Hey,

some time ago I (as in @potfmedia on Twitter) was asked by a user on Twitter if there'd be a PotF Live Album available. Sadly there isn't (yet). So the idea of a custom-made PotF Live album grew in my mind.

I won't ask the Poets to come here and play a gig that I'm going to record, and make an "album" of it (I wouldn't mind if they'd come in the end, though). What'd be coming to my mind is to contact those people who have recorded songs at a Live gig and ask for permission to use the audio, then extract the audio, maybe tweak it a bit (I'm no sound expert, though) and offer it as a bunch of mp3 files, so you can put it on your iPod and have a Poets Live Gig on your ears anytime.

What I do not want is to cause the guys problems, nor do I want to cause me (or anyone involved) problems with this, so that's why I'm asking here in the first place.
Currently I have no idea if there's enough audio material available that meet a certain level of quality. If all that can be found would be of crappy audio quality, a "PotF Live Album" would be rather counterproductive, and that's not the idea of this.

What I do not want here is to make money with this or pass the album off as my unique work. All people would be credited of course, and it would end up as a zipped collection of mp3's for download on potfmedia.com, nothing more. In the end it would be just nice to have a few Live Tracks to put on your iPod and feel like you'd be on a Poets Gig (and I guess many havn't had that pleasure yet).

@Poets/Admin: If there are slightest (legal) concerns about it, I'd be glad to know. If that idea would most likely be counterproductive in the end for the Poets, and you'd rather not have something like that being made, that would be totally okay. At the present point it's just a bee in my bonnet, and nothing more. I can handle replies like "Go home, Alph, and forget about the idea. Idiot!".

What do you think?
*waits for the shit hitting the fan*

OK, I'll bite and give you my two eurocents:

I would absolutely love to have a POTF live album, fan made or otherwise (I'd like a DVD even more, but that is another topic ) so generally, I am all for it. If it turns out that the Poets are OK with this and it turns from thought to project, I'd be happy to help.

That being said, I have two major concerns: quality and "the money thing". I’ll come to these in a minute, but I think I might have to explain a few things first.

As a collector, listener and viewer I have had some experience with concert bootlegs. When I say “bootleg” I refer to concert recordings that are obtained without the artist’s permission and distributed in one way or the other. There are professional bootleggers who do this to make money as well as fans who do this for themselves and other fans and give away their recordings for free. For the record: I have no clue whatsoever about recording and no intention to do it. I merely enjoy listening to such recordings. Everything I’ll say below is based on what I learned in this area over the years.

Quality:

Quality depends on the quality of the recording, the re-mastering and the encoding. A lousy recording will remain lousy, but for average recordings a lot can be done in mixing. Then, the quality can be kept by choosing a lossless format of encoding (e.g. flac) or quality gets reduced by encoding it in a lossy format such as mp3.

With video I see the problem, that usually the audio is not exactly great, especially when the recording is done with a digital photo camera and not a video camera. I know that for most of the DVD bootlegs I have seen the original audio (from the video camera) was replaced by a better sounding audio recording (that was done with an audio recorder). Thus, I doubt you’ll be able to find enough videos where the sound quality is good enough. But I may be wrong.

Of course by encoding them to mp3, the quality will get a bit worse.
I am not a “quality nazi”, i.e. I don’t care if something is encoded in mp3 as long as it sounds good to my ears, but I do think there should be certain minimal standards (whatever they may be), in order not to create a bad reputation for the Poet’s live sound.

Of course there are video recordings that have been show on TV and there are audio recordings from radio gigs, but to use these would lead to legal problem I assume. So I’d say this project should be limited to fan recordings as stated by you.


“The money thing”

I know that you have no intention of selling this, but by my experience if a collection like this exists, there will be someone who will burn it to CD and sell it on ebay. I have seen it happen time and again that fan made CDs and DVDs that were intended to be freely distributed have been sold on ebay and there was not much to be done about it.

Of course, an mp3 CD may not sell so well, but the format can always be converted and people won’t know the quality of what they buy until they hold it in their hands. Also, some fans will buy anything.

Thus, while the intentions are good, I think we should all be aware of the fact that this is going to happen eventually. I am not saying it should not be done, that is not for me to decide, but I might be the one saying “told you so” in the end.


So there, I certainly do not want to be a killjoy, but I felt these things needed to be considered.
I’d still gladly help with this if it’s OK with the Poets and kudos to you, Alphawolf, for wanting to do this for us fans.

*takes cover until the wind has blown over*

Great idea, Alph! I wonder why don't they have any live CD yet

95% of live recorded music is from a poor source and or positioned microphone, quality and clarity will always suck.

I think POTF should just take a feed straight from their mixing / monitor equipment at every gig then cherry pick the best performances. I think they've done it before e.g. DMWM on CoR single.

My two British pence.

There are lots of copyright issues with this. Just because you have recorded something yourself on a gig, doesn't mean you can distribute it, even for free. Of course there are tons of crappy gig videos and recordings on Youtube and elsewhere, but making a "product" out of them (even if it's totally free and unofficial) might be a little suspicious.

Personally I don't understand why people have to upload (or even record) clips that sound more like Autechre's Gantz Graf (do check it out on Youtube BTW ) than a POTF song.


If you mean just record the same stereo signal that goes into PA, that actually sounds really horrible and strange from normal speakers. For reasons that I don't fully understand, a PA system requires its own sound that is very different from a home listening mix. You can get surprisingly good "bootleg" recordings with just a pair of good microphones in the right place, but of course the proper way to do it is to record everything on separate tracks, then mix it in the studio.

There are actually several official live recordings already available. Three songs can be found on various singles, and at least one gig (although only 4 songs if I remember correctly) was broadcast by The Voice at some point. There might be even more, can't remember...

I have recordings from two radio acoustic gigs (2008 and 2010), 4 songs each I think. So, yes, some recordings do exist.
It would be nice to have a full live album though.

Fully understand your point regarding the copyright issues. I figured it was not going to be so simple.

Is there a way to get those recordings?

Well well, already thought it wouldn't be that "easy". But thanks Admin and Stef for pointing out the concerns. I actually didn't even have a rough overview of the available material on the net, but it was just a fixed idea in my head, and I wanted to ask here before actually starting to investigate.

But since this would bring up serious copyright issues, aside from the the quality concerns, it wouldn't make much sense to continue working on/thinking of it.

I just hope that there will be a Poets Live CD someday. I'm not an expert, but I'm sure that it would be kinda expensive to produce a Live CD, with all the recording, mixing etc, and it wouldn't be easy for the guys to self-finance that from own resources.
I knew about the Radio Unplugged Tracks, but it's quite a difference to a Gig with a crowd, with all the screaming and "Marco, I want a baby from you".. :p I attended numerous open-air festivals lately, and each one was awesome, so that's what made me want something "Live" from the Poets, too. I seriously think a Live CD/DVD would pay off.

That's what I meant :]

I just think microphones capturing from another set of speakers is really never a good idea. Capture too much of what you don't want from the surrounding environment and the reproduction from the speakers alone will never be right. Loss of fidelity, how it was supposed to sound..

Meh, but then that would take away the whole live feel