Live vinyl: AC/DC & Ry Cooder, a couple of winners from different ends of the musical spectrum

[Review by Bill Glahn] 

AC/DC: Live At Agora Ballroom Cleveland 22 August 1977 (Radio Looploop RLL026)

Venue: As stated in title

Tracklist: (side A) Live Wire/ She’s Got Balls/ Problem Child/ High Voltage (side B) The Jack/ Baby Please Don’t Go/ Rocker –complete radio broadcast, slightly out of order

Sound Quality: not bad, but I was expecting so much more

Cover: Nice color front, but only fair resolution. Black & white photos of Angus Young  and Bon Scott on back with track listing and band credits.

Review: The 1977 Let There Be Rock tour, their first in the States, found AC/DC in a state of transition. Mark Evans, their bass player since the second Australian release, T.N.T., had been unceremoniously sacked following the previous Spring’s Dirty Deeds world tour – a tour that did not include the U.S. Atlantic Records had rejected that album and wouldn’t release it stateside until 1981 to fill a demand for Bon Scott material. 

Evans had not felt a sense of security in the band for a long time. But when it came time to deliver the bad news, Angus Young remained mute, while manager Michael Browning was left to give Evans his walking orders. Malcolm Young pitched in, “We want to get a bass player who can sing, that’s all.” 

In his book, Dirty Deeds, Evans refers to Angus Young as “the most dedicated musician I’ve ever encountered in my career.” Young called the shots in the band, although often with a degree of skullduggery. Notoriously a hard drinking outfit, that didn’t extend to the stage where all members were expected to be punctual and sober. Young took notes, but rarely confronted problems directly. Browning, who had guided the band to massive popularity, would suffer the same fate as Evans two years later. Without ever having played a note on any AC/DC record, Cliff Williams would fill the spot on the first tour on this side of the Atlantic, and remain the only constant besides Angus Young in the band until his retirement in 2016.

Williams makes his first appearance immediately with the familiar intro bass line of “Live Wire,” the opening song in the band’s setlist through much of the 1977 tour. But, unless you reach for the equalizer or bass boost, it’s the last you’re going to hear from him. Like a number of Radio Looploop’s other releases, the sound is massively compressed, indicating a possible previous life as a lossy MP3 download. From here on out, it’s a wall of Malcolm, Angus, Bon, and Phil Rudd, tightly packed together and overwhelming everything Williams has to offer. Oh, sure, you can hear his bass in the breakdown of “She’s Got “Balls” and “The Jack, “ but then back to the same ‘ol same ‘ol – high end digital distortion. Guitar freaks may love it, rhythm section and stereo enthusiasts not so much. The band delivers a well-paced, although short, set. “High Voltage” and “The Jack” are switched to make sequencing more conducive to vinyl. “Whole Lotta Rosie” and “Dog Eat Dog,” mainstays of this tour, were not played due to the restricted time allocated for radio.

Every track on Live at Agora Ballroom, however, is played with a great deal of gusto, the band barreling through the set in quick order. The oft covered Big Joe Williams  tune, “Baby Please Don’t Go,” rocks with the kind of force only AC/DC could deliver. Theirs is the definitive hard rock treatment, unsurpassed by such other contemporaries as Aerosmith. No contest in fact. The record closes with an equally frantic “Rocker.”

Conclusion? For vinyl enthusiasts, it works pretty well. When turned up loud enough it will rattle the walls. And isn’t that a big part of the AC/DC attraction? But it might just be worth waiting for a better source with better mastering. Grade: B-

[review by Bill Glahn]

Ry Cooder: Radio Ranch Recordings (Mind Control Mind 720)

Venue: December 12, 1972 WMMS studio, Radio Ranch show

Tracklist: (side A) Police Dog Blues/ Comin’ In On A Wing And A Prayer/ Holy Spirit (Great Dream From Heaven)/ Cleanin’ Up At Home (side B) Floating Bridge/ Billy The Kid/ Ditty Wah Ditty/ Jesus On The Main Line/ Going To Brownsville

Sound Quality: Good low generation tape source, some reverb added

Cover: Bare basics, A young Ry Cooder and title on front cover, track listing and date on back

Revue: Recorded as a solo performance, sans audience, for a radio broadcast, Radio Ranch Recordings focuses on the first and final parts of the one-hour performance and leaves out the middle. There’s a couple of slight errors on the song titles as well, but otherwise it’s a pretty good document of one of Cooder’s early shows.

Cooder pulls equally from his first three albums and adds to them, including “Jesus On The Main Line,” “Diddy Wah Diddy,” “Floating Bridge,” and “Cleanin’ Up At Home,” none of which he had recorded at the time.

The problem with this era Ry Cooder, as I see it, is he was merely copying arrangements that he took from the 78s that he had obviously been listening to. It was “studied” music, academic in nature. Already a skilled session man, Cooder could be found playing on far more adventurous music elsewhere. He would break out somewhat on 1974’s Paradise & Lunch (which included “Jesus On The Mainline” and “Ditty Wah Ditty”) and further still on 1976’s Chicken Skin Music. 

While the studio albums featured sparse accompaniment (percussion, bass, piano), these recordings feature only Cooder and his notable acoustic guitar skills. His boozy Americana drawl ain’t bad either, as white interpretations go. With so little available from this period in taper circles, this is a noteworthy release. 

