Ten Years After Recorded Live

This live set is OK in small doses. Ten Years After were always rooted in the blues, and the highlights here, such as "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" and "Slow Blues in C," show they hadn't changed. While this set is competent enough, there just isn't enough of the excitement you would expect coming from this band…

The cover of Ten Years After's 1973 album Recorded Live depicts a giant reel-to-reel recorder, which certainly captures the era when this double-LP set was recorded. Approaching the end of their run – only one more album would come, 1974's Positive Vibrations – Ten Years After were deep into the thick of '70s arena rock, so everything they played on-stage wound up stretching well beyond the five-minute mark, sometimes reaching upward of 11 minutes…

Recorded live in a small London club, Undead contains the original "I'm Going Home," the song that brought Ten Years After its first blush of popularity following the Woodstock festival and film in which it was featured…

After five years of promises, Ten Years After finally release their first live DVD with the new line up, "Live At Fiesta City". Recorded at the Fiesta City Festival in Verviers, Belgium on August 30th 2008, in front of a 5000 capacity crowd, it is a great showcase of the band's talents in a live environment. What you see is exactly what happened that night: no technical doctoring, no overdubs, just TYA at their finest. Included on the DVD as added bonuses are interviews with each band member, biographies, plus a photo montage synchronized to "I Think It's Gonna Rain All Night".

This superbly recorded double disc (the original engineer was Eddie Kramer, best-known for his work with Hendrix) captured over a weekend worth of dates in February 1970 at the venerable New York City venue catches the Brit boogie quartet at the peak of their powers. These shows were sandwiched between their triumphant Woodstock set and the release of Cricklewood Green, generally considered the band's best work. They find the group primed through years of roadwork, as well as obviously excited to be playing in front of an appreciative N.Y.C. crowd…

"I'm Going Home" from Ten Years After's previous release put them on the charts, at least in the U.K. (the band's U.S. breakthrough was at Woodstock a year after its release), but the four-piece was already experimenting with ways to expand their basic boogie rock template. Stonedhenge was the result, as producer Mike Vernon helped steer the band into a more jazz- and blues-oriented direction. That's especially evident in the swinging "Woman Trouble," but this set is generally more prone to broadening the sound without losing TYA's basic concept. It doesn't always gel – the four short pieces that feature each musician alone on their instrument is an interesting idea that ends up as a distraction – yet the album boasts some terrific performances by a group that was hitting its peak. Canned Heat, who TYA supported in America and who were also trying to push their own boogie envelope, were a big influence, born out by the very Heat-sounding "Hear Me Calling." Alvin Lee keeps his fleet fingers in check, preferring to work his style into a more organic fusion.

Ten Years After was a British blues-rock quartet consisting of Alvin Lee (born December 19, 1944, died March 6, 2013), guitar and vocals; Chick Churchill (born January 2, 1949), keyboards; Leo Lyons (born November 30, 1944) bass; and Ric Lee (born October 20, 1945), drums. The group was formed in 1967 and signed to Decca in England…

Ten Years After was a British blues-rock quartet consisting of Alvin Lee (born December 19, 1944, died March 6, 2013), guitar and vocals; Chick Churchill (born January 2, 1949), keyboards; Leo Lyons (born November 30, 1944) bass; and Ric Lee (born October 20, 1945), drums. The group was formed in 1967 and signed to Decca in England…