Customer Reviews

Live at Bill Grahams Fillmore West 1969

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

You are in front of one of the greatest live blues album ever! I am not scared about making this statement as I believe that this is absolutely true. This live set recorded in 1969 finds Mike at the pick of his carrier and in a fantastic shape. Michael performance in here is so good to leave you speechless. Numbers like Blues On A Westside, Moon Tune, It Takes Time, Killing My Love, Carmelita Skiffle, It's About Time, One More Mile To Go are real gems that are going to remain in the history of blues music. More, they should be played in every music school to teach how electric blues is meant to be played! Surely Mike has been one of the most, if not the most, influential white blues guitarist ever lived. Just listen to the intro of Blues On A West Side and then to Ronnie Earl's Rego Park Blues final solo (live version) and you will see. However in this fantastic album packed from start to finish with excellence also the performances of the great vocalist Nick Gravenites deserves a special mention as it does the guest appearance of Taj Mahal. This is a 1969 recording sounding as fresh as it was recorded yesterday, a real masterpiece that deserves attention not just from blues lovers but also from everyone who love music.

I can't say enough about this great album. I say album because I've owned the 8-track, the cassette, the LP and have pre-ordered the first release of it on CD next month. Taj Mahal, Mike Bloomfield, Nick Gravenites anchor this music which surely was one of those moments in history when all factors converged to make musical history. The guitars, vocals, drums, they all came together to make the best blues album of the late 60's from Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium. You probably know of the legacy of the Fillmore aditoriums, East and West, and this album is true to that heritage. Maybe it doesn't contain the screamin' Janis Joplin, or the unorganized Jefferson Airplane, but it plays like a Family Dog poster, diverse groups meeting to make in tune, melodic music that has held up over the last 40 years. Don't miss this one. I strongly recommend it for all blues enthusiasts!

Recorded by Columbia at the Fillmore West in early 1969. This set doesn't contain the most notable of Bloomfield's recordings; it's not the best band he played with, nor is it the best material with which he had to work. It's best appreciated as one of numerous releases on which to hear his reliably accomplished blues-rock guitar work, although it's not as flashy or inventive as his best performances, the arrangements sometimes recalling Electric Flag due to the presence of a horn section. No less than four vocalists (Gravenites, Bloomfield, Bob Jones, and Taj Mahal, who guests on "One More Mile to Go") were featured on the original Live at Bill Graham's Fillmore West 1969 LP; this expanded version does give more weight to Gravenites' singing, as he takes lead on all four of the tracks added from My Labors. However, not a little additional material from the same source appeared on one side of Gravenites' My Labors LPAs a final bonus, the CD also includes a Bloomfield-sung cover of Ray Charles' "Mary Ann" from another Bloomfield live album of the era (The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper), as well as historical liner notes. ~ Richie Unterberger

This album, along with the Butterfield stuff, is Bloomfield at his best. His playing on this album is fantastic, period!!. Anyone who forgot or never heard of Bloomfield should get this immediatly. A Desrt Island Disc as they say. Bloomers lives !!

A combination of 2 previously out of print blues discs.
Although as original releases, neither disc was classified as a classic blues album, the combining onto 1 disc has greatly elevated the status of the original ratings.
Not previously in the category of must have albums, it is now an essential disc for both Bloomfield and Gravenites fans or music fans wanting to experience some of the West Coast music scene of the late '60s.

The expanded reissue of "My Labors" on Acadia includes much of this material. It also has one 13 minute live cut not included here, as well as three inferior studio cuts. This compilation has five cuts not on the Acadia release. I'm just going by track lists, so it's possible that some of the duplicates might be alternate takes. While this album is described as being from one "legendary concert," the Acadia notes reference several live sessions at the Filmore from January and February 1969. However all of the Acadia material was taken from the two original releases, and I would assume that the * next to the last title on this one indicates the only previously unreleased track.

Let's see if I have this straight---Sony/Columbia Legacy saw fit to let two of these performances ("It Takes Time" and the incandescent "Carmelita Skiffle") turn up to round off their excellent Michael Bloomfield overview ("Don't Say That I Ain't Your Man," in 1998) but not to let the entire original album (released in 1969), plus the performances that were saved for Nick Gravenites' "My Labours," see the light of day once more.