Despite having the same academic overtones as the studio releases, fans of Cooder should find Radio Ranch Recordings a fine addition to their collections. Casual fans, however, might not find enough here of interest, the studio albums being far better recorded. Kudos to Mind Control for putting out something off the beaten path that some bootleggers follow. Grade: B

Backpages: MC5's Wayne Kramer interview by Bill Glahn, August 1997 issue

[In 1997, Bill Glahn interviewed the MC5's Wayne Kramer during his Citizen Wayne tour. His homage to working people, Citizen Wayne remains relavent today]

“I’m in the business of disrupting business.”
- Wayne Kramer during a performance in St. Louis during his Citizen Wayne tour.

BILL GLAHN: There seems to be a genuine camaraderie on the new record with working people.

WAYNE KRAMER: Yes, I honor work. And I honor the working man and woman. I think working people are being fucked across the board. I think big business makes more and more money every year. Wall Street makes higher profits. Corporate CEO’s salaries are inconceivable in size - the amounts of money they make. And still they cut benefits, cut jobs. I think wages and wealth are the civil and human rights issues of today. I think we have management  consultants… they’re the new goon squads. They downsize and streamline. And people’s jobs go out the window.

Last night you said from the stage that you didn’t think any intelligent person could be an optimist today.

I don’t see anything out there that makes me optimistic. But I do believe I am a prisoner of hope - that there are ways to overcome injustice. You can call me old school but I still believe in things like self-determination and equality and peace and love.

It doesn’t really seem like things are getting better.

I played a demonstration called Motown Action ‘97 to support the striking newspaper workers up there (Detroit). They’ve been on strike for over two years now. A lot of those people are personal friends of mine. Gary Graff and Sue Whitehall - the music writers. They’ve supported my work all through the years. And the toll that it’s taken on them has got to be (pause)… serious.

The National Labor Relations Board ruled the day before the rally that the management had been guilty of unfair practices all along. So all the trade unions came to Detroit. There were some estimates - 125,000. I had a chance to talk to John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO. I believe in unions. I believe that unions are the only way working people can interface with big management and get any kind of fair deal. Otherwise they would just run us over and spit us out. They don’t’ care.

One of the misplaced priorities of capitalism is profit at any cost. I believe in free market economy and free market capitalism but as a group we can organize and use what political power we have. It was kind of moving to see United Mine Workers, carpenters, plumbers, pressmen, Teamsters from all over the country there to show their support. Teachers. The teacher’s union has over 800,000 members! I think unions can be a strong voice.

But a lot of the guts have been taken out of unions.

Yeah, but I think Sweeney has a vision. Union budgets in the last 10 years have spent 3 per cent on organizing. Sweeney said we can’t survive like this. So he’s committed 30 per cent across the board on a national level and a local level to go back into organizing. To get the rank and file. To go into the neighborhoods. To go to the churches. To go to people’s homes. And convince them of the value of the union. And the strength of the union. Things like record store clerks. There was Borders Books and Records. There was a movement afoot to form a union and the management squashed it. But I think the union can come back. So my pitch to John Sweeney was, “If I can be the point man in the rock & roll world, then count me in.” I had to be there. I’m from Detroit. Those are my people.

I was a member of the UAW for nine years. I worked at Honda’s East Coast warehouse - the only Japanese car facility to organize successfully. It didn’t come without a toll. But it was possible. Not long afterwards, Reagan did his bit on the air traffic controllers…

Reagan busted their backs. He busted the backs of unions, period. Reagan… His legacy… What a dog he was! So I try to honor the worker in my work - in songs. I’m from that background. I worked myself at things besides music and so I relate to it. It’s the same struggle. You make a decision. You take a stand. It’s like the war in Vietnam. It’s like racism. And I took a stand and that’s where I’m at on it. Some people don’t like it and think it’s unpopular but tough shit.

Unions have received some bad press.

And let’s not kid ourselves. There has been some corruption in the unions.

Some people will tell you that unions have outlived their usefulness. But I think a lot of people are seeing it different now.

Right. I used to say (in “Back When Dogs Could Talk”) ‘my blue collar workers’ but now I include white collar workers as well, because they’re suffering, too. As I said - the new goon squads… management consultants… I’m trying to spread some consciousness in my world. I believe in the dignity of work. Work is the glue that holds us together. When your neighborhoods where there’s no work and there’s no opportunity or possibility - those are the neighborhoods that are destroyed by crack, alcoholism. If you combine meaningful work and love - that equals living. When you leave those things out, then you’ve opened the door for all manner of personal psychic demons.

"I worked myself at things besides music and so I relate to it. It’s the same struggle. You make a decision. You take a stand. It’s like the war in Vietnam. It’s like racism. And I took a stand and that’s where I’m at on it. Some people don’t like it and think it’s unpopular but tough shit."

You were saying that you believe in a free market society. Do you still believe that that exists here in the States?

Yeah, I think there’s entrepreneurial possibilities, like what you do with your magazine, what people like Brett Gurowitz do with Epitaph Records, what independent filmmakers do. By making things happen themselves. I certainly encourage all that. The best thing about punk rock is that it’s ‘do it yourself.’ There’s no manual. We’re learning as we go.

Don’t you think a lot of doors have been closed, though. Especially in the music business?

(nodding his head) Yup.

If you go back to the ’50s or the punk era, small labels thrived. Now there’re six labels.

(still nodding) Yup. Well these guys, these six major labels, they don’t care anything about you, your artists, your health, your career. They’re concerned about market share and profits. The last thing they’re interested in is music. I saw an interview last week with Tony Brown (Nashville record executive) and he said (paraphrasing) “What we do is we find young people who don’t know anything and have never played anywhere and have never done anything and we run them through media training, put records out on them, and put them on the road for three or four years and we destroy them. We destroy their lives. We destroy their health. We destroy their marriages. And then we throw them away and we get more.”

