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Fairport Convention & Matthew Southern Comfort
Live In Maidstone 1970 (Voiceprint)

One for all you Fairport obsessives as this recently rediscovered footage features the Full House line-up (Thompson, Nicol, Pegg, Swarbrick and Mattacks) in all it’s youthful glory playing to a Kent audience in 1970. Filmed by Tony Palmer (the man behind the recently re-released All My Loving documentary) at least half of the fun here is watching the audience from stern ‘squares’ to hip young folkies and all points in between, and the glorious moment when the Fairport’s set is interrupted to allow the crowd to watch a helicopter team take off (complete with vocal, if unsanctioned, Fairport commentary over the PA), left this reviewer misty eyed for all those wonderfully haphazard old family fun days where you could see a marching band, some performing animals and a ‘pop’ group all in the same balloon peppered field, ah heady days. At just over 31 minutes it’s the briefest of tastes of this legendary line-up but the hi-octane clatter through ‘Jenny’s Chicken & The Mason’s Apron’ show a band firing on all cylinders and even Matthew Southern Comfort’s less than world-shattering efforts are pleasant enough. One for fans only probably but a worthwhile find nonetheless.

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Foreigner

Seldom does a new release elicit such divided responses at TotalMusic-Online towers, with opinion more or less equally divided into two camps, the first subscribing to the ‘proper classic grown up rock music that’s both melodic and punchy’ school of thought whilst the second plump for the slightly more confrontational ‘oh for god’s sake can’t someone take that irritating AOR shite off please’. Of course the line-up can now only boast the one original member in Mick Jones, but the real skill in writing songs like 'Cold As Ice', 'Hot Blooded' or 'Feels Like The First Time' is that pretty much anyone can play ‘em and the new line-up (including John Bonham’s son Jason), play the songs exactly the same as the old line-up, so no disappointments there. The only real downside is the truncated set (recorded live at the German Bang Your Head Festival in 2006 – Germany must be the only place in the world that Foreigner could play a 'heavy metal' festival), just the nine songs spread over an hour or so but the set rattles along at a fair old pace avoiding the slowies, and should satisfy any Foreigner fans keen to catch up on one of the biggest selling rock acts of all time.

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Faust
Nobody Knows If It Ever Happened
(Ankstmusik)

The most volatile of the krautrock godfathers (a tag which they hate incidentally), Faust’s career could, at best, be described as sporadic, which makes this wonderfully ramshackle video of the bands performance at London's Garage in December 1996 all the more remarkable as the aged rockers - the line up features original members Werner ‘Zappi’ Diermaier, Hans Joachim Irmler and Jean-Hervé Péron - turn in a hugely enjoyable, unstructured, car crash of a performance which positively oozes menace and uncertainty. Lest we forget Faust all but invented the industrial plant machinery approach to music later adopted by bands like Ensturzende Neubauten, and all of that hardware is utilised to gob smacking effect here - the accompanying film of the band setting up, with lot’s of sawing up, welding and cement mixers being loaded on the stage, sets the tone before a note is played (or hammered, painted or indeed angle ground). It’s not all scary industrial clanging mind as classic tracks like 'Flashback Caruso' and 'J'ai Mal Aux Dents' get an airing but it’s not hard to see why most venues would shy away from a Faust performance as the Garage is left looking like an overturned paint lorry in a vandalised building site.

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Bryan Ferry
Dylanesque Live - The London Sessions
(Eagle Rock)

A positive orgy of Bryan Ferry this month (OK two DVD’s, but for Ferry fans that’s a lot), but unlike the preening, camp glam rocker found above, this is the smooth, velvet tongued crooner wrapping his warm tonsils around a dozen Bob Dylan tracks with various degrees of success. Never an obvious Dylan acolyte (he even admits to not ‘getting’ Dylan in the early folkie days) it’s Ferry’s love of Dylan’s remarkable lyrical imagery which initially prompted his covers album Dylanesque, around which this live session was created, and several of the arrangements are certainly different enough from the recorded versions to warrant the purchase for Ferry completists. The album certainly alienated some Dylan AND Ferry hardliners and this won’t do anything to convince either camp differently, but needless to say if you liked the album (and we did) then you will almost certainly like this especially with the addition of non-album track ‘Don’t Think Twice, It's Alright’, between song musings on the songs from the man himself and the original 1973 video of ‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’. And to cap it all this is probably the only time you are ever likely to see Ferry wearing jeans, oh yes!

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Peter Frampton
Frampton Comes Alive II
(Universal)

Ex-Bromley Technical School (also home to one David ‘Bowie’ Jones), ex-Herd, ex-Humble Pie and the man behind, possibly still, the biggest selling solo album of all time the six times platinum Frampton Comes Alive, Peter Frampton’s career has been a bit like Orson Wells in that it has become steadily less successful as it continued – not least when he signed on for the hideous Bee Gees film flop Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - and, like Meat Loaf recently, he has obviously decided that a follow up to his greatest success will put him back in the worlds arenas. Which brings us to this (not an updated version of the original, although several of the tracks from FCA I survive). Looking considerably less hirsute than on the original effort, FCA II is in truth a lot like FCA I, if slightly less energetic, but the world has moved on and whilst Frampton’s guitar playing is still excellent his song-writing remains avowedly AOR in style which is about as popular as a wee jobbie in the bath right now. Still, if you loved the first instalment then this will probably still appeal, and yes he does use the old talk box thingie.

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Free
Forever
(Universal)

It’s been remarked elsewhere on TM-Online that Free never really received the kudos (or indeed the dosh) that bands like Cream or Led Zeppelin did and yet were easily their equal musically, a deal more soulful and head and shoulders above the general lumpen blues rockers alongside which they spent most of their careers. Trawling around the world on a never-ending enthusiasm sapping merry-go-round of tours would ultimately do for the band (and of course Paul Kossof would ultimately lose his long fight with drug addiction) but this extensive collection of clips, videos and live footage (including some recently uncovered images from a great live set at the Isle Of Wight – the ‘audio only’ material from the show is also included) is manna from heaven for old hands and hopefully also a gob-smacking introduction to a new generation of fans. Peppered with wonderful old unseen footage, interviews - including any number of entertainingly differing reminiscences about the old days (including numerous theories about the genesis of ‘All Right Now’) - and lots of little hidden bits and bobs to ferret out, this is a well constructed, well packaged collection which will provide many hours of entertainment for fans old and new.

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Faithless
Forever Faithless
(Sony/BMG)

Strange cove Johnny video collection, especially in the case of an act like Faithless who really need to be experienced live to get the full, hands-in-the-air, euphoric effect of their thought provoking trance/rock (We Come 1 and Take The Long Way Home really fly live but are oddly muted here despite both having very watchable vids). Naturally enough when the visuals are good (Muhammad Ali, God Is A DJ, Mass Destruction), they do add a certain frisson to the proceedings, but when they’re mundane, even if the sounds are cool and you still tune in mentally, you just stop looking (early efforts like Salva Mea and Don’t Leave are strictly by-the-numbers efforts, and Bliss and Dido out cleavaging each other on One Step Too Far is just plain dull). On the whole things work best when the video makers pick up on the handsome stately grace of Maxi Jazz and the hard as nails, but sexy with it, Sister Bliss - the good sister whacking drums on Mass Destruction is far more pulse racing than any Britney S or C Aguilera sweatathon – but Faithless on film is never going to be as exciting as Faithless in the flesh

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