This very clear and extremely listenable audience recording has the band in fine form in Sheffield. Cirkus has a somewhat eerie beginning with Wallace hissing out the title of the piece over Sinfield’s VCS3-generated waves. The following track, brimming with confidence, shows how tight the line-up had become. After an equally authoritative reading of Pictures, Wallace once again takes to the microphone doing his Monty Python-inspired My Hobby (heard more clearly perhaps on the Denver Summit recording KCCC 35). From the ridiculous to the sublime with a lovely reading of Formentera and into a scorching rendition of Sailor’s Tale, complete with chordal revved-up solo that harries and swipes at the rhythm section. As Collins supplies a spectral Mellotron this builds into one of the best versions of the piece that you’re likely to hear. As ever, there’s lots of power and fun to be had during Groon, and listen out for Fripp’s unaccompanied solo at the end which seems to be flirting with the Peace theme from Poseidon in places. All told, an exceptionally powerful gig!
This very clear and extremely listenable audience recording has the band in fine form in Sheffield. Cirkus has a somewhat eerie beginning with Wallace hissing out the title of the piece over Sinfield’s VCS3-generated waves. The following track, brimming with confidence, shows how tight the line-up had become. After an equally authoritative reading...
Very good example of the 1971 tour, Sheffield City Hall is my fave venue for bands, the oval hall has great accoustics which can be heard here.
Bought this for the fact it is KC, Sheffield City Hall, and my fave year and LP of the band (Islands)... Very glad i did, worth every penny. Good crowd response as always from Sheffield.
Written by Pablo Cordero
Solid performance, not so great sound quality.
My general impression is that this is a good, but not excellent download. The sound quality is lacking; not unlistenable or even particularly terrible, but just hissy enough to prevent us from appreciating the finer details. The performance is good, even great at some points ("The Letters" has some creative fretwork from Robert under the vocals, and the heavy part is very heavy), and there are small surprises, such as Boz singing most of the first verse of "Ladies of the Road" backed only by a b...
My general impression is that this is a good, but not excellent download. The sound quality is lacking; not unlistenable or even particularly terrible, but just hissy enough to prevent us from appreciating the finer details. The performance is good, even great at some points ("The Letters" has some creative fretwork from Robert under the vocals, and the heavy part is very heavy), and there are small surprises, such as Boz singing most of the first verse of "Ladies of the Road" backed only by a bass drum and a tambourine. You would probably not want this to be your only live recording of this band, but as part of a tour bundle I'm happy to have it.