So how much of Bill's music is in it?

Dear God! I've just replied to you on the LITAA thread, and you talk utter shit! I've seen Jeff Beck playing with Jan Hammer, and it was obvious who was playing what. Just sad that the last time I saw him was last year, with Johnny Depp. Not his best career move. But so many great memories, and so many great albums to play. RIP, guvnor.

As far as I know, they added percussion on 'Shine'. That's all. What have you read that Bill was upset? The original sleeve notes said that he wanted BBD live to be a transient, fleeting experience, yet here it is committed to the permanence of vinyl... or something like that. You seem to have definitive opinions about an album that you know sweet FA about!

It just occurred to me that if they chose different tracks from different performances how would they link up the timing? They picked complete tracks, songs, numbers, whatever you want to call them - not tracks as in "multitracks". So timing was not a problem.

The only time I have heard immaculate live playing was on the LITAA. That could have been a studio album, or maybe it was in part.... judging from what I read. Don't know what you've read, but if you listen to the box set you can pick out the tracks from the various shows which were selected for the original album. There was a discussion here about that, at the time of release of the box set. I did it, and I don't remember hearing any differences from the selected performances in their original shows and then on the original album - apart from Cabasa El Dubova on 'Shine' 😉

The other thing I should have said was that in 1977 there was no domestic video market. So a professionally-shot film would have been only for cinema release or for selling to a TV company - not for selling to masses of domestic customers.

It was 1977, remember? Doing it professionally would have meant considerable expense. And the home movie equipment available to the average punter would have been something like a Super 8 camera - expensive, impossible to conceal, taking only a few minutes of film, and maybe (I don't know) not able to cope with the lighting conditions. Maybe somewhere there's a few seconds of shaky, hand-held, local news footage. I guess the record company thought they were spending enough by hiring the Rolling Stones mobile to record the audio. Though of course this would almost certainly have been cheaper than hiring a studio for the same length of time, especially since the band was actually bringing in money at the same time.

Nice to see that the "Sunburst Finish" box is now the same size as the others. 😎 It was the first to come out, but after that they had to change suppliers.

Read this and then please stop talking nonsense. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/populationestimatesbyethnicgroupandreligionenglandandwales/2019 "In 2019, the most common ethnic group in England and Wales was White (84.8%)...."

Royal Artillery Memorial, Hyde Park Corner, London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Artillery_Memorial

Not the first time Bill has been in the crossword. The trouble is, I can't do it nowadays, since Fred Dellar passed away last year and someone else is compiling it now. (Spoiler alert) I can however tell you that photoclue C is Christian Vander, leader and drummer of Magma, whom I saw for the first time in 1975, and for the second time in .... 2019!

Just noticed that Prog Magazine have a very nice review of the Red Noise reissue. (It's the issue of the magazine with Fripp on the cover.) I have seen three reviews of the Red Noise box set, in Mojo, Classic Rock and Prog. They have all been excellent - scoring 4 out of 5, or 9 out of 10. It's clear that, even if what Bill was trying to do was not fully understood or appreciated at the time, it most certainly is now. Looking forward to it!

@Orphan of Babylon I know that political discussions are a turn-off for most people here - and we could discuss why that is a problem 😁 - so I don't intend to prolong this one. But I'll tell you how I arrived at my position on boat people. A few years ago I had a holiday on Kos, the Greek island that is just a short sea crossing from Turkey. It was, and still is, a popular destination for boat people, since it means that they are in the EU. Anyway, although the authorities had set up a camp in a stadium outside Kos town, there were also many of them camping in Kos town itself. Looking at them, it struck me that the great majority of them were young and fit. They had had the initiative and drive to get out of their own countries, and they had - or had had - a substantial amount of money, to pay the people smugglers. Only half facetiously, I observed that most of them had better phones than I did. So I came to the view that these were just the sort of people that any country should welcome. I reckoned that after a short period of assimilation they would become productive members of society, and certainly not a burden on the health service. I was ashamed, and still am, of the government's attitude to and treatment of these people. Finally, I note the very poor performance of the far-right parties (Britain 1st, UKIP, Reform, etc) in Wakefield, and conclude that immigration - illegal or legal - is not seen as much of a problem there.

@Orphan of Babylon There is a difference between entering the country by an irregular route (eg small boat across the Channel) and entering the country illegally. Seeking asylum is NOT illegal, despite what the government and Daily Mail want you to believe. 7 out of 10 initial asylum applications were granted last year - https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/feb/24/deportations-from-uk-at-record-low-as-asylum-applications-soar. If you really are in this country illegally and undetected, then you're going to keep a low profile and avoid contact with the authorities, including the NHS, aren't you? 😉

@Orphan of Babylon We are only a small island and cannot medically treat people from all nations for nothing. We don't. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/how-the-nhs-charges-overseas-visitors-for-nhs-hospital-care/how-the-nhs-charges-overseas-visitors-for-nhs-hospital-care

To go from "God Save The Queen" to "Fanfare For The Common Man", we'd have to be a republic 😉 Bring it on! Although Copland wrote the original in response to the US entering WW2. So that would probably rule it out for most countries other than the US. Tricky business, isn't it?

It's all about England, and wouldn't be acceptable to the other three home nations. Unless of course you were thinking only of England! And someone once said that the appropriate responses to it - read the lyrics - are "No. No. No. No. Get them yourself!". 😄

The best method in such circumstances is for the moderator, list owner, Mayor, or whatever, to forward, with your permission, your email address to the person that you are trying to contact. That way, no privacy is violated, and it's up to the person you're trying to contact whether they respond to you.

It came in 5th :(

I have actually just responded to a report of this on a national newspaper's website. And the word I used was also "silly". It's actually the "1812 Overture" that they have removed. A piece that was written to commemorate the heroic defence of a country from an invading army. Of course that country was Russia, but the context was the precise opposite of what is happening today. When Phil Spector died a year ago, one newspaper published a piece saying that we should not listen to his music because he was a murderer. My response, calling, on the same grounds, for Caravaggio's paintings to be removed from public view, didn't go down very well :) Make sure your copy of "War and Peace" is safe. They will be coming for it next!