TRACKLIST
1 Love In Your Eye (15:30)
2 For Richard (16:55)
3 The Dab Song Concerto (18:45)
4 Hoedown (5:20)
track 4 is also included on the 2CD "The Show Of Our Lives, Live At The BBC 1968-1975".
TRACKLIST
1 Intro (by DJ Pete Drummond) (0:29)
2 Love In Your Eye (15:30)
3 For Richard (16:55)
4 The Dab Song Concerto (18:45)
5 Hoedown (5:20)
track 5 is also included on the 2CD "The Show Of Our Lives, Live At The BBC 1968-1975".
Richard Coughlan (drums)
Pye Hastings (guitar, vocals)
Geoffrey Richardson (violin, guitar)
Dave Sinclair (keyboards)
Mike Wedgewood (bass, vocals)
year/format/label/cat/country
1991/CD/Windsong International/WINCD003/UK
1998/CD/Strange Fruit/SFRSCD058/UK
Having discovered Caravan relatively late, this concert was my first introduction to the group. The four tracks show just how competant a group they are. Whilst they are all live versions of established work (The Dab Song Concerto appart), they are better than the original works as the group are clearly a band that can reproduce their recorded work in a fantastic way live. The tight sound and brilliant vocals make this recording one that any serious Caravan or prog rock fan must have in their collection.
A. DAVEY 4/5 11.03.2004 (AMAZON)
Introduction to Caravan.
Also like the previous reviewer this album was also my intro to Caravan. I am really impressed by the quality of the musicians and the quirkiness of the music. I intend to research a lot more of Caravan's music and find that reviews of this nature are a good guide in doing that. A great album and well worth investing in.
J. Crockett 5/5 12.08.2008 (AMAZON)
MOTTS FAVORITE CARAVAN JOURNEY
One of the wonderful B.B.C. in concert series released from the dusty vaults of the Government run British Broadcasting Corporation. The band are introduced by D.J. Pete Drummond sounding very serious whilst extolling the virtues of these fine musicians, you must remember that this was March of 1975 when progressive rock was in its hey day all trying to look deadly serious whilst wearing kaftans, beads, & 30 inch bell bottom hipsters, no wonder twelve months later Johnny Rotten & Punk rock come along to breath some fresh life and fun back into Rock 'n' Roll. But does the music of Caravan stand the test of time after 26 years, surprisingly, yes very well indeed. Back in the late sixties? The Wilde Flowers? the senior rock band of Kent, garden county of England, split in two, spawning Caravan & Soft Machine. Caravan helped create a musical style that has become known as the Canterbury sound, a name that has stuck to this sub genre of progressive rock ever since. Surrealist lyrics, humour & a rock style that incorporated elements of Procul Harum, Jethro Tull & Pink Floyd, The Canterbury sound was a jazzy, classical, folkish sound that was still very unique. Caravan were definetly one of the founding progressive rock bands. Having already recorded seven albums by the time they went into record this concert at the London Paris Theatre. By then, the 3 original members of David Sinclair, Pye Hastings and Richard Couglan, had added Geoff Richardson on violin and replaced David Sinclair's cousin, Richard Sinclair with Mike Wedgewood on bass, who came in from Curved Air. There are only 4 songs on this hour long concert, 3 of them clocking in just under the 20 minute mark before the final rave up, of the short & sweet audience fave rave, Hoedown from Caravan's fifth album For girls who grow plump in the night, the original album sleeve, depicting a naked pregnant women, was vetoed by record label Decca, but a compromise was reached & the women appeared wearing a night dress. Ho Hum such are the politics of mid seventies rock. For Richard comes from Caravan's 2nd album, If I could do it again I'd do it all over you which appeared way back in September of 1970. Regarded by many fans as their best work it became a perennial favorite in the live set. As you can see there were some marvelous titles from Caravans history none better than the trickly titled Cunning Stunts from which the other two musical pieces on this album come from. This album is a fine showcase for the rich musical talents of a band whose unique contribution to pop music history is unlikely to be forgotten.
Kim Fletcher 5/5 01.10.2001 (AMAZON)
A Must Have for Caravan Fans!!!
