Bootleg Rodeo: Buckingham Nicks, Ry Cooder with David Lindley, Spooky Tooth

#7 – October 2018

Thanks to the vagaries created by loopholes in international copyright law, it seems that live music from the 1970s and early ‘80s – particularly FM radio broadcasts – are fair game for release on CD by dodgy European labels. The situation is a godsend for rock ‘n’ roll fans, who now have access to budget recordings by their favorite artists that were only previously available as higher-priced bootleg titles.

Not all of these so-called “copyright gap” releases are worth your time and money, however, which is where That Devil Music’s “Bootleg Rodeo” comes into play. This regularly-published column aims to separate the wheat from the chaff and let you know which of these recordings deserve a place in your collection and which should have been left to collect dust in a closet somewhere. Get ‘em while you can, kiddies, ‘cause one never knows when copyright treaties will be revised and the availability of these (admittedly limited edition) albums disappears.

For this month’s “Bootleg Rodeo” column, the first in a few months, the Reverend reviews releases by Buckingham Nicks, Ry Cooder with David Lindley, and the mighty Spooky Tooth, with links to buy ‘em (or not) from Amazon.com.

Buckingham Nicks – Alabama 1975: The Tuscaloosa Broadcast (Iconography)
If not for Fate’s fickle hand, the duo of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks would have long ago faded into rock ‘n’ roll obscurity…though maybe not, given the talent and ambition of both musicians. The two met while attending high school in the San Francisco area, after which Buckingham invited Nicks to sing with his band the Fritz Rabyne Memorial Band. From 1968 through 1971, ‘Fritz’ would open for a number of biggish acts performing in the Bay area, including Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, allowing Buckingham and Nicks to get a taste of the bigtime and develop an onstage poise and chemistry that would prove invaluable during their future gig together.

The two artists developed a romantic relationship, and when Fritz broke up, Buckingham and Nicks moved south to L.A. to pursue their dreams of rock stardom. While in Los Angeles, Buckingham continued to hone his guitar skills while Nicks worked various jobs like waitress and cleaning lady to support the two. They wrote and recorded songs together, starving for their art, before coming to the attention of studio engineer and producer Keith Olsen, who helped the duo get a deal with Polydor Records. They released a lone 1973 album (Buckingham Nicks) for the label, which was subsequently under-promoted to death (to put it mildly). Although much of the country never heard the soon-to-be cut-out LP, they found a receptive audience in Birmingham, Alabama (of all places), and would later perform several well-received shows in the Birmingham and Tuscaloosa area (this is important – I’ll get to this below).

Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac heard songs from Buckingham Nicks, the album, while checking out Sound City Studios. Liking what he heard, Fleetwood and the band met with Buckingham and Nicks and offered them a gig with Fleetwood Mac. It was an opportunistic meeting for all concerned. Fleetwood Mac was a band in transition at the time after lead singer and songwriter Bob Welch left to pursue a solo career after the release of the modestly-successful 1974 album Heroes Are Hard To Find. Fleetwood Mac needed a singer and guitarist badly to capitalize on their rising star, and Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks ended up fitting like a glove. Released in mid-’75, the self-titled Fleetwood Mac album included just four songs written by the newcomers, but they were four important ones, and the injection of new creative ideas and energy resulted in a chart-topping album that would selling better than five million copies stateside (unheard of at the time) and launch the band to a superstar status that continues to this day.

Before hooking up with Fleetwood Mac, however, Buckingham Nicks had a trip to make to Alabama, which is where this Iconography label CD release of Alabama 1975: The Tuscaloosa Broadcast is sourced. Interest in the duo has only grown after their creative and commercial successes with Fleetwood Mac, and their lone studio album has never been reissued on vinyl or CD even after all these years (though both Buckingham and Nicks have spoken of wanting a reissue of the album). It’s an odd oversight for a label family as big as Polydor Records (now a part of the Universal Music Group), especially since aside from the original album’s ten tracks, there are reportedly another dozen or so songs available in the can.

The live performances documented by Alabama 1975 have circulated around the Internet for years, but Iconography is the first to release them on CD to my knowledge. The first 15 tracks here feature a complete January 1975 radio broadcast live from The Morgan Auditorium in Tuscaloosa, with another five tracks sourced from a previous 1974 performance in the same venue. While Alabama 1975 offers no musician credits, Internet scuttlebutt says that bassist Tom Moncrieff (who later played on Nicks’ first solo album) and drummer Gary Hodges were part of the Buckingham Nicks touring band; superstar studio bassist Waddy Wachtel also toured with the band at times, although it’s not known whether or not he appears on any of these tracks.

Overall, Alabama 1975 is an entertaining collection that provides an early glimpse of greater success to come for the duo. The sound is a fair-to-good with a few drop-outs but not much distortion to get in the way of the listener’s enjoyment of the performances. Buckingham Nicks crank through songs from their already-dead studio album as well as material like Buckingham’s up-tempo “Monday Morning” and Nicks’ hauntingly beautiful “Rhiannon” that would achieve greater heights when recorded by Mac further down the line. Nicks’ “Crystal” is a real gem, delivered here with great emotion and charm by the pair as a lovely duet. In spite of its minor flaws, Alabama 1975 is a fine live collection that would appeal to both Buckingham Nicks fans as well as the legion of Fleetwood Mac faithful. The Rev’s recommendation: Buy it!

Ry Cooder & David Lindley – Two Long Riders (Good Ship Funke)
I’ve written about the phenomenal guitarist Ry Cooder on this site before. A favorite here at That Devil Music, Cooder is a veteran of 1960s-era bands the Rising Sons (with the legendary Taj Mahal) and Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band as well as an accomplished studio professional whose credits include recordings by Van Morrison, Little Feat, the Rolling Stones, among many others. A moderately-successful solo artist during the 1970s and early ‘80s, Cooder also made a name for himself as a composer, writing movie scores for films like Walter Hill’s The Long Riders (1980) and Southern Comfort (1981) and Tony Richardson’s 1982 film The Border.

I haven’t had the opportunity to write about the multi-instrumentalist talent David Lindley until this moment, however. Lindley can boast of a C.V. every bit as impressive as Cooder’s – he was a member, with Chris Darrow (Nitty Gritty Dirt Band), of the 1960s psych-rock band Kaleidoscope, which released three albums circa 1967-69 that remain highly collectible. Lindley would become Jackson Browne’s ‘secret weapon’, contributing his talents to Browne’s recordings from For Everyman (1973) through the hit Running On Empty (1977) to Looking East (1996), and touring with him for over a decade.

Lindley served much the same purpose for Warren Zevon, notably performing on records like Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School (1980), Sentimental Hygiene (1987), and I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead (1996). Lindley was more than just a sideman for Browne and Zevon, however, as he was also an in-demand session player with records by Rod Stewart, Ian Matthews, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Joe Walsh, and Crosby, Stills and Nash (band and solo efforts) to his credit.

Lindley fronted his own roots-rock outfit, El Rayo-X, with whom he released three wonderfully eclectic studio albums between 1981 and 1988; he has recorded a slate of true solo albums; and he collaborated with experimental guitarist Henry Kaiser on four acclaimed albums during the 1990s – and that just scratches the surface of Lindley’s career. Throughout all of this activity, Lindley became friends with Ry Cooder, the two first working together on Cooder’s 1978 album Jazz and again on 1979’s excellent Bop Till You Drop. Cooder would also use the multi-instrumentalist on film scores like Alamo Bay; Paris, Texas; and The Long Riders, from whence this live recording takes its name.

