Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Guitar Trilogy: Clapton-Beck-Page, February 22, 2000
This collection kicks of with "For Your Love," the Yardbirds' highest charting U.S. single (No. 6) and the song that led to the resignation of lead guitarist Eric Clapton. Despite Clapton's early exit from the band (March 1965), he appears on nine of the eighteen tracks. He especially shines on the final three tracks taken from Five Live Yardbirds. Listen especially to Clapton's guitar and Keith Relf's harmonica interplay on the nearly six-minute version of Smokestack Lightning!Clapton's replacement wasn't too shabby either. Listen to Jeff Beck on their rave-up of Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man" where Beck and Relf do a guitar and harmonica call-and-response. For a time the Yarbirds boasted the twin-guitar attack of Beck and Jimmy Page (although Page is not featured on this collection). All told, this is amazing music. My only complaint is that it doesn't include "Over, Under, Sideways, Down"--one of only six singles the band had in the U.S. [For that matter, this set also omits the Yardbirds' last top 40 hit, "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago." To get these two songs, buy the equally amazing Yardbirds' album Roger the Engineer.] ESSENTIAL
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Indispensable, April 25, 2008
In 1966, Michelangelo Antonioni released a highly controversial movie called Blow Up. Set in London, the film starred David Hemmings, Sarah Miles, and a young, and exquisitely beautiful, Vanessa Redgrave. Thomas, (Hemmings), lives a fast, ultra-hip existence and at one point finds himself in a wild, psychedelic nightclub. It's loud, it's cookin', and on the bandstand Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and the other birds are rippin' up a version of The Train Kept A Rollin' which had been slightly altered for copyright reasons. The live energy is absolutely explosive; high voltage, raw electric blues like that was simply unknown back then.
This CD chronicles the most important years in the short, but sparkling, career of a hugely exciting and influential band. When you consider that this music was recorded over 40 years ago it's easy to understand that, at the time, it was as revolutionary as the arrival of Hendrix. More remarkable still, the music sounds as great today as when it was released, full of edge, authority, and bite. Sure, there are clunkers that probably sounded dated even when they were released, You're A Better Man Than I finds the Yardbirds adopting a pious, and highly inappropriate, idealism while Still I'm Sad would have been better left to the Moody Blues or some other clinically depressed outfit. Putty (In Your Hands) is cute - a word that damns it - just too close to early Beatles for comfort.
Pretty much everything else is fast out of the gate and hot as Georgia asphalt in August. I'm Not Talking is a perennial favorite of mine, as are The Train Kept A Rollin', Smokestack Lightning, Evil Hearted You, Heart Full Of Soul, I Ain't Done Wrong. The Yardbirds definitely had their limitations, Keith Reif is a mediocre vocalist - compare him with what the Beck/Stewart match up on Truth sounds like. And this whole "guitar academy" factor everybody likes to cite - Clapton, Beck, Page - actually stood in the way of The Yardbirds ever coalescing as a group. However, they did manage to keep it together for a while, and in doing so, accomplished something artists rarely achieve, they produced music that was genuinely new and good enough to stand the test of time.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mother Lode for Second British Invasion, February 15, 2006
The Yardbirds were one of those great 'first British Invasion' groups whose primary claim to later fame is the fact that they provided the breeding ground for the stars of the 'second British invasion' lead by Cream, Traffic, and others. The thing which is so easy to forget is that groups like the Yardbirds, the Spenser Davis Group, Manfred Mann, Them, and the Graham Bond Organization were such fertile breeding grounds because their stuff was darn good itself.
I love it when I see contemporary commercials come up with songs from these great early bands, and listening to this album shows us just how important the Yardbirds were in their own right, not just as the launching pad for the careers of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Paige.
This is an essential album for any survey of rock roots!
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