NEKTAR

Live At The Wildey Theatre

NProg icons captured live in the nick of time.

ektar were still playing gigs in early March, and captured this digital-only audio and video release by the skin of their teeth. Recorded in Edwardsville, Illinois and available to stream on their website, Live At The Wildey Theatre presents a full 138-minute show from the veterans.

Once past the unavoidable reality that sound quality is far from perfect, this is a voyage through the most epic moments in Nektar’s catalogue. While it’s not a big budget production, Mick Brockett’s eye-popping visuals bring an extra layer of substance to it all. And this is no lazy plod through the hits, but a wholesale rebirth for some of the great unsung music in the prog canon. Songs from 2020’s The Other Side slot seamlessly beside A Tab In The Ocean and both halves of Remember The Future, while new epic Love Is/The Other Side is a genuinely lovely addition to the canon.

Visibly taken aback by how much the audience seem to adore him, frontman Roye Albrighton leads the band through a rousing version of

Good Day, “the first song we ever wrote back in 1969”. Five decades later, it still rocks and Nektar are still well worth a couple of hours of your time. DL