Small Faces

First official release of Belgian show, January 1966, their earliest recorded set.

1966 would be a banner year for the Small Faces, and it began with these two blistering live sets – with new organist Ian McLagan – recorded on January 9 at the Twenty Club in Mouscron, Belgium. Steve Marriott gives a shout out to the Mods in the audience before launching into Whatcha Gonna Do Bout It – “our current Britishit” – and the two sets merge into one long jam, bashed out at maximum volume and with an abandoned spirit, peaking and subsiding in superb team telepathy. Propelled by Marriott’s slashing guitar and exhortational vocals, the Small Faces transmute blues and soul tropes into a seamless strip that in Plum Nellie includes snatches from Baby Please Don’t Go, Parchman Farm Blues, In The Midnight Hour and Land Of 1,000 Dances. The second set has a version of Please Please Please, an unrecorded song called Strange, and a run through stoner B-side Grow Your Own (“gear”). They’d continue this approach on their first Decca album, but here it is, fully formed, raw and impossibly alive.