Which I thought was pretty upfront because that’s exactly what they do. Major labels, across the board. This industry - the record industry - is built on the dreams of young people. They take youth culture, record it, manufacture it, package it, sell it back to the youth and rake in all the profit. Very few musicians ever end up with anything. For every Tom Petty and Springsteen, there are hundreds of men and women out there starving. Working two jobs so they can still be in a band for this dream of making it.

This is the big hypocrisy, because the music industry has such a reputation for (caring)…  Let’s save Tibet.Save Tibet. Fuck Americans.

Yeah! Let’s save the whales.

Here’s an industry that gets behind every welfare issue or homeless issue. A US$40 billion industry that doesn’t supply basic health care needs or benefits for their primary money earners.

This is a big issue with me. This is something that I want to pursue with Sweeney. Go across the board. How many musicians do you know who have health insurance? I don’t know any. How many record executives have health insurance? Record executives - they’ve got pension plans. They’ve got health insurance. Every musician I know works three jobs and has nothing. I’m 49 years old now. Health is starting to become an issue with me. My great fear in life, like everybody’s, is to be old and homeless and sick with no money. That’s what motivates me in the morning. To get up and write a song, get on the phone, book a tour, make shit happen, get a record together.

Let’s talk a little about the tour. How long is it going on?

This tour is 30 cities, about five weeks.

Are you doing one tour this year?

No, I’ll do a lot this year. I usually do two or three. There’ll be a European tour and a Japanese or Australian tour. I love to work. I’m a musician. I love to play.

You have a new bass player (Doug Lunn). He wasn’t on the record, was he?

No. Paul (Ill), like so many musicians in L.A., works in about five bands. One of the other bands he works in, he’s a full partner. He’s a writer in it. He felt as though he needed to make a commitment to them and he needed to be in Los Angeles over the summer. I, of course, had to honor that. I mean he was gracious enough to do my gig for as little as I can pay. He worked real hard for me and he’s a wonderful musician. We will continue to work together but he couldn’t tour this year.

Well Doug is certainly more than capable. I was really impressed by last night’s show.

He’s a monster! A beautiful musician.

This is really a fabulous rhythm section. I think you’ve been blessed to work with some great ones. Brock (Avery) is a marvelous drummer.

The rhythm section is the most important part of the band. And I can say that as a guitar player. In a band, the bass player and drummer have gotta be smokin’. A band is only as strong as the rhythm section. You can have a great front man, a great guitar player - but if the rhythm section ain’t working you’re fucked.

I think musicians are probably much more aware of you than the public in general.

Absolutely.

And as someone who was in a band that really mattered. I would imagine the MC5 had the same dreams as anybody else who ever started a band - to be successful - but the MC5 demanded to be successful on their own terms and it fell apart.

Oh, we wanted more than to be successful. We wanted to change the world. Our idea was to have a new music. A new politics.

Did popularity ever enter into that?

Of course. Even Chairman Mao says bad art is bad for the revolution. You have to make good music. People have to appreciate what you do. And, of course, we wanted to be accepted and loved for our work.

Do you think that the fact that the MC5 fell apart has made you a better artist today?

I have to feel that this has all been a process you go through. That it couldn’t have gone any other way. That would be idle speculation. Brett (Gurowitz) and I have discussed it and Atlantic Records made their mistake - Ahmet Ertigan, who is one of the most pernicious of the record company thieves and scoundrels and robber barons and exploiters - he made a mistake by not supporting the MC5. Had he supported the MC5 chances are we would have gone on to make millions of dollars for Atlantic Records and for each other, and today I would be in an income bracket with Bob Seger and Ted Nugent and Neil Young. The MC5’s influence would have been vast and everybody would know the music of Sun Ra and John Coltrane today.

But the world wouldn’t have Dangerous Madness and Citizen Wayne.

Right. Right. And I have to look at it like these are the cards that I’ve been dealt and make the best of them. The center never holds. The only thing you can count on is that things will change. I think as an artist your responsibilities are to yourself and your art - that if you have a commitment to writing great songs, making great records, doing great gigs, that’s the best you can do.

There’s a lot of ancillary things you can do, a lot of influence and focus that you can draw to things, but your real commitment is to yourself and your art. Cause in the end we’re only here for a short time and you’re dead for a long, long time. What’s left is the work you do. That’s why I’m committed to work as I am. I would hate to die and feel like “I shoulda, I wish I coulda.” So that’s why to me it’s all about doin’ the work.” To me, that song “Doin’ the Work” on Citizen Wayne, is a love song.

 

Stevie Ray Vaughan and CSNY historic recordings now on vinyl. Rev. Keith A, Gordon and Bill Glahn take a look.

 

[Back in the day (1993-2000) when Live! Music Review was doing print editions, bootleg recordings were almost exclusively released on compact disc. With a resurgence of interest in vinyl, that is changing. Being vinyl junkies, this excites us tremendously. However, as a non-profit fan venture on the Internet, we are limited to our meager incomes and the willingness of manufacturers to supply review copies that will determine how much we can cover. "Back in the day," review copies arrived in the mail daily. While L!MR never made even a pittance, the expectation of sample goods at least kept quality writers interested in writing. Yeah, times have indeed changed in more ways than one. Review samples may be sent to the address in the header. In the meantime, we will soldier on. (Bill Glahn)] 

STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN: Live In Albuquerque & In Denver

(Radio Looploop Records U.K.)

[review by Rev. Keith A. Gordon]

VENUE(S): Tingley Coliseum, Albuquerque, New Mexico; November 28th, 1989 and McNichols Arena, Denver, Colorado; November 29th, 1989.

