Customer Reviews

Live on the Sunset Strip

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

 

 

The past few years have been rich for Otis Redding fans, with expanded reissues of key live recordings hitting the market. A pair of 1967 performances from London and Paris documented Redding at the top of the Stax Revue, and his breakthrough performance at Monterey Pop has been reissued in high-definition Blu-Ray. These are now augmented by this double-disc set of Redding's four night stand at Los Angeles' Whiskey A Go Go. Unlike the 1967 sets, in which Redding performed with Booker T. and the M.G.s in a large auditorium, these 1966 Whiskey dates are played with his ten-piece road band to a smaller, but hugely appreciative, club audience. Some of this material has been anthologized before [1 2], but this is the first time these three complete sets (the last from Saturday night and both from the closing Sunday) have been released as a whole.

These are much more than collections of songs - they're performances, with beginnings, middles and ends. Redding was not just the best soul singer of his generation, but a terrific entertainer who crafted whole performance, not just vocals. The segues between songs are often so tight as to leave both Redding and the audience gasping for breath; once he has you in his emotional grasp, he doesn't let go. His command - of the material, his singing, the band, and of the audience - is so thorough that it's difficult to believe he was only 24-years-old at the time. The sets are a perfect blend of his best known hits and covers, including tour de force workouts of the Stones "Satisfaction," along with lesser-known gems like "Any Ole Way" and the R&B hit "Chained and Bound." There's some duplication of songs from set to set, but it's interesting to hear how Redding mixes up the song order from night to night.

As satisfying as were the Stax Revue sets, as rousing as were those performances, as great as was the Stax house band, these performances are as good or better. Redding is an incandescent ball of fire for a half-hour at a stretch, and his band, led by saxophonist Bob Holloway, never lets up. Redding is warm as he takes a moment to speak with the audience, and he and Holloway share a bit of repartee while the band catches their breath. By the last set of the stand, Redding gets a bit playful with the set list, adding a cover of the Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night" and a ten-minute rendition of "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" whose groove is soul deep (but whose looseness would have made James Brown a pretty penny in band fines).

The three sets weigh in at two hours of churning soul music, recorded by ace West Coast engineer Wally Heider. The sixteen-page booklet includes new liner notes by Ashley Kahn, a choice photo of a tuxedoed Redding with two go-go-dancers, and a microscopic reproduction of Pete Johnson's L.A. Times show review. Redding's subsequent European tour with Stax, three-night stand at San Francisco's Fillmore, and legendary performance at Monterey Pop may have been witnessed by larger audiences, but these club sets capture the roots of his musical greatness: unrelentingly gutsy performances that leave every last drop of soul on the stage. This is an essential spin for Redding, Stax and soul fans. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

There have been a few posthumous releases of Otis Redding's legendary performances at the Whiskey A-Go-Go, but this new release stands head and shoulders above any previous compilations. Taking three full sets from the stand, you get to experience the power of the live Otis Redding. While this leads to some duplication of songs, it doesn't diminish from the listening experience. The band (or orchestra as they are listed) is firing on all cylinders and Mr. Redding's vocals are gritty, raw, real and without compromise. You can almost feel the sweat dripping from the speakers. Anyone who is interested in listening to what deep fried southern soul should sound like, give this disk a listen.

A+ on all counts. What's unbelievable is how unfazed the crowd at these shows seems to be, the MC actually has to stoke them. They must have been oblivious to the greatness. I like these performances better than the London/Paris sets recently rereleased. I think the "& his orchestra" might be the reason. If you're a soul enthusiast, this one is not to be missed.

(Please take a few moments and read my following review as to why I gave this item so low a rating...)

Otis Redding, who was without a doubt one of the biggest rising stars in the Stax/Volt Records stable until his untimely death in 1968 at the amazingly young age of 26, was a loss that was truly felt in the soul and R&B community then, and the music he wrote (Respect, Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay, I've Been Lovin' You Too Long) is still revered and sometimes even re-recorded today.

