Favourite Van Der Graaf Generator Album?

i just bought a copy of the Pawn Hearts 2CD+DVD reissue from last year - haven't listened to all the bonus tracks, but fired up the Denon DVD-3910 to listen to the DVD-Audio disc with the "new stereo mix" - and I don't have Hoffman ears or purity of heart but it was pretty fkn awesome. totally revealing of extra details in the mix and honestly miles better than my grotty old LP.

just found a 2xLP copy of Vital - Live. pristine shape, too. I guess whoever bought it didn't like it much :)

I do find it amusing that VdGG were the last of the major prog acts to release a live album, and they did so in 1978, when the band and the genre itself were falling apart. not only that but it's a bootleg quality recording, with Jackson's sax infamously not even picked up on most tracks. in spite of all that it absolutely rules. it just tears up their whole back catalogue and the performances are reckless in a way you rarely see in prog. its also full of unreleased stuff which is pretty unusual for one of these live albums. in fact I can't think of another 70's live prog album with unreleased original material on it, let alone this much of it

There's "Conundrum" and "Quatrain" on Jethro Tull's Bursting Out, but I can't think of any others.

ahh well, that's one prog live album I haven't heard :)

Depending on whether you consider Santana prog (I do, especially in this era), there's a bunch of unreleased stuff on Lotus.

I do find it amusing that VdGG were the last of the major prog acts to release a live album, and they did so in 1978, when the band and the genre itself were falling apart. not only that but it's a bootleg quality recording, with Jackson's sax infamously not even picked up on most tracks. in spite of all that it absolutely rules. it just tears up their whole back catalogue and the performances are reckless in a way you rarely see in prog. its also full of unreleased stuff which is pretty unusual for one of these live albums. in fact I can't think of another 70's live prog album with unreleased original material on it, let alone this much of it

― frogbs

_another live_ by utopia

VITAL is so sick!!!! that bass tone!!!

I guess if you include prog bands that improvised from scratch onstage you'd have large pieces of Henry Cow's Concerts, some stuff from the Crimson live albums, and so on.
Tangerine Dream's Ricochet and Encore are almost entirely new/improvised music, but also questionably "live".

i highly rec the Maida Vale sessions too!!

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41lYm6lchFL._SY580_.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpolfQIPS84

even the recent Merlin Atmos live album is good

(plus it has VDGG handling some typically Hammill solo songs like Flight and Gog)

I do love them live around 75-78 cos they get really intense and have guitar and stuff.
Vital in the remastered form for the 2005 reissues is pretty good and I think has more David Jackson in as part of the remaster process I think. But there are a load of live sets around too. By the end they could rate as a pretty great dark post-punk band so hope there were a stack of people discovering them at the time. Like if John Lydon cited them do hope it lead to some people finding out how good they were and seeing them at this peak, one of several but others were years earlier too. Like not that they don't stand on their own feet since they did seem to be pretty marvelously maverick.

the maida vale sessions are fabulous, the version of "darkness" on there is wonderful. i don't think it's on the maida vale sessions proper, but the expanded version called "after the flood" has some wonderful material too - great version of "killer" and as i've already said, i'm really fond of "necromancer" - really fun '68 version here.

yeah think I mentioned turning up my copy of After The Flood a few days ago.