Live

Foghat are often referred to as the finest southern rock 'n boogie band not to have come out of the south - they actually hailed from Brixton and Hounslow in London, emerging from the UK blues scene via Savoy Browne in the late 60s. The band packed their bags and found fame and fortune across the pond where the surviving members continue to tour successfully almost forty years on. Foghat Live moved two million copies on first release. This album amply attests to their sheer ability to rock out as a live act and is worthy of the car stereo of any fan of 70s metal.

Yes Foghat are English but not very successfull in the UK so relocated to the USA and started to make a name for themselves shifting albums and filling concert halls. This live album is a good representation of the band at the height of their fame, note there is now a live 2 which is twice as long if on LP would have been a classic double live!. If you love rock with a sprinkling of boogie searing lead guitars and pulsing rythums then this comes highly recommended!

Foghat are an important British Rock band who featured ex-members of Savoy Brown and who mixed the boogie sound with moments of hard rock to form a thirty year career after relocating to the United States. Their 1977 Live album is actually the best selling Foghat album to date and with good reason.

Although the record only contains six tracks it is arguably the best thing they've ever done and is a better introduction to the band for new fans than any of their individual studio albums would be. Whereas each of the albums may have some filler and weak moments along side the classic material, Live contains six of the band's best tracks performed energetically and with superb virtuosic musicianship.

When you think of the classic rock and progressive rock bands, there are a lot of who have a seminal live album that takes a lot of the band's best material, makes it bigger, brighter, faster, heavier as well as adding additional impressive guitar solos and build ups into the songs themselves. Think of Deep Purple's Made In Japan, Kiss' Alive, Jethro Tull's Bursting Out and you will understand. Foghat's Live really does the same sort of service for their material, making the already strong songs larger than life.

The choice of tracklisting is pretty great, with the band's classic anthems `Slow Ride' `Fool For The City,' and the cover tune that broke them `I Just Want To Make Love To You' to please any new fans wanting the tracks that keep coming up in soundtracks. On top of this, you get strong performances of `Road Fever' and `Home In my Hand.' But the absolute highlight is an absolutely incendiary rendition of the ludicrously catchy combination of Yardbirds/Big Joe Turner cover tracks `Honey Hush,' which is sure to keep fans of the band's harder side happy.

Interestingly though, despite coming out after the Night Shift album, Live features no tracks from that release, which is sort of a shame as it was actually one of the band's finest studio outings.

Despite 1976's Night Shift or indeed 1974's Rock And Roll Outlaws not being represented on the record, Live has a strong tracklisting and is a superb, consistent and filler-free forty minute introduction to the band that would serve fairly well as a greatest hits package for the band's early days. If you have any interest in Foghat at all then this should be your first port of call, I highly recommend this album.