Matt:
> I've been told or have read that they were one of the absolute worst
> live bands of their era. Makes sense to me. Remember that horrible album
> with Rock n Roll Fantasy? Yugh.
Actually, I did see them on that very first tour and they were fine, for
that genre. But--if I may belabor the Free and Mott comparison once
more--I saw both those bands too and the Bad Co show was very
"packaged" and "prefabricated"-feeling by comparison. My feeling
about Bad Co was that they were a good Arena Act(if that's not an
oxymoron <g>), whereas the two earlier bands were far more ambitious and
wide-ranging in what they would come up with for a live show.
I saw Mott many times and, truly, for me they were a formative experience.
Mott shows were crazy-ass affairs filled with what, in retrospect,
was a sort of proto-punk energy and audience attitude. You never knew
what they'd do and they could go anywhere from overintellectualized
ballads to absolutely chaotic, earshattering, MC5-esque versions of Little
Richard or Chuck Berry chestnuts. They had humor, depth, attitude,
the guts to take a lot of risks, and VOLUME!! <g>. As someone once
said, they were the missing link between Dylan and the Pistols...
Mott made me feel good and love rock n' roll the same way X made me
feel good and love rock n' roll years later. Free,
too, had a great live show, imo, that was also far more unpredictable and
ambitious than what I saw Bad Co do. It wasn't on the level of a Mott
experience, but to my mind easily better than a Bad Co show in any case.
Anyhow, that's my nostalgic two cents <g>,
--junior
