Audience 8.6     (Early Show)

Audience 9.6 - This one is loaded with razor sharp guitar, a gem of a show.

Audience 7.8 - Interesting recording, seems like it was done from the keyboard side of the stage for sure as they come through clear and loud, followed by guitar. The rhythm section is somewhat indistinct and vocals, while pretty front and center too, are fighting for the space that the keyboards occupy causing a bandwidth battle. What you have is a fight to control the mid-band range, so while I think this recording is good and clear, it’s too much happening in the middle. One thing you may also notice, the feeling you might get is that this is still the 70’s, even though it is the end of the decade, the music and atmosphere here is still firmly planted in the 70’s.

Audience 8.8 - Decent sound quality with good low end which helps immensely. The louder you crank this the more realistic it gets. Mix-wise, I hear guitar maybe a little low, but bass, drums, vocals especially present.

Audience 8.4 - Good solid punch, a well defined mid band and decent highs. A keeper!

Audience 7.2 - Crowded in the middle, with more definition contained in the upper frequencies, but too much clutter for me on this one. Good for the serious collector, as most people know the band really hit their stride on the European leg of this tour.

Audience 8.3 - Not too bad, with some telltale big hall boom (not that much) and maybe recorded from somewhere in the middle of the hall. It’s a welcome tape though, not that many decent 76 shows to choose from.

Audience 7.6 - Reasonably clear tape, with a touch of that bass drum and bass guitar boom for a large hall but it does not intrude on guitar which comes through it all.

Audience 7.8 - A little tape noise comes through, but the music has frequency intact giving it a pretty good overall sound field – maybe slightly compressed and not pinpoint accurate with the separation but one can get into this show. It is a “fine” audience capture.

Audience 7.4 - Vocals and Guitar are audible above the denseness. Not a clear tape, but surprisingly it is very quiet meaning I believe this is VERY low generation if not from a master source. Decent for 1971, we take what we can get!

Audience 8.6 - The key to enjoying this show is you have to turn it up very loud as the levels are low.

Audience 7.7 - Somewhat compressed sound translating into a murky type mix, but sonically it is not offensive just not very detailed. There’s also some tape noise present. The selling point of course is that this is a very adventurous, musically speaking, set. Long long tracks with much bravado and brilliance. Worth it for that alone!

Audience 7.4 - Decent for the time and you can hear ever instrument and clearly enough so I think this was remastered. It is a very good 1971 audience recording. It does lack a little depth in my opinion.

Audience 7.4  (7.8 in quieter parts).

Audience 8.9 - A very forceful sound, might be front and center of the room, and pretty darn clear too. Wonderful!

Audience 8.8 - A stellar audience tape! Good highs, well captured sound that ain’t perfect but sure is nice!

London - Pro 9.0  (BBC)  /  NY - Audience 6.3

Audience 8.8 - Surprisingly clear and spacious, very enjoyable tape! Glen Cornick .... Bass player for Jethro Tull  

Pro Soundboard 9.1 - Recorded for broadcast in a studio setting so you know it is going to be really good. Tape is just a touch “aged” in that it is not as bright as you would expect but still darn good.

Soundboard 8.8 - Good mix, with a lively bass and clean punchy sound with a well balanced left right pan for the live mix. Good stuff

Audience 8.7 - Some harshness on the cymbals, but I’d rather have those highs intact because it is easier to round off than try and crank them up if they don’t exist.

Studio Quality 9.5

Audience 7.0 -7.3 - Why the funky rating? Because what started out as a dismal audience tape has slowly over the years morphed into a listenable show. Why would you care? Because 1978 shows KILL! If you loved and miss the vintage Eddie Van Halen signature between riff fills that he used to dish out effortlessly, than get this one because later he began relying too much on tried and true signature frills and less and less on inventing killer little hooky lead fills on the spot. This show has them, and you can hear them, and it’s weird because this tape has a very strange dynamic to it where the sound channel down the middle opens up enough to let Eddie’s sound permeate and even float around a little above the din of the bass and kick. So the re-mastering addressed some of that by dropping some of the low and low mid boom and attenuating the upper mids and highs with multi-band compression. It helped a lot. Still kind of rough but actually the show is so interesting and just enough above being not listenable that it will still suck you right in and you will actually play it all the way through. I promise that. I did, without regrets.