The Police LIVE - The Bed's Too Big Without You (FYYC's 16min 'The Magic Is In The Middle' Live Mix)

Warning: only for enthusiasts!

This mainly concerns the audio: a 16 minute version of TBTBWY! The connoisseurs among you know that The Police often improvised ´intermediate pieces´ during their live performances. Pieces that did not appear on the studio versions of those songs. Initially simply because there was insufficient material to fully fill the agreed time for a show. But it quickly became a trademark of the band. For me this is the place where the real magic happens…! Where you can taste the raw energy from their early days and the beauty of the interplay. Where you can hear how the band experimented with throwing punk, rock, reggae and jazz influences into one musical blender. Even so many years later, those live intermediate pieces are still enchanting to me.

Nowadays, there are many live performances of TBTBWY available. But certainly not all equally top, especially in terms of sound quality. That is why I have selected some beautiful intermediate pieces and compiled them into one new (live) song. You can probably find them all on the web these days, but I used my own old crispy clear tape recordings and bootlegs from back then. They all date from their early years, 1979 and 1980, so I didn't use any later reunion tour versions. Early gigs from these years just sound so much better than when they hit the stadia later on. With the necessary creativity, this resulted in a live TBTBWY version of over 16 minutes. I also have a 33 minutes (!) version, even more extreme, but I don't dare to feed you that one (yet). In addition to the hypnotic middle section, listen also to the beautifully pulsating drums with which Copeland introduces the song, and which can be heard so clearly on the version used here.

And then the video. Since most of the audio used is not captured on film, what you hear is (mostly) not what you see. This applies to all audio, except for the Rockpalast performance (WDR, Hamburg 1980). So it was still quite a puzzle to produce a matching video. Hope you like it though.

By the way. I am a pure enthusiast, and have no rights to the footage used. Except from the Hamburg gig as mentioned, it comes from 'Don Kirshner's Rock Concert' gig (Los Angeles, 1980), 'Gusman Auditorium' gig (Miami, 1979), and the trailers from 'Cant Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police' (2015) and Everyone Stares - The Police Inside Out (2019).

Okay people, you have been warned, enjoy your meal!

If you like this enlarged version, you might also enjoy my remix version of the original studio-version, see:    • The Police RENEWED - The Bed's Too Bi...