Customer Reviews

Live at Montreux 1982 & 1985

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This newly released cd is another example of Stevie Ray Vaughan's incredible ability playing live. At the 1982 show, the crowd wasn't being too kind to this unknown (at the time) incredible guitarist's amazing performance, or the effort he put into each and every note - They didn't welcome him from the moment he began his set. Even with the crowd booing him, Stevie still didn't let that affect his playing. He played strongly until the end, and left the stage upset from the little response from the audience and the constant booing.

When he returned in 1985 however, this was completely different. The crowd accepted him and loved him. He once again played another incredible show, this time a lot more confident with a great response from the crowd.

This 2 cd set is awesome for any SRV fan, any guitarist, or as a matter of fact, any body who has the slightest intrest in the blues at all. These cd's are up there with the Live at the El Mocambo show, and shows some of SRV's best live performances. I recommend this 2 disc set very strongly, as a huge SRV fan. Get a hold of it as soon as you can!

This double disc set is a real gem of a live album. It captures the energy of a brand new blues star at his early best on a foreign stage. Despite blistering performances both on several standards and his own compositions audible boos can be heard from the uptight Swiss/French crowd attending. Fortunately for SRV and Double Trouble, also in attendance were none other than David Bowie and Jackson Browne, who immediately realized the raw talent of Stevie Ray.
Vaughan's performance of Hide Away makes Eric Clapton's with the Bluesbrakers appear low voltage by comparison. His ripping performance of Rude Mood highlights his incredible speed with a pick. Pride and Joy, Love Struck Baby, and the novel Give Me Back My Wig are all classic interpretations. Texas Flood, though not quite as resonant or powerful as the incomparable version on Live At El Mocombo, still thrills.
Disc Two captures Stevie's triumphant return. His playing is superb as always as he rips through his standards, adding this time an extended Voodoo Child with a homage to Jimi Hendrix, whom Stevie greatly revered. Life Without You, and the on stage talk with the audience reveals an inner sincerity that he was beginning to reveal to audiences even before he was able to kick his alcohol/drug habit.
The only weak spots on these performances are Dirty Pool in 1982, and Tin Pan Alley in 1985. Both require a good bit of patience to sit through, they are so subdued and lengthy.
Nonetheless, the two disc set adds further to the SRV Legacy...in my opinion, the greatest blues guitarist to ever play. Muddy Waters, B.B., Albert or Freddie King, T-Bone, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, or the new bucks, Kenny Wannabe and Johnny Whathisname, none had/have Stevie's speed with a pick, his guitar's raw power, his passion. He combined Hendrix's mastery of combining rhythm and lead, tremelo and wah-wah effects, with traditional blues techniques and discipline and the perfect blues voice to ascend to his own level, a quantum leap above others. Listen/watch any other blues guitarist,then watch SRV. Then you WILL understand. Does bootleg video exist of SRV kicking ass into hyperspace at Alpine Valley August 26, 1990-The Holy Grail of Blues/Rock Video?

Sure, if you're a Stevie Ray fan, you have all of these songs in one or more versions. Some have even appeared on previous CDs, including four songs from the Live Alive release. So, why should you buy this 2 CD set? First, it contains some versions of the songs that have not yet been released, so if you're a completist, you just have to add it to your collection. But, even more importantly, these recordings have been mastered to deliver the best sound quality yet available on any Stevie Ray release, live or studio. All songs sound new and fresh, given the perfect mixing and balancing of the instruments. The guitar sounds crisper and cleaner than ever before. This is a must have for any fan and is certainly the sound quality reference standard for a re-mastered live recording.