Documenting an FM radio broadcast of a lively acoustic performance by the two musicians at the Montreux Jazz Festival in July 1990, Two Long Riders mostly features material from Cooder’s solo catalog and soundtrack albums as well as a smattering of traditional blues and gospel songs. The sound quality is mediocre, at best, with muddy vocals literally buried in the mix, a great deal of hollowness, and an overall tinny ambiance that tends to favor the high end, making the two men’s instruments sound bright, loud, and clangy. The performances are top-notch, however, a literal guitar workshop for readers that dig that sort of thing, with the talented string-benders jousting on songs like the gospel standard “Jesus On the Mainline,” Cooder’s “Across the Borderline” and “Mercury Blues,” Bobby Womack’s classic “It’s All Over Now,” and the Leadbelly folk-blues gem “Goodnight Irene.”  
    
Bottom line: due to shabby production and sound quality, I can’t recommend Two Long Riders to any but the most hardcore fan of either Ry Cooder and/or David Lindley. If you’re a ‘newbie’ interested in Cooder, you’d be better served by albums like Paradise and Lunch or Bop Till You Drop, both of which can be had on CD at a budget price or found on vinyl at used record stores for a reasonable cost. Likewise for Lindley, whose El Ray-X albums are of uniformly high quality and a great showcase for the musician’s talents. Spend your money on those recordings instead. The Rev’s recommendation: Eh, maybe?

Spooky Tooth – Son of Your Father (Laser Media)
It was a simple equation, really – take the late ‘60s British psych-rock band Art, add American keyboardist and songwriter Gary Wright – and viola, you have legendary rockers Spooky Tooth! It wasn’t really that easy – Island Records founder Chris Blackwell introduced Wright to the members of Art, which at the time included singer Mike Harrison, guitarist Luther Grosvenor, bassist Greg Ridley, and drummer Mike Kellie. The five guys hit it off, formed Spooky Tooth, and releasing their overlooked debut album, It’s All About, in 1968. They delivered what is arguably their masterwork, Spooky Two, in 1969 after which Ridley left to join Humble Pie, replaced by Andy Leigh for the controversial LP Ceremony.

Released in 1969, Ceremony was a project championed by Wright, a musical collaboration with French electronic composer Pierre Henry. Wright envisioned the resulting album as a Henry album for which Spooky Tooth served as studio musicians, but the label released it as a bona fide Spooky Tooth album against Wright’s protests. It sounded nothing like Spooky Two, and the band’s fans stayed away in droves, causing Wright to quit and chase after solo stardom. Harrison and the remaining members enlisted the help of the Grease Band’s Henry McCullough and Chris Stainton to record 1970’s The Last Puff, after which Harrison left to launch his own solo career before putting Spooky Tooth back together with Wright and guitarist Mick Jones for 1973’s You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw. The band’s history becomes even more convoluted after this point, before Harrison reformed it again in the 1990s.      

Son of Your Father ostensibly captures a 1969 live radio broadcast by the Ceremony band line-up and features mostly songs from The Last Puff album (four of the eight). They throw in “Better By You, Better By Me” off Spooky Two and a couple other songs of unverified provenance (possibly mistitled?). Better sources credit the album to the 1970 version of the band that toured in support of The Last Puff – Harrison, Grosvenor, drummer Mike Kellie, bassist Steve Thompson, and keyboardist John Hawken – which makes more sense given the album’s track listing. As such, Son of Your Father offers a glimpse of this transitional band roster that existed for the tour, subsequently breaking up and never recording.

The performances on Son of Your Father are pretty rockin’ tho’ the sound is somewhat muddy and there’s a bit of hollowness to the mix. Overall, though, the sonic quality is acceptable using the Reverend’s standard benchmark (age of recording x volume = aural satisfaction), but I really wish that Laser Media would get its shit together and provide better packaging, liner notes, and such for its semi-legit releases of ages-old radio broadcasts like this. Still, performances like the band’s malevolent take on the Beatles’ “I Am The Walrus,” Harrison’s soulful reading of “Son of Your Father” (complete with some delightfully white-hot Grosvenor fretwork), and the fluid, chaotic instrumentation provided the powerful “Better By You” make for an entertaining listen regardless of the incorrect information provided the CD release.   

It should be noted that Spooky Tooth served as a finishing school for a number of accomplished musicians. Singer/songwriter Mike Harrison enjoyed a modest solo career during the mid-to-late ‘70s, releasing three critically-acclaimed albums. Gary Wright, of course, scored a big FM radio hit in 1975 with “Dream Weaver” and released a slew of acclaimed solo albums, later reuniting with Harrison in Spooky Tooth but also doing session work with folks like George Harrison, B.B. King, and Jerry Lee Lewis, among others. Greg Ridley, as mentioned above, became Humble Pie’s longtime bassist and also played on Steve Marriott’s solo albums. Guitarist Luther Grosvenor changed his name to ‘Ariel Bender’ and hooked up with Mott the Hoople while late-period Spooky Tooth guitarists Henry McCullough (Wings) and Mick Jones (Foreigner) also went on to successful bands.

Spooky Tooth was a criminally-underrated band during its time on planet earth, its legacy partially redeemed by the 2015 release of the nine-disc box set Island Years, 1967-1974 which collected everything from Art’s lone 1967 album Supernatural Fairy Tales through the band’s final 1970s-era LP The Mirror. The box also includes a rare, previously-unreleased live album documenting a 1972 performance in Germany. There’s precious little live Spooky Tooth to be found in the wild – I recall seeing an obscure albeit legit release titled Live In Oldenburg 1973 that shows up on few of the band’s discographies (tho’ I can see the LP cover in my mind), and there’s an out-of-print BBC Sessions disc from 2001 that seems to feature the 1969 band line-up. As such, in spite of Laser Media’s notorious labeling snafus and minimalist packaging, I have to recommend Son of Your Father for any faithful Spooky Tooth fan. The Rev’s recommendation: buy it!

Previous Columns:
Bootleg Rodeo #6 - The Band, John Hiatt with Ry Cooder, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Bootleg Rodeo #5 - The Byrds, Midnight Oil & Poco
Bootleg Rodeo #4 - The Marshall Tucker Band, Steely Dan & Joe Walsh  

Bootleg Rodeo: The Band, John Hiatt & Ry Cooder, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

#6 – April 2018

Thanks to the vagaries created by loopholes in international copyright law, it seems that live music from the 1970s and early ‘80s – particularly FM radio broadcasts – are fair game for release on CD by dodgy European labels. The situation is a godsend for rock ‘n’ roll fans, who now have access to budget recordings by their favorite artists that were only previously available as higher-priced bootleg titles.

Not all of these so-called “copyright gap” releases are worth your time and money, however, which is where That Devil Music’s “Bootleg Rodeo” comes into play. This monthly (give or take) column aims to separate the wheat from the chaff and let you know which of these recordings deserve a place in your collection and which should have been left to collect dust in a closet somewhere. Get ‘em while you can, kiddies, ‘cause one never knows when copyright treaties will be revised and the availability of these albums disappears.

