidentally consisted of Razorwire, It Scares Me and Confined. Its a shame they're missing but this gig was so good I didn't want to pass up the opportunity to make this one available.

Anyway, judicious use of EQ and some mastering tools have really polished this up. The show is now available for free download HERE as 1 MP3 file.

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

Setlist
Firefly
To Be Alive
Headstone
People Like Me
Little Missile
In The Light Of Day
Trust You
Purest People
I Can't Imagine How It Hurts
Retaliation
Let Them Crush Us
Leave You Nothing
You Didn't Want Me
My Saddest Day
Not Prepared
Friends Like These

Show 73: Ultravox - Live at The Whisky A Go Go, Los Angeles - 30 December 1979

Its been a while since we last featured one of my favourite bands from the 1970s and 1980s, Ultravox. So I’ve remastered a gig from an interesting point in their history! And broken one of my own rules to do it...

This is an audience recording! But apart from some very brief moments when someone is close to the mic (especially at the beginning), you can barely tell. Its a great performance, very raw and exciting. This one has been subject to some judicious EQ, level balancing and noise reduction and has polished up really well.

Original singer John Foxx left after they began 1979 with no record company, after being dropped, and after a short tour of the USA (there’s a remastered gig from Philadelphia on that tour on the Live and Loud! Archive already HERE). It seemed Ultravox were finished until keyboard player Billy Currie, who had been working with Midge Ure in Visage, persuaded him he should become Ultravox’s new singer (it may actually have been Ure persuading Currie!). Without a record deal, Ultravox reconvened, wrote some songs and arranged to play some live dates in America in November and December 1979 - and we have a recording of the last show from that tour for you this time.

It’s not quite the full set - Hiroshima Mon Amour and, I think,  King's Lead Hat are missing, sadly - but what IS there, from set opener Astradyne to set closer I Can't Stay Long, is a great record of a band enjoying themselves and gelling - they went on to sign a record deal in early 1980 and included many of the new songs played at this gig on their first album as a quartet, Vienna. The set also features a few tracks from the last album with John Foxx (Systems of Romance) as well as an early version of a song which didn’t make it onto record at all (at least, not as a studio recording).

There are more Ultravox shows to come, so be sure to come back! In the meantime, this show is now available for free download HERE as 1 MP3 file.

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

Setlist
Astradyne
New Europeans
Quiet Men
Sound On Sound
All Stood Still
Mr X
Western Promise
Slow Motion
Sleepwalk
I Can't Stay Long