The Yardbirds Albums (11)
'Live at B.B. King's Blues Club'
Release Date 3/30/2007
Tracks 19
Label Favored Nations
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What The Critics Say
Anyway you slice it, the Yardbirds are one kick-ass band on-stage, and here they mostly do more than re-enact 1960s-era triumphs in a live setting. Even some of the lesser new material off of the new album, such as Chris Dreja's bluesy dirge "My Blind Life" and the shapeless "Mr. Saboteur," is much more worthwhile in its presentation here; indeed, "Mr. Saboteur" becomes the basis for a great workout on the instrumental break. And the better numbers off of that record, such as Jim McCarty's "Crying out for Love" and "Please Don't Tell Me 'Bout the News," are also given fine airings here, in what ought to be considered their definitive presentations. Of course, any release of this kind is going to rest on its vintage repertory -- the band alternates between new and old across their set, and the new stuff is worth hearing, even if not all of it is as intrinsically memorable as the old songs. And of necessity, most of their worth, like much of this band's work, stand or fall on the contributions of new members John Idan (lead vocals), Billy Boy Miskimmin (harmonica), and Ben King (lead guitar). As it happens, they do acquit themselves admirably -- Idan, who also plays bass, bears an uncanny resemblance to Keith Relf vocally, so that it seems like he's channeling the late singer even on the new numbers; and Miskimmin takes the harmonica breaks to places that Relf (who suffered from a collapsed lung at one point) couldn't always go. As for King, he adds his own flourishes to the numbers that can take them, and they're welcome -- this isn't like listening to a Yardbirds jukebox, is what we mean. Dreja's rhythm guitar work is better represented here than it was on some of the group's live broadcasts of the '60s, and Jim McCarty plays like this is 1966, not 40 years after 1966. "Shapes of Things" might be the one impossible spot in the group's set, as it is competing not only with the Yardibrds' original single but also with Jeff Beck's subsequent remake -- the re-formed group couldn't skip it, as the song looms too large in their history to neglect it; but apparently, they chose to completely ignore the reality of Beck's later version; Idan handles it as though Beck and Rod Stewart never pushed it over the line into pure heavy metal, and the rendition here ends up being the one place on this CD where one feels the performance is a slavish re-creation. Otherwise, they do put enough energy and sufficient new flourishes into it so that numbers such as "Rack My Mind" and "Over Under Sideways Down" are extended into shapes the original band didn't try for. In the midst of those vintage songs, one Box of Frogs number -- "Back Where I Started" -- proves just about their equal as a vehicle for some extended jamming. They also make "For Your Love" roll convincingly into "Still I'm Sad" into "Dazed and Confused," leading to a finale of "I'm a Man" (which one wishes were fully expanded here, the way it was on the Anderson Theater live album) into "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago." The latter song has shown astonishing durability given its disappointing performance as a single in 1966 -- as a big finish, it's a surprising choice, and this version of the band does about as well as the original group did with it on-stage back when. The sound is first-rate throughout, and the booklet includes lyrics and some annotation, though one wishes there were more said about the specific date represented. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
'Reunion Jam, Vol. II'
Release Date 2/15/2006
Tracks 11
Label Mooreland St
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'Live! Blueswailing July '64'
Release Date 9/23/2003
Tracks 7
Label Castle
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What The Critics Say
This recently discovered seven-song set is an awe-inspiring live recording of the Yardbirds before their official debut, Five Live Yardbirds. As a document, it adds considerable weight to the band's early rep that has been passed into legend. It also rewrites history: this short set blows Five Live away both in terms of performance and sound quality. This is the second incarnation of the band, with Chris Dreja, Jim McCarty, Keith Relf, Paul Samwell-Smith, and new guitarist Eric Clapton (who had replaced Andrew "Top" Topham). The music here roars, screams, howls, growls, and bleeds white-boy British blues; it is blistering in its raw intensity, with covers of Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" and the standard "Smokestack Lightning." The band's trademark "rave-up" antics are abundant here (check out "She's So Respectable"), and in the closer -- one of the most startling rock versions of "The Sky Is Crying" on record -- the listener gets the clearest picture yet of Clapton as an early and worthy guitar hero. His playing is so inspired and full of razor-sharp turnarounds and knotty arpeggios, one has to wonder what was left for him to accomplish even then. The energy here is crackling, dangerous, and woolly. Anyone interested in vintage garage or modern garage rock should check this out, as it rivals most of what comes out of today's "raw and raucous" scene as well. Indeed, history has been rewritten. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
