Crowd Noise...

I’ve talked before about my long love of live albums. But here’s one thing I’ve never mentioned about them. Crowd noise. Those albums like the Grateful Deads ‘Europe 72’ which fade out the crowd noise immediately feel unnatural and fail to appreciate one of the beauty’s of the live album is hearing the crowd at that gig and in that moment.
As an adjunct to that, I'm fascinated by the voices you can hear on live recordings. I’m not talking about the amorphous cheering, though it must be great to think you are on a record, albeit along with thousands of others, I’m talking about the individual voices you can hear preserved for all time.
For example, on the fourth live side of Eat It by Humble Pie, recorded at Green’s Playhouse, just before Up Our Sleeves, someone shouts in a Glasgow accent ‘Get it up ye!’ Who was that person? Did they know they were on a record? There’s always one.
On a live Genesis recording, in between songs as Peter Gabriel is taking off one of his costumes and strapping on another, talking to the audience, someone, a young voice shouts ‘moonlight knight’, anticipating the next song, to which Peter says ‘wrong’ and they go into ‘Selling England By The Pound.’ Who was that kid? This is what I love about live recordings. Its a moment in time, held in a kind of sonic aspic.

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