Blogger (what this site is built on) stopped alerting subscribers with emailed updates quite a long time ago and I had no way of reliably giving everyone updates - relying on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which are all varying degrees of "flaky"! I currently plan on leaving Twitter by 31 December 2022 (assuming it hasn't collapsed on its own by then) and Instagram too, I think. I will still be using Facebook (there's a group and a page on there for "Live and Loud! Shows") for a few months longer - at least that's the current plan - but I now have a new newsletter via Substack which I will use to send out emails to subscribers to let them know about new gig restorations being added to the site, and any other site related news.
So if you want to keep uptodate with what'd going on on the site, please subscribe to receive future updates directly in your email inbox - it’s entirely free of course and you can unsubscribe at any time. Just use your email address in the box on the page; no Substack account is necessary.
26 June 2022
Firstly, for those who haven't seen the updates on Facebook recently, Covid got me, finally! At the beginning of the month or thereabouts. Despite this being the mild version (apparently), it was bad enough and put a stop to everything for a few weeks and has lingered. Gradually getting what energy I normally have back again, so it should be business as usual in the next week or so.
I've been able to do some work on a Marilyn Manson show over the last week - only to find a better source today which means I basically wasted my time on that... This happens sometimes - new stuff comes along all the time. But we crack on and SOMETHING will appear in the next week or so. Whichever one gets finished first. And then new shows every couple of weeks thereafter. That's the plan, anyway.
In the meantime, if you're missing a live music fix, go download something new off the site! There's plenty to choose from. Cheers!
13 May 2022
Unfortunately my chronic illness (chronic just means "long term and permanent", not "REALLY AWFUL...although it sure can be) got the better of me recently and so there's been a bit of a hiatus on the restorations. Back in the saddle again over the last couple of weeks and the latest show is a short but exciting and powerful set from Joe Jackson, from 1979.
Remember, I do this as a hobby because I love making old stuff sound decent again. I DO NOT do it because I'm greedy and want loads of money from y'all! If I was doing that, I'd be starting up a bootleg shop, designing a crappy sleeve, printing up a batch of CDs and charging £20 for each. What I do here will almost always sound better than a bought bootleg - because I improve these things so they sound so much better! Many bootleggers don't care about that and rely on people thinking "its on CD so must be better". People still believe that, bizarrely. Collectors spend fortunes on crappy bootlegs just because it has a sleeve and has come out in a "limited edition of 1000 on blue vinyl", or whatever.
That said, if the donations do eventually dry up, so will the site; I can't afford to pay the bills that come with this out of my own pocket. No danger of that just yet though, even if donations are less common - in this current age of austerity that is hardly a surprise. We're good for a while yet. It has been suggested to me that I should do something like Patreon or Ko-fi to bring in regular income to the site - even some facebook pages do this now, just for posting old photos or whatever they post every day. Not sure I'm comfortable though with saying "give me money for doing what I do - which by the way, I enjoy doing anyway"; feels a bit weird. Your thoughts on that are certainly welcome.
All comments on this blog are reviewed to stop spam (and abuse), so feel free to comment and don't get put off by it not appearing right away. If you're polite, it will get posted up (you don't even have to agree with me, as long as you're polite).
Anyway, hopefully a steady stream of restorations will ensue from this point on. If they do, it'll have been a good year. Enough rambling for now!
25 January 2022
More news as soon as things start to firm up! Until then, have a good week, all.
16 December 2021.
Final blog entry for 2021. God, what a year...! I shall keep it to Site business though.
The recent Soft Cell restoration proved popular so all being well there will be another next year. The last show of 2021 will be one I've been working on for the longest time... and audience recording of 1 of Jean Michel Jarre's Docklands concerts from 1989. That is in the final stages now and will appear before Christmas.
