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Italy Prog Fest 1972: Volume 1,2,3 Audience 7.5 - The stuff that dreams are made of! How long I have waited for something like this to materialize. I mean, I have been listening to and collecting these bands for ages and now I get to hear a full on multi-artist concert experience by all of the era’s top artists at the zenith of the prog rock movement. How cool is that? What a set this is too! The quality of presentation equals the unquestionable importance of this as a document of an important time for rock music. Thank you to whoever recorded this, and thank you to whoever packaged the recording like this.
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Audiece 7.0 - Loud and noisy, but Maiden fans know all too well the kind of lo-fi muddy sound most of the early recordings suffer from, that’s why this is welcome. It is not nearly as horrid as most, in fact in places this is actually pretty decent. You do get a great feel of the hall, and the energy level, and even though it is a tad crunchy you do get most of the band.
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Audience 8.4 - There’s some obvious flaws in this tape, what sounds like a rather highly compressed sound, but I have to say if you give it a complete listen you will fall in love with it. Case in point – not to be a spoiler, but while playing Magic Man they riff on some classic Yardbirds and it just makes it for me. Just a little riff is all it took for me. I love this show! An absolutely devastating performance you won’t forget about.
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Audience 7.4 - For the first half of the show containing the Edgar Winter and Leon Russell sets, and 8.2 for the duration, which is cool because now you have a complete picture of the entire evening, start to finish, which you rarely find. As the tape progresses, rather than diminish, it brightens and opens up for pretty much the entire Gregg Allman set. Not that it is horrible, just that it occupies a mid range bandwidth without straying into too many dynamics. Tape does not distort, and does not peak, so what you get is a consistent capture that gets progressively better as the evening wears on. This tape has never been heard prior to the release of this set.
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Audience 7.7 - You can count on one hand the number of GFR live recordings from the early 70’s, so whenever one pops up, it is worth investigating further. This one is absolutely worthwhile, with sound quality that places it into the top 5. All instruments hear, and clearly with drums being the weakest link.
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Audience 7.1 - Not the greatest fidelity but once you get through the first sound and your ears adjust you will get sucked into this marathon of a show. Only one song clocked in at under 6 minutes. One thing that I was struck by here, was the sheer massiveness of the bass, when he kicks in the fuzz overdrive it is massive and really drives this band’s music. A worthwhile listen considering the miniscule amount of GFR recordings out there, especially from this vintage.
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Audience 8.7 - It’s a small to mid-size venue and a loud all-girl metal band so the idea here is to just have some fun. If you are wanting pristine clarity and dynamics, you have come to the wrong place. If you want polished, precision metal, um, yeah, whatever pal. If you wanna rock with some veteran metal chicks and get sloppy drunk, well, step right up!