Search - B.B. King :: Live at the Regal

Great audio, great performance, horrible edits

J. Polsgrove | Baja Arizona | 08/30/2008

(2 out of 5 stars)

"So they finally went back and remastered the muddy audio on this classic album! The new sound is fantastic -- clear as a bell. Sadly, while the audio was being cleaned up, no one bothered to clean up the very, very sloppy edits (especially in the second half), such as when the second intro of B.B. (why two separate intros, anyway?) gets abruptly chopped off and goes right into a song that from the background crowd noise came at some other point in the show. If you're going to do a live album, the tracks should at least create the illusion of a live show, especially in this digital era when fade-outs and fade-ins are no longer used, and audience applause can be smoothly edited in to create seamless transitions!



The performance is powerful and this is definitely a 5-star recording that has been royally botched by sloppy and oh-so-obvious edits. In addition, many remasters go back and add in some bonus tracks. If no original source material survives (which may be the case 42 years after this performance!), then something from the era is added as a bonus and the CD is fleshed out to anywhere from 60 to 79 minutes long. Not here. You get the original 35 minutes. No more. No less.



Anyone who's seen what Legacy is doing with classic LPs (adding more to the original CD, plus a second CD of extra material) by Bob Marley, Eric Clapton, The Who, etc., surely have some idea how this great LP could have been updated for the 21st century. What we get is clearer audio, and nothing else. What a disappointment!"