This is my DVD review with in addition a comment to the reviewer who calls the booing audience "French idiots". Montreux is in Switzerland and their audiences come all over the world. I would estimate that up to 50% of the people at the concerts are foreigners.
I've read many accounts of what happened during SRV's first Montreux performance, all of them were wrong. People like to believe that SRV was not appreciated because his color, his age, his clothes, his electric blues etc., I would like to clarify what really happened at Montreux.
He was not booed because of his tatoos, because he was white or because the audience didn't understand electric blues. He was loud. Way too loud for the room he was playing in. He was so loud you couldn't even understand what he, or the rest of the band was playing. The stage sound was so loud that even when the house sound was turned off you still couldn't understand what he was playing. He also appeared to be so "absorbed" in his music that he didn't realize what was happening. Everyone I spoke to at the concert felt that he was on drugs (which later turned out to be a major problem for SRV).
The next day Jackson Brown was playing and during the soundcheck his people repeatedly said "let's keep the volume down because yesterday SRV was booed off the stage because he was so loud".
When SRV came back the 2nd time, he was already a star (or a rapidly rising star) and even though he was still very loud, it wasn't as bad, plus this time he had built a fan base. We all know that stars are forgiven almost everything by their hard core fans.
I saw 15 years of MJF, and can say that the Montreux Jazz Festival audiences are very appreciative of any style of music. They listen attentively both to well known and new artists. However, since they are paying to listen to music they want to al least hear what they paid for.
By the way, another artist was booed before SRV. It was Barbara Mandrell in 1979. It was an evening of country music and I think she didn't come across as sincere.
Another time Champion Jack Dupree was playing at the MJF and since he was surrounded by televsion cameras and the audience couldn't even see him sing and play they started booing the TV people. Unfortunately CJD misunderstood and thought he wasn't appreciated, wrong! The audience loved him!

You may be inclined to pass on this this, thinking it's just another barrel scraped archival release to cash in on a true guitar legend. You couldn't be more wrong. It's particularly interesting to hear the actual entire performance that led David Bowie to recruit Stevie for "Let's Dance". Many of the tunes on the 2nd disc were already issued on 'Live Alive", but they're sequenced better here and are presented in superior sound quality. Treat yourself to this one.

I have to admit that no one is more surprised than I am at how much I loved SRV and miss him. I had only his records and seen a few TV appearances when he was killed; but he was gone and here I was expecting many more years and much more music from him. More "product" as such does not replace the loss.

I also am not a "completist" when it comes to collecting albums-meaning that I don't need every single note an artist put on magnetic tape to feel like I have a fair collection. Thus, as much as I love Hendrix and the Doors, I do not delve much into obscure pressings from...say...Singapore or Denmark. So why show any interest in another "live" album from the SRV archive even though it comes from EPIC-Vaughn's official U.S. label?

"Live" albums in a sense are like wines. The same vineyard growing the same variety of grapes produces different yields and qualities in vintage year to year. Some "live" albums are undistinguished and one can substitute one for another from the same band. Indeed, the reason so many "live" albums fall flat is because anymore one goes to a concert to see the band and not so much to listen to the music. (You try to catch the nuances of the bass playing in a large stadium.) The best however go for some consistent level of excellence for the fans. But, in spite of even the artist's intentions, some shows just catch fire like no other for little apparent reason. Some nights and special occasions are just memorable in themselves. So while an artist may offer three different "live" vintages of the same set list, the flavors of those recordings may be markedly poles apart.

With this release we actually have two "live" performances separated by three years. The first disc presents SRV's first appearance at Montreux where he was greeted with boos and catcalls. This was before SRV's first album and so Vaughn's style and reputation was mainly confined to the state of Texas. The jazz and blues fans at Montreux know what they like and this isn't it. They like the blues sound most closely associated with Chicago; but Texas has it's own blues tradition. SRV also was heavily influenced by Jimi Hendrix and, in spite of several jazz greats (such as Gil Evans) absorbing Hendrix' music into their own bag of tricks, a large segment of the jazz community will hold it's nose whenever any "Jimi chords" pass by.

The organizers of Montreux have a long tradition of reaching out and booking musical acts that fall outside the jazz community's rigid boundaries. The actual crowd at these events also has a long tradition of trashing these acts; so the brickbats SRV met with were not entirely unexpected. Vaughan's actual set consists of much of the early material that made it to TEXAS FLOOD, his first album. You can practically feel the tension coming off the CD as Vaughan manfully plays against the resentment and calls for him to leave the stage. For fans, this first disc is interesting as a document of this legendary rejection. It is clear that it was not as some claimed that SRV was having a bad night and the audience was reacting to that. The audience didn't know what it was listening to and reacted badly because SRV wasn't living up to THEIR expectations. The silver lining in this disaster was that SRV won the enthusiasm and support of David Bowie.

