We're in danger of confusing 'over-produced' with 'over-arranged' here. Over-arranged is what it says, over-produced is things like faking quality by using pitch correction, or compress it to hell so we wind the volume up (yes that is also mastering/engineering - part of producing).

I agree that demos should be 'what you're going to here when you book them' - otherwise it's a con, and we've seen it happen, where the live performance is actually atrocious

BB and I have always avoided doing anything on our Wild Goose CDs that we could not reproduce on stage - that's not to say we havn't used the advantage of a studio to add friends on other intruments and choruses - but it could still all be reproduced on stage.

But even so you're concious that many purchasers are after a souvenir of the evening (people don't but our CDs just because we're famous - we're not). But it is a constant dilemma as to how much to arrange. 'Demo', 'live' and 'studio' are different beasts - and probably have different target markets! Horses for courses - but don't con the punters!

TomB