For over a year now I have been planning to replace my current PC, which was built for me almost 8 years ago now. Very stable and still works well but tech has moved on and so has software - some of what I use now could run a lot quicker on a more modern PC so I've had one built for me once again by the same friend who built the last one. Thanks to delays in parts supply, it's taken far longer than planned but that should be with me before Christmas, so I'll be spending a lot of time over the holiday period installing software on the new machine. Hopefully there will be a show in January but it very much depends on how the next 2 or 3 weeks go!
Either way, as ever, there are loads of gigs still to do. For example, gigs by the likes of Depeche Mode, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk didn't get done this year - so will be done soon. Behind me I still have a pile of sent in cassettes from listeners for ripping for possible restoration and upload here, plus I have more gigs than I can count on my SSD drives already. Counting the upcoming Jarre show, there will have only been 15 shows this year. Hopefully many more than that will get done next year.
Merry Christmas, to all listeners and visitors to the site.To those of you who share posts on social media or page links - thank you! These all help keep the site going. To my few donaters this year - many many thanks for taking the time in such a difficult year for all; your support is very much appreciated.
Cheers!
15 October 2021
A few bits of news to catch upon! :-) All work ground to a halt for a while, apart from a couple of re-restorations and some splitting of shows for a donater. Mojo lost - it happens. But I got back into things last week and finished and released the OMD 1982 show as of last week; and this week had some nice news...
Some months back a listener put me in touch with his brother's band to see if I could help rescue an old tape they had. That band turned out to be Shed Seven! And the tracks I found and then restored for them will be included as extras on their upcoming 25th Anniversary Edition release of A Maximum High! More details on this from their website!
Paul from the band shared the extras CD artwork with me and gave permission for me to share it, so here it is - I even get my name on the credits which is nice. A great band - they're playing live dates this Winter too, so go and see if they're near you (and there are any tickets left!).
I can do tape rescuing and restoration for you too - as well as gig recordings you own that wouldn't go on the website. It's not expensive. So feel free to get in touch and ask!
For example, at the moment I'm currently working on a live recording from 1979 by a band I can't name, for a big fan of the band, and a listener to Live and Loud!. The singer's lawyers are known to be active on this particular recording so it won't be appearing on the website - but for a small consideration, she will be getting a far better copy of the recording than anyone else is likely to have.
And finally - one of the web forums I use to publicise these restorations decided to block me after several years as someone on there complained I was selling bootlegs. Which I don't. Someone made the same complaint a couple of years back and the admin agreed with me that publicising this site was fine, as I don't sell bootlegs (which is against their rules). For some reason now, another admin has decided to block me and won't respond to messages. So that's a big publicity outlet gone, which potentially means less visibility, less downloads, less donations (which are hardly common anyway).
So - if you like a show - please share out the PAGE link for that show on your own social media. Not the file link - that doesn't really help me - it's page views and people being aware of the site that helps, so please share out the URL at the top of the page for any show you like yourself. At the moment hundreds find each show - if that dwindles away, so does the site and so does any point in spending so many hours doing these. So if you download any of the free shows from the site - please share out the page links to let others know the site exists. Thanks!
2 September 2021
A rather bad few weeks, health-wise, hence no shows. Normal service is slowly being resumed. The next show has been gradually worked on over the last couple of weeks and will be a restored recording of Clock DVA from 1 of their live dates in Germany in 1992. The show after THAT is likely to be something rather different and far more 80s pop-oriented. Rather than wait until Friday of next week to release the Clock DVA gig, it will be completed and uploaded before then, when it's ready.
In the meantime, enjoy the upcoming weekend.
1 July 2021.
Following on from the previous blog entry, I now have clear ears again (which is a relief) and yesterday I got back to work on the Dire Straits show. This morning I finished it and I have to say - and I'm not particularly a fan - what a great live band. The show is from early 1978 - before they'd released a single, and its a great snapshot of 4 talented musicians playing live. Without blowing my own trumpet, it sounds really good now too.