SOUND QUALITY: Decent, but not great FM broadcasts, possibly sourced from second or third-generation copies. Somewhat hollow sound, but with nice sonic definition, and little distortion even when played at higher volumes (turn it up!). Both shows originally recorded for Westwood One Radio Networks’ Superstar Concert Series and originally broadcast the week of April 24th, 1993.  

COVER: Simple, but effective – a cardboard pocket housing two nicely-thick slabs o’ black vinyl in plain white paper sleeves. Sepia-toned photo of Stevie Ray on the front cover, a color “action” photo of the guitarist on the back cover with no liner notes, just the venue info and track listing.  

TRACKLIST: (Albuquerque, Side A) The House Is A Rockin’ • Tightrope • Look At Little Sister • Let Me Love You Baby (Albuquerque, Side B) Texas Flood • Leave My Little Girl Alone • Wall of Denial (Denver, Side C) Cold Shot • Life Without You (Denver, Side D) Superstition • Crossfire • Voodoo Chile

COMMENTS: By the early 1980s, blues music had largely disappeared from the world of rock ‘n’ roll. Hard rock and new wavish pop dominated the Billboard charts in 1982, with artists like AC/DC, the Go-Go’s, Asia, Fleetwood Mac, and Paul McCartney scoring chart-topping albums that year. Things would begin to change just a year later, however, with talented fret-burners Stevie Ray Vaughan (Texas Flood) and Robert Cray (Bad Influence) releasing ground-breaking and influential albums whose impact can still be felt on the blues and rock genres. Whereas Cray would hit his stride a couple years later with the astounding Strong Persuader album, and he continues to record and perform to this day, Stevie Ray’s career was a supernova that exploded with his tragic death in August 1990. Vaughan recorded only four solo studio albums during his too-short career, as well as one disc with his brother Jimmie (also a gifted guitarist), but his legacy has been kept alive by numerous live album releases, legit and otherwise, that serve as a permanent record of the guitarist’s electrifying on-stage persona.

The two performances documented by Live In Albuquerque & In Denver draw their set lists primarily from Vaughan’s 1989 album In Step, released in June of that year, and from 1985’s Soul To Soul album. In Step was notable because it marked the guitarist’s first recording made after his newfound sobriety, Vaughan shedding himself of the drug and alcohol abuse that plagued his career from the beginning. In Step offered fans a mix of classic blues covers by legends like Willie Dixon, Buddy Guy, and Howlin’ Wolf alongside original songs, many of them co-written with friend and fellow Texas roots-rocker Doyle Bramhall. These two performances took place on subsequent nights, mid-week, in November 1989, as part of the third leg of the In Step tour.  

The guitarist is backed on both night’s performances by his longtime Double Trouble band, comprised of bassist Tommy Shannon, drummer Chris Layton, and keyboardist Reese Wynans. The Tuesday night show in Albuquerque kicks off with the roadhouse favorite, “The House Is A Rockin’,” which is the perfect showcase for Vaughan’s unique guitar pyrotechnics and his band’s immense musical chemistry. These guys have been playing together so long by this point that little flourishes, like Wynans’ underlying honky-tonk piano riffing, fly under the radar. The song itself swings, a hybrid of sorts of West Coast jump blues and Asleep At the Wheel’s jazzy Texas twang. “Tightrope” is a horse of a different color, a muscular blues-rock construct that sports a longer and more incendiary guitar solo, Vaughan flying high above Shannon’s rock-solid bass rhythms and Layton’s busy hands on the skins.

In Step’s “Let Me Love You Baby” is a cover of a classic Willie Dixon tune, but the legendary Chicago blues singer, musician, and producer never rocked the song like SRV and crew. With Stevie Ray’s guitar set on ‘blowtorch’ and the band boogieing up a storm, it’s an engaging performance that displays Vaughan’s rediscovered joy in playing. The title track from SRV’s 1983 debut LP, “Texas Flood” has always delivered an explosive live experience, and it’s no different here. SRV steps into a greasy, larger-than-life guitar lick and strangles that mutha to within an inch of its life as Double Trouble shuffles behind, Vaughan’s tortured vocals matched only by his anguished guitar-mangling and Layton’s relentless banging of the cans. 

Buddy Guy’s “Leave My Girl Alone” (mistakenly listed as “Little Girl” on the sleeve) is a provided a smoky Chicago blues arrangement, with Vaughan’s emotional vocals paired with his crying fretwork, and an ambient, shuffling, late-night backing soundtrack. It’s a nice performance that shows that SRV could be nuanced with his playing, and his guitar tone on the track is mesmerizing. The Albuquerque set closes out with “Wall of Denial,” another In Step track, on which SRV shows off his dexterity with a fleet-fingered and downright confusing guitar intro that would twist a lesser-player’s fingers into knots. The song’s another rocker, with a touch of Chi-town in the grooves, and a slingshot rhythm accented by Wynans’ funky keyboard licks. 

The following night the band was in Denver, and there’s no overlap with the Albuquerque concert’s set, which is why they’re often paired together. SRV starts the party with the fan-fave “Cold Shot,” a rowdy cover of a tune by Stevie Ray’s friend, Texas bluesman W.C. Clark. Stretched out to half-again its album length, the performance is given room to breathe with some white-hot six-string playing juxtaposed against sometimes minimal backing instrumentation and other times crashing drumbeats and heavy bass lines. “Life Without You” is one of Stevie Ray’s underrated original tunes, kinda bluesy, kinda soulful, what might have been called “Southern Rock” a decade earlier. The performance is top-notch, with Jimi-tinted fretwork complimented by SRV’s most effective R&B vocal drawl, the song stretched out with a gorgeous instrumental jam.

