| Various Artists - Saturday Night Live: The Musical Performances, Vols. 1-2 |
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| Music Disc Reviews Audio CD | |
| Written by Brian Kahn | |
| Tuesday, 21 September 1999 | |
The Musical Performances, vols 1 & 2 | Performance 4 | Sound 6 | Saturday Night Live has long been showcasing great artists who have performed live on the show. Music has always been an important part of the show which has featured artists from all genres, some superstars and some not so well known. Celebrating twenty five years of weekly performances the show has decided to release thirty songs from 1977 through the present on two discs. With so many performances to choose from it should be no surprise that all of the performances are outstanding. Some of the artists, like TLC, sang versions of their songs quite different from that in general release. The wide mix of artists on Volume 1 includes Jewel, Eric Clapton, Paul Simon, Grateful Dead, Lenny Kravitz and Billy Joel. Volume 2 features Nirvana, Hole, Beastie Boys, TLC Dr. Dre and Neil Young. Paul Simon’s "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" is the first cut of the volume 1 and is a great live performance. Simon accompanied by a seemingly large number of musicians and singers starts the series off with a well recorded upbeat island tempo. The horns and background singers really make this song sound great. I could go on track by track through the whole set, there are some real gems here. The fun thing about live music from the show, and in general is capturing something different, something spontaneous. The sound quality is very good for a live performance. While the quality varies a little bit from performer to performer it is fairly consistent considering the performances occurred over more than twenty years and is better than average. If you listening closely you can hear the progression of sound quality improvement over the years. If you enjoy the music from the past twenty years you are bound to find lots to like on these discs. Like this article? Bookmark and share with any of the sites below.        |
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