Leaving it to Australia's Raven label to do what should have been done long enough ago. Considering Legacy's diligence in its "Roots 'n' Blues" series and with much of the Bloomfield canon from his Columbia years, that omission should be considered a crime. That said, thank Raven for its own diligence and for producing a set that presents everything Columbia recorded (save "Winter Country Blues," omitted for space reasons but still alive and well on the reissued "My Labours") the 1969 weekend Bloomfield, Nick Gravenites, and a few of their regular musical partners (including Bloomfield's former Butterfield Blues Band teammate Mark Naftalin on piano, his "Live Adventures" bassist John Kahn, his soon-to-be-frequent drummer Bob Jones, and erstwhile Electric Flag baritone saxophonist Snooky Flowers) commandeered the Fillmore West for some freewheeling blues and soul jamming.

Concede the point that this isn't exactly "Super Session Mk III" (and not just because organist Ira Kamin is no Al Kooper, though he's quite tasteful and sinuous in his own right), and you have one of the most powerful documents in the Bloomfield catalog. The horns and the Gravenites voice may deceive you into thinking this was a kind of projection of what Bloomfield ultimately wished the Electric Flag to have been, but this music is far more tightly grounded in blues and soul than the eclectic (and ill-fated) Flag, and these musicians, whatever their individual inclinations, are most at home in those two neighbourhoods. Gravenites has rarely been heard in better or more soulful voice, even when it cracks now and then; Kahn, Jones, and conga player Dino Andino play as though they'd been welded together for years; Naftalin and Kamin are as supple a keyboard team as you could ask without stepping on each other's corns; and the horns---Flowers, Gerald Oshita (baritone sax), Noel Jewkis (tenor sax), and John Wilmeth (trumpet)---sound as buttery and exuberant as the tightest sessions of the Memphis Horns.

And Bloomfield? He gives more than enough evidence of what Al Kooper hoped to isolate with "Super Session" in the first place: catching him when he could just forget everything except playing his heart out, from the kickoff lick to "It Takes Time" (boy, did he never forget what Otis Rush among the other Chicago masters taught him as a teenager hanging around the classic southside blues clubs) to the last notes of "Moon Tune." And just about all points in between. If you missed out hearing it on "Don't Say I Ain't Your Man: Essential Blues, 1964-69" (it's since gone out of print), here's "Carmelita Skiffle"---the original vinyl release closer---and Bloomfield plain rollicking, practically squeezing everything he'd learned about and felt about the blues into one incendiarily melodious solo, before handing it off to Jewkis for a smooth saxophone break and Kamin for a soaring organ solo, before returning with an exclamation point of a coda.

In between? "Oh, Mama" is a Bloomfield composition, the kind of soul he'd begun exploring in the Electric Flag, and while the music is exquisite Bloomfield as a singer was a virtuoso guitarist. With Gravenites extending his breather, Jones takes a surprisingly solid vocal on the Arthur Conley chestnut "Love Got Me" (and you thought all Conley was good for was "Sweet Soul Music"). With Gravenites returning, "Blues on a Westside" lives up to its mini-legend as a wrenching jam, with Bloomfield absolutely soaring. Taj Mahal joins up for a throbbing "One More Mile," and Gravenites' "It's About Time" could be said to live up to its title, working blues into a James Brown-like groove in a more freewheeling style, guitar and piano wrestling each other's chords deftly and riding the rhythm smoothly, Bloomfield firing off a few horn-like bursts to set up his solo statement.

And the "My Labours" additions? All of them Gravenites compositions, the one that's most likely to stick in your head is "Gypsy Good Time," what they used to call funky blues, punctuated sweatily by Willmeth's trumpet phrases and Andino's rolling secondary rhythm, with the full band cutting a deep and wide groove over which Gravenites sings exuberantly and Bloomfield peels off a fiery, melodious solo.

It's a shame the compilers found no room for "Winter Country Blues" but chose to fill out the available space with "Mary Ann," a quartet performance (and a good one) from "The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper," which is actually a good introduction to that set if you don't have it yet. Just why the new compilers saw fit to include that as a bonus track isn't made clear. But it shouldn't distract you from the power of the main attraction.

