With only a handful of gigs under their belts, Barry, Bobby, Sara and Johnny cut the rug with their own brand of dance tune classics. The material here (replete with pre-echoes of the impending Discipline sound) is taken at a more even pace than the performance at the Royal Exeter. Nevertheless, there are fiery solos aplenty from you-know-who, though sadly Andrews’ manic organ lines are not well represented due to the limitations of this official cassette bootleg. There’s also a smattering of new material that never made it to the official releases which will be of interest to both the curious and the collector alike. Speaking to Melody Maker’s Lynden Barber around the time of the League of Gentlemen’s album in 1981, Robert offered this view of the band: "The LOG was originally put together for three months work, and then it was innocent, after that we had two or three subsequent bouts of working for maybe three weeks or a month or whatever and we never managed to get the same kind of coherence."
With only a handful of gigs under their belts, Barry, Bobby, Sara and Johnny cut the rug with their own brand of dance tune classics. The material here (replete with pre-echoes of the impending Discipline sound) is taken at a more even pace than the performance at the Royal Exeter. Nevertheless, there are fiery solos aplenty from you-know-who, th...
Finaly ! Indeed 27 years ago. I remember very well being there at this Milky Way, the hash and weed smellings.... and this beautiful music of RF and the LoG. Just downloaded the FLAC files and I will have listening this evening with a glass of wine! Cheers and a votre santé, monsier Fripp !
Written by Thomas Troccoli
Simply Marvelous...
I am detracting one star only for the over-all sound. There is hiss evident making this a not so optimal headphone listening experience. The music seslection by the band as well as the performance itself is stellar. Mr. Fripp simply ROARS throughout. The tunes do indeed sound as though they are new, and in that way not over-played. A truly wonderful and tasty addition to my collection and worth every cent (pence, yen, wen, lire, peso, ruble, or whatever YOU pay). Thanks DGM.
Written by Michael Paulus
excellent performance with amazing sound quality
Since I already have two bootlegs, one from New York and one from Hamburg, Germany, I was hesitant if I should get this one. But I have to say, this is an excellent concert and the fact that this is just the 7th concert only means, that some versions are not worse but as a matter of fact more playful. There were indeed many variations from the versions of later concerts I heard. They play slower overall but that does not mean at all that they are more boring, the band actually already has ...
Since I already have two bootlegs, one from New York and one from Hamburg, Germany, I was hesitant if I should get this one. But I have to say, this is an excellent concert and the fact that this is just the 7th concert only means, that some versions are not worse but as a matter of fact more playful. There were indeed many variations from the versions of later concerts I heard. They play slower overall but that does not mean at all that they are more boring, the band actually already has a perfection at this early stage I never realized before! And for the first time (however, I never got the official Bootleg nor the Exceter concert) I hear an LoG concert with perfect sound quality. It is sheer unbelievable that this concert is taken from a cassette bootleg! That also means that for the first time I can hear everything the band actually plays and realize once more how much I love them. Great, great, great, even after all those years.I actually went to the LoG concert an 8 May (I believe?) in Hannover, Germany, which was my first Fripp concert ever!! I was 18, a Crimson fan for 3 years and ever since I had become a Crimson fan wanted to see them or Fripp live. I loved Exposure, was not so sure about all the Frippertronics at that time (loved already No Pussyfooting though and the rest changed later...) and had just gotten into Punk and New Wave big time. Pop Group, Wire, Joy Division, PIL, Siouxise, Gang of Four, Pere Ubu, so much great stuff around. And then, out of the blue, Fripp came on tour. This was the time before the internet, so you did not actually know what was going on at all. I read an article about the LoG after the concert and then slowly understood what it was about. At the time, I just had hoped for a mix of lots of Exposure with maybe some Crimson tunes I still deemed to be New Wave fashionable, such as LTiA II. The concert was preceded by the German New Wave band Abwaerts and the crowd was small (just about 100 people), very intimate, indeed. I was grooving away to the beats of Abwaerts (they actually were quite good) and suddenly saw somebody standing next to meet, a bit shorter than me, also grooving away. I thought, gee, I have seen that guy and sure enough it was Fripp himself! I just had not expected him to stand in the middle of the audience at all, so I was quite surprised. I didn’t talk to him though, and we both kept grooving away... What followed was one of those unbelievable moments. Sure enough, I still was hoping for some well known tunes but what came was just so amazing and new. I never ever had heard a sound like this before. Me and my friends were literally blown away and tried to "sing" the best moments (as far as we could remember them) on our way home. We actually were considering going to the Hamburg concert as well but did not have much money and eventually skipped that idea. What a mistake!Download this concert - it’s great...P.S. By the way, for those who do not know, Melkweg is THE concert venue in Amsterdam that has seen many fabulous performances. I am not sure how popular it is today but it used to be huge...
