Rock and roll has been around long enough now to have developed its own traditions. Some, we could do nicely without — drum solo, I’m looking at you! Several of the early rock traditions that have disappeared over the years, though, are true losses and none more so than the live album.
Of course, plenty of live concert recordings, audio and video, are released every year, with increasingly-sophisticated enhancements like 7.1 (and counting) surround sound and hi-def resolution. And while studio sweetening has long been a mainstay of live recording, the out-of-tune bass on Steppenwolf Live and Morrison blowing out his throat on the Doors’ Absolutely Live are the kinds of authentic concert moments that make live rock and roll so exciting and unpredictable, and which would never make it onto a contemporary live album.
Another rock and roll institution that has nearly disappeared is the battle of the bands. Beginning about five minutes after the Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, kids started bugging their parents for electric guitars and drum kits. Soon after that, it was common for even small communities to have several rock combos—with names like The Dukes and The Elements of Time—competing for the few available gigs at area high schools, church basements, and teen hangouts. This was the environment that led some enterprising individual to invent an ingenious means of providing entertainment for the kids, performance opportunities for the musicians, and some modest admission fees for the promoters.
Battle of the Bands Live! (from the wonderful Collectables label) is as close as you can come to reliving those band competitions that were fixtures of the local music scene across America throughout the 60s and early 70s. Unlike Hollywood’s depiction of the “typical” American high school rock n’ roll dance, this CD offers an unvarnished, vérité version that’s as raw and immediate as the best documentary film.
Over the course of 22 tracks, The Outcasts, The Stingrays, and The Apollos blast through short sets, comprised mainly of mid-60s rock standards. While the setting isn’t identified, the recording is low-fi to the extreme, almost as if it was made using the bulky tape recorder that ordinarily played the national anthem over the school PA each morning, and the gray, plastic mic the principle used to read the daily announcements and lunch menu.
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