For this month’s “Bootleg Rodeo” column, the first in a couple of months, the Reverend reviews recent releases by the Band, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and the team of John Hiatt and Ry Cooder, with links to buy ‘em (or not) from Amazon.com.

The Band – Syria Mosque 1970 (Zip City Records)
The Band’s self-titled 1969 sophomore album would vault the rustic rockers and former Dylan backing band into the Top Ten in the U.S. and Canada on its way to selling better than a million copies. Fueled by the Top 30 hit single “Up On Cripple Creek,” the album turned heads and created expectations for what the Band would do to follow up their success. The answer came less than a year after the release of The Band in the form of Stage Fright, a complex work fraught with lyrical self-doubt and disenchantment. While songs like “The Shape I’m In” and the title track would propel the album to #5 on the charts, it would be years before the initial mixed critical response would turn uniformly positive and Stage Fright would be considered a bona fide classic of roots-rock.

Touring in support of Stage Fright, the Band made a stop in the ‘Steel City,’ Pittsburgh PA, performing at the Syria Mosque. A legendary venue built by the Shriners in 1911 and opened in 1916, the Syria Mosque had a lengthy history of hosting incredible musical performances long before the Band showed up at their door, with artists as diverse as Enrico Caruso, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Buddy Holly, Sam Cooke, Bo Diddley, the Who, and the Band’s old cohort, Bob Dylan among the many performers that had graced Syria Mosque before 1970. The Band’s November 1st performance was, according to the liner notes of this Zip City CD release, syndicated to FM stations across the country for broadcast. While I couldn’t confirm this as true, I did find that a Dutch TV station taped the concert for later airing, and it was a mono line feed from that recording that was used for several previous bootleg releases of the show.

In 2013, a fly-by-night operation in Japan by the name of Hook & Jab Productions released a bootleg CD titled Syria Mosque 1970 with restored sound and a track listing identical to this Zip City CD, so I’m guessing that they used that Japanese release as an origin for this one, which would explain the odd audio of the performances. The CD’s sound isn’t bad, just a bit muted and hollow which, given its vintage and alleged provenance, isn’t too shabby at all. The Band’s performance is top notch, however, as they crank through a dozen and a half songs drawn from all three of their albums at the time (with an emphasis on songs from Stage Fright, natch). The highlights are what you would expect – “This Wheel’s On Fire,” “The Weight,” “Up On Cripple Creek,” “Stage Fright,” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” – but a rowdy cover of Little Richard’s “Slippin’ and Slidin’” tops off the concert nicely. The Rev’s recommendation: buy it!

John Hiatt with Ry Cooder – Live at the Cotati Cabaret 1983 (Gold Fish Records)
The early ‘80s were an odd and trying time for talented singer/songwriter John Hiatt. By the time of the 1983 release of his Riding With the King album, Hiatt had already released five commercially unsuccessful albums for three different record labels. His albums were critically-acclaimed and Hiatt songs were recorded and/or performed by folks like Roseanne Cash, Willie Nelson, Bruce Springsteen, Ricky Nelson, and Bob Dylan. Still, Hiatt couldn’t buy a bullet on the charts. Guitarist Ry Cooder, on the other hand, was riding fairly high at the time. A veteran of the Rising Sons (with the great Taj Mahal) and Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band, Cooder was an in-demand studio musician whose credits included recordings by the Rolling Stones, Randy Newman, Van Morrison, and Little Feat, among many others.

Cooder’s solo albums sold reasonably well throughout the 1970s and, by the early ‘80s, he’d made the transition towards into writing movie scores which, with his instrumental talents, he excelled at, resulting in acclaimed soundtracks for films like Walter Hill’s The Long Riders (1980) and Southern Comfort (1981) and Tony Richardson’s 1982 film The Border. Cooder and Hiatt had become friends when Hiatt contributed a pair of songs for Cooder’s 1980 solo album Borderline. Hiatt and his road band at the time backed Cooder on his 1980 Borderline American tour, a favor later returned by Cooder, who played with Hiatt during his 1983 tour for Riding With the King. Cooder would remain with Hiatt for the recording of the singer’s breakthrough album, 1987’s Bring the Family and, in 1991, they formed the band Little Village with Hiatt’s friends and bandmates Nick Lowe and Jim Keltner, the musical collaboration resulting in a lone self-titled album in 1992.

All of which, in a roundabout way, brings us to Live at the Cotati Cabaret 1983, an FM radio broadcast featuring Hiatt and Cooder performing together in Cotati, a rural California town north of San Francisco. Touring in support of Riding With the King, the concert’s setlist draws heavily from that album, Hiatt performing nine of the LP’s dozen songs on this sixteen-track collection, alongside a smattering of material from his earlier efforts. The sound quality ranges from good to better, with a couple of drop-outs and some recording artifacts, but nothing that detracts from the performance. Hiatt’s band included players from his 1982 album All of A Sudden, including keyboardist Jesse Harms and drummer Darrell Verdusco, as well as former Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ bassist Howie Epstein and, of course, guitarist Cooder.

Little of this material is familiar to any but the most hardcore Hiatt fanatics, but there’s a lot to like from the underachieving Riding With the King. “Love Like Blood” showcases the warm, soulful vocals that Hiatt would perfect on later albums, his voice complimented by Cooder’s wiry fretwork. “Riding With the King” itself is an underrated tune (that would later become a hit for Eric Clapton and B.B. King), the song brimming with swaggering, confident vocals, resonant guitar licks, and energetic keyboard flourishes while “Say It With Flowers” is a new wave-styled power pop jaunt with vibrant guitar playing and an infectious rhythm punctuated by warbling synthesizer notes.

“Zero House,” which would later be recorded for Hiatt’s 1985 album Warming Up To the Ice Age, is an unabashed rocker that offers some mighty fine Cooder slide guitar and Hiatt’s rapid-fire vox roaring above a locomotive rhythm. Altogether, Live at the Cotati Cabaret 1983 is a solid showcase for both Hiatt’s intelligent lyricism and expressive vocals and Cooder’s imaginative and lively fretwork. The performance captures Hiatt “before the fame,” and it’s well worth checking out for any fan of the man. The Rev’s recommendation: buy it!

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – Nashville 1974 (All Access)
This is a concert that the Rev sort of remembers from high school. Broadcast by local FM radio powerhouse WKDA (before its name change to WKDF), it featured the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band performing live at Woodland Studios in Nashville. The band’s inspired mix of country, rock, and bluegrass music was an unlikely fit with the station’s regular hard rock playlist, but the Nitty Gritty boys had a firm local connection, and they were plugging away in an artistic milieu that included the Eagles, Poco, and the Flying Burrito Brothers, appealing to open-minded record buyers before commercial radio formats placed genre cross-overs into a one-size-fits-all straitjacket.

With their mix of twangy originals – typically penned by singer and guitarist Jeff Hanna and/or multi-instrumentalist John McEuen – and well-chosen cover tunes that ran the gamut from early rock ‘n’ roll classics to country legends like Hank Williams and Bill Monroe, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band were uncredited, albeit bona fide Americana pioneers. The Dirt Band was still touring in support of their 1972 Will the Circle Be Unbroken album at the time of this live broadcast, the enormous triple-vinyl release representing a commercial breakthrough for the band and featuring a slew of impressive guest stars like “Mother” Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, Merle Travis, and Norman Blake. The LP would hit #4 on the country charts and a respectable #68 on the pop charts, opening up an entirely new audience for the band as the album eventually went Platinum™. They would later revisit the entire Will the Circle Be Unbroken concept with two additional volumes in 1989 and 2002.