The band’s riotous cover of Stevie Wonder’s wonderful “Superstition” had yet to be recorded in the studio, but the song made frequent appearances on stage, and SRV even performed the song earlier that year with Wonder himself for the MTV special Stevie Wonder: Characters. It’s provided a powerful performance here, just under five minutes but the lightning-bolt guitar alone is enough to singe yer eyebrows and ear hairs down to the root. In Step’s “Crossfire” is similarly incendiary, a dangerously-flammable performance that stops just short of ignition with plenty of stinging guitar and a smothering backing sonic drone. The album-ending cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile” is a reverent homage to the master, SRV tearing at the strings like a hungry bird-of-prey while the band’s thunderous din provides a suitable backdrop for Vaughan’s relentless axe assault.    

According to the online SRV Archive (https://srvarchive.com), these two performances have been previously released on bootleg CDs as Brotherly Love, Colorado & New Mexico, and Crossfire, among other titles. The shows have also been released on vinyl as “copyright gap” recordings several times over recent years, but few of these releases offer the full shows from either venue (a non-album song from each performance is usually dropped). Altogether, the Albuquerque show runs roughly 35 minutes in length, while the Denver show clocks in around 39 minutes and change, so you get a CD’s fill of live music for a double-LP price. Is it worth it? Sure, as I’ve seen this current set go for as little as $30 on eBay, which isn’t too steep a price for a double-album these days. Although both shows are truncated from their original length, they’re each lively, rollicking affairs that capture a scary-as-hell blues outfit that still had fire in its belly and an eye on future conquests. Grade: B+

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: Roosevelt Raceway, Westbury, September 1974 (Wax Radio WLVR 029, limited edition of 500)

[review by Bill Glahn]

Venue: Roosevelt Raceway, September 8, 1974, End of Summer Festival

Tracklist: (side A) Love The One You’re With/ Wooden Ships/ Immigration Man/ Helpless (side B) Military Madness/ Johnny’s Garden/ Walk On/ Almost Cut My Hair (side C) Teach Your Children/ Only Love Can Break Your Heart/ Lee Shore/ Time After Time (side D) Southbound Train/ Another Sleep Song/ Our House/ Hawaiian Sunrise

Sound Quality: Excellent FM broadcast from an off-air master, but with a couple of caveats. The live mix wasn’t the greatest to begin with and there are times when the backing vocals overwhelm the lead singing. Also, there are one-second gaps of digital silence between each song, something you might have came across in the early days of CD-R burning, but inexcusable in the 21st Century.

Cover: Simple single pocket jacket with little in the way of information beyond the title on the front and the track list on the back. Nice, but unaccredited stage photos used, color on front, black & white on back. The photo credit should probably go to Joel Bernstein, the official tour photographer.

Review: After two multi-platinum albums, Crosby Stills, Nash, (and Young) went their separate ways and recorded only solo, duo (Crosby-Nash), and outside band projects (Stills’ Manassas, Crosby’s brief sojorn with a reformed Byrds), well received at first, but showing rapidly diminishing returns by 1974. Without the formidable union of the quartet, neither albums nor tours were selling very well. Manager Elliot Roberts proposed a tour of large stadiums and arenas to the band. They accepted and Bill Graham, who had orchestrated Bob Dylan’s return to the stage early in the year, was hired on as tour director. Rehearsals began in May. Against group objections, Atlantic Records released So Far, a hits package culled from the two studio albums and a non-lp single. Nash, especially vocal, called that “absurd.” The album went to number 1 in the charts. 

Many of the shows on the tour were recorded, ostensibly for Neil Young’s unrealized “Human Highway” project (a film was released in selected theaters in 1982, a subsequent DVD in 1995, but never as an album of music), possibly for a follow-up to 4-Way Street, the 1971 live double album by the quartet. But apparently the band felt that two double live albums for a band that had only recorded 22 tracks in the studio was just as ludicrous as a greatest hits compilation. The recordings would sit in a vault until the 2014 box set, 1974. 1974 was a compilation of tracks that sought to assemble some semblance of the group’s marathon shows.

And marathon they were. The tour was primarily used as a tool to generate much needed cash into their failing fortunes. Even Neil Young’s Time Fades Away had been a commercial flop. The setlist was used to generate some renewed interest in their solo careers, with the bulk made up of solo material, both released and unreleased. Both proved to be failures (possibly Neil Young, the exception). The legendary excess of the tour - from the extravagance of using Joni Mitchell’s So Far cover design for dinnerware at catered backstage feasts - to the huge cost of taking along a recording crew and various extras including a tour photographer – not to mention vast amounts of cocaine – left very little in the till at tours end. Crosby, Stills & Nash would be playing small clubs and theaters as solo acts by the ‘80s, only generating public interest by re-grouping for albums and future tours. Neil Young, who remained a critic’s darling and with the occasional radio hits, would fair better.

Of the recordings used for 1974, none came from this show, the final one in North America. One more show, a week later, at London’s Wembly Stadium would follow, marking the end of the tour.

Part of a “Summer’s End” festival put on at a racetrack, at least the first set was broadcast and it became fodder for bootleg and protection gap specialists in the CD era. For vinyl enthusiasts, this set works to fill a gap in the ol’ record collection. The one-second gaps between the songs, suggesting a CD-R source, don’t really interfere, as the gaps come at the cessation of crowd applause, rendering them unnoticeable to all but the most anal of listeners.

