Live

It's now been quite a while since I've had the opportunity to attend a live music concert. We have tickets to see Kings Of Leon live in Dallas next month, but at this point, I'm worried there is a high chance a lot of fall concerts will end up being cancelled due to ongoing COVID-19 surges as new variants continue to arise and spread around.  Perhaps because of this situation, or perhaps because of some other random reason, I've noticed recently that I've been really in the mood to listen to live concert cd's as well as watch live concert videos.

I recently enjoyed watching and also listening to the Pet Shop Boys 1994 Discovery in Rio de Janeiro that was recently released as a DVD/2 CD set.  The song selection and performances are enjoyable and Chris and Neil both wear a lot of very ridiculous elaborate costumes during the set, which some might find overly silly, but are definitely fun.  The one thing I don't enjoy about this show is that on a couple of tracks their on-stage dancers perform routines that seem a bit too overtly sexual in a way that I think detracted from the overall "fun" feel of the show and felt out of place with the tone of the rest of the show.  But if you just listed to the cd's, of course you don't even know there are dancers.  Another fun thing about this show is that in some songs they add in a short medley of another track by another artist, which is a live technique that I always find interesting and usually enjoyable (depending on the song choice of course).  I think the ones in this show work well.  They also do a full cover version of Blur's Boys And Girls, which is also fun.

I recently purchased the Blu-ray/2 CD set from New Order titled Education Entertainment Recreation, which is a live show at Alexandra Palace recorded in 2018.  I haven't had a chance to watch the video yet, but I have been enjoying listening to the live cd's.  One worry I do have about this set is that Bernard Sumner's voice seems to be getting noticeable weaker over the years, but overall I think he still sounds ok and does a pretty good job.

My newfound interest in live recordings has also inspired me to want to buy the Inner Sanctum Blu-ray/2 CD set from Pet Shop Boys from a couple of years ago that I've never seen and also to re-watch their Pandemonium concert video from 2009 that I have.  I did play that cd again recently and thought it was good, though for that show the cd was limited to only one cd and so does not contain all of the tracks that are in the show on the DVD.  I also recently listened to Erasure's World Be Live 2 cd set from 2017 which was good, but I was disappointed to find they released only audio for this show - there is no video available.

Do you enjoy listening to or watching recordings of live concerts?  Which do you prefer - just the audio or watching video with audio?  Are that any concert recordings you've enjoyed lately that you would recommend?