Alan Price

1976's Shouts Across the Street arrived decked out in a fabulous Ralph Steadman cover, but the album itself did little to entertain an audience who wanted more from the wee Geordie of Price's Between Today and Yesterday peak. Rather, the album rattled along without ever really getting out of first gear, a collection of songs that were "nice," but never demanded anything more from the listener than a politely tapping foot. The strange thing was, in concert at this same time, Price remained a vivid performer, with memories of the period live show certainly imbibing songs like "The World's Going Down on Me," "I Know When I've Had Enough" and the title track with considerably more energy than the vinyl ever mustered…

This is a very good live album from Alan Price which features a good mix of his old and new original material and a nice set of covers, such as Simon Smith and I Put a Spell on You. While the songs from O Lucky Man would be the best known, there are other gems here, such as Between Today and Yesterday (the LP which followed O Lucky Man) and the set as a whole is great listening. The musicians are top-notch and the production sounds really good; the drum sound is well captured, for example. Alan is in fine voice and sounds as if he's really enjoying the show(s). Highly recommended for fans of Alan Price, R&B or Randy Newman type songwriters.

Price moved to Jet Records in 1977 and recorded a series of successful albums throughout the rest of the decade. In 1980, he crossed the big pond to record an unusual album in Los Angeles: entitled Rising Sun, it included a reworking of the song The House Of The Rising Sun, which picked up quite a bit of air play in the UK.

This box set contains 5 Alan Parsons Project albums (Pyramid, Turn of a Friendly Card, Eve, Stereotomy and Gaudi) as remastered in 2008, including the bonus tracks issued at that time. The Alan Parsons Project were a British progressive rock band, active between 1975 and 1990, consisting of singer Eric Woolfson and keyboardist Alan Parsons surrounded by a varying number of session musicians. Behind the revolving lineup and the regular sidemen, the true core of the Project was the duo of Parsons and Woolfson. Woolfson was a songwriter by profession, but also a composer and pianist. Parsons was a successful producer and accomplished engineer. Almost all songs on the band's albums are credited to "Woolfson/Parsons".

Engineer/producer Alan Parsons and his colleague, songwriter and lyricist Eric Woolfson, formed the Alan Parsons Project in 1975. Throughout their career, the Alan Parsons Project recorded concept albums (including adaptations of Poe and Asimov books) with a revolving cast of session musicians. Released in 1982, Eye in the Sky was their greatest success; the title track charted in the Top Ten on the pop charts and the album went platinum. Although they weren't able to repeat that success, the group maintained a devoted cult audience, even after they stopped recording following 1987's Gaudi.

Alan Parsons studied a number of musical instruments in childhood but, like many of his peers, settled on the guitar in his early teens. His job in the late 1960s at the EMI tape duplication facility allowed him access to many classics of the day, including the tape master of The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), which fired him up to become a recording engineer. He subsequently managed to get work at the Abbey Road Studios and participated in the creation of The Beatles albums Let It Be (1970) and Abbey Road (1969) and the infamous Apple rooftop session. He also went on to work as mix engineer with Paul McCartney and George Harrison after The Beatles split…