Pendragon - Live in Krakow 1996 (1997)

Recorded before a very receptive audience in Poland - where Pendragon are several orders of magnitude more popular than they are in their home country! - Live In Krakow 1996 is one of my favourite Pendragon live albums. Part of this is because it presents what I consider to be definitive renditions of just about all of The Masquerade Overture aside from the disposable intro track and the brief and rather forgettable interlude of The Pursuit of Excellence. As well as trimming back those two bits of gristle from the album, the versions here also spark with energy and rock out a bit more than the ones on the studio album, which I felt suffered from a slightly sterile and pop-leaning production.