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.
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).
Sunday 6 December 2015
Date For Your Diaries...
I can't tell you WHO will be in the first show - but coming up will be vintage and unreleased gigs by the likes of Japan, Gary Numan, Sex Pistols, Ultravox, B-52s, Kraftwerk, Big Country, The Ramones, Simon and Garfunkel and...many more.
Stay tuned for more info in the coming weeks...
Sunday 4 October 2015
The Show Is Returning
I have been sent a couple of shows recently in the hopes I can do something with them and I am always happy to receive gigs (or even requests for gigs) but sometimes the quality in the recordings I find or receive is just a bit too variable. The show is all about rescuing old recordings and making them as good as possible but they need to be rescuable and to be listenable to begin with.
So, for the new season I've set myself a few rules to save some time and to ensure the series is as good as possible. So these are all now out of contention, unfortunately:-
- Audience recordings
- recordings that vary widely in quality from song to song (eg muffled sound/bright sound or pitch variations
- any recordings with distortion
- any with more than 1 song that's cut short
- any recordings which are less than 75% of the gig (hour long old FM recordings are fine but 6 or 7 songs from a set are not)
Does mean I'll have to forego some great gigs - more than 1 early Human League set for example; a great gig by The Jam from 1979 for another - but ultimately I want the quality to be there week after week and not to have to make excuses ("it sounds a bit rough but its a rare gig so wanted to do it anyway" etc).
Sunday 20 September 2015
1 Year On - All Updated
Shows 1 - 29 and 31 - 57 are once again available - and all are now available to stream or download as 320 kbps mp3s.
The odd one out is Show 30 - Jean Michel Jarre in Egypt from 1999. The remaster file is lost and so the show will need redoing. It will be - but for now, I hope you enjoy the rest of what's available - and new shows going forward.
Tentative plans at the moment for Live and Loud! to reappear via another radio station but these things take time to sort out. More news (and thus new shows) once more is known. New shows will appear - just a question of where (before they come here, of course!).
Cheers!
Friday 4 September 2015
Upload Plan - Missing Shows...!
Shows 1 through 45 were all downloadable at 1 time. 29-45 were available as 320 kbps mp3s. All those before were only available as they were broadcast - as 128kbps mp3s. Well, I don't know about you but I like the better sound quality... All gigs when remastered by me (almost all, anyway) were saved at 320 - but without intros etc. Unfortunately 1 or 2 were at a lower rate to begin with, as that's the source file I was working from was at. In 1 particular case, the remaster and show has completely disappeared!
So this is the plan:
Shows 29 and 31-45 will be up next as they're all ready to go in the better quality mp3s.
Shows 1-28 will be uploaded with a brief new intro from me in 320 mp3s (except 2) for the first time, in chronological order.
Show 30 (Jean Michel Jarre in Egypt) will have to be remastered - that was the one lost.
Bit of a pain but I want to get them up as soon as possible and this seems the best way of doing it.
The Missing Shows
There are a few gaps:
Show 4 - Duran Duran 1982 - I remastered this a second time as I wasn't happy with the first. This then became Show 12.
Show 14 - Erasure - I got grief from someone who claimed to be working for Vince Clarke's management (at 1 point he faked an email claiming he WAS VC's manager...). After he'd got a copy of the show, of course. Telling me to take it down or face the consequences - so it got taken down. If you really want it, plenty of fans on Erasure forums and FB pages managed to get it before it was taken down, so ask there.
Show 20 - IAMX. This was never available for download as the files were originally made available by IAMX to fans. Seemed safer to never offer this one.
Anyway - 31-45 should be up over the next few days. Feedback has been good so far - glad people are enjoying them!
Tuesday 1 September 2015
Some Statistics
As the new downloads are made available, no doubt some of this will change but I thought this was a good point to take a snapshot from.
Shows 46 - 57 were only available to stream on Mixcloud (no doubt some found a way to download them of course!) so any totals marked * include streaming figures. Oh, and original listening figures from the original internet radio broadcast aren't available as...no-one thought to collect them!