There are so many stages to doing these shows...listening through, identifying and fixing faults, removing noise, improving the sound...it can take hours, days, weeks sometimes (on and off), so it's always a relief when the final change has been made and I've listened through to it one last time, checked it's as good as I can get it, and can say "done". And a couple of hours ago, I was able to say that on this one, although thankfully it wasn't one of the worst ones to do.
I've also now written the intro to the show to give a bit of context as to when the gig was, and will record that later, before editing that into the finished restoration. I also have the web page to write. Once that's all done, I'll upload to the site and put the word out sometime tomorrow afternoon UK time.
Oh, and worry not, lovers of synth based music - the next show coming along will perhaps be more to your liking! But IO know many of you, who are lovers of great live music, will give this a go anyway.
In the meantime, from a beautiful sunny day here in Scotland, enjoy the rest of the week and the weekend, when it arrives.
23 June 2021
The Alison Moyet show seemed to go down pretty well, I'm glad to say - always nice to receive good feedback from people saying either they were AT that gig, or went to that tour, and how it brought back great memories, or just that they COULDN'T go at the time but were glad to get a recording of it.
So what's coming NEXT? I hear you ask. Well, perhaps it's time for something different this time! So the next show will be Dire Straits. Early Dire Straits. So early they hadn't even released Sultans of Swing yet (that does appear in the set though)! It's a great 40 minutes long soundboard recording - which means once I'm done with it it will be a really clear listen. All from a time when they were playing college size venues, not arenas.
But it will be late next week - I've already fixed the tape dropouts etc so it only needs EQ and mastering - but...I don't trust my ears at the moment; they're blocked. I'm getting them syringed early next week so my hearing should be back to normal - but trying to EQ and master this week with blocked ears wouldn't be very sensible! But in the meantime I can hopefully go through 1 or 2 other recordings and fix any errors so I can build up a queue of gigs that can be put out over the coming weeks in a more timely fashion. That's the plan, anyway.
I'm doing more work for my German Slade fan client at the moment - transferring old tv show appearances to audio files, cleaning them up and putting them on CD for him. Obviously the "cleaning them up" phase is also dependent on good ears so that part is on hold too.
That's all for now. Dire Straits should be up by Friday 2 July. Bye for now...
9 June 2021
Currently working on the next show - a cassette I was sent a couple of months ago with an old FM broadcast of Alison Moyet in concert from 1984. I saved it to digital shortly after it arrived and realised it had quite a few issues to fix before it could be uploaded. It would be fair to say it is not in the best of condition - a couple of songs had tape flutter which got really bad (imagine the songs with fast vibrato on everything) which was pretty horrible to listen to. It is really really difficult to cure and not much software exists that can fix it perfectly (and what does can cost 4 figure sums).
Anyway - I had a go and after several hours this afternoon, it's reduced to the point that the songs are listenable - the alternative would have been to take the songs out, and I didn't want to do that.
Anyway, currently listening to the rest of the gig to see what else needs doing - FM hiss is bad in places, I've already fixed a few tape dropouts and will probably find more...then hopefully just into the EQ and polish stage then.
Normally this year I've been trying to upload new shows on Fridays but this one will probably not make this Friday - (for 1 thing I have my 2nd covid jab this week) but I'll be uploading as soon as it's ready - as ever, keep an eye out on the social media outlets for that.
2 June 2021
Bit of a delay for the next restoration. I finished off the other day one of my "other" sound jobs - more burning of Slade gigs to CDR for a client in Germany, as mentioned in my blog further down. He has more work for me, some of which will benefit the Live and Loud! site in the future, but that isn't going to be worked on just yet.
But at the moment, my ME is making me really noise sensitive and I'm spending more time than usual wearing ear defenders to block out sound. Clearly this also makes it impossible to work for any amount of time on sound restoration! It will no doubt ease off again in a few days but it does mean there won't be a new show coming this week. Maybe next, will see.
Cheers for now.
14 May 2021
The Numan show is just about finished - I am giving it 1 last listen (and still fixing a couple of little things as I do). Tons of work to repair and restor a manky old audience recording from over 40 years ago but given the rarity of recordings of that particular tour - so worthwhile.
