THE BUTTERFIELD BLUES BAND: LIVE (1970)
1) Everything Going To Be
Alright; 2) Love Disease; 3) The Boxer; 4) No Amount Of Loving; 5) Driftin' And
Driftin'; 6) Intro To Musicians; 7) Number Nine; 8) I Want To Be With You; 9)
Born Under A Bad Sign; 10) Get Together Again; 11) So Far, So Good.
The very idea of the Butterfield Blues Band
releasing their first live album without
Mike Bloomfield — or Elvin Bishop, for that matter, if we want to be
chivalrous about it as well — seems so revolting to me that, you know, these
guys would have to work real hard to
compensate for the affront. And they did not work that hard. Live seems
like a realistic picture of Paul Butterfield and his bluesy/jazzy friends at
the time: a band that plays it tight, intelligent, and safe to the point of
boring. The fact that the record came out the same year as Live At Leeds and Get Yer
Ya-Ya's Out!, not to mention all the fresh blood like Led Zeppelin or
Jethro Tull shaking down the walls, does not exactly speak much in its favor,
either.
The main problem, however, is not that the
Butterfield Blues Band does not sound «tough» when it gets out on stage —
kicking ass and rockin' the roof are not, after all, obligatory requirements
for a good show, not even in 1970. The main problem is that they give the
impression of trying to sound «tough»,
without truly rising to the task. Case in point: ʽNumber Nineʼ, a lengthy,
speedy funk-rock jam, with the brass section in full flight and Paul playing
Aeolus, Lord of Winds, on the harmonica. You can literally feel the buckets of
sweat coming off the players, but to no avail: Sly & The Family Stone or
James Brown would have blown them off the stage in a minute. There is a certain
level of tightness and coordination, but it does not feel natural, and
eventually the brass section just begins going to hell, with the players
falling out of sync with each other and almost hinting at free-form jazz — but
then, neither is this too free-form
to genuinely compete with, say, Eric Dolphy. It's all neither here nor there: a
whoppin' big mess that becomes a real chore when you realize you have to endure
ten minutes of it.
Naturally, most of the songs are taken from the
band's latest albums: ʽEast-Westʼ is not an option, and there is not even a
single fast, short, catchy blues-rocker from their past — mostly these excursions
into jazz-pop and funk territory, with a little gospel on the side (the awful
singalong number ʽGet Together Againʼ, which, for some reason, strives to
establish a black church atmosphere in an L.A. club). ʽThe Boxerʼ, by the way,
is not a Simon & Garfunkel cover (that would have been at least novel), but
rather a new funky composition by Rod Hicks that provides the drummer with a
soloing opportunity (the drummer is
the boxer, see?), and the brass section with a chance to replicate the
meticulous punctuality of The Family Stone (which they fail). The other tunes
aren't even worth discussing.
What is
worth discussing is the split that the public had with the critics — most of
these latter day Butterfield albums, and this live one in particular, have
always received a serious share of academic admiration, yet sales were
drastically slow, and if East-West
still finds support among the connoisseurs these days, everything after 1966-67
seems to have completely fallen out, no matter how much the critics try to
revive it (see Bruce Eder's truly glowing account of the Live album at the All-Music Guide, for instance). The reason, I
guess, is that The Butterfield Blues Band play their program formally right. There are no serious
lapses of taste here (other than in the ʽIntro To Musiciansʼ bit, which Paul
delivers as if he were stoned, or dead drunk — maybe he was), there's energy,
there's some originality, there's not a lot of pretense and quite a lot of
humbleness. But there is never a sign
that this is a band that's ready to «go all the way», you know. Ultimately,
they just sound like any average blues-rock band with enough determination to
go on practicing, no matter how much time it takes. And the decision to expand
into jazz-rock and funk — genres that absolutely require that one «goes all the
way» if one wants to make a difference — was probably the single silliest
decision of Butterfield's entire career. As a jazz musician, he's too sterile;
as a funk player, too stiff. He was born in Chicago, and that is where he
should have stayed.
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