First up, the 20 most popular artists/bands to appear so far were these...
Artist/Band | No. of Shows | Total Downloads |
Ultravox | 4 | 1275* |
Depeche Mode | 5 | 1142* |
Human League | 1 | 1000* |
Gary Numan | 2 | 468 |
OMD | 2 | 360 |
Japan | 2 | 282 |
Kraftwerk | 2 | 271 |
ABBA | 1 | 255 |
Yazoo | 1 | 244 |
Kate Bush | 1 | 240* |
A Flock of Seagulls | 1 | 175* |
Elvis Presley | 1 | 160 |
Beatles | 1 | 142 |
Bauhaus | 2 | 139 |
Siouxsie and The Banshees | 1 | 136* |
Queen | 1 | 135 |
Spandau Ballet | 1 | 123 |
Eurythmics | 1 | 122* |
Simon and Garfunkel | 1 | 120 |
Squeeze | 1 | 112 |
So to that list of shows then and which were the popular ones? Remember those with a * were on Mixcloud only - all others were download only.
Live and Loud! Show | Downloads |
Show 48: The Human League - Kant Kino, Berlin - November 1980 | 1000* |
Show 57: Ultravox - Hammersmith Odeon, London - June 1984 | 686* |
Show 55: Depeche Mode - Nakano Sun Plaza, Tokyo, Japan - April 1985 | 331* |
Show 32: Gary Numan Live in Calgary, Canada - November 1980 | 313 |
Show 18: Abba, in 1981 | 255 |
Show 39: Yazoo - Live at The Dominion Theatre, London - November 1982 | 244 |
Show 52: Kate Bush - Manchester Apollo - April 1979 | 240* |
Show 16: Ultravox at The Marquee, December 1978 | 238 |
Show 2: OMD - Glasgow Apollo 1983 | 233 |
Show 1: Depeche Mode at Hammersmith Odeon 1983 | 220 |
Show 27: Japan Live at Hammersmith Odeon - February 1981 | 219 |
Show 11: Depeche Mode - Glasgow Tiffanys 1982 | 216 |
Show 6: Ultravox at Crystal Palace Bowl 1981 | 213 |
Show 45: Depeche Mode - Live at Hammersmith Odeon - November 1984 | 194 |
Show 31: Kraftwerk Live in Paris - June 1981 | 192 |
Show 21: Depeche Mode, Live at Crocs 1981/Bridgehouse, London - 1980 | 181 |
Show 46: A Flock of Seagulls - Top Rank, Brighton, UK - May 1983 | 175* |
Show 37: Elvis Presley - Live In Little Rock, Arkansas - May 1956 | 160 |
Show 5: Gary Numan In New York Feb 1980 | 155 |
Show 40: The Beatles - Live in Sweden 1963 and Japan 1966 | 142 |
Show 44: Ultravox - Live in Philadelphia USA - February 1979 | 138 |
Show 49: Siouxsie and The Banshees - Janus Landing, St Petersburg, Florida - August 1987 | 136* |
Show 26: Queen Live in Houston, Texas - December 1977 | 135 |
Show 28: OMD Live at Kant Kino Berlin - December 1980 | 127 |
Show 34: Spandau Ballet Live in Rotterdam - September 1983 | 123 |
Show 47: Eurythmics - Night Moves, Glasgow - February 1983 | 122* |
Show 36: Simon and Garfunkel Live at The Hollywood Bowl - August 1968 | 120 |
Show 33: Squeeze Live in Montego Bay, Jamaica - November 1982 | 112 |
Show 24: Mike Oldfield Live at The Sporthalle Cologne Germany - November 1982 | 106 |
Show 50: Marilyn Manson - Docklands Arena, London - January 2001 | 96* |
Show 22: Simple Minds Live at Werchter Festival Belgium - 1983 | 85 |
Show 30: Jean Michel Jarre Live in Cairo - December 1999 | 84 |
Show 19: Blondie, In Boston, May 1978 | 81 |
Show 12: Duran Duran - November 1982 | 81 |
Show 17: The Comsat Angels, In Rotterdam, 1983 | 80 |
Show 10: Kraftwerk MOMA New York 2012 | 79 |
Show 35: Bauhaus - Live in Toronto - December 1982 | 77 |
Show 9: Blancmange at Hammersmith Odeon 1985 | 71 |
Show 38: Adam And The Ants - Live In Tokyo - October 1981 | 67 |