The second disc tells a wholly different story. Three years later with two smash albums under his belt SRV returns to Montreux like a conquering hero to cheering crowds. This CD booklet shows SRV in a cowboy getup that strikes me as unintentionally funny-but that may just be me. Probably the "Buffalo Bill Wild West Show" look is what Europeans think a cowboy really looks like. The enthusiasm of the audience who now knew what to expect clearly set SRV on fire. With the audience so grateful and appreciative of what he had to give naturally Vaughan was more than happy to give them more. As if there was any doubt whether Vaughan belonged on Montreux's special stage, Johnny Copeland graces an appearance on "Tin Pan Alley "-as if to say to the doubters "Yes, this is very O.K.".

There is only a two-song duplication between these two discs but even there the difference is like night and day. Obviously, I prefer the 1985 performance to the earlier 1982 one. While I still like SRV's LIVE AT CARNEGIE HALL best, this is a superior "live" recording. If there are more CD releases from the EPIC vault, let's hope that they are all of this high caliber.

This double set presents two moments in SRV & Double Trouble life as a band. The first CD documents their first live show outside the US even before their debut album - Texas Flood was even released. The crow that day was not ready to understand or even enjoy their music. It seems that day during the festival they came on stage after an acoustic blues and folk day and SRV screaming and powerful electric blues shock those present booing the band at any change they got. What fools they were??. What is amazing is that does not undermines the band's ability to deliver a strong set.

The second set presents SRV & Double trouble at the heights of their careers. This time they were a well known band and the audience was expecting them. The performance this time is as powerfull as the first one showing how SRV and Co. were commited to the music.

This is the way ALL live concerts should be released: in their entirety, with near-perfect sound, and informative liner notes.
The unjustified booing of this Swiss audience throughout the 1982 set is plain stupid. They're really a sad bunch and time proved them so so wrong. What kind of people were this? But hey, there were booers when Elvis made his first dancing moves on stage, when Hendrix first used feedback, when Dylan went electric in '66, and they probably crawl under a rock when they'd hear themselves booing on CD today. SRV and band are tough and great all the way, the setlist also differs from 1982 to 1985. Montreux proved to be carreer defining for SRV. One thing left to say: whether you're a seasoned fan like me or a SRV beginner, this set should be in your collection, play it loud, grab a beer and enjoy!

I have been a fan since his first album. I bought this to keep the collection complete, thinking it was just another live set. The first disc, from before his first album was recorded, is a brilliant, hungry and energetic set. I understand now why David Bowie and Jackson Browne had to introduce themselves after this concert. Short, yes, perhaps his best. The second disc is great from years later. Buy this CD.

Well, first of all, the 1985 Montreux show is very good. The fact that several of the '85 cuts were released back in '86 on the "Live Alive" album is a bit of a drawback, but the music is excellent. Stevie Ray Vaughan and his band perform superbly throughout the set, resulting in magnificent renditions of "Texas Flood", "Ain't Gone 'N' Give Up On Love" and several more.

Shemekia's dad, guitarist Johnny Copeland, lends a hand on the awesome 12-minute "Tin Pan Alley", and there is some amazing guitar playing on this 76-minute set. Copeland actually appeared on two more songs, including a great rendition of "Cold Shot", but those have been cut in order to keep the 1985 concert on one disc. You can hear it, and "Look At Little Sister", on the 2004 DVD issue of these two shows.

The 1985 show is great, but the 1982 show is the real revelation here. I have heard all the official live albums by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, and this magnificent performance outdoes them all.
It is somewhat unpleasant to hear the crowd's reaction (unlike the 1985 show, Vaughan - or possibly the sound system - was met with indifference and even hostility when he and Double Trouble first performed in Montreux), but the music is white-hot.

Opening with two instrumentals, Freddie King's "Hide Away" and his own "Rude Mood", Stevie Ray Vaughan plays some of the very best and bluesist guitar you'll ever hear, particularly on a smouldering ten-minute version of "Texas Flood".
He was sometimes accused of playing ten notes when three would have done the job, but that accusation certainly doesn't hold up on these fabulous recordings.
Also, his vocal performance is superb. He rocks on "Give Me Back My Wig" and growls menacingly on "Dirty Pool", and the production is excellent. Sometimes a live album will suffer from the vocals being too low in the mix, but here the mixing is perfect. And Vaughan's playing on "Pride And Joy" and "Love Struck Baby" makes it hard to believe there was only one guitar player present.

This is one of the very best live blues and blues-rock albums I have ever heard, and if you like the genre you can't go wrong with "Live in Montreux".