Live Review: Ten Years After, Hammersmith Odeon, 27th January, 1990

21 YEARS LATER

The rock n' roll show comes to London town folks! That's right, 21 years later, veteran rockers TEN YEARS AFTER are back on the boards rocking and rolling with the best of 'em.

Yep, it's the original four-piece line-up that hit Woodstock just over two decades ago! Alvin Lee still playing that old blues guitar, Rick Lee still rattling out those old rhythms, Leo Lyons still slapping that old base and Chick Churchill knocking it back with that old Hammond.

What's new is that the band are performing again on the back of their recent vinyl comeback album About Time, their energy and chemistry once again reawakened with an extensive US tour firmly under their belts.

OK, these guys might be old, but from where I was sitting all I could see on stage was a rock band playing damn fine rock n' roll music, and that's what it's all about ain't it - MUSIC.

As musicians they combine the power of the blues/jazz and early rock n' roll with the excessive, indulgent energy of the prog rock movement of the late 60s early 70s. From the down-to-earth workouts of oldies such as "Love Like a Man" and "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" to the electric blows of new rave-ups "Victim of Circumstance" and "Let's Shake It Up", here were a group of guys who meant business.

Their humoured approach to the blues applied itself perfectly to their playing. as they performed epics such as "Bad Blood" and "Outside my Window" with that sting of style you would expect from such seasoned warriors. Each a superb showcase for guitarist Alvin Lee's six-string roars, as he and the band were once again writing another chapter of rock n' roll history, filling in those lost pages with a legacy that will hopefully enable them to explore new musical avenues into the 90s and beyond.

Worth the wait!

Mark Crmpton
Photo: Nigel Hinkes
Riff Raff
April 1990

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!