801 Live

801 Live is the debut live album by 801, released in November 1976. In 1976, while Roxy Music had temporarily disbanded, 801 got together as a temporary project and began rehearsing at Island Studios, Hammersmith, about three weeks before their first gig.

801 performed three critically highly acclaimed concerts: in Norfolk, at the Reading Festival, and on 3 September at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall. This last concert was recorded and released as the album 801 Live. The music consisted of more or less mutated selections from albums by Phil Manzanera, Brian Eno and Quiet Sun, plus a full-scale rearrangement of Lennon-McCartney's "Tomorrow Never Knows" and an off-the-wall excursion into The Kinks' 1964 hit "You Really Got Me". 801 Live set new standards for live recordings because it was one of the first in which all outputs from the vocal microphones, guitar amps and others instruments (except the drums) were fed directly to the mobile studio mixing desk, rather than being recorded via microphones and/or signals fed out the front-of-house PA mixer. The album became a significant cult success in many countries, notably in Australia, where it was heavily promoted by the ABC's new 24-hour rock station Double Jay (2JJ).

In 2006, the official Phil Manzanera Web site Manzanera.com reported that 801 Live was soon to be reissued as a double CD with "minor tweaks" to the original recordings and restoration of the "proper ending" to the song "Third Uncle". In April 2011, Burning Shed announced the availability of the double CD under the title 801 Live Collectors Edition Material for the second CD was taken from a 23 August 1976 studio rehearsal on a sound stage at Shepperton Film Studios.