America Live

Performer: America
Engineer: Geoff Emerick
Producer: George Martin
Distributor: Gotham Distributing Corp.

Notes: America: Dewey Bunnell, Gerry Beckley. Additional personnel: Jim Calire (saxophone, keyboards); David Dickey (bass guitar); Willie Leacox (drums); Tom Walsh (percussion). America Live marked the beginning of the group's history as a duo. Recorded at the last of a series of four shows at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles in July of 1977, with film music legend Elmer Bernstein conducting the orchestra and George Martin producing, the album closed out the group's original Warner Bros. contract and was mostly released for that reason, following the Harbor album and the departure of co-founder Dan Peek. Their ninth album in seven years (counting a greatest-hits compilation), it filled in a hole in the group's history and represented America surprisingly well, given the circumstances of its release. Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell are both in excellent voice, and one could hardly ask for a sharper or more balanced live recording. The expected mid-'70s hits such as "Tin Man," "Ventura Highway," and "Sister Golden Hair" (all brilliantly sung, and worth the price of the album) are here, and more modestly charting but highly personal tracks like "Amber Cascades" are represented as well, along with early classics like "I Need You" and "A Horse With No Name" (the latter done with a beautifully elegant yet restrained orchestral arrangement). One does wonder, however, if there were more to this show than the 14 songs represented on the original LP, which might make for a good CD expansion someday. On the other hand, given that Warner Bros. has never seen fit to release this album on CD anywhere but in Europe and Japan, that might be too much to hope for. ~ Bruce Eder This cut-down version of the two-man lineup's King Biscuit Flower Hour performance from 1982 is reduced to ten songs. The performance and the sound quality are both excellent, and depict the band in a more basic rock setting than their "official" Warner Bros. live album from 1977, which featured the presence of a large contingent of backing musicians. The work here is more viscerally exciting, the singing is impeccable, and the instruments have a nice, healthy, up-front presence. The absent songs from the King Biscuit release include "Here," "Love on the Vine," and "Inspector Mills." As is usual with budget-priced releases of this type, there is no annotation and no indication of the actual date or venue for the performance, or annotation of any sort. ~ Bruce Eder

The first half of the 1970s was the heyday of introspective songwriting and close-harmony singing. The band America was at the forefront of the commercial end of this movement, releasing a string of singles that dominated the radio for years. Following their debut smash, "Horse With No Name," a Neil Young-derived, hallucinatory song-story, America scored again and again with singles and a series of records whose titles for some reason all began with the letter "H." Despite the group's indelible association with soft rock, America's understated pop found an unlikely new legion of fans in the '00s indie world.

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