When this came out in 2003, it marked the first studio release by the Yardbirds in 35 years. In that time, of course, the personnel had changed quite a bit. Even those inclined to get excited by reunions of great bands should know right off that it includes just two original members, drummer Jim McCarty and rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja (though Jeff Beck plays guest guitar on one number, "My Blind Life"). Rounded out by three "new" members (including bassist John Idan, whose lead singing sounds fairly close to original Yardbirds vocalist Keith Relf in style and tone), the record also features guest lead guitar cameos by Jeff Baxter, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and Brian May, with Johnny Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls singing lead on "For Your Love." The instinct is to make cruel, sardonic jokes about how the absence of Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and (for the most part) Jeff Beck doesn't matter, as guitarists were always the weak links in the Yardbirds anyway. Yes, the non-presence of these fabled guitar heroes, as well as Relf (who died in 1976), does mean that this can't be compared in any way to the group's classic 1960s output, even if it's billed to the Yardbirds' name. For all that, however, this is a lot better than you'd expect, and certainly far more respectable than most reunion/comeback efforts by decimated lineups of classic outfits. The production is straight-ahead without the usual sellouts to modern technology, putting the sleek guitar work to the fore. Half the record has remakes of old Yardbirds staples like "For Your Love," "Shapes of Things," and "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago," but they're not done badly, though you feel as though you're listening to a really good Yardbirds tribute band rather than the real deal. The original material, though not as good as those old Yardbirds tunes, actually sounds -- whether as a result of conscious or unconscious effort -- in the Yardbirds style, with plenty of irregular tempos, minor-keyed melodies, metaphysically questing lyrics, and Gregorian vocals (as on the Relf tribute "An Original Man (A Song for Keith)"). ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide
'Yardbirds Reunion Jam'
Release Date 1/1/1999
Tracks 16
Label Mooreland Street
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What The Critics Say
Once Jeff Beck joined the Yardbirds, the group began to explore uncharted territory, expanding their blues-rock into wild sonic permutations of psychedelia, Indian music, and avant-garde white noise. Each subsequent single displayed a new direction, one that expanded on the ideas of the previous single, so it would seem that Roger the Engineer -- Beck's first full album with the group and the band's first album of all-original material -- would have offered them the opportunity to fully explore their adventurous inclinations. Despite a handful of brilliant moments, Roger the Engineer falls short of expectations, partially because the band is reluctant to leave their blues roots behind and partially because they simply can't write a consistent set of songs. At their best on Roger, the Yardbirds strike a kinetic balance of blues-rock form and explosive psychedelia ("Lost Woman," "Over, Under Sideways, Down," "The Nazz Are Blue," "He's Always There," "Psycho Daisies"), but they can also bog down in silly Eastern drones (although "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" is a classic piece of menacing psychedelia) or blues tradition ("Jeff's Boogie" is a pointless guitar workout that doesn't even showcase Beck at his most imaginative). The result is an unfocused record that careens between the great and the merely adequate, but the Yardbirds always had a problem with consistency -- none of their early albums had the impact of the singles, and Roger the Engineer suffers from the same problem. Nevertheless, it is the Yardbirds' best individual studio album, offering some of their very best psychedelia, even if it doesn't rank among the great albums of its era. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
