Customer Reviews

Live at Leeds '75

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

 

 

Out of print for many years, mainly due to the original limited edition LP being available only through the mail, direct from the artist himself! (Could this make Martyn the godfather of the "D.I.Y." concept?) A must for any 70's music fan, especially for the bonus tracks featuring the late great Paul Kossoff (!) on guitar (fidelity-wise, alas,these tracks are quite dicey, but fascinating for Kossoff fans nonetheless). Now, if more record companies could be encouraged to use the CD reissue concept in this manner--making truly rare treasures available again, as opposed to the "newly digitally remastered version of the same old title you have likely already purchased and discarded as an LP, cassette, 8-Track, Reel-to-Reel, Virgin Vinyl, and original CD version!"

Back in the early 70s when this was first released, before the internet, CD's and mail-order monsters like Amazon.com, this was without question the hardest piece of vinyl to track down that ever was. I had to be satisfied with a cassette recording of "Outside In" taken off the air at KCSU at about 1AM for about 20 years, when this was first re-released on CD. To call that 18 plus minute monster a transcendent masterpiece is a gross understatement; to this day, there's been nothing recorded to equal that song's cathartic climax, and it's slow drifting back to earth and ending in silence. The rest of the album ain't bad either. It's great to see this artists work being rediscovered; there's nothing like his slurred, velvety, basso whisper and brilliant guitar figurations, not to mention his incredible gifts as a songwriter (listen to the lyrics of "May You Never" "Solid Air" "Head and Heart" and "Bless the Weather" for example). Thank heaven this is still available, although my version only has the original six tracks on it. Don't pass it up this time.

If you were lucky enough to see John Martyn live in the 70s or very early eighties, before he lost his way a bit, you MUST buy this. It faithfully captures a live concert with all that strange quirkyness that made the concerts so great. You'll be shouting out "I'd rather be the devil" with the crowd and breathing in that sweet cannabis smell just as you did way back then. I real "trip" down memory lane - just fabulous.