The Alan Parsons Live Project – 28 June 2025 (Poble Espanyol – Barcelona)

Sometimes, without realising it, you come to the end of a chapter in your life, which makes you realise how old you are getting… Last Saturday, I finally got to enjoy a live performance of one of my childhood albums, Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976), by The Alan Parsons Live Project at the Alma Festival Barcelona 2025. The concert was a nostalgic journey back to my infancy, when my parents would play this tape on repeat during road trips without seatbelts in a Renault 18 through the Monegros desert to visit grandparents…. After the cancellations in 2020 and 2022, I can’t deny that I was eager to experience their performance live.

Alan Parsons from The Alan Parsons Live Project, Barcelona 2025 – Foto taken by Meritxell Rosell for Indieofilo^©

The evening’s main course was preceded by a performance on the Village stage by Bagdad, a local band formed by drummer Carlos Conesa (partner of Concert Studio) and journalist Ricardo Mir de Francia, who provided vocals. Their punk rock style, reminiscent of the British wave of the last decade, caught the attention of an audience that gave them a standing ovation after a speech in support of Palestinian rights and against Israeli genocide.

Bagdad, Barcelona 2025 – Foto taken by Meritxell Rosell for Indieofilo^©

The Alan Parsons Live Project, a conglomerate of artists, took to the stage with British punctuality to the instrumental intro of ‘May Be a Price to Pay‘, leaving a special place at the back of the stage for the legendary sound engineer. Accompanied by the band that recorded their last album, From the New World (2022), the concert featured mostly mid-tempo songs and ballads, delighting the over-50s audience. Highlights included ‘Time‘, ‘Old and Wise‘, ‘Don’t Let It Show‘ and ‘Day After Day‘, with P. J. Olsson, Todd Cooper, Dan Tracey and Jeff Kollman each taking a turn on vocals..

The Alan Parsons Live Project, Barcelona 2025 – Foto taken by Meritxell Rosell for Indieofilo^©

However, the best moments of the concert came when madness overtook the controlled emotion that pervaded it, as in the concatenation of ‘Breakdown‘ with ‘The Raven‘, or the middle part of ‘Psychobabble‘ which could have been composed by Pink Floyd themselves. It is also worth mentioning Tom Brooks‘ wink to the local audience when he introduced a few verses of Sau‘s ‘Boig per tu‘ in ‘Prime Time’, as well as the final song before the encores: the union of ‘Sirius‘ (which immediately brought to mind the Chicago Bulls of the ’90s for this NBA fan) and the long-awaited ‘Eye in the Sky‘.

Alan Parsons from The Alan Parsons Live Project, Barcelona 2025 – Foto taken by Meritxell Rosell for Indieofilo^©

There would still be time for an expendable ‘The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether‘ and an up-tempo finale with ‘Games People Play‘ during the encores. The final touch to a concert that showed that, even though it seems like there is no place for symphonic pop these days, the nostalgia of the past and a loyal audience have given them more than enough strength to fill a venue like the main square of the Poble Espanyol, which is difficult for many current artists to reach…