10 May 2021
And...back in the room. Bathroom finished, workman gone, back to the regular routine.
As I type I am listening through Gary Numan, live from his debut 1979 tour of the UK, listening out for errors in the recording - weird gaps, fadeouts, tape dropouts - and finding a few to fix along the way - about 6 in the first 40 minutes, including one where the sound completely changes for a couple of seconds - all gone now, you'll never tell where they were. 😎 I've already reduced ambience (this is a very old audience recording, with a lot of ambience) and done the noise reduction. Once all the defects I can catch are gone (I'm about half way through the show at the moment), next stage is EQ and a little "studio magic"...and then doing the usual blablabla intro and outro.
All being well, this will see the light of day at the end of the week! Stay tuned...
30 April 2021
As I type, we're into day 5 of a new bathroom being put in. Ironically, given what I do on Live and Loud!, my ME makes me incredibly noise sensitive - so I am parked in a bedroom at the other end of the house as far away as possible, with industrial ear defenders on! The alternative is far worse than the worst hangover you can imagine, trust me.
So...no studio work being done right now. But I am currently downloading some live recordings for possible future use. Early Roxy Music ones at the moment, from 1973, 1979 and 1980 - the 1974 one I did a while back (if you missed it click here) went down really well so I'm looking forward to doing another. And some Queen from 1979, and a copy of the last gig by The Beatles in 1966.
Before anyone gets too excited, there are often reasons why I can't actually restore a gig and put it on the site. For example...it might be legally available elsewhere, or there might be plans to put it out officially - I once announced on the "Live and Loud! Shows" Facebook group that I was going to be doing a show by The Jam very shortly...while I was working on one, they then announced they were releasing a box set with a whole load of live recordings in it - including the one I was working on...
Alternatively, it might just sound so bad, I can't do anything with it. I was doing a Stranglers show once but after spending some time on it, I found parts were so distorted, it just wasn't possible to go on with it.
So I might mention stuff I have but that doesn't mean it might appear imminently. But you never know. Feel free to comment below, or in the FB group on what you might like to hear.
In other news, this week I was sent a lovely quality live recording of a band called Messengers, who were Ultravox's support band in the 1980s, and played as part of their live set up at that time. They got together again to play in 2010 in London at the famous 100 Club, which is where this was recorded. I plan on doing some work on this and putting it up on the site sometime soon.
Fans of Gary Numan who used to attend fan get togethers in the mid 1980s in London and the South East of England might remember an electronic band called Dymaxion. They released 1 single and a cassette EP, both called Rainbow Warrior, around 1986. 1 of the things I'm working on improving at the moment are those released tracks after being sent a copy of the single and cassette. I was also sent a unique live recording from them, comprising part of their set when they played The Flag in North Wembley in 1986. I plan on the whole lot being made available on the site soon but it will take some time to clean up.
Last weekend I found a live recording of Gary Numan from his first headlining tour of 1979. All recordings I've heard from this tour - apart from the official release of the London gig - are terrible quality. However, I have found one that sounds so far like it might be rescuable! Thanks to the bathroom work, this is on hold for a couple of weeks but it was starting to sound ok. Hopefully more on this very soon.
Oh, and I also received some Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk gigs recently - hoping to do an early one of each in the very near future too.
That's it for now. Cheers!
Any comments are welcome in the box below - I have to approve them before they appear, thanks to spammers and - well, assholes, basically! - so they won't show up straight away.
28 April 2021
I thought I'd just add extra info here as I go along - anything related to Live and Loud! in between uploads. Thoughts, stuff that happens (that's relevant!), that kind of thing. I guess that makes this the first entry...
Blogger doesn't allow me to create unique posts and add them here so you can click on them individually, so it will just be me, manually editing this page, adding in what I want to say, and making this one page longer and longer...
So...let's start.
