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).

Tuesday, 14 August 2018

Show 126 - David Bowie - Live at The Astoria, London - 2 Dec 1999




It's been a while since I did a Bowie show - long overdue! This is a great show from the short (but perfectly formed) "Hours" tour in 1999 with plenty of banter with the crowd from Bowie throughout, not to mention some great versions of songs.

The source files were in rather dull and muddy mono - the text file with the lossless source files claimed it was a soundboard recording (I think it's either that or a mix from a video soundtrack). After transferring the files to a single .wav file and sorting out a few clicks and some sound level variations, 30 band EQ was used to refine and clear up the bottom end and roll off harsh mids and upper frequencies, to bring some clarity to the mix (Sterling Campbell and Gail Ann Dorsey are now rather clearer in the mix than before).

***2025 UPDATE***

Someone donated to the website and asked for this gig to be put on CD. Given I did this restoration almost 7 years ago, I figured it was worth me trying to improve on what I had done before. So with better software than I had at the time and new mastering tools, I WAS able to improve quite a bit on the sound quality. My donor now has that new version on CD and you now get that new version for free here too. And as it's  stored on the new cloud server, it's also now streamable for the first time.

The All Important Download/Stream Link

As always, the restored and remastered show is available to download or stream for free as a single 320kbps MP3. Just hit the link:

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD OR STREAM

Setlist
Life On Mars?
Word On A Wing
Thursday Child
Ashes To Ashes
Survive
Can't Help Thinking About Me
China Girl
Always Crashing In The Same Car
Something In The Air
Drive In Saturday
Stay
Seven
Changes
Rebel Rebel
Repetition
The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell
Cracked Actor
I'm Afraid Of Americans

Be sure to check out the other gigs from David Bowie I've restored HERE - all similarly downloadable for free.


Supporting The Site

If you want to support the work I do on these recordings, and (if you wish to) obtain separate, fully tagged 320kbps MP3s of this restoration for less than the price of a coffee in return, or lossless FLACs - or even a lossless copy on CDR - head on over to the Rewards For Donations tab to see how you can obtain these for a very small donation towards the site. There is NO OBLIGATION to do so of course - you can take the file on this page absolutely for free - but every single donation is appreciated and helps me do more shows and update some of the software I use as time goes by. Either way, enjoy the show.

Subscribe And Share

Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE TO THE FREE EMAIL NEWSLETTER (spam free) so you never miss news on which new gigs are going to be restored and uploaded here; any news will be delivered to your inbox. And your email address won't be sold on by me as a result.

And if you like this recording, please spread the news and share the page link to anyone you think might be interested - Facebook fan groups, web forums, Bluesky, Mastodon, X, Threads, Instagram are a great way of spreading the word - that way, I always find out which bands are popular and can do more shows by them in the future. So please tell ya mates about the site and this page! Many thanks.





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