Paul Is Live

by

Paul McCartney

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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 !!!!

I attended one of the shows during this 1993 tour and was amazed at how strong Paul's voice was. He sounded better than he did on the TTLF album from the 89-90 tour. I was disappointed when I listened to the cd because the recordings didn't quite do the show justice. The instruments sound rather muffled and too loud over the vocals. And what was up with that flangy, echo effect on Paul's voice during the entire cd? I don't recall hearing that come out of the PA's when I went to the show. The new songs from the OTG album sound great live, even though it was sad when the audience sat down only during these songs... Will not disappoint Beatles fans, but as for Wings fans, material is lacking. Paul did close the Memphis show with Band on the Run, which sounded great and should have been added to the album in place of the weak soundchecks. Those were nice but a waste to fill up the album.