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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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