Thread: Alvin Lee

Hello Garrett,
What is the best live album you will recommend with a great Alvin Lee preformance ?
Kind regards

Thank you, for your very quick answer Garrett, i'm gonna listen to this. I don't know very much of Alvin Lee and 10'rs after, apart the Woodstock 69 incredible performance "going home".

In addition to what Garrett and Cool Bec listed, the 1973 double live Lp called Ten Years After RECORDED LIVE and the 1968 live lp , Ten Years After UNDEAD.
The Fillmore 1970 Live CD that Garrett mentioned was issued in 2001. You'll enjoy that.
The WOODSTOCK album 1 (various performers at Woodstock Festival Aug 1969) has the classic version of "I'm Going Home" from the film.

There are also some other great TYA performances floating out there..... One cat that had listed up over 2000 audio concerts of classic rock artists from '66 -'78 had loaded up some complete TYA shows that were FM radio bcasts & soundboard tapes. Unfortunately, his youtube account was closed due to (c) issues due to formal complaints from various Labels/Artists...
Some that were noteworthy and quality tapes, were the Gaelic Park, Bronx New York 8-26-71 concert which was 85 minutes and Winterland, SF Calif 12-2-72 which was 120 minutes.
Another is TYA's performance at Texas International Pop Festival, just two weeks after Woodstock Festival . There is film footage of their performance. There is also a relatively good soundboard/Pa mix stereo audio tape of their entire performance there.
If you search around, there are some really nice gems out there in terms of TYA live tapes, FM Concerts/board recordings etc in release or near release quality....
Wolfgangs might have a couple of King Biscuits and Bill Graham archived board tapes of TYA that you can listen to on the wolfgangsDOTcom site.
Youtube has some incredible live performance clips of TYA from '68 to mid seventies. There is some incredible French television live performances from 1968.
............When this group was "cooking" on stage back in the day, it was amazing. Their bass player, Leo Lyons, had to be the coolest bass player ever from a spectator's perspective as nobody got into it like Leo did...............if you never saw TYA, you gotta see some of their live video clips to see what I mean about Leo and him getting into it..............you gotta see it..................nobody before or since got down and into it in the same way as Leo did with his bass playing.
Sometimes, you got Alvin playing too much stuff and the vocals and overplaying of guitar didn't quite groove when it should have even though it was the fastest guitar playing on any stage........ TYA was a superb rock and roll band that certainly was enjoyable on stage and a crowd favorite and when everthing meshed perfectly, e.g. Alvin's four thousand notes per second guitar playing and his vocal style, it was magical. There were no weak links in terms of band members capabilities, as the keys, bass and drums were always really really good, the only weakness was the overplaying by Alvin on occasion. He was crazy good.
TYA made some great studio albums too. You should give a listen to their 1971 album that has I've Been There Too and I'd love To Change The World , on it. Great sound on that album. The contrast of their more polished and more varied songs/instrumentation on studio albums than their 145 decibel loud live concerts with the group full-on and Alvin scorching the strings at supersonic speed on the faster songs. If you haven't heard it, you've got to hear "I Can't Keep From Cryin Sometimes" from the double live album, RECORDED LIVE. Incredible! It just shows that fast or slower paced songs, TYA could do it all. If I recall , there are a couple of great video clips of different live performances of "I Can't Keep From....." on youtube-------the Isle of Wight '70 clip seems to come to mind. Check them out if you haven't seen those videos or aren't as familiar with TYA's work. They have a lot of great stuff. It is a shame that rock radio dropped them from playlists before the seventies ended.

Hi Dr,


Thank you for giving me so good medicine for my head and my ears, after testing some of your suggestions i've ordered « Recorded live » and « Ssssh » .


You said :

Wolfgangs might have a couple of King Biscuits and Bill Graham archived board tapes of TYA that you can listen to on the wolfgangsDOTcom site.


Thanks this site is new for me !


You said:

Alvin's four thousand notes per second guitar playing and his vocal style, it was magical. There were no weak links in terms of band members capabilities, as the keys, bass and drums were always really really good, the only weakness was the overplaying by Alvin on occasion.


I really like the way he is playing, not a machine, but very musical and inspired indeed.
There is no doubt that the rest of the band has talent, specially the bassist.
I also like the dynamic, and he is so quick...but we can hear all the notes clairly.

You said:

The contrast of their more polished and more varied songs/instrumentation on studio albums than their 145 decibel loud live concerts with the group full-on and Alvin scorching the strings at supersonic speed on the faster songs


Louder than Ted Nugent ?? My equipment can produce 136db, (Thanks to Klipsch!!), the loudest concert i've heard was The Nuge in the early 80's. The local newspaper spoke about 40000 watts (5000 people only) inside a theatre.



Many thanks again for such so detailled and precious infos,


Kind regards