What have I been up to recently? Well, I've had a couple of paid bits of work in recent months which helps keep the site going. A German collector of Slade bootlegs got in touch earlier this year, and offered to pay for my time in downloading a list of around 20 Slade live recordings and then burning them to CD for him. He was so pleased with what I did, he's since asked for another 20, which I'm in the process of doing. He then plans to ask me to do a full Live and Loud!-style restoration on a selection of those - some of which no doubt will eventually end up in the Live and Loud! Archive here on this site (Slade shows are always popular).
As a sideline I offer sound restoration services - restoring old cassette recordings (or even MP3s) for example. It's surprising how GOOD you can get these to sound. Anyway, recently I did some work for the rock band Shed Seven, transferring some old songs from a cassette from the 1990s, which was the only copy they had (yes, a band that still plays arena gigs entrusted ME with their only copy of a tape that had been in storage for over 20 years...). That was nervewracking, praying my cassette deck didn't chew it up! But it was ok - and I then worked on restoring the contents to sound really clear and punchy again. They were really pleased - with the work and the cost; Paul, their guitarist, was a pleasure to deal with.
Another one I've been working on is a very old cassette containing a copy of a home reel to reel tape recording from 1962 of a piano recital. Again, it's really rewarding resurrecting something of such personal value to somebody.
I can copy and restore old tapes from as little as £5 - so if you have anything you want rescuing get in touch! My email is on this page. Instead, you can of course buy those little USB cassette players and do it yourself - but believe me, the sound quality is usually far worse than transferring from even an average quality cassette deck (even if you fiddle with it later with audio software). As I said, I can of course also improve old MP3s or other format digital files.
No more adverts 😀
Last week saw the upload of the 6th live restoration of 2021 - Genesis at Wembley, from 1981. My source for this was a lossless copy of an old vinyl bootleg. I have to say the recording wasn't originally very good! Just because bootlegs appear on vinyl or CD does NOT give you a guarantee of decent sound quality. That doesn't stop people telling me their old version of a gig I've restored sounds far better "because it's on CD". To those people, I nod and smile (and run away).
Anyway, Hopefully owners of the Genesis vinyl bootleg will one day find my restored version and enjoy the gig all the more. More details on what I did to clean up that recording are on the page - but it took about a month, on and off.
Those bits of paid work mentioned above (and ongoing "life" stuff) have rather delayed work on the shows at times this year but I'm confident things will speed up a bit - I have literally hundreds of recordings here and people contact me fairly regularly with more - either ones they have as files, or old tapes they ask if I can make use of. So I am never short of material!
Several shows are in the current plan for the next couple of months but the plan changes sometimes for several reasons - might talk more about that another time. I have several things I'm currently doing work on with a view to uploading soon. More on those next time.
I'm especially looking forward to the Dymaxion, Gary Numan and Kraftwerk recordings, Phil. As always, thank you so much for your time and efforts with all of the restorations you do!
ReplyDeleteThanks Jeff, appreciated!
DeleteHi Phil, you just wrote - feel free to comment on what you might like to hear, so here it is :)
ReplyDeleteSome time ago (last year I think) I pm-ed you on facebook and asked you for some tips to improve the bootleg of Clock DVA live record made somewhere in Germany circa 1992. https://www.discogs.com/ru/Clock-DVA-Tour-1992/release/520682
At that moment I thought I'll be able to make some improvements by myself, but did not succeed at all (well almost) unfortunately.
Nevertheless I'm still interested in hearing this record in an upgraded quality and I'm sure lots of DVA fans are as well - Clock DVA live gigs from their 89-94 activity period are pretty poorly documented.
So, I would be extremely grateful if you kindly consider to work with this record.
It is available in MP3 and FLAC, I could provide you best source quality accessible.
Best, Sergey
Hi Sergey
DeleteFor sure, if you want to PM me on Facebook again, maybe with a link to 1 of the tracks from the gig, I can see if there's anything I can do with it? Cheers!