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was down to four members in January ’74 when they performed for the radio audience at Woodland Studios, with Hanna and McEuen joined by drummer Jimmie Fadden and guitarist/keyboardist Jimmy Ibbotson. Some of the material from this show would be included on the band’s Stars and Stripes Forever album, released later that year, but I’m not sure why they didn’t just release the entire concert on vinyl. The performance documented by Nashville 1974 offers an engaging mix of country, rock, and bluegrass, the band’s signature sound accompanied by an obvious enthusiasm and reverence for the material.

They deliver passionate performances of tunes like Buddy Holly’s “Rave On,” Hank Williams’ “Jambalaya (On the Bayou),” Johnny Horton’s “The Battle of New Orleans,” and Bill Monroe’s “Uncle Pen,” but they aren’t afraid to dig into more obscure songbooks, as with their fine reading of Michael Nesmith’s “Some of Shelley’s Blues” or Michael Martin Murphy’s “Cosmic Cowboy.” Of course they included their two biggest hits at the time – loving covers of Kenny Loggin’s “House At Pooh Corner” and Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles” – before closing out the show with the Cajun romp ‘n’ stomper “Diggy Liggy Lo.”

The band would continue to struggle through the rest of the ‘70s, scoring the occasional hit single but virtually spending nearly two decades in the wilderness before dropping the “Nitty Gritty” from their name and finding their footing as an exclusively country-leaning, hit-making machine. They’d score better than a dozen Top Ten charting country hits during the mid-to-late ‘80s before re-adopting their former name and soldiering on well into the new millennium. For this night in Nashville, the band let its talents shine brightly, performing with joyous abandon. The Rev’s recommendation: buy it!

Previous Columns:
Bootleg Rodeo #1 - Tom Petty, Carlos Santana/John Lee Hooker, George Thorogood & the Destroyers 
Bootleg Rodeo #2 - Tom Petty, Stephen Stills & Manasass, Neil Young
Bootleg Rodeo #3 - Bob Seger
Bootleg Rodeo #4 - The Marshall Tucker Band, Steely Dan & Joe Walsh  
Bootleg Rodeo #5 - The Byrds, Midnight Oil & Poco

Bootleg Rodeo: The Byrds, Midnight Oil & Poco

#5 – January 2018

Thanks to the vagaries created by loopholes in international copyright law, it seems that live music from the 1970s – particularly FM radio broadcasts – are fair game for release on CD by dodgy European labels. The situation is a godsend for rock ‘n’ roll fans, who now have access to budget recordings by their favorite artists that were only previously available as higher-priced bootleg titles.

Not all of these so-called “copyright gap” releases are worth your time and money, however, which is where That Devil Music’s “Bootleg Rodeo” comes into play. This monthly (give or take) column aims to separate the wheat from the chaff and let you know which of these recordings deserve a place in your collection and which should have been left to collect dust in a closet somewhere. Get ‘em while you can, kiddies, ‘cause one never knows when copyright treaties will be revised and the availability of these albums disappears.

For this month’s “Bootleg Rodeo” column, the first in a couple of months, the Reverend reviews recent releases by the Byrds, Midnight Oil, and Poco with links to buy ‘em (or not) from Amazon.com.

The Byrds – Pretty Boy Floyd (Digital Legends)
Now the Reverend realizes as much as any home taper/tape trader that the further back you go in rock ‘n’ roll history, available recordings are harder to listen to due to primitive technology that resulted in shabby recordings. It seems that the basically anonymous Digital Legends label is vying with Laser Media to see who can sell the crappiest-sounding concert discs to rabid fans, and this unsourced 1971 performance by the trailblazing Byrds is one of the worse CDs, sonically, that these poor ears have ever heard (and I used to review bootleg CDs for Live! Music Review zine back in the day). Credited only to “Radio Broadcast, N.Y. 1971,” the Byrds’ Pretty Boy Floyd sounds like a poor audience taping mastered from old vinyl than anything that (presumably) WLIR-FM would have broadcast.

‘Tis a shame, too, ‘cause if the date of the performance is to be believed, the 1971 concert documented by Pretty Boy Floyd probably falls somewhere between 1970’s wonderful Untitled LP and 1971’s underrated Byrdmaniax album. The band line-up at the time included singer/guitarist Roger McGuinn, the enormously talented multi-instrumentalist Clarence White, bassist Skip Battin, and drummer Gene Parsons. The track list here draws heavily from Untitled, including gems like “Lover of the Bayou,” “Truck Stop Girl,” and the sublime “Chestnut Mare.” Only a single track is from Byrdmaniax – a lovely cover of Jackson Browne’s “Jamaica Say You Will” – and there are the expected performances of “My Back Pages” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” as well as an “Eight Miles High Jam.”

The band’s performance is spirited and quite entertaining, but the cavernous sound buries the vox and instrumentation in the depths of the mix, and there’s little definition provided White’s charming fretwork and the Byrds’ trademark vocal harmonies. You’d be much better off buying a copy of Sundazed’s Live At The Royal Albert Hall 1971, which features the same band line-up, it sounds better, and the CD offers a total of 19 songs instead of the dozen songs on Pretty Boy Floyd. The Rev’s recommendation: forget about it!

Midnight Oil – Live On Air (Laser Media)
I’ve frequently slagged Laser Media for the crappy sound of their concert CDs and, to be honest, Live On Air isn’t much different in sonic quality than the dreck typically released by the label. The sound is marginally better than previous Laser Media releases I’ve heard, or maybe Midnight Oil simply transcend the shabby source tape and lazy mixing endemic to many live discs of dodgy provenance. Midnight Oil’s Live On Air captures a truly electrifying performance by the Australian band; claiming to be an “official radio broadcast” from 1984, that would place the concert preserved by Live On Air sometime after the release of 1982’s highly-rocking 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 and before 1984’s Red Sails In the Sunset album.

Eight of the twelve tracks here are from the 1982 LP, and while I’m not sure whether this CD is sourced from an Australian radio broadcast or some sort of label showcase aired on American FM (Midnight Oil was barely known in the U.S. in 1984 even if they were signed to Columbia Records), the CD’s sound is a notch below horrible, but at least frontman Peter Garrett’s vocals jump out at from the sonic muck while the guitars of Jim Moginie and Martin Rotsey slice through the fog with all the ferocity of the hungry rockers they were at the time. There were a lot of great songs on 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 including “Power and the Passion” and the politically-charged “Short Memory,” both of which received significant college radio airplay back in the day. Tunes like “Scream In Blue,” “Outside World,” and “No Time For Games” ain’t chopped liver, though, and earlier band material like “Written In The Heart” (from the 1981 LP Place Without A Postcard), with its jagged, angular guitar licks or the chaotic rocker “Stand In Line” (from 1979’s Head Injuries) both display a different facet of the band’s talents.

