Ten Years After - Live At The Fillmore East 1970 (2001) CD-Rip

2 CDs taken from two February 1970 concerts at the Fillmore East, with only one track ( Love Like a Man ) previously released! The rest is pure jam band material, with Alvin Lee's amphetamine-ized blues licks leading the way. Includes Good Morning Little Schoolgirl; The Hobbit; 50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain; Spoonful; I'm Going Home; I Woke Up This Morning , and more. Band member Ric Lee contributes the liner notes let's boogie!

With its devotion to '50s rock and blues coupled to a manic, if decidedly middlebrow performance tack, Ten Years After could seem positively Jurassic, even by late-'60s standards. This collection culls magnificently recorded performances (kudos to Hendrix/ELP engineer Eddie Kramer) from a February 1970 weekend stand at the Fillmore East, capturing the band at its post-Woodstock performing peak. The running times of most of the tracks (three-quarters of which clock in at seven-plus minutes) will tip listeners to the show's jam-heavy take on covers of Sonny Boy Williamson (an ominous, revamped "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl"), Willie Dixon (a slow, 16-minute burn through "Help Me"), and Chuck Berry (atypically economic romps of "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Roll Over Beethoven"). But with the band's own primordial originals (the titles "Skooby-Oobly-Doobob" and "Extension on One Chord" speak for themselves) there's an elemental, effusive--and, dare we say it--Ramones-like stoopidity to the tracks. Even Alvin Lee's trademark fret-burner "I'm Going Home" is hard to resist. This set perfectly captures one of the era's hardest working bands in a concise, double-disc time capsule. -- Jerry McCulley