Show 43: Japan, the final concert - Nagoya, Japan - December 1982 | 63 |
Show 3: Bauhaus In Boston 2005 | 62 |
Show 13: The Sweet in Berlin 1976 | 60 |
Show 15: Talk Talk In Salamanca, Spain, 1986 | 59 |
Show 53: ABC - Live at The Musikhalle, Hamburg - February 1983 | 58* |
Show 7: David Bowie In Los Angeles, September 1974 | 50 |
Show 56: The Beach Boys - Memorial Auditorium, Sacramento, California - August 1964 | 50* |
Show 41: Pet Shop Boys - Live at Wembley - June 1991 | 43 |
Show 23: Devo Live at The Orpheum Theatre Boston USA - November 1982 | 39 |
Show 54: The Police - Roxy Theatre, San Diego, USA - May 1979 | 35* |
Show 51: Devo - The Walker Centre, Minneapolis - November 1978 | 34 |
Show 8: Boomtown Rats at Middlesex Polytechnic 1978 | 30 |
Show 25: Teardrop Explodes Live in Guildford Civic Hall - June 1981 | 30 |
Show 42: The Police - Live at The Budokan Japan - February 1981 | 25 |
Show 29: The Undertones Live in Amsterdam - March 1980 | 21 |
Total | 8186 |
Sunday 23 August 2015
Come On Dude, You're Late...
So I'm looking for somewhere else to broadcast the radio shows from. An online station is interested and that's looking likely it might well be sorted out in the next few weeks. In the meantime, I'm still finding shows and very shortly I'll be doing the remastering to a whole range of great live shows from the 60s onwards. I'm also tidying up this blog a bit, so the tags/labels are down the right hand side - and complete - so you can search for stuff you might like easier. I've taken all download links OFFLINE temporarily - files are moving to a new host at the moment (it takes a while). The mixcloud links are still up for the last lot of shows.
I'm also putting together some stats to look at which shows have been the most popular, which I'll share with you all in the next post. Cheers!
Thursday 16 July 2015
In no particular order yet, you can expect...
Joy Division from 1980
Kraftwerk (from 1975 and 1991)
Big Country from 1984
Queen from 1975
Slade from 1976
XTC from 1981
The B-52s from 2001
Nash The Slash (a few to choose from)
Depeche Mode (got a few here, not decided which yet)
Gary Numan, from 1983
Ultravox (a few to choose from)
Simon and Garfunkel (quite a few to choose from 1967 onwards)
The Doors from 1970
Squeeze from 1980
The Specials from 1979
Rolling Stones from 1973
Devo from 1980
The Damned from 1984
Duran Duran from 1982
Sex Pistols from 1996
and...and...probably a few others too. ;-)
So...WHEN DOES IT START? Well, I'm really not sure but it will be in August. The station www.radiohappy.eu has been offline a few weeks with a stream provider fault but if that's still unavailable, the shows will appear online and won't be held up. So...if you're on Facebook, subscribe to the Flip Martian group or facebook page - or both! to keep uptodate with broadcast dates. You can also check out www.flipmartian.com on the news page.
And just because there's a long list here doesn't mean I'm not open to requests - so if you have a band you want a gig from, contact me by leaving a comment below! And if you have any live recordings you think could benefit from being remastered, once again - leave a comment and I'll get back to you. Cheers :-)