Alan Parsons Live

rdf:langString Alan Parsons Live

rdf:langString Alan Parsons Live /

rdf:langString The Very Best Live

rdf:langString Alan Parsons Live.jpg

rdf:langString Arcade Records

rdf:langString May 1994-February 1995

rdf:langString live

rdf:langString Alan Parsons Live is the first live album by Alan Parsons, recorded in May 1994 during his European tour, and released late that year by Arcade Records in Europe. RCA/BMG added three new studio tracks and changed the cover art when releasing the album in the rest of the world in 1995, renaming it The Very Best Live; stylized on the cover with "The Very Best" in a smaller font between Alan Parsons and Live. Despite the tour promoting Try Anything Once with seven songs from the album in the setlist, the live performances on the album are all songs from his years with The Alan Parsons Project. Project regulars Ian Bairnson, Andrew Powell, Stuart Elliott and anchor the band with Parsons, Gary Howard (Freudiana) and ex-Manfred Mann's Earth Band vocalist Chris Thompson (Try Anything Once) providing vocals for the live tracks. The album is notable for instrumental track "Luciferama" (a blending of "Lucifer" and "Mammagamma" that first appeared on Andrew Powell's 1983 instrumental album The Philharmonia Orchestra Plays The Best of The Alan Parsons Project, was played like this at the Project's Night of the Proms live performance in 1990 and remains in Parsons' live set to this day); "When", another Parsons songwriting contribution by Bairnson, sung by Thompson; "Take the Money and Run", the second songwriting and first lead vocal contribution to a Parsons album by Elliott; and Thompson's first non-demo studio recording of his co-composition "You're The Voice", a song first recorded and released by John Farnham in 1986. It is also the only Parsons live album that contains a full rendition of "The Raven" with the vocoder part. The track is prefaced by the second part of "A Dream Within a Dream" (uncredited on the album). Later performances opt for seguing "Breakdown" into the second half of "The Raven".