'Live Yardbirds Featuring Jimmy Page'
Release Date 1/1/1972
Tracks 11
Label Columbia
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What The Critics Say
Arguably the most famous lost live album in history, Live Yardbirds Featuring Jimmy Page, cut at the Anderson Theater in New York on March 30, 1968, has been issued twice on vinyl legitimately (only to be suppressed by legal action) and innumerable times since as a bootleg. In August 2000, Mooreland St. Records put out the first authorized CD edition of the performance, and it is a complete revelation. The original master tape has been improved significantly; the absence of vinyl noise is an obvious plus, but the sheer impact of the instruments is also startling, given that the show was taped by a producer who had never recorded a rock band before, on equipment that was ten years out of date. The producers have expanded this reissue with help from a separate reference tape, an audience recording that preserved the complete unedited show; it's somewhat low-fi, but it captures material edited from the finished master, and it allows for the restoration of little nuances. Page's guitar (which goes out of tune several times) is the dominant instrument, alternately crunchy and lyrical, but always loud and dexterous; the roughness of Keith Relf's singing is also more apparent, but his shortcomings don't really hurt the music. The performance also reveals just how far out in front of the psychedelic pack the Yardbirds were by the spring of 1968; Page had pushed the envelope about as far as he could, in terms of high-velocity guitar pyrotechnics. Ironically, this album isn't quite as strong as the contemporary Truth album by Jeff Beck, mostly because the Yardbirds were still juggling three sounds: the group's progressive pop/rock past, the psychedelia of 1968, and a harder, more advanced blues-based sound. It's clear that they had few places left to go with the first two; "Dazed and Confused," by contrast, represented something new, a slow blues as dark, forbidding, and intense as anything that the band had ever cut -- it showed where Page, if not this band, was heading. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
If almost any group other than the Yardbirds had released Little Games, it would be considered a flawed but prime late-'60s psychedelic/hard rock artifact instead of a serious step backward, and even a disappointment. Not that it's a bad album -- it just lacks the cohesion and polish of the group's preceding album, The Yardbirds (aka Over Under Sideways Down aka Roger the Engineer). And well it should -- although they were nominally the same group they'd been a year earlier, in reality the Yardbirds had undergone a massive shift in personnel since the release of The Yardbirds. The departure of original bassist Paul Samwell-Smith in June of 1966 set off a sequence of personnel shifts, bringing guitarist Jimmy Page into the lineup, first on bass and then on lead guitar in tandem with Jeff Beck (while rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja switched to bass), until Beck's exit in November 1966 for a solo career left Page as their lone guitarist. At the same time, the band was forced -- by the failure of its single "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" -- to accept a new producer in the guise of Mickie Most, who was currently enjoying huge success with Donovan and had a formidable string of hit singles to his credit with Herman's Hermits, the Animals, et al. The Yardbirds' blues roots and progressive tendencies clashed with Most's pop/rock preferences, and the two sides never did reconcile, much less mesh for more than a few minutes on the finished album. To top it off, the bandmembers were finally seeing some serious money for their live performances (ironically, just as they were hanging on by their fingertips to a recording contract), courtesy of their new manager, Peter Grant, and so were committed to lots of stage work. The overall result was a hastily done and uneven LP with flashes of brilliance. Apart from the title single -- one of the better compromises between where the group had been and where Most wanted to take them -- the two best cuts were "White Summer" and "Drinking Muddy Water," excellent showcases for the experimental and bluesy sides of the band, respectively; both, curiously, were also virtually thefts, "White Summer" lifted from Davy Graham's arrangement of the 300-year-old "She Moves Through the Fair" and "Drinking Muddy Water" a rewrite of "Rollin' and Tumblin'," a blues standard usually attributed to McKinley Morganfield (aka Muddy Waters). The best of the rest included "Only the Black Rose," a strangely beautiful, moody acoustic psychedelic piece; "Stealing, Stealing," an unusual (for this band) pre-World