I was lucky enough to see Midnight Oil perform in Nashville at the notorious Cannery venue. The band was touring in support of their 1990 album Blue Sky Mining and was still riding high on the strength of their Platinum™-selling 1987 U.S. breakthrough LP Diesel and Dust. The club was packed and the temperature well over 100 degrees – hotter than the Outback said Peter Garrett – but the band kicked out the jams nonetheless. The sound quality of Live On Air sucks a wallaby’s bum, but the band’s performance is pure dynamite and the CD offers Midnight Oil during a little-documented period of their career. The Rev’s recommendation: buy it!

Poco – Live at Columbia Studios, Hollywood 30/9/71 (Retroworld Records)
Unlike the aforementioned Laser Media and Digital Legends labels, Retroworld is a bona fide legit operation and although they’ve released a few questionable titles over the past couple of years, the consumer is fairly well assured of getting a consistent sonic product. For Poco’s Live at Columbia Studios, Hollywood 30/9/71 the label licensed the masters directly from the band’s longtime label home, Epic Records. This live-in-the-studio performance dates to September 1971, which puts it around the time when the band’s third studio album, From The Inside, was released. The first album to feature guitarist Paul Cotton in the wake of original band member Jim Messina’s departure (to form the uber-successful Loggins & Messina), the band at the time also included frontman Richie Furay, pedal steel wizard Rusty Young (who keeps the band going today), bassist Timothy B. Schmit, and drummer George Grantham.

An underrated period of a rich decade that saw Poco release ten critically-acclaimed albums to mixed commercial success (only 1973’s Crazy Eyes would chart Top 40), Live at Columbia Studios features a half-dozen tracks off From The Inside, including the spry “Hoe Down”; Paul Cotton’s lovely, intricate “Bad Weather” and the rockin’ “Railroad Days”; and the album’s ill-fated lone single “Just For Me and You,” a gorgeous mid-tempo ballad that only climbed as high as #110 on the charts. The classic “Pickin’ Up The Pieces” is woven into a charming medley with “Hard Luck” and Buffalo Springfield’s “Child’s Claim To Fame,” the band sounding a lot like Crosby, Stills & Nash, while “C’mon,” the closest thing that Poco had to a hit single at the time, is provided a lengthy and electrifying instrumental jam.

Professionally-recorded, sound quality on Poco’s Live at Columbia Studios is befitting what is essentially a major label archive release, and despite the CD’s import status, fans can pick up a copy for a reasonable price online. Displaying the sort of pioneering country-rock sound with pop undertones that was Poco’s trademark, Live at Columbia Studios is a worthy addition to the band’s extensive catalog. The Rev’s recommendation: buy it!

Previous Columns:
Bootleg Rodeo #1 - Tom Petty, Carlos Santana/John Lee Hooker, George Thorogood & the Destroyers 
Bootleg Rodeo #2 - Tom Petty, Stephen Stills & Manasass, Neil Young
Bootleg Rodeo #3 - Bob Seger
Bootleg Rodeo #4 - The Marshall Tucker Band, Steely Dan & Joe Walsh 

Bootleg Rodeo: Marshall Tucker Band, Steely Dan & Joe Walsh

#4 - October 2017

Thanks to the vagaries created by loopholes in international copyright law, it seems that live music from the 1970s – particularly FM radio broadcasts – are fair game for release on CD by dodgy European labels. The situation is a godsend for rock ‘n’ roll fans, who now have access to budget recordings by their favorite artists that were only previously available as higher-priced bootleg titles.

Not all of these so-called “copyright gap” releases are worth your time and money, however, which is where That Devil Music’s “Bootleg Rodeo” comes into play. This monthly (give or take) column aims to separate the wheat from the chaff and let you know which of these recordings deserve a place in your collection and which should have been left to collect dust in a closet somewhere. Get ‘em while you can, kiddies, ‘cause one never knows when copyright treaties will be revised and the availability of these albums disappears.

For this month’s “Bootleg Rodeo” column, the Rev has chosen to round up recently-released live CDs from Joe Walsh, Steely Dan, and the Marshall Tucker Band, with links to buy ‘em from Amazon.com.

The Marshall Tucker Band – Take the Highway (Laser Media)
As a teenaged Southern Rock fanatic, the Reverend was an avid fan of the Marshall Tucker Band. Take the Highway documents a 1973 radio broadcast from the good ol’ country boys, sourced from Ultrasonic Studios and probably broadcast on WLIR-FM out of Long Island NY. Considering the shabby sound quality, it seems like it was taped off a tin can with the string thinly stretched to another can placed at the station’s back door. This is a damn shame – WLIR concert broadcasts are usually of fairly decent sonic quality – and the MTB kicks up a hell of a performance here. With Doug Gray slinging the microphone and Toy Caldwell pickin’ on the strings, the rest of the band swings with its usual aplomb, mixing up rock and country with a bit of blues spicing it up with some jazzy licks.

Five of the nine tracks here hail from the band’s self-titled 1973 debut album with several – “Take The Highway,” “Ramblin’,” and “Can’t You See” – becoming fan favorites and staples of the band’s live set to this day. As alluded to above, the performance is high-energy and spirited, bucking like a bronco but offering some tasty instrumental jams as well. I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard a Laser Media release that sounded better than stuffing your ears with wet sand, though, and their packaging is minimally unspectacular. This often-bootlegged performance can probably be found online if you look hard enough, and the Shout! Factory set Way Out West captures a different show from the same ’73 tour that duplicates seven of the nine songs here. The Rev’s recommendation: forget about it!

Steely Dan – Doing It In California (Sutra Records)
With the recent death of Walter Becker, ½ of the brilliant duo that was, basically, Steely Dan I thought I’d go looking for some unauthorized live stuff to share with you gentle readers. As Steely Dan basically ceased being a touring band after the release of their excellent third album (Pretzel Logic), digging up vintage recordings of the band proved to be a minor chore. Luckily, the Reverend scored with Doing It In California, a seventeen-track compilation of questionable provenance that offers up the bulk of two live shows. The first nine tracks are sourced from a March 1974 FM radio broadcast of a California performance while the back seven hail from a notorious and often-‘legged April 1974 show at the Ellis Auditorium in Memphis, Tennessee. Both performances here are top notch, the sound quality suffering a bit because of primitive recording technology but quite listenable nonetheless.

The Cali tracks include spunky performances of Steely Dan faves like “Do It Again,” “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” and “Reelin’ In The Years” along with a rare sighting of “This All Too Mobile Home,” which was never recorded in the studio by the band. The Memphis performance is equally as enchanting, with a little less sonic buffing done to the tapes, but featuring songs like “Bodhisattva,” “Brooklyn (Owes The Charmer Under Me),” and “Dirty Work,” the band again throwing in an unrecorded song with “Your Gold Teeth II” (different than the version on Katy Lied). A sonically-shabby version of “Do It Again” dating from a 1973 TV broadcast of The Midnight Special is unnecessarily tacked on to the end here. The band came off the road in mid-’74 and didn’t play again live until the reunion of Becker and Fagen in 1993. If you’ve checked out Steely Dan’s excellent 1995 Alone In America live set and need more, grab up a copy of Doing It In California or Going Mobile, a virtually identical radio broadcast of a similar vintage. The Rev’s recommendation: buy it!

