LAL

["Gary M. Gillman" <garyg@inforamp.net>]

Why is LAL head and shoulders, not just above all other live rock albums,
but all  other live Who recordings? Clearly the band played and sang
extraordinarily well at Leeds University in 1970, but LAL has a clarity of
sound and detail of production which are unique. I`ve probably heard, say,
the extended instrumental jam on My Generation a thousand times, and every
time I hear it it brings shivers down my spine it`s so good. The only live
recording that comes close to LAL is Get Your Ya-Ya`s Out - and I read
recently that the Stones heavily doctored it in the studio....(whereas with
LAL the Who actually tried to make it sound WORSE, as we`re now informed!).
As I said, the band played great, but there are some imponderables here. Why
does a 1970 recording, reflecting the (presumably) primitive recording
techniques of the time, far outshine live albums recorded years later, even
by the same band, which, by many accounts, was still a great live act until
1982?. Eg. take Who`s Last (with that flat sound and awful crowd noise - as
an old review once said, on LAL the power and excitement come solely from
the " heat of the playing"). Is the live recording process that flukey that
it was just pure god given luck that LAL ended up sounding so resonant, pure
and powerful? Nothing else in the live Who canon touches LAL, I say: take
all your 1971 SF Bargains, 1969 London Coliseum`s YMB, and even the
Woodstock performances, and they don`t hold a candle to the original or
expanded LAL (although careful listening has convinced me that the "new" LAL
tracks are slightly inferior to the tunes on the original album, thus
explaining no doubt the original track selection)......... Any thoughts? I`d
be interested especially in the reactions of some of the younger fans on the
list...........Gary M.