Live in London – Drury Lane ’74 discography

Track list

  1. Mirror Man
  2. Upon The Me Oh My
  3. Full Moon Hot Sun
  4. Sugar Bowl
  5. Crazy Little Thing
  6. Keep On Rubbin’ aka Mighty Crazy
  7. Sweet Georgia Brown
  8. This Is The Day
  9. New Electric Ride
  10. Abba Zabba
  11. Peaches
  12. Capitol Radio Concert Advert

Recorded at the Drury Lane Theatre, London June 1974

Album overview

Recorded by Virgin but never released until 2006 presumably because the two 1974 Virgin albums were such critical failures they didn’t think it was worth bothering with at the time.

Two tracks – Mirror Man and Upon The My Oh My – did appear on the ‘V’ sampler in 1975 and part of the show had a (debatably) official CD issue on a Portuguese label in 1984 as London 1974. The sound quality on this CD was not as good as the tracks on ‘V’.

Well, we now have the full show finally available, which means two extra tracks that didn’t make it onto the Movieplay CD. Unfortunately, this includes the awful filler – Sweet Georgia Brown – with Del Simmons squawking away on sax. The other additional song is the blues vamp – Keep on Rubbing/Mighty Crazy – which does sound as if Don is making more of an effort.

The one redeeming feature of this release are the excellent sleevenotes by Mike Barnes. He doesn’t rehash the same old myths and disinformation but puts the album in context and doesn’t shy away from the fact that many hardcore fans still don’t like the 1974 albums.

If you like this easy listening version of the Magic Band then go ahead and enjoy. Me, I’d rather listen to a poorly recorded boot of any other incarnation of the band!

Purchase London 74

Releases

  • 2006 Virgin CDVR2238

Help us out

If anyone is able to complete or update any of the information above, then please do get in touch.

1 Comment

  1. I have been listening to CB for a very long time and I really like this album. It sounds great and this band helped CB gain much needed cred. and expand his popular audience base. I don’t give any credit to reviews and diehard critics, just listen to what the audience reaction says. And whenever I have it playing in the car or what have you I always hear positive enquiries. And in regards to the studio albums in question try to think outside of the box, I would like to see other bands do energetic interpretations live.

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