REO Speedwagon - Not Live: You Get What You Play For

A while back I posted a Peter Frampton comp that recreated his Comes Alive! album using the studio versions. I was wondering if other live albums could be given the same treatment. Here is the first of those efforts.

In the 70s, double live albums were all the rage. For many artists, their live albums were their breakthrough moment when the general public took greater notice of them. Some breakthroughs had long lasting results pushing the band into the upper elite of rockdom, others were brief flashes of stardom that gave them their 15 minutes of fame before being sent back into near obscurity.

REO Speedwagon fell somewhere in between. Their live album gave them enough of a push to see them through at least two albums that would spawn several chart hits.The hits would slow down as they seemed to push their MOR ballads over their more snappier rock tracks. By the early 90s they were once again playing clubs and the festival circuit. They still tour and record but only the singer Kevin Cronin and keyboardist Neal Doughty are from the classic line-up and the keyboardist being the only founding member. Gary Richrath, the guitarist from the classic line-up who sparred many times with Cronin over creative control left the band in 1989 and passed away in 2015.

01 Like You Do
02 Lay Me Down
03 Any Kind Of Love
04 Being Kind (Can Hurt Someone Sometimes)
05 Keep Pushin'
06 (Only A) Summer Love
07 Son Of A Poor Man
08 (I Believe) Our Time Is Gonna Come
09 Flying Turkey Trot
10 157 Riverside Avenue
11 Ridin' The Storm Out
12 Music Man
13 Little Queenie
14 Golden Country
15 Roll With The Changes
16 Time For Me To Fly

Reality Notes

In the 70s it seemed everyone and their grandma released double live albums. Some were good, some were not so good and a few were amazing. REO's was good but I'm not sure about amazing. I think the downside of these albums is that if this was the band's breakthrough then the live versions of their songs become the definitive versions over the studio versions. This tends to minimize the importance of those studio albums that came before. Though the die hard fans will seek out anything and everything related to their favorite band the casual fan will stick with the live album or the greatest hits package.

Personally I prefer the studio over the stage. Even as a musician I prefer recording over performing. While I enjoy the immediacy and 'in the moment'-ness of performing live, the studio has an additional creative layer to it. Painting with sound as the cliche goes.

For REO, their live album was where it all came together. They had struggled through their six previous studio albums, riding out personnel changes that included three different singers. Kevin Cronin joined the band for their second album and quit while recording their third. His replacement lasted two more albums before Cronin rejoined them for the sixth album. The setlist for the album draws from four of the six studio albums. Completely ignoring albums four and five which Cronin had no input into, being recorded during the time he was away from the band.

So this comp features three different singers. Although the band has released some tracks from the third album that feature Cronin's voice before they were replaced I chose to stick with the officially released versions. As a bonus, similar to what I did with the Frampton comp, I included the hit songs from the follow up album.

I used the original album cover as a template for the cover I made. Turned out nice I think.