Budokan II (1994)
1.ELO Kiddies
2.High Roller
3.Southern Girls
4.Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Piece
5.California Man
6.Downed
7.Stiff Competition
8.How Are You?
9.On Top of the World
10.Can't Hold On
11.Oh Caroline
12.Auf Weidersehen
The best thing about this release is
this is not a "later" concert of the band returning to the shrine that
made them famous. This is simply a continuation of the same series of
concerts that yielded their most popular album ever (At Budokan) released sixteen years earlier. You
could also argue that the song selection is better here than on the
first release. To be fair though, it's not completely authentic.
First, they add three songs (Stiff Competition, How Are You and On Top
of the World) from a show at the same location one year later - so
purists will be annoyed. Second, this album was released, supposedly, without the band's
"permission" and members openly griped about it (supposedly, there's
audience "loop" that's repeated throughout the whole album - I don't
notice it). Even the cover picture was from the latter tour. None of
this bothers me. I'm extremely happy to have their three best albums
represented live when the band was at their peak.
Ironically, this one might be a bit hard to find. Epic released At Budokan: The Complete Concert four
years later. The running order on thatwas exactly the same as the actual
concert, but personally, I missed the extra three songs. If you still
have the original At Budokan disc, I would recommend this one to go along with it,
rather than getting the compilation.
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