Beady Eye – Live At The Empress Hall – Blackpool

Mastering notes from Pete Maher:

Beady Eye Project: Britpop was completely manufactured by the UK music industry in a bid to sell more records. As a young musician I lived at the so called centre of Britpop in Camden Town and I saw no evidence of it. Yes a few bands would hang out at the Dublin Castle in Parkway and Steele’s pub in Chalk Farm but there was no real feeling of anything really happening. For me it was the ‘Vanilla Sky’ moment. It was the part in the film where real life ended and a new virtual life began. Before the mid 90’s we had rock’n’roll, the British invasion, mods, rockers, hippies, glam rockers, punk rockers, new romantics and finally Madchester. This was original music backed by a record industry that actually cared about the music it released. Then the mid 90’s and Britpop arrived and Malcolm McClaren declared it the ‘Karaoke Age’. Looking back now, there was only a handful of bands worth remembering with the biggest and best being OASIS.

Fast forward to 2013 and I’m watching an OASIS documentary on Sky Arts. At the same time I’m glancing at my laptop and I see an email arrive from Quest management who look after Paul McCartney and the Gallagher brothers. They had a Beady Eye ‘live in Blackpool’ DVD that urgently needed mastering for the Cannes Film festival that week. Charlie Russell and Bradley Spence had mixed it at Dean Street Studios and they wanted me to master it. It was another live album that required sonic microsurgery and enhancement. It was upmixed to 7.1 by Steve Belgrave before being sent off to a very happy Beady Eye and Quest Management. The opening track can be heard above and the video can be seen below.