Customer Reviews

Live Bullet

5 star:		(91)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

How can words convey the electricity swirling around southeast Michigan in 1975 when this lp was recorded at Cobo Hall in Detroit? At 12 I was still listening to AM and "bubblegum" music, but a friend let me borrow a copy of Seger's "Beautiful Loser" and I thought he was " a fox" (the lingo in those days). When the "Live Bullet" lp came out months later, both generations of my family.... parents, aunts, uncles, cousins....everybody had to hear it over and over. It helped that my cousin Debbie had tried to convince us 10 years earlier that Bobby would be a star someday and we hadn't believed her and now we were all eating humble pie (she should have made bets, she'd be rich now!) To get a sense of what playing a concert at Cobo Hall meant in those days: "Kiss Alive" was made at Cobo Hall. When Elvis came, he came to Cobo Hall (at least, before the Pontiac Stadium was built). So the idea that this kid's band that Debbie used to go see when he played at bars or at college concerts recorded an lp at Cobo must have really meant he was famous, according to my family ( I guess the fact he played with John Lennon and Yoko Ono at the Free John Sinclair Rally years earlier didn't faze them).

"Live Bullet" was much better than "Beautiful Loser" because Seger sings much better live. He gets a lot from a great audience. It is a give and take thing for him.

One of the unique things about this CD is that it contains some of his older stuff, which is hard to get. It also features a great drummer & back-up singer, Charlie Martin, who was in a tragic accident shortly after this show and was never able to play again. "Heavy Music", which Bob & Charlie duet in, is superb. "Lookin' Back" is another oldie-but-goodie. "Rambling Gamabling Man" was his only national hit before he made it the following year with "Night Moves" (and that was in 1968, I believe).

"Live Bullet" seemed to be the erruption of the Detroit volcano that finally ignited Bob Seger's national success, as he made a national album hit with Night Moves just months later. It was a lot of fun to witness that little bit of time while he was still just "ours" and growing to be a national star. Or maybe international....when I left for college in 1980, I bought a used record by Canadian rockers Kate & Anna McGarrigle that contained a French version they'd translated of Seger's "Someday Lady You'll Accompany Me", called <<Un bon jour tu va m'accompagner>>. Go figure!

LIVE BULLET is the real deal when it comes to concert recordings. Nobody did it any better live than Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band. Recorded live at Cobo Hall on September 4th and 5th in 1975, LIVE BULLET represents Seger climbing to the peak of his career, recorded the year before the NIGHT MOVES album would break them wide open in terms of popularity. This was the tour following the BEAUTIFUL LOSER album. A thundering burn-the-house down cover of Ike & Tina Turner's NUTBUSH CITY LIMITS is the opening track of this incredible concert CD. Slower blues based ballads that would become Seger's trademark signature sound are next on the track list, TRAVELIN' MAN, BEAUTIFUL LOSER and JODY GIRL. Track 5 is a rocking cover of Van Morrison's I'VE BEEN WORKING. Track 6, TURN THE PAGE, is an FM radio classic. Tracks 7 and 8, U.M.C. and BO DIDDLEY, are as bluesy as anything The Blues Brothers ever did. Track 9, RAMBLIN' GAMBLIN' MAN, is one of the bigger early Seger hit songs. Track 10, HEAVY MUSIC, is just awesome. Track 11, KATMANDU, is another early Seger hit song. Everybody know's this one, come sing along. Track 12, LOOKIN' BACK, (like HEAVY MUSIC) is just plain awesome. Track 13, GET OUT OF DENVER, is an improvisation of Chuck Berry's JOHNNY B. GOODE and is absolutely a rocking little number. Track 14, LET IT ROCK, is the finale, another Chuck Berry improvisation number - this time of LITTLE QUEENIE. Believe me when I say that it doesn't get any better than this. This is OLD TIME ROCK & ROLL at it's best. LIVE BULLET doesn't include Seger's biggest hits from NIGHT MOVES or STRANGER IN TOWN like the CD NINE TONIGHT LIVE does, but all in all is a much better performance than NINE TONIGHT. Every single track on LIVE BULLET should have been a chart topper - it's that good.

Bob Seger's career seemed to be going nowhere fast when he recorded the fantastic live album "Live Bullet" and consequently jump started his career. Though it was released before the album "Night Moves" and as a result contains few of his best known songs, it is still full of great songs and great performances. The best sequence is "Travelin' Man/Beautiful Loser" in which he links two good studio songs into one great live performance. Also first rate are the burned out performer anthem "Turn the Page," (lately covered by Metallica) with its weary vocals, the ballad "Jody Girl" and some great rave up versions of his early singles "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man," "Katmandu" and "Get Out of Denver." Any fan of Bob Seger or of great American classic rock should own this record.

One of the legends surrounding this album is that Capitol was going to drop Seger if it wasn't a hit, so this represented his last shot at the big time. I'm not from Detroit, so I don't know if that's true, but in thirty years of hearing concert recordings I've never heard the kind of effort and emotion Seger put into this record from any performer, especially the mythic "side 3", the linked versions of "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man", "Heavy Music" and "Katmandu". Without a doubt the greatest live rock & roll record of all time!

If you want to know what a real Detroit rock concert was like back in the 70's, this is the CD. The performance, the production, the selection of songs - this is just a great concert experience - and its the only CD I carry in the car (I know it's 30 years old, but ...)
Its just a little rough around the edges - denoting a REAL live performance, but WOW, It FEELS like a live concert ...
(I saw these guys in Detroit the year after this album was released wnd was hooked. I attended [almost] every show after that when they came into town ... even traveled out of town to see them...)
The last few tracks - Bob and the boys are just JAMMIN' and the only way to listen to it is ... LOUD ... very, VERY LOUD.
Its just a crime that this performance isn't being sold on DVD. The way Mr. Seger interacted with the audience and could get the entire venue out of their seats, dancing and clapping and singing ...
In my opinion, it's one of the best live performances ever recorded. Highly, HIGHLY recommend it.
When I think of Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, this is the performance I see ...

