Now, all these years later, I am sitting here listening to Alphaville's live album, 'Stark Naked.' It does two things for me: it makes me realize all I've discovered musically in spite of radio stations, and also makes me regret what I missed when their career first took off. From start to finish on this album, there is an energy to lead singer Marian Gold's vocals. Even without benefit of listening to previous Alphaville recordings, I can tell he isn't doing note-for-note performances of the studio albums' tracks, instead letting the music and the audience dictate where he goes next in a song.

The songs themselves are well-written pop songs that are catchy but with a complexity that comes from trying to craft music as opposed to a hit song. Keyboard player Martin Lister is very adept at his fingering (much like an NYC cabbie) and even with the other musicians involved, he and Marian Gold seem to be on another plane during much of the performance. In particular, Martin Lister amazes me on the song "Monkey on the Moon" which at times sounds like it requires three hands to perform.

The songs on this album are a nice mix of uptempo pop songs, melodic lazy songs, and wisftul ballads, with enough of a variety to keep the crowd fairly high in intensity level throughout the performance. The album features the bands biggest hits, opening with one of them, "Sounds Like a Melody." Also interspersed are the obligitory romantic songs: "Guardian Angel" and "Flame." Both lend themselves to slow dancing or lovemaking (whichever you may be in the mood for when listening to this album.) However, it closes with a bang, starting with arguably their biggest hit, "Big in Japan," sliding into the beautiful "Forever Young," and closing with "Apollo", with the lyrics "This is the end of the show..."