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Thursday, 1 September 2016

Strawbs - Live at the Golder's Green Hippodrome (1974)



Fourth re-up of a live set by this band, one of the few (with Procol Harum and Groundhogs) that I collect the live recordings with interest since their interprations and their setlist can be so challenging and so diverse. More details about this one below (the band had just mutated from its folk-rock line-up to its prog-rock one). Catch it here.

Let's have another try of a Str... album. After the Paris Theatre concert, a live set at the Golder's Green Hippodrome (same than Procol Harum) one year later but with a totally new line-up since from the previous band only Dave Cousins and Lambert are still in the band. After the split, they imagined to enrole the rhythmic section of Ten Years After (a strange choice) but finally recruited the keyboards of Renaissance, John Hawken with 2 other members (Chas Cronk and Rod Coombes, the latter from Stealer's Whell), forming maybe the line-up most popularily associated with the name of the band. When comparing the songs played with the 2 line-ups, it's clear that the band is very different, much more compact and progressive than the previous one. But finally, old songs are better with the previous line-up (in particular, the keyboards are sometimes too much synthetiser and progressives when they were still traditional and folk previously) and the band excels mainly on new songs. I think to put other concerts of this great band soon. Hope not to have them withdrawn. Sorry for the mistake on the fake cover sleeve (from a picture taken by Alison Scarpulla). Too complicated to correct it.





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