I love this CD! It has a great energy to it that some of their other live performances lack. Plus they add some funky new ideas that really enhances old favorites such as "For Richard" I thought Pye's guitar work was crisp and clear and his dueling solos with David Sinclair were excellent. Hats off to Geoff Richardson violin work! I have yet to tire of listening to this one!
A Customer 5/5 18.12.2003 (AMAZON)
Good, but not their best live album.
This is from a BBC 1 broadcast show. The CD is about 55 minutes long and the sound quality is very good. The first 3 songs (after an introduction) are 16 to 18 minutes long. The last, Hoedown in 5 minutes long. This comes from 1975, so the band is Coughlan and Hastings (as always) with David Sinclair, Geoff Richardson and Mike Wedgewood. The bad thing about Caravan live albums, is that For Richard is on almost every one, and Love In Your Eye and Dab Song Concerto are on many, many of them. The good thing about Caravan live albums is that Caravan plays these songs differently almost every time in concert. The versions of Love in Your Eye and Dab Song Concerto are very good. They are among the best I have heard. Although, I think ending of Love in Your Eye is a little weak compared to some other versions I have heard. I found this version of For Richard to be forgetable. My favorite live album from Caravan is called the Best of Caravan. I have not seen a CD version of it yet. My next favorite is the poorly titled Songs for Oblivion Fishermen. Still, this is a very nice live CD.
kireviewer 5/5 08.03.2010 (AMAZON)
Given that Caravan's sole official live album from their classic period was done with a full orchestra, the four 1975 sides here -- drawn from four different albums and featuring just the quintet playing before a live audience -- fill in an important gap in the group's history. Any new listeners who might be puzzled as to Caravan's appeal could well be won over by the opening track, the quietly gorgeous yet ominous "Love in Your Eye" (from Waterloo Lily), a 15-minute virtuoso number that showcases Geoff Richardson's violin, Dave Sinclair's jazz/prog rock keyboard flourishes, and Pye Hastings' hard rock guitar, all supported by Mike Wedgewood's eloquently understated bass. Also present are "For Richard" (originally from If I Could Do It All Over Again), "The Dab Song Concerto" from their then-current album Cunning Stunts, and "Hoedown" from For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night. In contrast to a lot of progressive rock performances that were mere shadows of studio originals, the concert setting here enhances the material and the group's musical skills are more than up to the challenge of making this kind of intricate material work on-stage. The recording quality is excellent as well.
Bruce Eder (ALLMUSIC)
Prog-rock in full flight! Commercialization? In your mind only!
I don't know how often Caravan were guesting in the BBC studios themselves, but this isn't a selection of tracks from guest sessions - it's the recording of a broadcast of Caravan's show at London's Paris Theatre on the 21st of March, 1975. I'm not sure if it's the complete show, either, but if it is, it's a hell of a daring one: the entire recording consists of three very long tracks and one (relatively) very short one. That night, Caravan did their usual standards, 'Love In Your Eye' and 'For Richard', which you can also find on the New Symphonia album, and augmented them with their recent long-song exploration, 'The Dab Song Concerto', which was yet to appear on the Cunning Stunts album several months later, finally washing it all down with a short uplifting 'Hoedown' that included some untrivial audience participation. Ah well, a 'Golf Girl' or two would be nice... but we can't always get blah blah blah. Anyway, the important thing to note is that the Cunning Stunts is already fully in place, with Mike Wedgewood occupying his place as bass guitarist. Not wanting to run ahead, I'll just note that it's a funny thing to notice Caravan being so dreadfully esoteric and intricate and long-winded in their stage approach when their very next album would already be all poppy and short-song-based and accessible and all - meaning it's much harder to actually change your image on stage than it is to do that in the studio. On stage, you're kind of chained by your audience. What's better for an avid prog period Genesis fan - the studio Abacab or Three Sides Live? There are no two answers to this question. Then again, I'm subconsciously making that mistake of placing a red-hot iron bar between the "prog" and "pop" sides of the same band, which really should never be done. On to the performances themselves. The lack of orchestra, surprisingly, does not make Caravan's sound any thinner, because Dave's rich array of keyboards almost perfectly emulates the sound of a string section when needed. And with or without the orchestra, 'For Richard' is still infinitely better than its studio counterpart when played live. Thus, Geoff Richardson's violin solo in the first part of the song moves fluently and flawlessly, with a little bit of country influence, I'd say (or maybe he just plays the violin in the same way he'd play a guitar, which, of course, makes it sound country in the end - that's the bizarre crazy thing about all those instruments), and so does the Dave solo... the best thing, though, happens when Dave and Pye start battling with each other, the first one with that thin wimpy "fusion-esque" synth tone so deeply loved by Jan Hammer, the second one with a weirdly processed guitar sound. 