Originally Posted by
kenneth
The editing on those early live albums was too atrocious to be believed. The sudden changes in the tapes when suddenly the crowd noise disappears - or suddenly appears. I was probably in my early 20s when I found these albums in the cut-out bins, but I can't imagine any self-respecting teenager wouldn't have wondered at the crude edits and scanty attention to quality on these. Still, as others have said, it's nice to have at least some document of these early performances. For example, some of the Marvelettes' live set is almost unlistenable [[due to Wanda's screeching, and she is my all time favorite Motown singer), but some of it is excellent as you can really feel the crowd's excitement and how different the Marvelettes were on stage than they were in the studio.
These must have been really rushed to market. The first James Brown Apollo set is indeed excellent, but a lot of James Brown's 'live' LPs have similar quality problems to those in the early Motown catalog.
But anything is better than simply overdubbing the sounds of a live crowd over a studio recording. Or singers lip-syncing to a recording while they're pretending to be live...and never knowing quite how to handle the fade out at the end of the record. I didn't even remember that "Operator" and "Old Love" were the studio recordings on the Wells set. I'll have to find these and listen to them again. Too bad they're not on CD. As I recall, there was a Marginal or some other bootleg European label CD set which I think included all 4 of the early live albums [[Miracles, Marvelettes, Gaye, Wonder). I had a couple of the Marginal sets [[like the Eddie Holland, before his material was made available in that fantastic double CD set), and their quality wasn't bad, all things considered.
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