Derringer Live

2001 Dutch release with live recordings from the King Biscuit Flower Hour vaults. This 1983 Palladium show is a great place to start for anyone not turned on to Derringer's brand of music, though its circumstances were very unfortunate at the time. The gig was put together to raise money when all of the instruments and equipment belonging to Derringer and his band had been stolen, along with the van they were stored in that night, from a Greenwich Village side street. The guest artists include Lorna Luft (who put the show together), Dr. John, Edgar Winter, and Ian Hunter.

Rick Derringer follows up his excellent 1998 release, Tend the Fire with another blues-rock CD. While Blues Deluxe doesn't have quite the scope and variety of Tend the Fire, it is nonetheless an excellent CD, as Rick takes a couple more steps farther from rock and closer to the blues. This is not to say that Blues Deluxe approaches being a traditional blues CD. Rick has been playing Rock n' Roll and Hard Rock for nearly all of his 30+ year career. During live performances, Rick displays amazing proficiency playing that style of music. He is certainly one of the most talented guitartists performing today. But his head-on, full bore guitar attack, fully present on his first two blues releases for Blues Bureau, is too heavy for all but the most guitar-hungry of blues fans.

On the back cover of Captured Live!, Johnny Winter's second live album (following 1971's Live Johnny Winter And), Winter is pictured with his band (second guitarist Floyd Radford, bass player Randy Jo Hobbs, and drummer Richard Hughes) from the back, playing before a giant, open-air sports stadium full of fans. The photograph is not identified, leaving the impression, along with the large cheering heard on the LP itself, that Winter was headlining such a venue – but he couldn't have been, because he isn't that big a name. He must have been performing as part of a festival or opening for an act that can fill stadiums, like the Rolling Stones.