However, the people at Concord Music Group, who owns the entire back catalog of all of Otis' music, has once again screwed up a good thing - they are holding musical gold in their hands and yet still somehow almost turned it to doo-doo.

You would think that after ruining the 2007 release of their "WATTSTAX 3-CD Deluxe Edition", they would have had the good sense step back and make even a more than half-hearted attempt to give the public a complete CD box set of one of the earliest recordings of live music by hardest singing and most soulful of singers in their vaults, to give him a proper release...

But no, they screwed up again.

This 2 CD set, which claims to give us the "entire 3 night stand live set at the Whisky-A-Go-Go", performed in April of 1966, is a disaster on the record company's part, and it saddens me that people will buy this CD and not realized they're getting ripped off.

I must explain: I recently got a hold of the original vinyl release of "Otis Redding - Live at the Whiskey A Go-Go" from 1968 (released posthumously) and even through all the scratches I've still got more of a complete and enjoyable musical set than this 2 CD set of only one half of the third night and barely one half of the second night.

This CD set is definitely a legal case for "bait and switch" if I've ever seen one. It's a screwup of karma-bending heights.

HERE'S THE POSITIVES:

Now mind you, the sound on this remastered CD set is crystal clear - the clarity is just amazing. Otis sounds as this was recorded live yesterday, and his blistering voice never sounded better, rougher and more wonderful. When he begins to sing "These Arms Of Mine" I can feel the loneliness through the mike and I can't help but wish he survived that plane crash over Lake Monona in Madison, Wisconsin in 1967.

Unfortunately, it also shows that on those three nights his backup road band just couldn't keep up with him - they sound a bit ragged and worn, and you can clearly hear the horn section on some of the faster songs were off-key, but it seems that only Otis' raw power still saved those nights with his wonderful soulful vocals.

For the sheer cleanliness of how it sounds, the music displayed on this 2 CD set, I have to give it hands down 5 stars.

HOWEVER - THE NEGATIVES:

Concord Music Group screwed up AGAIN as this corporation gives us barely 1/2 of the total three nights they claim to be releasing, and charging a pretty hefty price for it, too, as they also have done with other barely all there releases.

There is a two-fold problem here -

1) Why be so repetitive? My original live album has 11 (mostly original) wonderful songs plus an intro and outro, but on the CD's it's the same songs, with only slight variations, repeated over and over and over, with no real separate intros and outros to tell you when the first night is, the second night is, when one night ends and another begins, etc. WHY? Which brings me to number two...

2) The "complete set list" is INCOMPLETE, plain and simple. On three different nights, Otis sang a blistering 10 to 12 song set. From this we should have been given a proper 3 CD release with at LEAST 35 to 40 tracks, including the intros and outros, but sadly the whole CD set ends on CD 2 track 15, "I Can't Get No Satisfaction", as the announcer begins to announce Otis is leaving the stage and then is VERY quickly faded out. On my vinyl release, the band actually plays on for almost a minute as announcer keeps talking. This has been deleted with an ugly abrupt cut on the CD (and even many of the errors and outright mistakes that do happen on live recordings, released on the original vinyl, were omitted or edited out). Once again, WHY?

As far as edits and mistakes on the part of Otis is concerned: It's fun to hear him talk about signing a James Brown song and then begin to sing "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag", and then stop the song because he knew he forgot the words! (He eventually starts over.) This SHOULD HAVE appeared right as part of the beginning of CD 2 track 14, but the track only begins with the start over.

These batch of recordings, no matter how wonderfully clear they are to the ear, have been carefully sanitized, edited and many of the audio flubs and mistakes I've found on the old original vinyl albums that make this recording outright fun to listen to are erased - gone forever, in Concord's mind.

This is a sham and a travesty on Concord Music Group's part, and they seem to have an enjoyable history of squeezing great improvised parts of songs or 7 or 8 minute songs into 3 minute cold antiseptic snippets with ABSOLUTELY NO RESPECT for the artists who recorded them.

