"This is a recording of a concert given at the Royal Festival Hall, London on 9th July 1987." I remember — for what seemed like a year or two after I got this CD — cursing myself, wondering how I'd missed attending the concert. Sure, I was still on student finances then, but a PCO gig, even then, was sufficiently rare to justify exceptional expense — at that time my parents still lived close enough to provide a bed for the night, and Jeremy could probably have been persuaded to come too.
Finally I remembered that I had a prior engagement on 9th July 1987: round at your place, getting ready for your Big Day on 10th. Sorry if the second-hand trifle set and the joke 7" single were a bit naff as gifts, but, like I said, student finances (even exceptionally)…
There's no such thing as a PCO album that isn't a work of exquisite beauty. This one has its moments, like the long slow fade (a live fade, not a mixing desk one) to Numbers 1 to 4. But without checking my setlists, it seems the live set was pretty stable over the years, and, though Simon Jeffes used to say that the studio albums were just sketches for the more definitive live versions, but there's relatively little to make these performances stand out above the others. So, if I were forced to give up one PCO album, other than the compilations, ceteris paribus, mutatis mutandis, et cetera, et cetera, this would probably be the one.
Actually, scratch that, I've just had another listen and I'm not giving it up, no way. Super corporem mortuum meum.
MusicBrainz entry for this album
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