War II-style acoustic blues complete with kazoo; and "Smile on Me," a hard, bluesy number that could have come from any part of the group's history. The attempt at a catchy rocker, "No Excess Baggage," however, needed more work and better involvement from vocalist Keith Relf; the power chord-laden "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor" was a great piece of psychedelic pyrotechnics, but it also sounded more like the Who than the Yardbirds, though it did introduce Jimmy Page's violin bow discourses on the guitar; and "Little Soldier Boy" was a silly psychedelic pop piece more appropriate to the Monkees than the Yardbirds. The album was unintentionally revealing, in hindsight, of the growing schism within the band, as Relf and drummer Jim McCarty's growing embrace of flower power and hallucinogenic drugs came to be reflected in the trippier numbers such as "Glimpses," whereas Jimmy Page was starting to take his blues slower and flashier, and into wholly new territory with that violin bow. One more album or a proper concert might've sealed the deal for the Yardbirds, but instead one more tour sealed the fate of the band. Little Games has been reissued in vastly expanded form several times, starting in 1992. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Back in 1965, this album seemed like a real mess, which was understandable, because For Your Love wasn't a "real" album, in the sense that the Yardbirds ever assembled an LP of that name or content. Rather, it was the response of their American label, Epic Records, to the band's achieving a number six single with the title track, with manager Giorgio Gomelsky selecting the cuts. The quasi-progressive "For Your Love," dominated by guest artist Brian Auger's harpsichord, is juxtaposed with hard-rocking blues-based numbers, almost all of which featured departed lead guitarist Eric Clapton (who is mentioned nowhere on the LP), with current lead guitarist Jeff Beck on just three tracks. The Clapton cuts, although primitive next to the material he was soon to cut with John Mayall, have an intensity that's still riveting to hear four decades later, and was some of the best blues-based rock & roll of its era. The three Beck sides show where the band was really heading, beyond the immediate success of "For Your Love" -- "I'm Not Talking" and "I Ain't Done Wrong" were hard, loud, blazing showcases for Beck's concise blues playing, while "My Girl Sloopy" was the first extended jam to emerge on record from a band on the British blues scene; the source material isn't ideal, but Beck and company make their point in an era where bands were seldom allowed to go more than four minutes on even an album track -- these boys could play and make it count. The 13 bonus tracks are mostly blues-rock and are mostly scintillating, and the Repertoire CD has the best sound that any of this music has ever displayed. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
In its original U.S. vinyl release, this album, comprised of several singles and B-sides plus excerpts off of Five Live Yardbirds, was one of the best LPs of the entire British invasion, ranking on a par with the greatest mid-1960s work of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones; it was also just a step away from being a best-of the Yardbirds as well. The contents have reappeared numerous times in many different configurations, but no collection has ever outdone the sheer compactness and high quality of Having a Rave Up. One major problem since the 1960s, as with all of the Yardbirds material owned by Charly Records, has been the sound -- for years, Charly only had substandard master materials to offer. That situation improved significantly in the mid- to late 1990s, and Repertoire Records is working from sources that are the cleanest and most impressive to have surfaced on these tracks during the CD era; one suspects that there might still be room for improvement, but not nearly as much as was previously the case -- a quick comparison of tracks between this and the contents of Train Kept A-Rollin' reveals somewhat superior sound here. The Repertoire reissue also adds 11 songs that cut across the group's history: principally outtakes from later in their careers and some odd studio sides from much earlier, plus the B-side "New York City Blues" (a rewrite of "Five Long Years"), the single "Shapes of Things, and their featured number from the Antonioni movie Blow Up, the "Train Kept A-Rollin'" rewrite "Stroll On," featuring Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page in the lineup. There are new notes by Chris Welch that, although structured somewhat haphazardly, give a good account of the history of the varied (and overall stunning) contents of this CD. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
