ThE YARDBIRDS

Live and Rare

Where the release above is quality, this collection is more about quantity— longer, more exhaustive, though also more fragmented, with 70 tracks over four CDs and a bonus DVD ranging from 1966 to 1968, from milkshake and toothpaste ads (surprisingly good!) to four different Train Kept A’Rolling live versions. The title is confusing — it’s live and/or rare, with the variable-quality live desk, radio and film recordings supplemented by studio singles, some of which, such as Happenings Ten Years Time Ago, aren’t particularly rare either. Worse still, there’s no apparent organisation by either origin or time period, shuffling from studio to radio to live, from 1968 to 1965 to 1967 without thought for listening continuity, and opening bizarrely with a bone-dry mono 1966 off-desk recording which favours, as desk recordings often do, the non-amplified vocals and drums, and with Relf’s vocal also pushing into overload distortion, so that the bass and drums from this Paris recording only find space between the lyrics. There’s almost nothing with the quality of Jimmy’s lush and impeccable release of the Anderson Theatre concert above. Yet there are gems, a 1968 Manchester BBC session especially, with White Summer showing Jimmy at full flamboyance through his prolonged solo spot before tabla-like drums and Dreja’s bass raise this Bert Jansch tribute/rip-off to another level. Again this and the Dazed and Confused that follows show proto-Zeppelin interplay, though the Zeppelin versions added dimensionality, communication and, let’s face it, a higher level of playing: witness John Paul Jones’s driving of the exit back into the main Dazed riff compared with Dreja’s back-seat bass delivery here. A mixed bag, then, but Yardbirds fans can certainly rejoice in such a sudden profusion of proofs of prowess from this still under-rated band.