In 1977, right on the heals of the Lace And Whiskey Tour, the nice people at Warner Bros. Records asked Alice to go out and record a couple more shows for a live album. Alice, the band, and the performers were all tired and burnt out, not to mention this was right before Cooper went into rehab for the first time as well.Does that mean that this is a crappy album? Does that mean this album gives a lack luster performance? Does this mean that you are going to be reading a bad Alice review?
The answers are no, yes and depends on how you take my opinion. For starters, as I've mentioned before live recordings prior to the 1990's tend to have crappy production, just because of the technology at the time. However, since this was recorded on purpose as a live album, the production is better than many. My biggest complaint is Alice's vocals are pushed too far forward.
Now, I don't think that this album reflects an actual set list. It totally doesn't reflect the length of an Alice concert either. In order to do that it would have had to have been a double vinyl release. Instead the track list reads more like a hastily thrown together greatest hits package.
The album opens with Under My Wheels. This is a great song, and the live version isn't a let down either. A great way to kick off an album, or a concert. Then from there it's on to Eighteen, which is just another basic live performance of that song.
The third song to appear is Only Women Bleed, a song I've never cared for. It's got great meaning, but I just don't care for the speed. It makes me wanna go sleepy. I also didn't need an almost six minute live version either, in which Alice sounds like poop.
I didn't care for the fact that Sick Things was shortened down to 1:01 either. It makes it more of a filler and less of the creepy cool song that it is. I do like the little laugh he gives right before kicking into the tad more danceable than normal, Is It My Body. I think it's the keyboards that add something of an almost Disco feel to the song, that makes it more upbeat groovy than before.
I have no clue why they felt a need to include not one, not two, but three ballads in the live set, forget wasting the valuable space on this live record. Don't get me wrong, I'm okay with the fact that I Never Cry is on this album, and it's a respectable 2:51, but when you include the already mentioned Only Women Bleed and the upcoming You And Me, it's too much. I Never Cry is my personal favourite of the three and I would have been much happier if it had been the only one on here.
Billion Dollar Babies follows that up. Good song, decent live version; however, Pentti (Whitey) Glan is not Neil Smith, and therefore can not play the song quite right. He plays the more simplified version, that I myself have to use.
From there we move on to Devil's Food/The Black Widow. I'd like to point out that for some reason Alice doesn't like performing these songs in their entirety since the actual Welcome To My Nightmare tour. They do a quick lead into the chorus of Devil's Food, which leads to the tape of Vincent Price's classic performance, and then on to The Black Widow. The second half was performed pretty much the same as the album, but Alice's vocals were rather weak.
Of all the songs to include from Lace And Whiskey I don't understand why You And Me was the one they chose to go with here. First off, over the years I've discovered that women are less likely to buy Live albums. Not to say that they don't, but Live is more of a guy thing, at least with Rock. Therefore three ballads is just stupid, and this one is the worst of the lot, luckily this is also the shortest of the bunch. In fact the only time I will listen to You And Me in any version, is when Alice performs it on The Muppet Show with Miss Piggy.
From there we move on to a medley of I Love The Dead/Go To Hell/ Wish You Were Here which is the only track from this album that ever goes on my Mp3 player. I would like to start by saying that 6:31 is nowhere near long enough to do justice to three songs that run about one to two minute shorter than this medley on their own. I Love The Dead, which is a favourite of mine and the best live song for performance purposes, takes up almost half of the song. Then finally Go To Hell kicks in, which feels rushed, and when it should go into the awesome breakdown it turns into Wish You Were here. Each song should have been on here separately, and could have been if it weren't for the three damn ballads sucking up valuable space. However, as far as medleys go, this one is actually pretty decent.
The album then finishes the same way every concert more or less finishes to this day. School's Out comes cranking out in a wickedly short and sped up 2:19. For a song that had been played so much by this band, it seems very disjointed and all over the place. Not anywhere as good as future live versions.
All in all this album is pretty blah. Alice sounds off, which I'm sure was thanks to the heavy drinking. The bands feels like they are rushing everything. The sound quality of the production is good for it's time, and the mixing for the album was done well, but neither are enough to save this albums meh overall sound and attitude.
5/10 - content
7/10 - production
5/10 - personal bias
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