Status Quo
Down And Dirty: Live At Wacken / Down Down & Dignified At The Royal Albert Hall.
The Parfitt-Rossi double act might be history, but this pair of live albums show how they rocked their trademark breeze-block boogie, and in more ways than one – in full-fat arena-rock mode, and with organic, lowcholestrol dressing – and as ever it’s irresistible.
If some Pavlovian response within you doesn’t make you nod your head when Caroline kicks off their fully amplified Wacken live set, you might want to check if you ever liked rock music in the first place.
It sounds like they stripped down the production (without the strings and orchestral touches) for the second
Aquostic tour, from which this recording comes, but it does little harm on harmonica/ accordion-accompanied numbers such as Paper Plane. The gripe from traditionalists will be that the old Parfitt-fronted songs will/can never be quite the same; for all bassist ‘Rhino’ Edwards’s sterling efforts at the mic on Rain and Again & Again, let’s not pretend there ain’t something missing.
But Quo remain distinctively Quo, and listening to these recordings you realise just what top-drawer songwriters they always were – with or without the Marshall stacks.