Customer Reviews

Raw N Live

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

 

 

For those of us who have seen The Shadows live and at The Cellar, we know the club was actually located in the NW burbs in Arlington Hts., IL. It was an one story industrial building which you could see from Route 14. One Saturday a buddy and I drove past and stopped because of a long line of kids. When we asked it was because The Who were playing. Yes, I saw The Who in a little club!

Anyway, The Shadows were like the house band at The Cellar and around the suburbs including clubs like New Place out by Cary, IL. This album captures that time and spirit in the raw power of the music. There is no subtlety on the CD - young guys playing their hearts out. The mix is terrible and memories real.

All the way from the lead singer dedicating a song to the Greasers to the primitive screams directly into the mic - this CD captures it all. If you want the memories or hear how the garage bands in the Midwest were like playing live, then this is the place to start. (11/22/99)

Just love these lost recordings of a vintage gig they sometimes master for CD release.'Raw 'N Alive...' is by no means a perfect recording,but it is of pretty decent quality.Tracks that I thought sort of stood out are "Oh,Yeah","Hey Joe",their Monkees cover "Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day","Everybody Needs Somebody","Dark Side" and the encore,you guessed it,the six minute boot stomping version of "Gloria".All through the band's set,vocalist Jim Sohns sounds in top form and guitarist Joe Kelley displays some good blues harp.Good to listen to on a rainy night.

This was very nostalgic for us "cellar dwellers". I was thrilled to find this cd ,for old times sake. It brought back such fond memories. "Gloria" as well as the other cuts on the record, captured the spirit of the "60's" not just in the Chicago area, but all over the USA. A fun trip down memory lane by a very talented group that we all thought would be the next "Stones"...

Yes, this is an actual vintage live recording of The Shadows of Knight of "Nuggets" fame. The Shadows are best known for their smash hit cover version of Them's "Gloria". They were a solid blues based garage band, but they had limited success, probably mostly due to the fact that there wasn't a good songwriter in the group. What we have here is a recording of the group playing at a teen club in late 1966. The recording quality is very good, considering the age. It was taped directly from the soundboard and is in mono. The performance is good, although it gets a bit sloppy at times. Singer Jim Sohns was in good voice that night, and the rest of the band is pretty solid. This may be the ultimate vintage recording of a 1960s garage band (not that very many recordings like this exsist). Recommended to fans of "Nuggets" type music.

The mix of this is just awful. The vocals are loud and blaring with the guiar too far in the back. The liner notes make reference to what a great sound system they had. I don't know, but it sure does not make for a great recording. They should have used Gloria as a live bonus track and maybe one other and kept the rest in the can. Cripes. If you want a better choice along this line get Electric Prunes Stockholm. Geez is that one good....

I recently showed a friend a VHS copy of the 1964 New Music Express Awards concert that was broadcast by the BBC. After viewing it for a while, he commented about how unimpressed he was with the audio and video quality. I had to admit he had a point. The film was grainy and the sound varied and suffered from poor mixing. I was about to counter that this was the result of - likely - multiple copyings and the rest due to what passed for state-of-the-art technology in 1964...but I didn't. Instead, I told him that it wasn't what he was seeing and hearing that was important, but rather it was the capture of the event as a cynosure of just what it meant to be in and among rock 'n' roll in those wonderful years immediately after February 9, 1964.

And that is what this album is all about! The making of a live recording is a dodgey operation at best. I doubt we will ever know how many so-called live albums were subject to and subjected to re-mix and additions to bring up the quality. This little gem is devoid of that. Instead, you get exactly what those attending got that night. The selections are just about typical for what you'd hear in late 1966: something from Chuck Berry, a few blues covers, some Stax/Volt covers and, of course, their one big hit.

The 13 somgs on the disc are of rather good quality, though incredibly short in some cases. You get to hear a band on a stage in front of a crowd with everyone having a good time. Nothing more is promised, nothing more is delivered and - most certainly - nothing more was expected. Listen to this album and relish the freedom is depicts with wholly true accuracy.