The Animals - Mid-Hudson Civic Center, Poughkeepsie, NY, 9-7-1983

The Animals had a really good run from 1964 to 1968, with lots of critical acclaim and hit songs. Lead singer Eric Burdon had more success through 1970, especially with the hit song "Spill the Wine" done with the band War. But then Burdon's commercial profile went way down, with his singles and albums usually not even making the charts.

So it wasn't so surprising that the Animals eventually reunited. What was surprising was that all five members of the original band got together, including keyboardist Alan Price, who left in 1965 and had a fairly successful solo career, as well as bassist Chas Chandler who quite playing music in 1966, becoming a manager and record producer. (He's best known for managing Jimi Hendrix and Slade.) The reunited band released an album in 1977, "Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted," which was critically acclaimed by ignored by record buyers, since new sounds like punk and disco were all the rage in 1977. They didn't play any concerts to promote the album.

The Animals disbanded again for a few years after that. But with none of them having much success with solo careers, all five original members reunited again in 1983. They put out another album of new material that year, entitled "Ark." This one was not so well received critically, and the sales also were poor. The new wave sound was the thing, and the band tried to modernize their sound to some degree. It still wasn't a good time for 1960s bands to reunite. For instance, the original Hollies also reunited in 1983, and were pretty much ignored too. 

The Animals disbanded yet again. They never really got back together again, not even to be indicted into the Roll and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, although individual members sometimes called their bands "the Animals" or "the New Animals" or even "the Animals II."

That said, I'm posting this for a couple of reasons. One, there's almost no live recordings of the 1960s Animals with good sound quality, other than their BBC recordings. The only full length concert recordings are from this 1983 tour. And two, they actually were still really good in their 1983 concerts. Although their album was only okay, they just played the best songs from it, which helped, as well as recent solo songs, and some other new songs that didn't get released until later, like "It's Too Late" and "Young Girls." It helped a lot that the live versions were more raw, without most of the 1980s production touches on the "Ark" album that didn't suit the band. But of course a good chunk of the concerts were their best 1960s songs. Burdon's voice would decline later, but he still sounded great here.

Two official live albums of their 1983 tour have been released, one called "Rip It to Shreds: Greatest Hits Live," and the other one "The Last Live Show." Those are from different concerts than this one. But both of those are fairly short, at about 40 to 45 minutes each, while this is nearly two hours long, so that's very different. They don't even sound that good. But this is an excellent bootleg, due to it being professionally recorded in order to be broadcast by a local radio station. So if you want just one live performance from the original Animals, this is the best one to get, by far, in my opinion, despite it being from 1983.

The last three songs actually are from another show on the same tour. That also is a soundboard quality boot. I added those because they were all good songs that weren't played on this night. "O Lucky Man" was a hit for Alan Price in 1973, and he sang this version too.

The album is an hour and 56 minutes long. If you don't include the last three songs from the different concert, the concert is an hour and 42 minutes long.

01 talk (Animals)
02 It's Too Late (Animals)
03 Melt Down (Animals)
04 Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (Animals)
05 The Night (Animals)
06 My Favourite Enemy (Animals)
07 Tryin' to Get to You (Animals)
08 Loose Change (Animals)
09 Just Can't Get Enough (Animals)
10 I'm Crying (Animals)
11 No John No (Animals)
12 talk (Animals)
13 Bring It on Home to Me (Animals)
14 Prisoner of the Light (Animals)
15 Love Is for All Time (Animals)
16 Heart Attack (Animals)
17 talk (Animals)
18 The House of the Rising Sun (Animals)
19 Hard Times (Animals)
20 Being There (Animals)
21 It's My Life - Don't Bring Me Down (Animals)
22 talk (Animals)
23 Young Girls (Animals)
24 Boom Boom (Animals)
25 talk (Animals)
26 We've Gotta Get Out of This Place (Animals)
27 When I Was Young (Animals)
28 O Lucky Man (Animals)
29 San Francisco Nights (Animals)

https://www.imagenetz.de/gj5as

The cover photo is just of lead singer Eric Burdon in 1983. I don't know exactly where or when it's from beyond that though.