Alphaville‘s live album was released in
Germany and Europe on the 26th of June 2000, one day after in overseas,
too.
Why is it only one CD? Wasn’t it said
it will be a double-CD? Correct! But it wouldn’t be Alphaville, if everything
worked as planned. During the production it turned out that not all of
the recorded material was qualified for the live album.
In 1996 Marian Gold, singer of the band,
said: “ A live album would be fine, unfortunately it’s so hard to realize.
There are so many pop- bands on tour but there are - certainly not without
a reason- a relative few number of live- albums and besides the most of
them are quite bad. A concert is as best a magical moment, which is determined
by the music as most important fact of course. But also by a lot of other
little Events like the mood of the audience, the band, the Location and
the esoteric question if the singer is in a good mood this night or not.
If you isolate the music from this coherence, the result will be not satisfactory
and the magical moment is missed.” (Source: Moonpaper 1/96)
Finally 13 songs met all requirements.
Why 13, since there are only 12 songs listed on the tracklist. Well, there’s
one hidden track, namely „Dance with me“ in a completely new version. The
former Dance- track became a wonderful, melancholic ballad. This one was
the crowning final of the last Alphaville concerts.
Many who already own the "Dreamscapes"
Box may say, half of the songs of this live album is already released on
the live- CD of the "Dreamscapes" Box. That’s correct at the first sight
as well, but even only at the first sight. Who’s listing to both CD’s will
notice quite soon that they are considerable differences. The songs were
recorded during different tours. The recordings of „stark naked...“ are
newer and you can notice Alphaville’s development as more concert- experiences
they got. And the effect of the „stark naked...“- recordings is absolutely
different. The Sound comes strongly to the fore and the noise of the audience
in the background. Sometimes you can even forget that’s a live album.
To make a live album is very difficult.
It’s very large-scale and expensive to make recordings at all. Mostly a
concert is only interesting for the persons, who are there and feel the
atmosphere. And you can’t burn the atmosphere on a CD.
Often you can hear only a singer, who
gasps for breath, and totally over-steered sounds. Alphaville managed successful
to present a new scale for a live- album.
It’s really an event and a pleasure to
listen this CD. Marian Gold impressed by brilliant interpretations. You’ll
see you never have seen the songs that way.
Once more they set great store at the
Booklet otherwise it wouldn’t be Alphaville. Among live photos that catch
the concert atmosphere very well in our opinion (May be you think in the
opposite way), there are also some playing around with coded messages.
Intentional we won’t decode it here in order to keep longer the mystic
and the attraction.
Otherwise it wouldn’t be Alphaville.