For the longest time, fans of rock power trios have wondered why when West, Bruce and Laing's Live 'n' Kickin' album was reissued on CD in 2004, it did not include any bonus tracks? The original LP stuck two songs on either side for a total of 40 mins.
An ROIO has surfaced with a super long version of their cover of The Rolling Stones' Play With Fire plus the omitted encore a cover of Cream's Sunshine Of Your Love. Our older readers will know that West, Bruce & Laing are Leslie West and Corky Laing late of Mountain while Bruce is Jack Bruce of Cream. The meeting was less than fortuitous. Bruce needed a new vehicle to earn some income after his critically acclaimed albums failed to sell in super quantities. West was star struck at the Cream bassist's legend and leapt at the opportunity, pulling in Laing. End of history.
When we received this CD-R, it was labelled that this was an upgrade and expanded version of the released Live 'n' Kickin' album. A quick search on the net drew this bit of information from Mountain Fan posted on the Amazon.com site Feb 26, last year:
"This album [Live 'n' Kickin'] came out in 1972 or so and was on vinyl and there is only so much space on a vinyl long playing record. I used to attend many Leslie West's shows with Mountain and their songs tend to be long. Now a little known secret and I found this out by accident.
"Live 'n' Kickin' was recorded at a place called the Orpheum Theater in Boston, Massachusetts. How do I know? Well I taped the show for myself and it wasn't until I had my tape converted to CD and swapped with another person that that person heard the familiarity of the song on my bootleg with the Live 'n' Kickin' album. Politician was recorded note for note. The other songs were edited. Now you know the rest of the story."
Some trimming was made to fit four songs onto two sides of an LP which was then released in May 1974, after the band had already split. West, Bruce & Laing recorded only two studio albums with the live album arriving after the trio had gone their separate ways. What about the other tracks on this CD-R? Our friend in Germany came to the rescue and identified the date as April 24, 1972, three days before the Boston show. He said the trio played Carnegie Hall in New York and that show must have been recorded as well.
What we have here is a full one-hour concert with a super long cover of The Rolling Stones' Play With Fire in two parts with a drum solo in between. Almost 23 mins long with Jack Bruce and Leslie West trading vocals. On the official release taken from the concert in Boston on April 27, the track is 13.26m long.
The trio's version of Sunshine Of Your Love is 13mins long. We had to omit two tracks - Politician and Powerhouse Sod - as these while having a few extra seconds are the same as the released version.
We did not find any of the tracks overlong or dull. It remains a mystery if more is in the vaults. During the 1972 tour to promote their debut album Why Don'tcha, the trio also played several Mountain tunes plus the Cream covers.
West, Bruce & Laing contributed little to rock music's repertoire. They sound like a fun band to watch and certainly had that heavy sound that's so hard to achieve.
We would like to thank the German professor for supplying this amazing CD-R. A true soundboard recording in stereo.