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A friend who reviews movies for a living provided this advice: "always begin a review with a positive comment."
So: (1) an interesting cover photograph; and (2) probably a fun concert to attend. That's the best I can offer.
The key problem with this CD is the terrible sound. I am not a techno-geek who measures pixels in DVDs, praises all Blu-Rays over all DVDs, or uses an audiometer to assess the compression of audio recordings. But the sound here is so bad that it drops a veil of grunge over the music. There are bootleg albums recorded on cassettes by audience members with sound superior to this. Put this CD on a high-end stereo and you'll wonder if you blew a few tubes in your amplifier. My initial thought when I first played this CD was that something was amiss with my stereo.
Plenty of talent on this recording, but they often seem to get in the way of each other. Think of the many "tribute concerts" you've seen or heard. The "big-name" performer being honored (Simon, or Baez, or Dylan, or Mitchell, or a host of others) introduces half a dozen "friends," and each comes on stage to sing a song or two. Then, the big finale, when everyone gets onstage at one time for a final number. These encores usually are mediocre. Too many singers and not enough structure, rehearsal, and restraint. That's what I hear on many of the songs of this album.
Listen to "Only You Know and I Know" on this album, then compare it to the version on Dave Mason's first album. The original is nuanced; his voice is melodic and the music crisp and lovely. The Delaney and Bonnie version is rushed, the lyrics shouted rather than sung, an almost bombastic treatment of a lovely song.
Consider the final track, the Little Richard medley. This is the kind of kinetic encore meant to get the audience on their feet and out the door with a smile. Great in concert, but again, wouldn't you tend to return to this track more often if they had done one of these four songs in its entirety, rather than racing through a stanza or two of four different songs? I once saw a famous Nashville artist introduce his guests, the Everly Brothers. He didn't explicitly say it, but the format given to them was "you've got three minutes; sing snippets of your five greatest hits." Like the final medley on the Delaney and Bonnie album, this sort of run-through is worth hearing once, is interesting to experience live, but is not a recording one returns to fondly.
Friends who bought this album did so primarily to listen to Clapton. His brief solos are excellent. But if that's the primary reason for listening, why not enjoy one of his albums instead?
One can't blame the age of this recording for the sound quality. There were many live albums released around the general time of this one..."Live at Leeds," "Ya-Ya's," "Full House," and "Before the Flood" all come to mind immediately. None of these feature demonstration quality sound, but none have sound so bad that it seriously detracts from the performance.
There are so many lovely, well-recorded albums available by Delaney and Bonnie, Dave Mason, and Eric Clapton. If, in the future, I want to listen to any of these artists, this is not the recording I'll reach for.
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