Things start off with a fast paced take on Stills’ hit, “Love The One You’re With,” from his debut solo album. Stills would never see that level of solo success again. This rendition is both too fast and sloppy. Percussionist Joe Lala and drummer Tim Drummond are completely out of sync. You’d expect more at this late date in the tour. What “Love The One Your With” does forecast is that both Young and Stills would be using a fatter and fuzzier tone than the guitar sound on the studio recordings. Perhaps no sound check for the festival? There are other indications in the performance that indicate the monitors weren’t performing their intended purpose. Side A closes out with “Helpless,” which starts off reasonably well. But following a classic bit of Young fuzz-stutter guitar, a falsetto vocal emerges from the background to overwhelm Neil’s lead vocal. It’s most likely Crosby singing too closely to an already very hot mic. That’s why they have monitors! 

In the best of cases, the guitar tones transform the performances here into an alternate dimension. “Military Madness,” an up-tempo folk tune in the hands of Crosby and Nash, borders on garage boogie when Young and Stills get going. A win for the rockers in the audience. An inspired take of “Almost Cut My Hair” concludes the electric portion of the first set. Somewhere along the way, Lala and Drummond have found rhythmic cohesion, making the transition from the first verses to a faster tempo jam and back for the final verse in perfect unison. The version here is easily the equivalent of the best takes you’ll hear anywhere else and a highlight of Roosevelt Raceway. On to the second disc…

For the second half of the first set, the band sits down and grabs the acoustic instruments. The harmony vocals are pleasant this time around and emit some genuinely beautiful moments. The folkies in the audience will surely be satisfied. Particularly notable are gorgeous renditions of “Only Love  Can Break Your Heart” (the piano is infectious!), “Lee Shore,” and “Our House.” Despite a solid vocal from Crosby, the unreleased “Time after Time” slows things to a crawl. It would eventually emerge in 1976 on the Crosby & Nash release, Whistling Down The Wind. Graham Nash’s “Another Sleep Song” is as boring as it was on his album, Wild Tales, released earlier that year to a ho-hum response from critics and a non-response from the public. The set closes with a Neil Young oddity, “Hawaiian Sunrise,” which the normally prolific Young kept in the vaults until the 2014 release of 1974. Interesting but not essential.

In conclusion, this Wax Radio release is of minimal interest to casual fans, but borders on essential for the hard-core. For those with a vinyl fetish (raising my hand!) it is preferable to the bootleg CD releases that all suffer from the same flaws. (B)    

Spanning 50 years, Revolution in the Air : The Stooges, Adam Gottlieb and OneLove

[One of the sections we featured in Live! Music Review every month was Officially Speaking, reviews of recent authorized albums, both live and studio, put out by different artists and labels. Fuck the big guns of the major music labels - we printed mostly reviews of releases by indie artists and labels. There were plenty to be found there of exceptional merit which normally got buried under an avalanche of big label hype. On this new online relaunch, we will continue that tradition.]

THE STOOGES

Live At Goose Lake, August 8th, 1970

(Third Man Records)

[review by Rev Keith A. Gordon]

VENUE: Goose Lake International Music Festival; Leoni Township, Michigan; August 8th, 1970

SOUND QUALITY: Aging soundboard recording sourced from original ¼” stereo two-track tape. Given its vintage, and that the tape has reportedly been sitting in the basement of a Michigan farmhouse for 50 years, it’s not really that bad. The sound is hollow overall, and somewhat muddy, with the instruments blending together to create a literal tsunami of sonic overkill, Iggy’s vocals stabbing out of the darkness to electrify the audience. Although the tape has been cleaned up and restored, producer Ben Blackwell wisely decided to leave the performance pretty much as it was, with between-song tuning, song introductions, and quiet pauses. As such, the album sounds as close to the original performance as you could possibly recreate after a half-century.

COVER: Nashville/Detroit’s Third Man Records has a reputation for quality packaging, but they went the minimalist route here with a simple cardboard sleeve, no gatefold, with just a couple of fuzzy photos from the festival and an overall graphic lay-out that resembles a high-end bootleg. A four-page over-sized insert provides insightful liner notes by legendary Creem magazine writer/editor Jaan Uhelszki. The insert also offers a nice-sized reproduction of the festival poster and a smaller reproduction of pages from the special edition of the Ann Arbor Sun underground newspaper that was circulated at the festival that includes a list of then-current drug pricing (pot for $10 a lid, California Orange LSD for $1 a tab!). 

TRACKLIST: (Side One) Intro • Loose • Down On the Street • T.V. Eye • Dirt (Side Two) 1970 (I Feel Alright) • Fun House • L.A. Blues

COMMENTS: Woodstock gets all the glory, but a number of other rock festivals in the late 1960s and early ‘70s were just as glorious. For example, the Goose Lake International Music Festival was held almost a year after Woodstock, in August 1970 in rural Leoni Township, Michigan – a little over an hour’s drive west of Ann Arbor (and 90 minutes from Detroit). Richard Songer, who had made some cash in construction, was the promoter and he brought in popular Detroit radio DJ and concert promoter Russ Gibb and his partner, Grande Ballroom manager Tom Wright, to help out with the logistics. The festival was planned around an estimated attendance of 60,000 fans and featured free campsites, free parking, and free firewood as well as plenty of bathrooms and showers, medical tents, and a lake with a beach, all surrounded by a high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire to keep out the riff-raff.

Admission for the three-day event was a reasonable $15 (compared to Woodstock’s $18 ticket price) and the promoters came up with the idea to use poker-chip style entry tokens to avoid counterfeited paper tickets. They also built a large, revolving turntable on the stage with two performance spaces, so that one band could go on and perform in front while the previous band was packing up its gear on the other side. Predictably, gate-crashers came in hordes, with an estimated 200,000 fans ultimately attending the festival. The line-up of performing talent included a veritable “who’s who” of national and international rockers, including the James Gang, Mountain, Rod Stewart & the Small Faces, Ten Years After, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Jethro Tull. Drawing from nearby Detroit’s robust and thriving rock scene, the festival also featured performances by a number of local artists including Bob Seger, the MC5, Brownsville Station, Third Power, SRC, Detroit (with Mitch Ryder), and the Stooges. Although billed on the festival poster, Savoy Brown, Alice Cooper, and Joe Cocker did not perform due to contractual problems.