Joe Walsh – All Night Long (Smokin’ Records)
As the former frontman for the James Gang, a successful solo artist, and member of the Eagles, Joe Walsh has become a bona fide rock ‘n’ roll legend. A unique and colorful personality, Walsh is an expressive, if average singer but is nevertheless a phenomenal guitarist and a skilled wordsmith when he puts his mind to it. While his back catalog is a mess of half-realized song ideas and cocaine-fueled questionable creative decisions (i.e. much of the decade of the ‘80s), there’s precious little to criticize among his 1970s-era albums like Barnstorm, The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get, and But Seriously, Folks. Probably due to his enduring popularity, a rash of live FM broadcast CDs featuring Walsh performances have been released as of late. All Night Long, sourced from a radio broadcast of a July 1981 concert in Dallas, Texas is undeniably the pick of the litter.

Touring in support of 1981’s There Goes The Neighborhood, this live set offers up only two tracks from that album – “A Life of Illusion” (a spruced-up old Barnstorm outtake) and “You Never Know.” The rest of All Night Long plays like a career-spanning anthology, Joe and the gang kicking out the jams with electrifying reads of James Gang faves (“The Bomber,” “Funk #49”) and previous solo hits (“Rocky Mountain Way,” “Life’s Been Good”) as well as album obscurities like “Over and Over” and “Theme From Boat Weirdos.” A couple of non-album rarities show up here, notably Walsh’s excellent “In the City,” from The Warriors movie soundtrack, and the Top 20 chart hit “All Night Long,” from the Urban Cowboy soundtrack. Altogether, this is an entertaining set and a ‘must have’ for any Joe Walsh fan. The Rev’s recommendation: buy it!!

Previous Columns:
Bootleg Rodeo #1 - Tom Petty, Carlos Santana/John Lee Hooker, George Thorogood & the Destroyers 
Bootleg Rodeo #2 - Tom Petty, Stephen Stills & Manasass, Neil Young  
Bootleg Rodeo #3 - Bob Seger

Bootleg Rodeo: Bob Seger

#3 - August 2017

Thanks to the vagaries created by loopholes in international copyright law, it seems that live music from the 1970s – particularly FM radio broadcasts – are fair game for release on CD by dodgy European labels. The situation is a godsend for rock ‘n’ roll fans, who now have access to budget recordings by their favorite artists that were only previously available as higher-priced bootleg titles.

Not all of these so-called “copyright gap” releases are worth your time and money, however, which is where That Devil Music’s “Bootleg Rodeo” comes into play. This monthly (give or take) column aims to separate the wheat from the chaff and let you know which of these recordings deserve a place in your collection and which should have been left to collect dust in a closet somewhere. Get ‘em while you can, kiddies, ‘cause one never knows when copyright treaties will be revised and the availability of these albums disappears.

With this “Bootleg Rodeo” column, we’re going to tackle the impressive three-disc Transmission Impossible set which collects a trio of Bob Seger’s “legendary radio broadcasts” from 1974, 1980 and 1983, along with a link to buy it from Amazon.com.

Bob Seger – Transmission Impossible (Eat To The Beat Records)

The Reverend has been a Bob Seger fan since the first notes of “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” rang out of the underpowered speaker of the little blue transistor radio hidden beneath my pillow in the bedroom of my Western Pennsylvania home. A few years later, I got to witness Seger and the Silver Bullet Band in person as they took the stage at Nashville’s Municipal Auditorium during the summer of 1976. Opening for Kiss, rockin’ Bob and his gang blew the feeble foursome off the stage and saw themselves kicked off the tour altogether after just a few shows spent upstaging the headliners. The double-shot of Seger’s Live Bullet and Night Moves albums that year would launch Seger to rock ‘n’ roll superstardom.

Flash forward a few more years, and the Reverend was living in Detroit and managing a bus station downtown. Hometown hero Seger announced a six-night run at the city’s famed Cobo Hall in support of his new album, Against The Wind. Tickets were sold on a lottery basis – you mailed in a money order and a self-addressed, stamped envelope and you might get tickets in return – and I was fortunate enough to score tix for my brother and myself for three shows, with rock legend Mitch Ryder pulled out of retirement by Seger personally to open for him.

The impressive three-disc Transmission Impossible set includes a trio of “legendary” Seger radio broadcasts from three distinctly different eras of the singer/songwriter’s career: a 1974 performance at Ebbet’s Field in Denver, Colorado; one of the six Cobo Hall shows from June 1980 that I attended; and a December 1983 appearance at The Hartford Civic Center in Hartford, Connecticut. The set’s deluxe multi-fold packaging is attractive tho’ too short on liner notes, offering up not much more than a list of songs. Still, for the true-blue Seger faithful, these three shows – adding up to over three hours of rockin’ Bob music – are something of a holy grail, and with a street price of under $20, Transmission Impossible is quite enticing…but is it worth the cost?

The 1974 Ebbet’s Field performance offers a fourteen-song set list that would sound somewhat alien to the casual Seger fan, with the newly-minted Silver Bullet Band touring in support of Seger’s (then) new album Seven. Familiar talents like guitarist Drew Abbott (from Detroit band Third Power), bassist Chris Campbell, drummer Charlie Allen Martin, and keyboardist Robyn Robins backed Seger on a scorching set that includes songs like “U.M.C. (Upper Middle Class),” “All Your Love,” and the entirely-appropriate “Get Out of Denver” from Seven as well as fan favorite “Rosalie,” a high-octane cover of Van Morrison’s “I’ve Been Working” (both from Back In ’72), and longtime live staple “Heavy Music.” There are a number of surprises on the 1974 set, though, beginning with the bluesy “Don’t Burn Down The Bridge,” which may or may not have been written by Albert King but featuring Abbott’s high-flying guitar licks backing Seger’s roaring vox.

One of the first appearances of the Ike & Tina Turner grinder “Nutbush City Limits” – which wouldn’t be recorded until 1975’s Beautiful Loser album – brings some funk to the party, while Seger revisits his past with “Song For Rufus,” from 1970’s Mongrel album. One oddball track is a cover of British glam-rocker Alex Harvey’s swinging “Gang Bang” which the Silver Bullet boys go way over the top with. Of course, Seger knocks out his big hit, “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man,” with reckless abandon, the arrangement juiced by Robins’ frenetic keyboard-bashing. Sound quality throughout the set is pretty decent considering the vintage of the recording, with a slight hollowness that isn’t a bother when you turn up the volume. This Colorado performance was released in 2012 by Chrome Dreams as Get Out of Denver, so if you have that disc you may not need this one (unless, of course, you want either of the other two mouth-watering shows).

Disc two of Transmission Impossible offers one of the June 1980 performances from Cobo Hall (not ‘arena’ like it says on the back cover) in lovely downtown Detroit, Michigan. Touring in support of Against The Wind, Seger cranks the amps from the beginning of the set with a red-hot take on “Feel Like A Number” from 1978’s Stranger In Town. The band plays like the well-oiled rock ‘n’ roll machine they had become, with Seger’s old pal David Teegarden taking over on drums by this point. Oddly enough, Seger only includes four songs from Against The Wind here, all of ‘em packed in the middle of the set. Although that album’s quality is a point of contention among Seger fans – critic Dave Marsh considered it the worst album of the singer’s career at that point – it was undeniably popular, topping the charts and sitting there at #1 for six weeks as the album would go triple Platinum™ within a year.

