music.wikisort.org - Composition

Live 1981–82 is a live album by The Birthday Party and released in August 1999. The performances were "[c]ulled from the private collection of founding member Mick Harvey with assistance from super fan Henry Rollins".[9]

Live 1981–82
Live album by The Birthday Party
Released	10 August 1999
Recorded	List of dates 26 November 1981 (London) 01 July 1982 (Bremen) 17 September 1982 (Athens)
Venue	List of venues The Venue, London (tracks 1-10) Aladin, Bremen (tracks 11-16) Sporting, Athens (track 17)
Genre	Post-punk noise rock no wave
Length	73:53
Label	4AD
The Birthday Party chronology
It's Still Living (1982) Live 1981–82 (1999)

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[1]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music	[2]
The New Rolling Stone Album Guide	[3]
NME	[4]
Ox-Fanzine	[5]
Record Collector	[6]
Release Magazine	[7]
The Stranger	[8]

Reception

The album received very positive reviews from various sources. "Though various live releases had emerged over the course of the band's existence," writes Ned Raggett for Allmusic, "no full-length capturing of the Party's particular bacchanalia approved by the group had officially emerged until this release [...][The album] threatens at all points to leap from the speakers and throttle innocent bystanders."[1] Tim Peacock of Record Collector called it "a vital addendum to the pioneering Aussies’ oeuvre."[6] Matt Mernagh of Exclaim! writes: "the only live album from these Australian bastards is a brilliant effort in capturing pure chaos. Whether it’s Nick Cave’s howls and murderous screams, Harvey’s squalor of blues guitar playing, Rowland S. Howard’s high pitched guitar riffs, Tracy Pew’s thumping bass being buried in the background and Phil Calvert’s hammering drum sound, this beast finds the band at their peak. [...] By performing so well together, the frenzied noise has been planned, although it doesn’t seem like that could be humanly possible." He notes the audience response as being "enthused and stunned at the same time." He finds the only downside of the album to be the fact that it "has been taken from three different locations and melded into one piece of music" instead of being from a single live show.[9] The sound quality of the performances received praise, as did the band's cover of "Fun House", the latter of which has been described as "viciously maul[ed] and deface[ed] [in comparison to the original]"[10] and a "relentless eight-minute thrash [...] with Jim ‘Foetus’ Thirlwell riding shotgun on sax that provides a suitably Bacchanalian climax."[6]

Track listing

• Tracks 1 - 10: Recorded at The Venue, London, UK, 1981
• Tracks 11-16: Recorded at Aladin, Bremen, Germany, 1982
• Track 17: Recorded at Sporting, Athens, Greece, 1982[11]

Personnel

Birthday Party

• Phill Calvert — drums (tracks 1-10)
• Nick Cave — vocals
• Mick Harvey — guitar (tracks 1-10), drums (tracks 11-17)
• Rowland Howard — guitar
• Tracy Pew — bass
• Jim Thirlwell — saxophone (track 17)

Credits

• Mixing — Lindsay Gravina
• Mastering — David Macquarie
• Photography— Bleddyn Butcher

Release history

Region	Date	Label	Format	Catalogue
United Kingdom	1999	4AD	CD	CAD 9005 CD
	29 July 2013		LP, CD	CAD 9005
United States	30 July 2013

References

External links

• Live 1981-82 at AllMusic. Retrieved April 24, 2015. Live 1981–82 @ Allmusic
• Live 1981-82 @ Discogs
• Live 1981-82 @ MusicBrainz

---