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Great Cross between Old and New Air Supply - Live!

L.A. Scene | Indian Trail, NC USA | 06/15/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The best way to sum up Air Supply's "Greatest Hits Live: Now and Forever" is that this is not your regular live album. This album brings 10 of the best Air Supply songs performed live with the Taipei Symphony Orchestra. There are two studio songs: There is a new song called "The Way I Feel" and a remake of an earlier Air Supply classic "Now and Forever". The live songs are really the pieces that are going to fuel this album's strength. The live pieces were recorded in Taipei, Taiwan in 1995. Air Supply's days as a hit-making machine had long passed for about 12 years now. By 1995, the band still had a solid following (especially outside the U.S.), so by finally releasing a live album almost 20 years into their careers they had nothing to lose. This effort would help continue to keep the existing fan base happy, help some of the old fan base rediscover Air Supply, and harvest some new Air Supply fans.Air Supply's performance on this collection is augmented a couple of ways. They are accompanied by some outstanding studio musicians - most noteably a pianist named Guy Allison who is going to help compliment the outstanding keyboards already in place by Graham Russell. Allison has played a role in 90s Air Supply as a songwriter too - co-writing the songs "Always" and "Someone". You'll hear the power of the piano and keyboards many of the big name classics that are included on the album. The interesting thing is that the Orchestra doesn't have as prominent role as on other albums by artists who have done live albums with one. The Orchestra's role is perfect making this very much an Air Supply album with a key focus on the talents of the stars - Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock. It will be the combination of Graham Russell and Guy Allison's keyboard and pianos that really are going to steal the show when it comes to the instrumentation - especially on tracks like "Making Love Out of Nothing at All", "All Out of Love", "Lost in Love", "Sweet Dreams"The trademark Air Supply vocals are on this album. Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock have some tremendous dual harmonies on the songs "Lost in Love", "Sweet Dreams", and on the classic remake of "Unchained Melody". What I like about their version of "Unchained Melody" is how they use the classic Air Supply crescendo to build up the song at the end, nobody does this better than Air Supply. There is a lot of true emotion on this CD, but none comes to life better than in "The One That You Love", when Russell Hitchock shows an elated emotion with a slight chuckle of joy when he sings "we have the right you know". As usual Graham Russell is perfect in complimenting Hitchcock's lead vocals. This is also heard on "The One That You Love". You will hear some classic trade off on the lead vocals between Graham and Russell; noteably on the song "Goodbye" (which is a David Foster penned song, you can hear his trademark keyboard influence). The two most powerful numbers are the first live song, "Making Love Out of Nothing At All" and the last live song (actually the 10th track since the remaining 2 are the studio cuts included), "All Out of Love". The live version of "Making Love Out of Nothing At All" even blows away the great studio version. Hitchcock again shows how in touch he is with the crowd and music when he sings "I can make all of the stadiums - ROCK!" (emphasis on the Rock). To me the "Rock" blows me away each time I hear it and it helps set the table for the remaining live cuts to have the high energy and emotion you would expect from an Air Supply live performance. On "All Out of Love", when Russell sings and holds the 'of' on "what are you thinking of" - instead of the classic slight pause you hear on the studio track, you'll hear a spectacular drum pattern followed by the significant pause. It's almost like a mini encore during the pause. The drum pattern lasts about 20 seconds and the pause goes about another 30 seconds. It is the perfect ending to what is a most powerful performance by the band. It's also worth noting that "Sweet Dreams" is very powerful number as well - the keyboard intro will just blow you away.The liner notes are pretty good. All of the lyrics to all of the songs were included. It would have been nice to see on which songs the Symphony Orchestra played a more prominent role. It also would have been nice to put the album references on each song, but the song copyright date is included. I would have also liked to have seen some more photos (there are six - plus the cover photo).As for drawbacks, the only real gripe I have is that only six of the classic songs are included from the album. Perhaps if they could have made this a longer album, they could have included tracks like "Just as I Am", "Two Less Lonely People in the World", and "Even the Nights are Better". Don't let this drawback deter you, because the later years stuff included is very good. This is a solid Live Album and one highly recommended for your collection. Judging this as a live album, it really does everything a live album should do - I give it the 5 star rating."

The best Live album I've ever heard

Chris Hewitt | Brentwood, CA United States | 03/21/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"About 5 years ago I went to an Air Supply concert. It was really good I have to say, and I even got to go up and meet one of the performers during the concert. So after the concert I went out to buy this CD and grew attatched to the music very easily.The CD starts out with "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All", which is a good beginning to this LIVE album. It is one of my favorite songs, along with the 7 minute, 14 second "Sweet Dreams". That song is really amazing in lengths that it has a huge piano solo in it in which when I heard it in the concert I was completely blown away. Guy Allison, the pianist, has a great talent that really shines in this album, and in particular this song.Another song on this album that is remarkable is the ever so popular "Unchained Melody". Air Supply did a very good rendition of this song. One of their big hits, Lost in Love is also really good.I liked the songs so much that I picked up "The Best Of Air Supply" song booklet for Piano/Guitar/Vocal. It shows you all of the chords and recreates the magic of their sound. A great momento if you are a music tracker type of person.All in all I really enjoyed listening to this album for the past several years and am going to continue to listen to it a lot in the future. If you want yourself some good soft rock/classic rock sound to listen to, this is a great album to pick up. 5/5 Stars for sure."