Live at the Roxy Club 1977 – The Adverts

The title might be misleading -- the concert was actually recorded in the English Midlands, several months after the Roxy Club closed down. But that is the only caveat surrounding this disc. Dating from early fall 1977, as the Adverts toured in the wake of their "Gary Gilmore's Eyes" hit single, Live at the Roxy captures the band's full-period live set -- that is, the forthcoming Crossing the Red Sea with the Adverts album in its entirety, plus the clutch of non-album B-sides that completed the band's repertoire. The audience is suitably enthusiastic, bit it's the band -- bassist Gaye Advert, drummer Laurie Driver, guitarist Howard Pickup, and vocalist TV Smith -- that most impresses. The U.K. press had a lot of fun at the time, complaining that the Adverts really weren't good musicians -- a hang-up, of course, dating back to most journalists' past digging ELP and Cream. Live at the Roxy, however, reveals them to be at least as competent as they needed to be and, in Pickup, possessed of a guitarist who could have been a hero if he'd emerged five years earlier. "One Chord Wonders"? It was a song title, not an autobiography. The songs themselves, of course, should need no introduction -- "Bored Teenagers," "Safety in Numbers," and "No Time to Be 21" were as much a part of the 1977 scene as any gabba-gabba-god-save-the-queening, and have actually aged a lot better as well. Most of the CDs in this Live at the Roxy series really aren't worth the time they take to listen to them. This one makes up for them all. ~ Dave Thompson, All Music Guide