On Friday 21st June 1979, the Steve Hillage Band performed a headline set of soaring psychedelic guitar riffs of cosmic aspirations. The summer solstice night was a pivotal point in Steve Hillage's musical journey, and this recording, provided from Steve's personal archives, will cement the performance as historic. Prior to the festival, Steve and the band spent two weeks rehearsing in a barn at Worthy Farm, site of the Glastonbury Festival. They crafted a set fitting and psychedelically uplifting enough to truly celebrate the longest day of Summer at such an auspicious location. Steve was an integral member of the Glasto team alongside Michael Eavis, 'Pyramid' Bill Harkin and Turbosound/Funktion One's Tony Andrews. Their work focalised the 1979 Fayre, helping the rebirth of the first of the modern Glastonbury Festivals. After spending the 80's in music production, Steve and his partner Miquette Giraudy returned to recording and live performance in the 90's with the dance oriented System 7 and was fundamental in the introduction of the Dance Stage to Glastonbury in 1995.
Mother's Finest tried to smash the embargo blocking black rock acts with this live record. It was the closest any album came to actually conveying the kind of nonstop excitement, spontaneity, and unpredictability of their live shows, although it also showed how vocally erratic they could be in performance. The failure of a band that had as exciting a vocalist as Joyce Kennedy and did both solid rock and fine grinding funk proved one of the '80s' more puzzling questions. It couldn't just be attributed to racism either, because Mother's Finest actually did better among white audiences than black ones.
In 1977, after three years' time off working on various solo projects - which were to have culminated with a trio of solo albums - Emerson, Lake & Palmer reunited to release Works, Vol. 1, a double LP containing the best of the solo works plus a side of group-conceived pieces. All in all, it was the most ambitious and wide-ranging body of music they'd ever released, and was followed by the more modestly proportioned but still successful Works, Vol. 2 in November of that year, and a tour that fall and winter; in keeping with the albums that spawned it, the concerts initially featured a 90-piece orchestra supporting the trio. They weren't able to keep the orchestra for more than a handful of shows before the money ran out, and the group spent the rest of the tour working as a trio to pay off what was owed, but they recognized the importance of those performances with the orchestra…
The title of this album is misleading for, although Cannonball Adderley produced the session, no "tribute" takes place. Adderley could always recognize talent and he was wise to get the veteran tenor Don Byas (who had not recorded since 1955) back on record. Teamed in Paris with trumpeter Idrees Sulieman, pianist Bud Powell, bassist Pierre Michelot and drummer Kenny Clarke, Byas proved to be in prime form on a variety of jazz standards including "Just One of Those Things," "Cherokee" and "Jeannine."
In 2023, Big Big Train were rapturously received by audiences across the UK and Europe, concluding the tour with two triumphant appearances at London’s Cadogan Hall. ‘A Flare On The Lens’ features the band’s full show at Cadogan from the second of their two nights there last year and also includes seven songs which were played only on the first night. 'A Flare On The Lens’ is the sight and sound of Big Big Train back on an upwards curve and re-establishing itself as one of the rock music scene’s most compelling live bands.
A Show Of Resistance and The Wake were recorded live at the Colos-Saal, Aschaffenburg, Germany on January 24th, 2020. Ever Live was recorded live at the Colos-Saal, Aschaffenburg, Germany on February 10th, 2018. Tour - Ever 25 & Resistance.