The seventies were truly the golden age of the live album.\u00a0 Twenty years before the Internet made it possible to not just hear but watch live concert footage more or less on demand in your living room, the best way to capture the flavor (and fervor) of catching your favorite band in concert without actually being in the venue was to buy a live album.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Ironically, some of the era\u2019s most memorable live acts \u2013 I\u2019m thinking especially of Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd \u2013 experienced difficulty translating and\/or packaging their in-concert prowess into worthwhile live recordings.\u00a0 Meanwhile, a host of otherwise second- or third-tier acts were busy producing some of the best live albums of that or any decade (Peter Frampton, anyone?)<\/p>\n
British quintet UFO made their contribution to the latter trend by following up their one-two punch of commercial breakthrough studio albums Lights Out<\/i> and Obsession <\/i>with one of the era\u2019s finest live hard rock recordings, 1979\u2019s double-LP Strangers In The Night<\/i>.<\/p>\n
All three albums feature what is often cited as the eternally-in-flux band\u2019s strongest lineup, with Phil Mogg on vocals, Michael Schenker on lead guitar, Pete Way on bass, Andy Parker on drums, and Paul Raymond on keyboards.\u00a0 (Not to criticize an act for surviving 40 years in the business \u2013 they earn much respect here for that feat alone — but anytime a band\u2019s family tree invites comparisons to Yes, you know it\u2019s got branches to spare\u2026)<\/p>\n
What UFO and contemporaries such as KISS and Thin Lizzy succeeded in doing that Zep and Floyd could not, was to capture for posterity the lightning in a bottle that is a band working the concert stage at the absolute height of its powers.\u00a0 Strangers In The Night<\/i> isn\u2019t just one of the best live albums from an era full of great ones \u2013 it\u2019s far and away the best album UFO has ever released.<\/p>\n
The combination of Mogg\u2019s bluesy, emotive vocals and Schenker\u2019s grandly aggressive lead guitar lay at the core of the band\u2019s early successes, as the pair forged track after track of propulsive, melodic hard rock.\u00a0 \u00a0The urgent drive of cuts like \u201cDoctor, Doctor,\u201d \u201cThis Kids\u201d and \u201cLet It Roll\u201d is redoubled live as the band burns through them in high style, the arrangements further bolstered by the addition of Raymond\u2019s keyboards and rhythm guitar.<\/p>\n
The Lights Out<\/i> and Obsession<\/i> material is dynamite as well, with \u201cLights Out\u201d in particular drawing an absolutely blistering performance from the entire band; this is one of those tracks that was strong on the studio original, but ignites like compressed rocket fuel in the live incarnation heard here.\u00a0 The lyrics might be muddled and vague, but Mogg sings them with such commitment that it hardly matters.<\/p>\n
The parade of tight, melodic four- to five-minute hard rock numbers is broken up just twice.\u00a0 \u201cLove To Love\u201d is a classic arena rock power ballad, a bit overwrought but undeniably memorable (if the phrase \u201cmisty green and blue\u201d means anything to you at all, you\u2019ve heard it\u2026).\u00a0 And \u201cRock Bottom\u201d is one of the great rock guitar showcases of the decade, as the band balloon what was a lengthy six-minute tune in the studio to eleven here, the extended middle section placing the spotlight squarely on Schenker\u2019s fiery, dynamic soloing.<\/p>\n
Still, in the end the most remarkable thing about this album is its consistency.\u00a0 It had been a decade or so since I\u2019d tracked it from start to finish when I decided to write this review, and what stood out to me while revisiting it is the way it simply never lets up.\u00a0 The lyrics might be a soft spot, but the performances by all five band members are simply stellar \u2013 tight, propulsive, melodic, relentless.\u00a0 There isn\u2019t a duff track here and the music ripples with energy every moment of the way.<\/p>\n
The irony and tragedy of this album is that it marked the end of the band\u2019s most successful era, as Schenker would storm out during the mixing of Strangers<\/i>, not to return for more than 15 years.\u00a0 This record offers no clues as to why he would choose that moment to leave \u2013 his playing is prominent in the mix and absolutely stellar throughout.\u00a0 The only way he could have played a bigger role on Strangers<\/i> would have been if the band had been billed as the Michael Schenker Group \u2013 which of course is what the very UFO-ish band he formed immediately after leaving UFO was called.\u00a0 Draw your own conclusions.<\/p>\n
Associated melodrama aside, Strangers In The Night<\/i> remains 30 years later one of the strongest releases of the live album\u2019s golden age, the unquestioned apex of UFO\u2019s career, and a damned fine piece of hard rock musicianship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5819],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-41850","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-ufo","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41850"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41850"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}