WISHBONE ASH - LIVE FROM MEMPHIS: Smoke On Your Radio
One of the coolest promotional trends in rock musicduring the '70s was the promo live album. Record companies would distributethese to radio stations exclusively so deejays could have unique programming tosnare an audience with. In turn, the bands would get to interest rock fans intheir music while also making a case for why they were worth seeing in concert.MCA issued one of these for Wishbone Ash in the summer of 1972. It was called Live In Memphis and it offers a greatlittle portrait of what made the band so special in their early era.
LiveFrom Memphis is drawn from a live-in-the-studio gig donefor a radio station that was recorded at the famous Ardent Studios (RichardRosebrough of Big Star was the engineer!). It contains just three tracks buteach is a showcase for a different aspect of the band live. "JailBait" makes for a potent opener. This pounding boogie plays differentlyfrom the steamy mix of its studio counterpart: the sound opens up here, drawingus into the live interplay of the guitar and giving its throbbing rhythms roomto breathe. Even more impressive is "The Pilgrim," which shows howthe band could recreate the variety of textures and tempo changes in their epictracks without mixing-assisted transitions. It also gives you a sense of theplayers' discipline and their ability to communicate as they weave their partsinto a complex whole.
The entirety of the second side is devoted to"Phoenix," which expands from the original 10-minute studio opus intoa 17-minute extravaganza of band interplay. Despite the nearly doubled length,this isn't saddled with a bunch of extraneous soloing or one of those "epicjam" endings that became de rigueur in '70s rock concerts. Instead, theband allows all aspects of the composition to expand, slowing down the firsthalf a few notches to build tension and then extending each of the movements ofthe high-energy second half in a way that allows the band to savor each twistand turn of the dramatic arrangement without surrendering its intensity.
The end result captures Wishbone Ash's original lineupin all its hungry-for-the-arenas glory. LiveFrom Memphis also set the tone for how the group would use live recordingsto showcase their abilities in a way that their studio work could only occasionallycapture. These recordings fittingly became a bonus tracks staple of the group'sCD reissues and can be found on several releases, particularly reissues of Argus.