I just noticed, when listening to some of Neal's live albums the other night, that his live CD sets (and shows, I suppose) have been getting shorter in the last couple of years. For both Testimony 2 and Momentum, the following live albums were both over 3 hours long, while Alive Again is just barely 2 hours and 20 minutes.
It looks like this current tour's show is also just over 2 hours, with TSOAD being about 106 minutes long, The Call/Agenda being about 14 minutes, and Momentum being around 7 or 8 minutes long. You could even fit the encore on Disc 2 after the end of TSOAD, so I'm sure the eventual Road Called Home live album will only be 2 discs (just like Alive Again was).
Has there been any stated reason as to why the recent tours have been shorter than before? Is Neal getting to the point in his life where doing 3 hour prog shows is a lot? I think even the Flying Colors shows were both under 3 hours long.
I hope in the future, at least in the case of Transatlantic, that Neal is able to do longer shows again, especially considering how LONG Transatlantic's songs are. I wonder if doing an album of shorter songs for TA5 (say, about 5 or 6 songs in the 8-15 minute range) would be more favorable in terms of doing them in a live context? Hmmm...
-Marc.