Bob Seger photo by Brad Stanley, 1994

Performed alongside the other material that Bob and band crank out, the Against the Wind tracks do pale by comparison. Two tracks from Stranger In Town, for example – “Old Time Rock & Roll” and “Hollywood Nights” – both kick ass, the former evincing a Southern rock groove with a nice Abbott git solo while the latter’s dense instrumental soundtrack and locomotive rhythm provide a perfect backdrop for Seger’s lyrics. A longtime live favorite from Beautiful Loser, “Katmandu” never fails to get the crowd stomping and this performance is no slouch, rolling out of your speakers with all the velocity and subtlety of machine gun fire while the deliberate vocals of “Night Moves” benefit from Abbott’s acoustic guitar strum and Alto Reed’s mournful saxophone. Of the Against The Wind tracks, “Fire Lake” stands the tallest, offering plenty of bluster, but even it is overshadowed by the scorched-earth groove of “The Fire Down Below.” Sound quality for the second disc is a mild improvement on the first, slightly more polished but still crackling with raw energy. Two tracks from this June 15th show were included on the live 1981 album Nine Tonight along with seven performances from four other nights. 

Disc three of Transmission Impossible documents a 1983 performance in Hartford, Connecticut, a show of some notoriety among Seger fans, bootleggers, and tape traders. Touring a year after the release of his 1982 album The Distance, the Silver Bullet Band had undergone upheaval with keyboardist Craig Frost and drummer Don Brewer from Grand Funk Railroad coming on board along with guitarist Dawayne Bailey (Chicago) replacing longtime band member Abbott. The Distance was another confusing album, with Seger seemingly searching for a sound, caught up in his own celebrity and unable to regain his old creative footing. Some of the old songs sound great, though – “Betty Lou’s Getting’ Out Tonight” features some hot guitar licks and cool blasts of Alto Reed’s sax while the old chestnut “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” fires on all cylinders.

Much like with Against The Wind, Seger only includes a handful of songs from The Distance on this seventeen-song set list, most notably the honky-tonker “Making Thunderbirds,” a swinging lil’ ditty with plenty o’ spirited Jerry Lee Lewis-styled piano-pounding. The set list as shown on the back cover veers off the tracks only six songs in, and the disc includes only a dozen of the seventeen tracks listed, with much of the middle of the set omitted for no good reason. The sound quality on this third disc is inferior to the first two, with an echo that would lead one to believe that it was an audience recording instead of a radio broadcast.

It’s by no means unlistenable, it just isn’t as enjoyable as the other two discs, and the missing songs are quite aggravating (what the hell, Eat To The Beat?). Still, Transmission Impossible provides a lot of rockin’ tunes for a pittance, and will kick out the jams for any classic rock fan. The Rev’s recommendation: if the missing songs aren’t a deal-breaker, then buy it!

Previous Columns:
Bootleg Rodeo #1 - Tom Petty, Carlos Santana/John Lee Hooker, George Thorogood & the Destroyers 
Bootleg Rodeo #2 - Tom Petty, Stephen Stills & Manasass, Neil Young

Bootleg Rodeo: Tom Petty, Stephen Stills & Manassas, Neil Young

#2 - July 2017

Thanks to the vagaries created by loopholes in international copyright law, it seems that live music from the 1970s – particularly FM radio broadcasts – are fair game for release on CD by dodgy European labels. The situation is a godsend for rock ‘n’ roll fans, who now have access to budget recordings by their favorite artists that were only previously available as higher-priced bootleg titles.

Not all of these so-called “copyright gap” releases are worth your time and money, however, which is where That Devil Music’s “Bootleg Rodeo” comes into play. This monthly (give or take) column aims to separate the wheat from the chaff and let you know which of these recordings deserve a place in your collection and which should have been left to collect dust in a closet somewhere. Get ‘em while you can, kiddies, ‘cause one never knows when copyright treaties will be revised and the availability of these albums disappears.

For this sophomore “Bootleg Rodeo” column the Rev has chosen to round up recently-released live CDs from Neil Young, Tom Petty, and Stephen Stills and Manassas, with links to buy ‘em from Amazon.com.

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – Psychotic Reaction (Zip City Records)
Of a later vintage than the mighty fine Petty set we previously reviewed, Psychotic Reaction captures an FM radio broadcast of a live November 1991 Heartbreakers performance in Oakland, California. The Heartbreakers has previously gone on hiatus when Petty hooked up with his idols Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and Roy Orbison as a member of the erstwhile ‘supergroup’ the Traveling Wilburys, appearing on albums by the band in 1988 and 1990. In between, working with his Wilburys bandmate Jeff Lynne and the Heartbreakers’ guitarist Mike Campbell, Petty recorded his first solo album, 1989’s Full Moon Fever.

Petty and the Heartbreakers reunited in 1991 to record Into the Great Wide Open with Lynne co-producing, after which the band hit the road for a 48-date North American tour from which this recording is taken. Psychotic Reaction is a lengthy (73min) collection of sixteen tracks that includes older tunes like “Refugee,” and “Here Comes My Girl” alongside new Heartbreakers’ jams like “King’s Highway,” “Into the Great Wide Open,” and “Learning To Fly.” Throw in live versions of Petty solo tunes like “Free Fallin’,” “I Won’t Back Down,” and “Runnin’ Down A Dream” and you have a totally electrifying set. Sound quality is better than an FM broadcast should be. Previously released on CD-R and widely traded in taping circles, Psychotic Reaction gets its name from the band’s raucous reading of the classic Count Five song featuring Petty’s ramshackle harmonica, Campbell’s scorching fretwork, and Benmont Tench’s undeniably foot-shufflin’ keyboards. The Rev’s recommendation: buy it!

Stephen Stills & Manassas – Live Treasure (Go Faster Records)
This might be the CD find of the month – provided that you’re a fan of Stephen Stills and Manassas, of course – Live Treasure a budget-priced two-disc set capturing a March 1972 performance at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam that was broadcast on FM radio. After releasing two well-received solo albums in the span of a roughly nine months circa 1970-71, Stills put together Manassas with former Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers multi-instrumentalist Chris Hillman, later recruiting Crosby, Stills & Nash drummer Dallas Taylor, pedal steel wizard Al Perkins (Flying Burrito Brothers), keyboardist Paul Harris, and percussionist Joe Lala (Blues Image). Manassas would release its self-titled debut in April 1972 (the label flogging it as “Stephen Stills’ Manassas”), which means that Live Treasure documents the band still knocking the rough edges off their (then) unique blend of rock, country, and blues music – what we’d call ‘roots-rock’ or “Americana’ these days.

Among the 29 songs and better than two hours of music you’ll find on Live Treasure are a bunch of songs from Stills’ solo albums, including gems like “Do For the Others,” “Change Partners,” and the hit “Love the One You’re With” as well as tracks from the then-forthcoming Manassas album like “Bound To Fall,” “Don’t Look At My Shadow,” and “Johnny’s Garden.” There are also performances of a couple of outliers like “Hot Burrito #2” from the Flying Burrito Brothers’ Gilded Palace of Sin album and Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.” The band displays a complex musical dynamic here, and Stills’ fretwork is simply stunning on songs like “Blues Man.” The sound quality on Live Treasure is spotty, but don’t believe the negative reviews on Amazon – although not as impressive a recording as, say, the aforementioned Tom Petty album, it’s not as bad as your garden variety bootleg, either; the overall fine band performance documented on these two discs more than makes up for the album’s sonic flaws. The Rev’s recommendation: buy it!        