'Love In Your Eye' goes off equally well, although, granted, that crashing violin riff which introduces the 'sturm und drang' section of the song is pretty goddamn hard to play convincingly without a full orchestra backing. Never mind - they compensate for it fully by stretching the song and adding even more of that jazz-fusionesque sound that was probably being pushed on the band by Dave, because he carries most of the soloing brunt while the jazzy parts are coming. 'The Dab Song Concerto' (here called exactly that, not with the crazyass spelling of Cunning Stunts) also requires your full attention. Yeah, I realize it's kind of tiring to listen to three fifteen-plus minute suites (sic!) in a row - when was the last time you did that since you threw your copy of Tales From Topographic Oceans into the garbage bin? But really, Caravan in concert are such a great bid, and they have such a ferocious jamming power you'd never expect from such a pathetically wimpoid band (well, at least Pye is definitely wimpoid), that I have no problem sitting through all these lengthy demonstrations of Brit virtuosity. But anyway, what I wanted to say was that this live version is easily just as good as the studio version, and that it's certainly Hastings' main spotlight on the album, with a few short, but well-placed fiery guitar solos and a vocal delivery to die for... I'm still occasionally afraid that his thin whiny voice might break just about any second now, but somehow it never does. And then there's the greatest moment of the entire record - at the end of the fourteenth minute, where the soft limpy melodies die away, get replaced by that "ominous" outburst of faux-orchestrated sound from the synths, and then Pye hits the distortion pedal and comes through with that massive metallic riff and they go into the looping coda of the song, with Richardson wailing away on the violin, and then they probably let in the tape or something because there are all these vocal overdubs and apocalyptic noises and blabber over the playing (and occasionally, a few lines of Mellotron - did they have one onstage or was it on tape as well?) and it just grows and grows and then BOOM!, it bursts, and the stunned audience has to have at least a second to realize that it's over before it bursts into applause. After these lengthy marathons, five minutes of 'Hoedown' sound like a Ramones song or something, but it's still fun, and a little bit of relief before the end - and a little bit of fun when Hastings gets the audience to clap and then politely informs them that they're 'clapping in 7/8 time' and everybody's happy. Including me. Well, I mean, I would still like to have something that wouldn't "double" the New Symphonia album so gruesomely, but I guess the BBC aren't really to blame.
George Starostin (STARLING)
A well hidden gem....
Behind a ghastly cheap cover, this gemstone is hidden. Ignore it at your peril. I walked past it several times in the local record-store before I had a look at this webpage and then ran back to the shop. The shop even gave me a very generous discount and the CD was mine. My point is; this album is easy to ignore as cheap worthless stuff. It is not ! The sound is brilliant from beginning to end. The first three tracks (of the in total four tracks) Love In Your Eye, For Richard, The Dab Song Concerto and Hoedown is all lengthy song. They clocks in at over fifteen minutes long each. They are filled with lenghty solos and improvisations in the best Canterbury scene tradition. The music is both playful and intelligent. It is also swinging like mad and I am dancing at the same time as writing these lines. Thank God for the laptop computers! The violins of Geoff Richardson, the guitars of Pye Hastings and the keyboards of David Sinclair often goes into lenghty solos. Lenghty and infectious playful. The rest of the band is superb too and I cannot fault them on anything. I do not know the studio versions of Love In Your Eye, For Richard and The Dab Song Concerto. But these live versions are really great. The last song Hoedown are a much more stripped down Caravan song and probably the weakest song of them all. It is only five minutes long too. I really enjoy the first three songs and this album is for me a solid kick up my backside and will lead me to go back to the Caravan albums. With the exception of In The Land Of Grey & Pink, I have not been listening to their albums for ages. This live album is highly recommended for anyone into Caravan and the Canterbury Scene.
toroddfuglesteg 3,75/5 27.04.2009 (PROGARCHIVES)