The Black Crowes

Live At The Greek

Gettin a little thick in the middle

Review Score:

(8/10)
I'm listening to the jimmy page and black crowes concert. I had to adjust the equalizers for this to be listenable: basically consisting of lowering the middle range ones. But this album is "better" on worse speakers, these speakers(120 watt B&Ws) bring out the fact that the sound is too thick throughout the middle and accentuate by their accuracy the general lack of definition probably due to it being a live recording. Now, turning down the middle range allows for somewhat of a wall of bass like what you could expect from led zeppelin music, I mean, custard pie is on right now, after all. But the recording levels are so high too, that I could break my apartment before I got the volume knob halfway up the dial. Now, the drummer, he's so shattered, I mean he's very precise but not very good and relies mainly on his middle range drum that has this thin sort of sound to it, and then the bass drum when used isn't brought out enough in the recording for it to come through as something special and unique like a separated member, making him sound even more mediocre. The whole drop down thing in Custard Pie just isn't brought out at all. So, the result is that I had more fun listening to this on my old speakers (40watt Sanyos) which could hide behind their muddy sound than I do on my new ones. And suddenly at the beginning of sick again, the drum/bass combination booms in more than did the drop down, drop down with drum response in custard pie so they're just full of--it that's all. I mean, sure this recording, for a concert, is fairly clean mainly, more technologically mastered and all that I guess you could say than song remains the same, this was recorded 26 years later, so you know, it should be even though you could argue each instrument doesn't separate out as much even as did the 73 recording (probably because there are too many guitars), but I can't believe Jimmy Page would be satisfied with putting this thing up and being happy about it enough to distribute it, whereas at the same time he's so damn stingy about old led zeppelin concerts which must exist on masters--you know they do--and that could be produced and sold, but he won't do it because as rumor has it he isn't satisfied with the recordings or the performances. Well, there are all those bootlegs out there and it is so frustrating the sound's so bad etc, and you just wanna say, come on man, you can put out a concert from say 1977 or I don't know 1980, why not, it won't kill you, I bet he's got master tapes of something, anything, doesn't he realize that if all those bootlegs exist, it's because people are STARVED for more of their music on stage. And it isn't always a question of the best concerts, there are bootlegs of mediocre performances, etc. but they're still fun to listen to because you have a window on a world gone, and I'm sorry but this album is a worse window into what had been, with all its slick recording techniques (which are questionable even still), than is a shoddy bootleg sounds like you're listening from a room down the hall. But I'm a sap and I love Led Zeppelin and just as I am in ecstasy over any bootleg you give me because you try to distill out what's wrong to get to the heart of something great, you can essentially distill out what went wrong here and get a little taste of what used to be, which was of course wonderful.

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