Swedish vocals
International relevance: ***
Habitually hailed as the best Swedish heavy rock band of the 70s, I'm not that big a fan of November. They had a few great tracks, but they also had a lot of formulaic power trio stuff that Cream had already done much better. So in all fairness, I'm not the target audience for an archival live disc of theirs, even if it's from their golden era of their first two albums.
Released in 1993, ”Live” was one of the first albums on the Mellotronen label (and a few years later reissued as a picture disc LP by Record Heaven). It features tracks from three different dates, one from 1970 and two from 1971. The first seven were recorded in 1971 for the Swedish Radio show Midnight Hour, the forerunner to the long running Tonkraft series that spawned so many excellent recordings. This live session was later included in truncated form in ”Progglådan” but in better sound.
Musically it's OK I guess but I don't
know what Mellotronen did to the original tapes to sound this strange
and murky. It's as if they've gone through some fake stereo
processing even though the source recordings are true stereo as
proven by ”Progglådan”. And it's not only the Midnight Hour tape
that has this mucky fidelity; everything here sounds the same. Add to
that the cheesy cover art, and ”Live” feels more like a bootleg
than an authorized release. Real November fans are probably delighted
by its existence regardless, but I think this is just a sloppy
release in desperate need for a restored and more credible reissue.
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