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Audience 7.4 - A scratchy, distant, and cluttered recording of an energetic show (band and audience). Is it worth getting? It’s on the ragged edge if you ask me, but as a completist you will find that it is not unlistenable muck, thankfully. It is interesting to hear a veteran touring band giving it 100% effort even if the city is other than New York, LA or Chicago. Just another tour stop, in the deep south no less, but there’s Rush giving their fans their all, night after night. God Bless Rush!
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Studio 8.7 - A little sonic degradation to these professional studio demos (the bonus tracks are abbreviated probably due to legal reasons at the time they were recorded). Some of the tracks are better quality, but the worst are still very good, just maybe a little loss of clarity and fidelity but nothing major. You’ll enjoy this if you are a fan.
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Audience 8.9 - Most of the recent tour recordings are excellent and all offer something different for the ears in terms of atmosphere, intensity, and clarity. This one I find has less of an emphasis on separation of instruments and more on depth of bass and overall sound. The guitar comes right at you, and the bass is nicely anchoring the bottom, drums are not as clear but still nicely placed. So, overall I like what this recording delivers.
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Audience 7.7 - Ever wonder what the opening act was like? OK, so this is a great example of that – a band that opened for Jethro Tull in 1970 and someone recorded them. Are they good? They are very competent and it’s easy to see why they got the slot. The recording is kind of one-dimensional but sufficient to allow you to hear it all, with clarity, just not a lot of dynamics. This is probably the only existing live recording of them so it’s worth grabbing.
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Sale!Audience 7.5 - A tape that struggles to get better, like you keep expecting it to suddenly open up because it isn’t bad once the taper gets his levels set. It maybe hovers too close to the bottom, but you get the sounds of everything on stage, maybe vocals a little behind the mix but so what? It’s Gentle Giant, you want the music parts mainly. I think fans can appreciate this early gig.