Search - Paul McCartney :: Paul Is Live

A solid live performance by Paul and his band! Definitely no

Matthew G. Sherwin | last seen screaming at Amazon customer service | 05/27/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Paul McCartney possesses an almost singular talent to create and sing good music. Period. I always enjoy picking up a live CD of Paul in concert to just get the feeling of what it was like to be there. People have said that these tracks, recorded at different times in different locations, have been put together so coherently that the overall effect is that this was all recorded at one time. They're right!



Quite a few of these songs are NOT repeats from Paul's 1990 live CD set entitled Tripping The Live Fantastic; and that's another plus for this album.



The CD has some very strong performances by Paul and his band. I particularly liked the way "Drive My Car" starts off the CD. It's a whopper of a song with an awesome positive beat to it and this sets the listener up for wanting more. "Let Me Roll It" follows and is very well done also. I really liked "Live And Let Die;" but "We Can Work It Out," "All My Loving," "Penny Lane" and "Peace In The Neighbourhood" are also very well done. There's hardly a bad spot on the album until the track "Welcome To Soundcheck," which was filler in my opinion. However, this one track is not intended to be the focal point of the album.



There are also two previously unreleased songs recorded during soundchecks and placed at the end of this CD: " Hotel In Benidorm" and "I Wanna Be Your Man." The sound isn't quite as good here but the reverse of the album does point out that these are soundcheck recordings and not finalized versions.



Look for Paul's late wife Linda, Hamish Stuart, Robbie McIntosh and Wix Wickens on vocals, too. The group harmonizes very well.



The sound quality is excellent for a live recording especially when you consider that these songs were recorded in different places on different dates. I was very impressed. Paul and his band send out a certain type of electricity that is unmistakable. Awesome!



The liner notes boast a great collage of photos from the 1993 tour put together by Paul himself. The locations and dates for each recorded song are also provided on the reverse of the album liner notes. A nice plus!



People often say that this is not the best live CD Paul put out; and maybe that's true. Nevertheless, I myself enjoyed it immensely with the exception of the soundcheck tracks. They just didn't quite "do it" for me.



I recommend this for Paul's fans, Beatles' fans (since there are eleven Beatles songs on this CD), fans of classic rock and pop vocals. Thank you, Paul--and please--ROCK ON !!!!

"

More like a 3rd disc for "Tripping"

Craig K. Galer | Michigan | 03/11/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I really don't want to come across as all negative here, because I really liked McCartney's '93 concert. But this live album, coming just three years after "Tripping the Live Fantastic", pales in comparison.



For one thing, only about half the concert is represented here - the half that doesn't duplicate material from "Tripping", which accounts for some of the complaints about its incompleteness. Even so, "Live and Let Die" is duplicated here (the only duplication), but "Another Day" (which was played in concert) is left off the album altogether. For this reason, it's not the "souvenir" of the concert that Paul's other live albums are (the "Hey Jude" singalong was just as cool in '93 as in '90, and "Yesterday" brought down the house as always, but neither is duplicated here).



Also, whereas "Tripping" went heavy with energetic rock-n-roll numbers, this time Paul filled out his setlist with mellower tunes like "Michelle", "Here, There and Everywhere", "Penny Lane", "We Can Work It Out" and "My Love". Don't get me wrong - I was glad to hear all of those tunes, but they're definitely lower-energy than the previous album. Again, there was plenty of rockin' in the concert, but it was mostly duplication from the previous tour, and thus not included in the album.



The material from "Off the Ground", which was Paul's most recent studio release at the time of the tour, is also not as strong as the "Flowers in the Dirt" stuff from "Tripping" (with the exception of "C'mon People").



All of that being said, I like this album. It's great to get live versions of "Drive My Car" and "Magical Mystery Tour", and there's still plenty here to enjoy - McCartney has never skimped on his concerts. It suffers, inevitably, by comparison with "Tripping", but that's hardly a scathing criticism. In fact, playing "Paul is Live" as the 3rd disc of "Tripping" might just be the best way to play it; it's Paul McCartney, live in concert, and how bad can that be?"

Pretty Good Live Album

Thomas Magnum | NJ, USA | 02/13/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Paul Is Live follows the course of his previous live effort Tripping The Live Fantastic, but is just a single disk. One problem the album faces is that it was in support of the Off The Ground album which does not match up to Flowers In The Dirt. The songs from the album featured here are okay, but not great. One nice touch is that Mr. McCartney does not duplicate the songs that were on the Tripping album. We get excellent songs like "We Can Work It Out", "Paperback Writer", "Penny Lane", "Let Me Roll It" and "Drive My Car". This is a nice supplement to his other live work as it helps round out the live versions of many of his most famous songs."