Live At The Whiskey-A-Go-Go '69 [CD+DVD, DualDisc]

I bought this after hearing the acoustic version of For Your Love (the Yardbirds hit) on Pandora. There are videos of other versions of most of the songs featured on this disc. The disc starts of with Marriot talking back to the audience saying Why Don't You Shut Up. The first song is a version of For Your Love is fluid and breezy. The strong vocals of Marriot with Frampton's back up are a delight to hear. You can hear Frampton riffing through out the song while Jerry Shirley holds the rhythm down and Ridley anchors the tune. The second song switches to electric with Shakin' All Over a song famous by Johnny Kid and the Pirates it's the same song covered by The Who on Live At Leeds. Marriot is singing again with Frampton backing him up. It's loud and edgy and different than the version by The Who. The third song is a Ray Charles cover called Hallelujah I Love Her So. This is an up tempo number not a bad song but one that I don't always listen to. The fourth song is where things really get going. The Sad Bag Of Shakey Jake is the whole band rocking Marriot starts it, Frampton gets the second verse I believe Ridley handles the bridge then back to Marriot. The guitar inter play finally picks up in this song with Frampton and Marriot playing off of each other. The big tamale is I Walk On Gilded Splinters. This is a cover song, I believe of the song featured on the Dr. John recording Gris-Gris. Just for the way Shakey Jake segue-ways in to Gilded Splinters is worth picking this disc up alone. These guy must have been great to see live. This isn't the whole set and by the sound of the recording I wish it was. I'm sure they played more acoustic stuff which would have been nice to hear. However, the 21 minute version of I Walk On Gilded Splinters is incredible. This recording spurned me to pick up most of the Humble Pie catalogue through Eat It. One can only wish Marriot had lived longer so that we could have seen the re-emergence of Humble Pie with Frampton as they were writing and playing together just before he died. The DVD side is the same songs with pictures being displayed during the songs. I wish that the videos I've seen for these songs could have been used but I'm sure they couldn't secure the rights or wouldn't sync properly. Either way just for the CD side it's worth a buy. I haven't taken it out of my car for over a year now.

This is an amazing album. I would say the best songs on here would be the hauntingly unrecognizable "for your love" stretched out to a nine minute acoustic raga. "Shakin all over" and "Hallelujah I love her so" are kind of late sixties live fillers. But the combination of "sad bag/ gilded splinters" is incendiary, mariotts' devastating voice and harmonica, Framptons insane runs, Shirley and Ridely just tearing up the rhythm section. I find this is much better then the similar "rockin the filmore" but that just might be, cause I heard this first. Oh and if anybody has a problem with my review, please talk about the review and not my grammatical errors.

The Pie Live at the Whisky A-Go-Go '69 is an excellent live album from the period and I was very pleasantly surprised at the excellent recording quality. This album is a wonderful complement to their '71 live concert at the Fillmore.

Those of us who love live rock had an incredible run for a few years. Imagine being marooned on an island in the South Pacific with a digital music player (FLAC files, please, for sound quality), a solar charger and this streak of live albums:

1969 - Humble Pie Live at the Whisky A-Go-Go '69
1970 - Grand Funk Railroad - Live
1970 - The Who - Live at Leeds
1971 - Humble Pie Performance: Rockin' the Fillmore
1972 - Deep Purple - Made in Japan

I'm not sure I'd be looking for boats on the horizon. I'll take the sun & music....

One caution, though...If you intend to rip this Dual Disc to digital files, you need to make sure you have an old CD-ROM or CD-RW drive available to read the CD side. Every combo CD/DVD drive I tried would not even recognize the CD-side of the disc. My ancient CD player hooked up to the receiver (huh, what's that...???) played the CD tracks, no problem, but the newer computer drives didn't like the CD side. No problems anywhere with the DVD side.