AL STEWART - BBC ROCK HOUR 4/12//1980
There was a bit of a fuss t’other day the draftervoi posted on the Voodoo Wagon his version of the BBC recording of the Al Stewart concert for their classic Rock Hour ‘Sessions’ series (no. 5 at the University of Reading from 1980 since you ask!), responses bemoaned the quality of the prior posting over at ATSE [Paul at Albums That Should Exist]
Now I didn't really want to get involved but don’t much care for comparisons and not being the biggest fan of Stewart left it for a while. But then having downloaded them both the original all that time ago now it seemed only fair to give drafter’s version a listen!
I do think the criticism of Paul is a tad snitty and mealy mouthed to be fair as he always tells us visitors when he has tampered with the recordings and added audience noise or re-edited and re-mixed at times. . . . drafters’ version seemed untouched but then both are IMHO! They both struck me as being largely only chaptered differently but the recordings remain the same albeit one is MP3 and the other FLAC so it is quite hard to compare.
Also given that Voodoo’s version is edited to be less tracks struck me as odd and hardly a fair comparison. Basically you download a version on FLAC format that is abridged for reasons best known to someone else or the MP3 version from ATSE that has two more tracks and from what I can hear hasn’t been tampered with at all from the BBC originals!
You pays your money and you takes your choice . . . . oh, except that you don’t do you!?
Here therefore are the two posts together and hope you enjoy both ( I DID!) and they made me reassess my feelings about Al Stewart and the band were really very VERY accomplished indeed.
Al Stewart - BBC Rock Hour 151 Uni Reading Voodoo Wagon
9 Tracks [FLAC]
Al Stewart BBC Sessions Vol 5 Reading Uni | Albums That Should Exist
11 songs [plus chat between songs] MP3