Paul McCartney - The Space Within Us (2015)

Okay guys, here’s the live album that never was… but definitely should have been! After I did Back In The World a few months ago, some folks suggested I give the 2005 tour a try to see what I could do about it. Truth be told, that was something I had secretly wanted to try anyway, but it seemed far too daunting a task to try. Then I re-watched The Space Within Us DVD and I remembered how torn I was by this release because there were some truly great performances of inspired setlist choices, yet the presentation (with the interview breaks between every song) made experiencing the concern an excruciating ordeal. We here at Voo-Doo Records decided that the time was right to try and create a live album that would disperse with the inane interstitial segments and just present the songs as a flowing live album, done in the traditional Macca live album style (see Wings Over America + Back In The World) where most of the between song banter is omitted entirely. This allowed for even more music, which is a good thing! Especially considering the fact that the decision was made to cull all the official releases from this era (2004-2005) to try and include every song performed during these shows. The 2004 setlist was a different animal than the 2005 model, to be sure. As Paul played many songs during this time that he never played before (or again), this decision made the most sense to encapsulate as much unique material onto one set. So for the record, there is material from the Space Within Us, Live In Red Square (including some of the bonus St. Petersburg cuts from that DVD), and Glastonbury (from The McCartney Years DVD), all mixed together. Even with all of those sources, there were STILL a few songs that I didn’t have an official source for, so for those I turned to the St. Petersburg video, which although is inline, is also in mono. I tried to make the transitions into/out of those songs as smooth as possible but there’s only so much one could do. I considered the alternative of leaving them out altogether, but the allure of including live versions of “You Won’t See Me” + “In Spite Of All The Danger” was too great to pass up. As far as those transitions throughout the first two discs (which make up the main concert portion), I tried to make them all as smooth as possible, which was kinda tough considering all of the different sources. I think it came out pretty well, despite having eight mono cuts on disc one and a further two (the first two, in fact) on the second disc. THIS is the live album Paul should have released from this tour, IMHO… As there was a lot of other material from the era that was released, I’ve included the complete sets Paul played at the Super Bowl + Live 8, along with the Secret Website show, which was slightly earlier than the rest of the material included here. I put it here for a few reasons – one, I had no space on Back In The World to include it. Two, I didn’t have the material in such great shape at that time (thanks recce for the DVD rip! ). Three, if I wanted this set to be the bridge between Back In The US and Live In LA, I needed to have that material SOMEWHERE! So it’s all on disc three. For disc four, I’ve decided to include the radio show disc that came with the Space DVD. It’s actually pretty decent and includes a bunch of live songs not available elsewhere (albeit with a few chopped up). The problem with the disc as included in the DVD is that the show is presented as two 30-minute tracks, which means there’s no listening to a particular song. I fixed that by adding track markers at the beginning of every musical segment. As the show included two of the AOL Sessions tracks, it made sense to include the other four songs from that show as bonuses on the disc. So it’s now all there.

One thing I have to say is that I worked like a dog to get this one together, especially in time for my trip in a few hours. As a matter of fact, I have been working on these things pretty much non-stop since I started this series little more than three months ago. At the time I began this, I envisioned about two or three titles a month (which is a frantic pace when you consider how quickly Paul has been getting the official sets out to us). Well, I’m sure you’ve realized that in three months I have gotten FIFTEEN titles out. That’s five a month and one full third of the entire catalog. My point is that I am exhausted right now and will be taking a few weeks break before I begin work on the next one. Don’t worry – I will not quit this series. I need time to start planning out the next several releases as I’ve done for most of this series. See, as far back as Back In The World, I basically planned out what the next several would be – in the same order (more or less) as I put them out. It was all leading up to this one, and now I have nothing planned. So I need to think this through and start planning it out so I can have each set be the best it could be. That will take time. Not too much time – like I said, a few weeks is all. So enjoy this one – Hell, enjoy ALL of them (if ya can! ) and I promise there will be more soon. For now, here’s over five hours of classic live Macca…