The raucous Goose Lake set by the Stooges on August 8th, 1970 has long been shrouded in notoriety. Three of the four band members were allegedly stoned out of their gourds for the performance, with bassist Dave Alexander said to be so blotto that he couldn’t play a note. But while Alexander’s non-performance would prompt Stooges frontman Iggy Pop to fire the bassist after the show, his longtime friends and bandmates Ron and Scott Asheton have said in several subsequent interviews that Alexander was playing his instrument, just playing some songs better than others, a claim verified by other musicians present at the festival. Regardless, you can judge for yourself with the recent, first-ever release of the Stooges’ Live At Goose Lake by Jack White’s Third Man Records on CD and vinyl. 

From a historical perspective, the Goose Lake festival was the last performance by the original Stooges line-up, captured shortly after the release of the band’s seminal sophomore recording, Fun House. In fact, the set list reflects the album’s seven-song track list, although with different sequencing. The other important thing about Live At Goose Lake is that the album is the only known soundboard recording of the original band line-up. Further muddying the waters is the longstanding rumor that the festival promoters pulled the plug on the band just as they were beginning to crank it up, but the album clocks in at roughly 40 minutes, and while you can hear the Stooges being bum-rushed off as the revolving stage turned 180-degrees while they were still playing to bring on Third Power, the next act, they were only given 45 minutes to perform in the first place. 

As for the Stooges’ Goose Lake festival performance, it’s a mixed bag. After a brief intro, Iggy launches into “Loose,” a garage-rock rave-up built around Ron Asheton’s flamethrower guitar and brother Scott’s explosive drumbeats. A rowdy performance of “Down On the Street,” with Iggy exhorting the crowd to “ram it,” almost got the band arrested for inciting a riot. Ron Asheton’s fretwork on the song is hypnotic and switchblade-sharp while the chemistry between bassist Alexander and drummer Scott Asheton is readily apparent. Iggy is in full-blown “streetwalkin’ cheetah” mode by the time they crank up “T.V. Eye,” starting the song with a primal howl and Asheton’s big-beat drums, Iggy’s swaggering vocals matched by the band’s instrumental intensity. Side One closes out with “Dirt,” a stoned, stumbling, wired performance that precedes and predicts the “stoner metal” genre that would follow in the ‘70s.

The second side of the album features three songs, kicking off with the incendiary “1970 (I Feel Alright),” a blistering performance with galloping drumbeats and scorching guitar licks matched by Iggy’s rapid-paced vocals in what is a strident, breakneck arrangement that takes no prisoners. On the other hand, saxophonist Steve Mackay’s dominates the performances of “Fun House” and “L.A. Blues,” ending the album on a discordant note. The former song offers Mackay’s chaotic sax riffing above the barely-rhythmic din of the band while the latter song is extended nearly two minutes past its album length into an extended jam that features Iggy scat-singing above the reckless blasts of sax while the band crashes and bangs its way to some sort of cacophonic conclusion. The result is nearly ten-minutes of instrumental anarchy that some listeners may appreciate, but my ears deem to be naught but noise-for-noise’s sake.       

The Goose Lake International Music Festival was meant to be the first of many such events, with promoter Richard Songer sinking $1 million into developing the 390-acre park into what he was calling the “world’s first permanent festival site.” The festival’s widespread drug usage and public nudity offended the usual parties, however, with Michigan governor William Milliken denouncing the “deplorable and open sale and use of drugs” while calling for an investigation, the state attorney general Frank Kelley quoted saying that “I think that we have seen the first and last rock concert of that size in Michigan.” There were 160 arrests of concert-goers as they left the event, mostly on drug charges, and Songer himself was subsequently indicted for promoting the sale of drugs, to be acquitted of the charges in December 1971. 

The local district attorney got an injunction barring any further concerts at the park, making the Goose Lake International Music Festival the first and last show of its kind. Today the festival site is known as the Greenwood Acres Family Campground. To my knowledge, the Stooges’ show is the only performance from the festival to be legitimately released, although with a cache of soundboard tapes recently unearthed, maybe we’ll hear rare concert performances from other Motor City rockers like Detroit, SRC, or the MC5. As for the Stooges, they soldiered on without Alexander, releasing their classic, influential Raw Power album in 1973, with Ron Asheton moving over to bass guitar and newcomer James Williamson taking over six-string duties. 

While the Stooges’ Live At Goose Lake is interesting from a historical perspective, musically it’s at least 1/3 hot trash and 1/3 pure electricity, with the rest falling somewhere in between. There’s a cottage industry in dodgy Iggy/Stooges live recordings, so you probably don’t need this LP unless you’re a Stooges completist or fanatic. If you must have a live Stooges album, track down and buy a copy of Metallic K.O. instead. Grade: C

