The fab four - Roy Wood, Carl Wayne, Bev, and Rick Price. In other words The Move. I was so in tuned to the music of that time when I was a teenager, yet, getting into The Move were not that simple to get ahold of, due to the fact that they were kind of obscure in the United States. The Jeff Lynne Move years were easy to obtain, but the early albums, one had to find an import copy - and that was usually by luck than anything else. Nevertheless, The Move was an incredible band.
It was their odd mixture of hard rock, pure pop, and incredible songwriting from Roy Wood. But also they had a singer, Carl Wayne, that didn't come off as a hard rocker, but more of a middle-of-the-road singer being backed by a nutty rock band. Why they never made it big in America, I think is because of their eccentricity. The Move Live at Fillmore East is an album that should have come out in 1969. If so, I think they may have been at the very least, have a Humble Pie type of success in the states. Alas, that didn't happen.
This is a fantastic live album, showing off The Move's love for American rock/pop, yet filtered through the Move aesthetic and style. So it's heavy but smart. Carl, Roy, and gang were not shy in doing covers, and their choices are brilliant. Not obvious stuff, but the off Carole King cut - more like the b-side of a single type of thing than anything else. I'm presuming Roy Wood was an obsessive record collector. His guitar playing, by the way, is great throughout the set/recording, and for me, Rick Price's heavy bass playing is something else. He and Bev as the rhythm section are like a tractor going over rocks. If we lived in a better world, this album would have been a super hit - and by now have a deluxe mix, but the tapes were being held by Wayne for safe-keeping. It sounded like they went through major sound operation to save or improve the aural aspect of this album. It's great. Get it.
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