This Raven release is simply the original "Live At Fillmore West", with the added live tracks from Nick Gravenites "My Labors", which were recorded at the same time.

The real oddity is the inclusion of "Mary Ann", which comes from the Kooper & Bloomfield Fillmore live album, recorded a year earlier.

However, the 2008 Japan mini-sleeve releases of both albums had even more tracks from these live sessions with Gravenites & Co.: "Stronger Than Dirt (6:20)" and "If I Ever Get Lucky (14:15)" on Fillmore and "Work Me Lord (4:25)", plus a blistering "Born In Chicago (10:04)" off Labors, over 35 minutes of additional, fabulous Fillmore bliss.

But, the Raven disc also has two tracks that do not appear on the Japan releases: "Holy Moly" and "Moon Tune".

So, if you want everything, you know what you gotta do! Unfortunately, good luck now finding the Japan Fillmore disc, as it is sold out & OOP. However, Sony does re-press/re-release mini-sleeve titles, so perhaps it will be available again in the future.

The Raven audio is a little louded-up, where the Japan discs are more accurate to the original dynamic range. There is also more in-between-song chatter on the Japan CD's that has been edited off the Raven.

Maybe someday, someone will do it right and release everything in one set. Who knows what else is in the vaults from these shows?

WHAT IS A JAPAN "MINI-LP-SLEEVE" CD?

Have you ever lamented the loss of one of the 20th Century's great art forms, the 12" vinyl LP jacket? Then "mini-LP-sleeve" CD's may be for you.

Mini-sleeve CDs are manufactured in Japan under license. The disc is packaged inside a 135MM X 135MM cardboard precision-miniature replica of the original classic vinyl-LP album. Also, anything contained in the original LP, such as gatefolds, booklets, lyric sheets, posters, printed LP sleeves, stickers, embosses, special LP cover paper/inks/textures and/or die cuts, are precisely replicated and included. An English-language lyric sheet is always included, even if the original LP did not have printed lyrics.

Then, there's the sonic quality: Often (but not always), mini-sleeves have dedicated remastering (20-Bit, 24-Bit, DSD, K2/K2HD, and/or HDCD), and can often (but not always) be superior to the audio on the same title anywhere else in the world. There also may be bonus tracks unavailable elsewhere.

Each Japan mini-sleeve has an "obi" ("oh-bee"), a removable Japan-language promotional strip. The obi lists the Japan street date of that particular release, the catalog number, the mastering info, and often the original album's release date. Bonus tracks are only listed on the obi, maintaining the integrity of the original LP artwork. The obi's are collectable, and should not be discarded.

All mini-sleeve releases are limited edition, but re-pressings/re-issues are becoming more common (again, not always). The enthusiasm of mini-sleeve collecting must be tempered, however, with avoiding fake mini-sleeves manufactured in Russia and distributed throughout the world, primarily on eBay. They are inferior in quality, worthless in collectable value, a total waste of money, and should be avoided at all costs.

Lots of other reviews here so this will be my short 2 cents worth. This is a great CD and makes me sad to think that Bloomfield left us way too early. His solos are just beautiful on this show and the rest of the band are fine as well. Mike didn't play many solos less than 100% in his career and these are right up there with his best. He took the spirit of Freddie King and carried it on for us. No reservations on this one!

Side note - what's up with the person who reviewed the CD with 1 star because he/she did not receive it from Amazon as ordered? As I see it, the idea here is to review the music, not the retailer. How can you review a CD you haven't even heard?

An spectacular album! The whole band is top notch, but Mike Bloomfield steals the show (as per the usual). His playing is simply amazing on this album; just as good or even better than on PBBB, East-West, Super Session, or his other popular works.

Nick's singing is very good and the rest of the band really rocks. All the songs are quite good and it's nice to hear Taj on Track 5.

Although I haven't seen it posted anywhere (and I looked, thinking mine was possibly defective) there is a squeal or squeak that you can hear occasionally in some of the songs. I don't know if it is feedback or what exactly, but it does distract me a little when listening. However, it isn't a big deal and the sound quality on the CD is good.