Always a tremendous live act, Bob Seger recorded this album on the brink of the stardom that he would achieve in the late 70's and early-to-mid 80's.

This CD captures the energy and excitement of his live show without losing any of the quality of the material. In fact, I think one could safely say that the most of songs on this CD are superior to his studio versions.

Standouts include Travelin' Man/Beautiful Loser, Turn the Page, Let It Rock and well, the whole CD. It is too bad the remastered version doesn't include some lost tracks, but that doesn't take away from the quality of this CD.

If only he would/could return to the form of his "Beautiful Loser" through "Stranger in Town" era. If only he would return period...Bob, where have you gone?

Frampton Comes Alive. That pretty much sums up the state of live rock and roll in the '70's. heavy metal had the shows...KISS, Ted Nugent, Angel...and pop had the hits...Eagles, Fleetwood Mac...but rock and roll had...well...Frampton Comes Alive. Sure it's a nice album. Lots of hits. But they were hits after the album came out. When those shows were taped for the album, it was just Frampton and his band playing to an audience craving great, live, rock and roll. But as this album shows, the audience should have been in the Motor City's Cobo Hall...that was where rock and roll was being played. Frampton had the pretty boy looks and the radio friendly hits...(Bob would have to wait until his next album Night Moves for those) but Bob had the voice, the strut and the Silver Bullet Band. He had been a local hero for years before this album...big in Detorit, second to Bruce everywhere else...but this album did what Springsteen refused to do...gave the mainstream a taste of Bob's secret- his live show. Side One is a perfect album...head on rock and roll giving way to aching beauty...sublte moments that most bands would be too scared to try live...especially in the bang your head heyday of the '70s. But Bob pulled it off...like a muscle car roaring from one of his hometown's factorys, the Silver Bullet Band pumped along, ready to prove themselves second to none. America has spawned few bands this powerful...Mellencamp's, The Heartbreakers, and of course the E-Street Band. Live Bullet is not Bob Seger's most famous album, and that's too bad. After slowly releasing a series of soft-rock albums, all of lesser quality than the one before, it would be nice for people to hear the power that he once held in the palm of his hand.

This is a 5-star album with a 1-star remastering, so I split the difference with 3 stars. Stick with the older CD version that is still available. I have no idea what happened on this remaster, but everything sounds much more distorted than on the LP or the original CD issue. Sure, Live Bullet is never going to be an audiophile album, but this Seger classic deserves much better treatment than this.

Fortunately, the Night Moves reissue released at the same time does not share these problems, and is a bit of a sonic improvement over the original CD.

Bob Seger had a ton of smash hits from the mid 1970s through early '80s. Right before he really broke through with the all-time classic studio album "Night Moves", he released this equally classic live album. Listen to this once, and you'll understand why Bob is one of the all-time great rock and roll performers.

Bob plays plenty of songs from his studio album before this, "Beautiful Loser". For sure, his "Travelin' Man/Beautiful Loser" medley sounds great--both songs sound better here than they did on the studio album. This is even more true of the legendary "Katmandu". What a catchy, fantastic song that one is live...to this day I still love how he yells at the end of the song, "Katmandu....Good night everybody!" It doesn't get much better than that.

Other highlights...How about the slower-paced, heartfelt, legendary track "Turn The Page"? Many people I know call this their favorite Seger song--and I can understand why. "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" is a very early classic that sounds great here, as does the cover of "Nutbush City Limits". "Jody Girl" is a great slower track (also from "Beautiful Loser" in studio form), while "Heavy Music" and "Let It Rock" are among the other great jams.

This is a TRUE live album. The interaction with the crowd and the crowd itself is left in the recording. I almost feel like I am at the concert whenever I listen to this. This is truly one of the legendary live classic rock albums of all time.

This album, first released in April 1976, shows what a fine live performer Bob Seger was (and is).
The choice of songs is pretty good as well, and although there are a couple of lesser tracks to be found, there is certainly no need to program out anything.
Seger and the Silver Bullet Band start off with a hard-rocking version of Tina Turner's "Nutbush City Limits", but most of the songs are Seger originals (the exceptions being Bo Diddley's eponymous first hit, Van Morrison's "I've Been Working", and Chuck Berry's "Let It Rock" - credited to E. Anderson!).

The shave-and-a-haircut beat is there, yet "Bo Diddley" doesn't pack the same punch in the hands of Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band as it did when it was Bo Diddley himself hamfistedly attacking his square-shaped guitar, and "I've Been Working" is one of Van Morrison's lesser tunes. And besides, Seger is not Van Morrison.

But almost everything else works, from the melodious mid-tempo shuffles "Travelin' Man" and "Beautiful Loser" to the fiery hard rocker "Get Out Of Denver". The Chuck Berry-homage "Katmandu" is fun ("homage" is a nice way of putting it), and the Silver Bullet Band lay down excellent, slightly bluesy grooves on "Lookin' Back" and "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man".

If you're a Bob Seger fan, you probably have this album already. If you don't, get it.
If you are relatively new to Mr Seger and his particular 70s amalgam of rock, pop and R&B, this is a good place to start. And if you just want a few essential Seger albums on your shelf, go for this one, the two "Greatest Hits" albums, and the equally enjoyable live offering "Nine Tonight".

Still wondering why "Let It Rock" is credited to E. Anderson?
Berry's full name is Charles Edward Anderson Berry. Cute, isn't it?