Adam Gottlieb & OneLove: All Of You [review by Bill Glahn] Tracklist: Intro/ Manifesto/ Under The Viaduct/ Waterfall Blues/ heart beat/ Ode To All Of You/ On The Brink/ Mama/ Who Will Stand/ Water Is Life/ Kylo/ We Need Peace/ Interlude/ After Capitalism All of You mixes elements of ‘60s psychedelia, spoken word, soul (Great Lakes variety), funk, rap, rock, 21st century pop, folk, and world music. If that sounds like a mess, guess again. What holds All of You together musically is a solid rhythm section that would fit nicely into any era of Motown, multiple vocalists (both male and female), as well as the horn section from Fatbook, another dynamic Chicago band (great charts!), who appear on most tracks. What holds it together thematically is a dream for a better world. It’s a great thing to know that our younger folks are still dreaming. And singing about their dreams. The disc opens with Intro, a sample of testimonials and conversations reminiscent in tone to Pink Floyd’s “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast.” This approach is repeated again on one of the final tracks, “Interlude,” and various interjections into other songs as well. Next up is “Manifesto,” a declaration of commitment towards a better world presented in an infectious piece of funk, complete with wah-wah guitar, a short and sweet saxophone solo, and the aforementioned horn section and rhythmic thunder. It continues with a great vocal bridge of “We gotta get up, we gotta get up,” another solo (this time on flute), and a final flash of horn blasts to accompany the vocal theme of the record. Musically, it’s a metaphorical victory. The Battle of Jericho was won with horn blasts, after all. Make no mistake, All Of You, is an invitation to join the conversation of a revolution in progress, one that includes the poorest and disenfranchised among us. Documented are the failures of Capitalism, a failure even its founder, Adam Smith, warned about if workers were not given a seat a the table. It documents such failures in tracks such as “Under The Viaduct” (homelessness), “On The Brink’ (imperialism motivated by corporate profit interests), “Water Is Life” [corporate exploitation of the very resources humans depend on, which incorporates a second unlisted poem, called “My (Ghost) Town”]. Things become problematic with the last track, “After Capitalism,” where Gottlieb reveals his vision as Utopian rather than Socialist. “Your food won’t come from California unless you live in California.” Really? Already he has eliminated all people from the equation who live in climates not conducive to growing things. “No one will work in a factory, or sell popcorn or scan things in shops...” Ouch. While this may come as a surprise to Gottlieb, the overwhelming majority of humans do not have artistic talents. And many have learning disabilities where education has its own barriers. Many find accomplishment in mechanical or technological pursuits, largely perceived by artistic minds as “jobs.” It also leaves a whole lot of folks out of the revolution that get a sense of accomplishment from producing physical things in factories such as tractors and farm equipment, intubators and face-masks, clothing, transportation devices, road workers, etc. etc. etc. Then there’s retail workers, office clerks, all who gain dignity from their work. Do we eliminate them from the revolution as well? All the peppy tempos and “la-la-las” in the world won’t solve these problems. A history lesson maybe, as part of the conversation? Both Josip Broz Tito, the most progressive of Communist dictators and the Nordic experiments (Capitalist countries with Socialist leanings) come to mind. First Tito. Tito was the biggest thorn in the side of Moscow Soviet ambitions. As a war hero fighting fascism during WW2, he had the backing of his Yugoslavian countrymen after the war. He instituted market socialism (corporations owned and self-managed by their employees) which operated in open and free markets of the west. Ethnic tensions were held under control through policies of self-determination by the states – a form of “states rights” with central control. He gave priority to the exportation of education and medical science – basically a Castro who didn’t have to deal with a decades-long embargo (something that forced Castro to deal with Moscow for economic support rather the more ideologically similar Yugoslavia). Even the arts played a part. Yugoslavia’s close proximity to Western Europe exposed them to western pop music coming from the radio stations there. Being a Communist country, Yugoslavia’s currency did not float in the financial markets, only their products did. It was a goods-for-goods scenario. European music conglomerates didn’t need any of the potatoes or cheap tractors that Yugoslavia had to offer. Licensing deals were off the table. But India did and EMI records had a wholly owned subsidiary in India. A deal was forged where Yugoslavia would trade tractors for records of EMI controlled artists (think Beatles, Pink Floyd Chicago, Canned Heat and other artists that came under the EMI umbrella in the UK) manufactured in India. The only country in the Communist block to distribute fully authorized releases (not pirates or counterfeits) was Yugoslavia. Licensing arrangements for Yugoslavian manufacturing were eventually worked out. Tito’s open border policies (both in and out) were essential to allow western bands to tour there. But as with any government controlled by a single individual, power leads to demagoguery and abuse. In 1963 Tito was named “president for life” by the very government he controlled. Tito had survived Stalin’s reign of terror by, after numerous assassination attempts, sending Stalin the following note: “Stop sending people to kill me. We’ve already captured five of them… If you don’t stop sending killers, I’ll send one to Moscow, and I won’t have to send another.” In later years, Tito began diplomatic relations with some of the harsh military fascist regimes of South America (never as cozily as the United States, though). When he died in 1980, his funeral attracted delegates from more counties (of all political ideologies) than any previously held state funeral. Onward to the 21st century. We are faced with a new set of problems than Tito had to deal with. It is true that machines are doing a lot of the functions that were previously performed by humans. But not nearly so fast as Capitalism, run rampant with no controls, is imploding on itself. And taking a civil society along with it. Capitalism’s response is to let people die – by the millions. Capitalist Scandinavian countries (and to a degree, their continental counterparts), have responded with socialist safety nets. But only the Nordic countries have instituted experiments that address the problems on the horizon with programs like a standard and permanent income for replaced workers. Results are somewhat mixed, the most encouraging being a happier existence and more mental stability. While All of You doesn’t offer much in the way of solutions, it has opened the door to discussion. That’s a victory and its most magnificent achievement. It’s time to turn the revolution over to younger folks. I'm easily tired these days as are many of my contemporaries. My only wish is that they look into the rear view mirror once in awhile. There are cautions and victories to be found there.

Grade: B+