Live and Loud!: Show 155 - Madness - Live At Paradiso, Amsterdam

Welcome - About Live and Loud!

Live and Loud! began as a fortnightly internet radio show in 2012 taking old unreleased live concert recordings I could find and working to repair and improve them - fixing tape hiss, noise, tape drop out, clicks, speed variations, defects - before improving the sound quality by EQing the sound to bring out the instruments as clearly as possible. These are now made directly available to download for free to reach as many fans of the music as possible.

Depending on the quality of the original recording, these can often be made to sound almost like commercial recordings - but of course I can't guarantee that for every show. What I can guarantee is it will sound far better than the original files available which have been floating around the internet and on bootleg recordings for many years.

Almost all are either "soundboard" recordings (taken directly from the mixing desk used at the gig on the night) or old FM radio recordings. A few gigs, if they are of special historical importance, make an appearance even if they were recorded from the audience - these can also be made to sound better than ever.

Do your ears a favour and listen on headphones or good speakers to get most benefit - laptop speakers will always sound pretty poor by comparison.

All shows still available are listed, including a link to download the remastered show for free. If you want to support the site with a small donation, you can receive the shows as either separate MP3s or FLACs (your choice) - head over to the Rewards for Donations page and see how you can get a lot for very little!

If you want to email me, an email link is in my profile in a link in the side panel.

And finally... These are great fun to listen to but DO NOT replace original releases - support these artists and buy their music. There is nothing you can go and buy in a regular record store here. If a gig is made available as a regular release, then it will be removed (as a couple have been already).

Wednesday, 23 September 2020

Show 155 - Madness - Live At Paradiso, Amsterdam - 2 February 1980

This is another of those recordings I thought would be quick and easy. I had a 6 track recording of Madness from this gig - an old FM radio broadcast. I spent some time working on it, announced what I was doing on the Facebook group and page and one of my listeners got in touch to say he knew of a 10 track version! Once he pointed me in the direction of it (only in MP3 format unfortunately) and I had a listen, I scrapped everything I'd done on the 6 track version and set to work on this one - I took the view it was better to have 10 tracks than 6, despite the slightly inferior source quality.

After converting it to 1 long WAV, the first thing was - it was way too fast and high pitched! Suggs sounded like he was on helium and the whole band was on speed (!) so I spent a fair bit of time matching the pitch and speed to other recordings from the same year before doing anything else. Then it was correcting a few glitches in the recording - tape dropouts etc. Then 30 band EQ to bring back some low end and remove a harsh high end, before finally moving to the mastering which tightened up the whole recording a lot.

The result is now available for free on this page and sounds really good. You can safely download this restored, unique recording for free HERE as one 320 kbps MP3 file with no nasty pop ups or ads getting in the way.

The remastered shows are also available as separate, properly tagged MP3s or lossless files in FLAC format; head on over to the Donations tab to see how you can support what I do and donate towards storage and web costs for less than the price of a coffee.

Absolutely no obligation to do so though; the free files will always remain free. Either way - enjoy the show!

Setlist
One Step Beyond
Deceives The Eye
My Girl
Swan Lake
Razor Blade Alley
Land Of Hope And Glory
Tarzan's Nuts
The Prince
Night Boat To Cairo
Madness