Search - Caravan :: Canterbury Comes to London: Live From Astoria

Bad new songs

kireviewer | Sunnyvale, Ca United States | 11/08/2003

(2 out of 5 stars)

"This CD has been released with different covers and different titles, all variations on the full title: Cavaran; Canterbury Comes To London: Live from Astoria.This is yet another reunion live album from Caravan, playing the old songs plus a few new bad ones. This time the group is Pye Hastings, Richard Coughlin, David Sinclair, and Geoff Richardson, with three other musicians. One of the new guys is the old guitarist from Robert Plant's band. So, parts of this album have a harder, guitar-oriented edge, with the dual guitar attack. The album starts out with a fairly good Memory Lain, Hugh with some nice guitar solos at the end. It's nice to hear Richardson' viola at the beginning. It always gave the later Caravan music a very unique atmosphere. From there it goes into an OK version of Headloss. But, both these tracks have been done live before and none of the live versions have been that much different than the studio versions. The ones here are slightly unique with the dual guitars.The Nine Feet Underground here is only 17 minutes, 4 minutes shorter than the original studio version. There is nothing that different for most of the song. Near the end, the group plays it like a lounge act. It's nice to see them change things up, but this new version isn't particularly good.The album than moves into 4 new tracks from Pye Hastings (songs from albums released in the nineties). There is only one, Cold As Ice that is even tolerable. It has that atmospheric feel, highlighted by Hasting's vocals. The rest are bad lyrically and musically. The last two are rants against people who have done Hastings wrong.For Richard is on almost every live album Caravan has done. There must be over 8 versions of the song. At 11 minutes, this is one of the shortest ones. What is nice about this version is that is edgier and harder than any of the other versions, with guitars slamming out the tune. However, the famous bassline gets muted and distorted so that it is no longer recognizable. The CD ends up with a pointless version of Golf Girl. It is not much different than the original, and I never thought that this was one of Caravan's better songs.So, with this album you get rougher, but interesting versions of Memory and Richard, a number of old songs where nothing new has been added and 4 bad new songs.There are many, better live Caravan albums to get. Songs for Oblivion Fishermen (what a horrible title) might be the best, featuring some really old performances. Then there is the Best of Caravan Live (but I don't think it has been released on CD). And, from 1994 there is the reunion album called "Live", featuring the original group."