SHAME ON THESE MUSIC EXECUTIVES for making such lousy decisions like this and further ripping off the public with abbreviated collections.

For not giving the public a complete document, I give Concord Music Group's slipshod decision on their (as usual) shoddy, haphazard handling of yet another set of wonderful soul music from Stax 1 star.

In summation, Otis Redding - and his legacy - deserves better treatment at the hands of more competent people. Concord Music Group has dropped the ball once again, and it's REALLY clear here. I've got vinyl albums and other various recordings of this legendary concert plus all the spoken non-musical stuff, but instead of giving us the entire uninterrupted three sets on crystal-clear MP3 audio, they merely carefully cleaned up, edited, of outright omitted some of the wonderfulness of these raw sets of recordings by a man who made up for those same minor flaws with his talent and skill in singing hot buttered soul.

SHAME ON CONCORD MUSIC GROUP - AGAIN.

Overall, I gave it 3 stars, and I'm trying to be nice.

Lastly, I implore you, the reader of this review - do not buy this CD set direct from Amazon - buy it from any number of secondary dealers here online. Don't give Concord Music Group your money and encourage them further to rework and release scrubbed down and soul-less classic soul music.

(Thanks for reading, and please check out my other reviews, ESPECIALLY the one I wrote about Stax' Wattstax 3CD Deluxe Edition box set here on Amazon - WATTSTAX (3-CD Deluxe Edition). Also, please feel free to leave any comments - they are helpful!)

It may have been better if you were actually there. On several tracks, riffs were repeated ad infinitum, and I was ready to leap from the car. Let's face it, you do get enough Satisfaction by the second time you hear it. Judicious editing could have worked miracles. But on the other hand, I love I Can't Turn You Loose, and every time Otis yelled "Hip Shaking Mamma I Love ya," I was ready to jump up and move to the groove.

Two previous LPs documented Otis' legendary stay at the Whisky A Gogo. As I don't own them, I don't know whether this release contains only what was originally left on the floor while compiling said previous albums, but the soulful music here is very very good, give or take two or three technical errors. Thus you know there have been no overdubs, thankfully! Otis had no equal to whip up a frenzy and here he does it to a max. "'Faction" garanteed! The guy obviously was on his way to something even better than what he had already mastered, as evidenced later by 'Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay'. No music collection should be without any albums by Otis Redding.

This album is worth it for the first two songs. And the cover, my god, what a weird-ass cover. I've written so much about this album that my brain hurts - but even those who aren't Otis fans could fall in love with some of these songs. The mistakes, the feeling of being trapped in 1966 and the uncooked rawness are sort of like a car accident - that grows on you.

The review this CD got on NPR was not an exaggeration--this is fantastic. It's not about songwriting, it's about performance. Give yourself time to listen to a full disc, and you will fall under it's spell.

If you don't have any other Otis Redding in your collection or even if you do this has to be the one to add. From the first cut to the last of this 2 cd set you won't be still-it Rock's. You can bet the "Go-Go-Girl's" at the Whiskey never sat down that night!

The two CD box present Otis in a live show at two different dates and it's a great testimony of teh talent and amazing energy of the great Otis Redding. The band is tight and respond very well to every move that Otis takes, the horn parts and the rythmic is really groovy and as well in the slow tempo ballads or in the more up tempo numbers. The audio quality is really good and there's some great unexpected numbers like a really funky cover of James Brown's funk anthem Papa got a brand new bag where the band is kicking hard ! the audience seems to be really enjoying the show and Otis seems really happy and in the groove !

I love the song "Security" with the nice guitar riff and Respect which is really sounding nice ! The classics from Otis repertoire are all present including Theses arms of mine, Mr Pitiful or I can't turn you loose as well as teh cover of Rolling Stones Satisafction ! If you want to know how Otis sounded live it's a great CD to get