| Artist: | IQ |
| Title: | For Ever Live |
| Label: | Giant Electric Pea GEPCDVBOX1 |
| Length(s): | 52+59m minutes |
| Year(s) of release: | 1996 |
| Month of review: | 05/1997 |
| 1) | The Wake | 5.11 |
| 2) | The Darkest Hour | 10.28 |
| 3) | Widow's Peak | 9.33 |
| 4) | Out Of Nowhere | 5.17 |
| 5) | Nostalgia/Falling Apart The Seams | 10.50 |
| 6) | The Last Human Gateway (middle Section) | 4.07 |
| 7) | Fading Senses | 6.55 |
Disc 2:
| 1) | The Thousand Days | 4.21 |
| 2) | Leap Of Faith | 7.09 |
| 3) | Human Nature | 10.10 |
| 4) | The Enemy Smacks | 15.59 |
| 5) | Headlong | 7.40 |
| 6) | The Last Human Gateway (end Section) | 8.01 |
| 7) | No Love Lost | 5.52 |
If you will excuse I will not go out of my way to describe these tracks in detail and will say that all of the tracks on this album sound fresh and balanced in the sense that it can hardly be told that the tracks are from such diverse periods. The Ever tracks I start to like better and better although the first two IQ albums are still number one in my book. Listening a bit more closely to the tracks it turns out that there is not that much difference between the studio and these live version except that the live versions tend to be more energetic and a track like Nostalgia does sound a little "Arabic". I wouldn't go as far as saying that the CD subsumes the need to own all other IQ albums, but I do think that taken alone it can serve as a great introduction to what the band can actually achieve.
About the video: it is nice to see John Jowitt again with all his hair on his head instead of under it, but I have to admit that it seems that he was not the stage personality at the time that he is now. Of course front man Pete Nicholls should get the lion share of the attention, but during a recent concert in Tivoli it showed that Jowitt's presence adds to the humour and the spectacle. On the whole I found the video a little disappointing lacking the humour mostly of a real IQ concert. Probably it was exactly their intention to record a concert concentrating on the music and only a few times, mainly during the great The Enemy Smacks, on the show (note that in this recording they have not used the usual stroboscopic light, but ordinary lighting to obtain the same effect. Of course live it is much better) The extra value of this box containing a video lies mostly in the fact that many of you might not have ever seen the band, but I prefer to see them live myself, being that much at an advantage. BTW No Love Lost is not present on the video.
About the package: The package is a very nice one. A box with well two rather ugly faces up front not looking very happy with being on one of the most prestigious efforts of the "small" progressive bands. As regards to sales, my copy had number 3658 (I was hoping for a prime number) and I can only assume this is a far as they got, hereby staying well below the sales of Ever. Of course the nice packaging, the video, double CD and well executed photo booklet amount to quite a lot in value and thus in price and maybe not many people can afford this. In fact I would suggest to the band to also release the live double album without the entire box later, making in my opinion the most valuable part of this release, music wise, available in a more economical way. Also I cannot imagine that this is everything they played that night and would suggest that they add this to the CD only release (hmm, how many people having the box would in fact want this?)