Handmade For Fans #2.
Recorded at the Martell Club, Falkirk 10-Sept-1997 except 1 recorded at the Pavillion Theatre, Glasgow 7-Sept-1997
Ian Hunter returned to Scotland early in September, at the start of his Autumn 1997 tour. After several months together, the band now play well together, and turn in a strong performance. This set, number 2 in the "Home-made for Fans" series, contains the full Falkirk gig, with bonus tracks from Glasgow thrown in for good measure.
The sound on this 2-CD set is very good. Don't let the fact it is an audience recording put you off - distortion and compression are almost non-existent and crowd chatter rarely intrudes. Heck, I've heard "proper" live albums which are not as good as this! Most of the set is in stereo too (tho' the bonus tracks from Glasgow are in mono). Salvation is exceptional - if this is anything to go by then Ian's next album will be a monster.
This set was recorded on Minidisc, and the CDs were mastered direct from these - sound quality is therefore audibly better than on the tapes of this show which are circulating. The discs themselves are CD-R (no fancy labels or suchlike), with just a hand-written "1" and "2" to distinguish them. Track indexing is spot on.
As an example of Ian live in 1997, you can't do much better than track this set down. This one gets a firm "highly recommended" tag from me.
Note: a few copies crept out with poor quality packaging. Better quality packaging is available (from the source of this CD) on request.