AW-LATEM
April Wine, Live at the El Mocambo – April Wine was nominally the headlining act on March 4th and 5th 1977 at Toronto’s legendary El Mocambo club, with an unknown band called the Cockroaches opening; of course, with time it was revealed that “the Cockroaches” were actually the Rolling Stones undercover and that they were the real headliners of the evening, playing their first club gig in over a decade. They also used the occasion to recorded their set, from which they selected four old blues numbers for side three of their Love You Live double live album, which came out on September 23rd of that year. Somewhat opportunistically, April Wine leveraged the occasion for a live album of their own, simply called Live at the El Mocambo.
True to their Canadian ways, the band’s recording is conservative and straight forward and has barely any of the excitement of side three of Love You Live, which has Mick wisecracking and talkin to an engaged audience that yells back, with lots of raw and groovy blues from the masters. April Wine plays a pretty sterile set that one suspects has had a bunch of post-production work on it (sounds a little too slick to really be live), and there is no audience engagement; indeed, the audience is barely heard at all!
At this point in their career, April Wine had released six studio albums, and at this live show they only had two of their “greatest hits” on offer, those being “Oowatanite” and “Could Have Been A Lady” (“Sign Of The Gypsy Queen”, “Roller”, “I Like To Rock”, “Just Between You And Me” and “Anything You Want, You Got It” were all released in the years to come).
The disc starts off with a sassy rocker “Teenage Love,” then gets into “Tonight Is A Wonderful Time To Fall In Love”, which sounds at the beginning like a cover of Alice Cooper’s “Be My Lover”. “Juvenile Delinquent” at first sounds more like a ballad, but then builds into a sophisticated groove rocker, a great sweet little song riddled with dozens of cool musical parts and a soaring chorus, held together by Myles Goodwyn’s meaty guitar playing and strong voice. “Don’t Push Me Around” is one of those “now that’s more like it” songs, with good rockin’ boogie, and an extended talkbox-style solo to show off a bit of the type of technical proficiency that other bands – like the Rolling Stones, for example – may lack. “Oowatanite” is a note-perfect version of their radio hit, and thus a bit dull – excepting of course the train crossing bell bit at the start that elicits Pavlovian reactions from people who grew up near train crossings. “Drop Your Guns” is a functional rocker that has frantic Rocky Horror Picture Show/Jack White mad voices in parts, but also a very boring chorus. “Slowpoke” is a great blues rocker with a fantastic soloing. “She’s No Angel” is a poppy rocker, with Myles singing a bit like Geddy Lee in a squeaky voice. Nice guitar bits, cool beat, although it somehow sounds more like a studio recording than anything else on the record. Call me cynical. “You Won’t Dance With Me” is a syrupy late-fifties crooning song, one where the vocalist talks to the audience (of the type parodied by Val Kilmer in “Top Secret”), the crappiest song on the album, complete with an “Unchained Melody” moment at the end. “Gimme Love” is something a bit better, with a cool screaming opener and some nice boogie (“You Won’t Dance With Me” and “Gimme Love” were not part of the initial release, but have made it onto my 2010 re-release). FInal song “Could Have Been A Lady” is a big hit, getting lots of audience response, and the version is good, jamming fun.