Neil Young – Bottom Line 1974 (Gold Fish Records)
Rock ‘n’ Roll legend Neil Young has released a number of classic live recordings under the banner of his “archive series” over the past few years, but this often-bootlegged performance seems to have been overlooked as of this date. Recorded at New York City’s storied Bottom Line club in May 1974, the album showcases Young performing in a solo acoustic setting. As legend has it, Young was in the audience that night for a performance by the talented Ry Cooder and, so moved was he that Young jumped onstage and proceeded to knock out a stellar eleven-song set clocking in at over an hour.

Although the Gold Fish Records release of Bottom Line 1974 states that it was taken from an FM radio broadcast, notes on Young’s own website say that it’s an audience recording. My educated ears say that it probably falls in between – maybe a soundboard recording with some bleed through from the audience – but there’s no denying the strength and passion of Young’s performance here. Young debuts five entirely new songs and a total of ten unreleased songs from future albums like On the Beach (“Ambulance Blues,” “Revolution Blues,” “Motion Pictures,” “On The Beach”), Tonight’s The Night (“Roll Another Number For The Road”), and Zuma (“Pardon My Heart”). Young draws upon not only his own songbook but also material like “Long May You Run,” from his future (1976) collaboration with Stephen Stills, and Buffalo Springfield’s “Flying On the Ground Is Wrong.” A charming display of Young’s talents, Bottom Line 1974 is an obscure but important addition to the artist’s catalog. The Rev’s recommendation: buy it, or wait for Neil to release a legit version…  

Previous Content:
Bootleg Rodeo #1 - Tom Petty, Carlos Santana/John Lee Hooker, George Thorogood & the Destroyers

Bootleg Rodeo: Tom Petty, Carlos Santana & George Thorogood

#1 - May 2017

Thanks to the vagaries created by loopholes in international copyright law, it seems that live music from the 1970s – particularly FM radio broadcasts – are fair game for release on CD by dodgy European labels. The situation is a godsend for rock ‘n’ roll fans, who now have access to budget recordings by their favorite artists that were only previously available as higher-priced bootleg titles.

Not all of these so-called “copyright gap” releases are worth your time and money, however, which is where That Devil Music’s “Bootleg Rodeo” comes into play. This monthly (give or take) column aims to separate the wheat from the chaff and let you know which of these recordings deserve a place in your collection and which should have been left to collect dust in a closet somewhere. Get ‘em while you can, kiddies, ‘cause one never knows when copyright treaties will be revised and the availability of these albums disappears.

For our inaugural “Bootleg Rodeo,” the Rev has chosen to round up recent live CDs from Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Carlos Santana, and George Thorogood & the Destroyers, with links to buy ‘em from Amazon.com. 

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – New York Shuffle (Sonic Boom)
A lot of shows from the legendary My Father’s Place in Roslyn, New York have appeared on bootleg vinyl and CD through the years, most of them snatched from the frequent and ubiquitous radio broadcasts by WLIR-FM. Radio stations generally hold onto tapes of these shows in their archives for years (or at least until some employee grabs ‘em!), and while more than a few of these previous bootleg releases were no doubt sourced from off-air recordings, in the case of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ New York Shuffle, the sound quality is good enough to believe that it’s a first generation soundboard taping.

Capturing an early Petty & the Heartbreakers’ performance from November 1977 at My Father’s Place, New York Shuffle documents a young band touring in support of their acclaimed debut album. As such, there are spirited performances of great songs like “American Girl,” “Breakdown,” and “Anything That’s Rock ‘n’ Roll” as well as “Listen To Her Heart” and “I Need To Know” from their upcoming album, You’re Gonna Get It! The disc also includes raucous covers of the Isley Brothers (“Shout”) and Bobby Troup’s “Route 66.” To fill out the CD’s tracklist (and get closer to an hour of running time), Sonic Boom added two tracks from a KSAN-FM broadcast earlier in the year, including a rowdy take on Chuck Berry’s “Jaguar & Thunderbird.” The Rev’s recommendation: Buy it!

Carlos Santana w/John Lee Hooker – One Monday Morning (Laser Media)
This lil’ disc from the enigmatic Laser Media label bills itself as “legendary” Santana radio broadcast dating from 1985, but that’s really all the information that they’re willing to reveal. Although his name is writ large on the front cover beside his smiling face, with a smaller “Special Guest John Lee Hooker” in a box below, this album has very little to do with Carlos Santana. Rather, it’s a mid-‘80s John Lee Hooker performance, the legendary bluesman backed by his Coast to Coast Blues Band, including guitarist Roy Rogers and keyboardist Deacon Jones.

Nevertheless, there are a few things on One Monday Morning to like, providing you can grab a copy at a decent (> $10) price. There are only eight songs here, two of which feature the CCBB cranking out blues/R&B standards like “Shake Your Money Maker.” They bring on John Lee and, after a couple of perfunctory warm-up tunes (“One Monday Morning” and “I Don’t Know’), the Hook launches into an incendiary reading of his classic “Boom Boom” that offers up some scorching fretwork courtesy of rock ‘n’ roll legend Santana. The sound quality is, to be kind, mediocre, shallow without noticeable equalization, but around half the performances here (i.e. those with Carlos) are incendiary. The Rev’s recommendation: Maybe?

George Thorogood & the Destroyers – Boogie Chillin’ (Zip City)
The El Mocambo club in Toronto, Ontario is one of Canada’s legendary venues, and the site of many a notable performance. Since the club opened in 1948, it’s hosted a literal “who’s who” of incredible performers like Muddy Waters, Elvis Costello, the Rolling Stones, and the Ramones, among others. It’s also been the site of the not-infrequent live FM radio broadcast, like this red-hot set by George Thorogood & the Destroyers, attributed to a July 1978 performance and broadcast by an uncredited local station. Thorogood and his rough-riders had been together a few years at this point and already released two critically-acclaimed albums (1977’s self-titled debut and 1978’s Move It On Over), and the performance documented by Zip City’s Boogie Chillin’ is largely comprised of material from those discs.

This is around the time that the Reverend first saw Thorogood & the Destroyers perform, at Nashville’s Exit/In with the Nighthawks opening, and I can personally vouch for the band’s explosive and entertaining live show. Boogie Chillin’ opens with Thorogood’s lively take on bluesman Homesick James’ “Baby, Please Set a Date” and, from that launching pad, soars with blistering covers of classic early rock ‘n’ blues gems by Bo Diddley (“Who Do You Love?), John Lee Hooker (“Boogie Chillin”), Willie Dixon (“I’m Wanted”), and Chuck Berry (“Reelin’ and Rockin’”). Thorogood was never the most prolific of songwriters in those early days, but his own “Homesick Boy” is an inspired rocker that fits like a glove with the other material here. The sound quality on Boogie Chillin’ is very good, with a sonic few drop outs, and George’s guitar seems to be out-of-tune at times, but Thorogood and crew more than make up for it with the passion and energy of these performances. The Rev’s recommendation: Buy it!