LIVE

This live album carries a very personal note for me. I have been trying to get it for more than 25 years now but I always had other priorities. Ever since I used to hang out in the local disco club in early 1980s Sarajevo, dancing like hell to the sounds of "Radar Love", "Are You Receiving Me" and the live version of "Mad Love's Coming", I was emotionally attached to the latter song particularly. I still remember giving an empty cassette tape to a slightly older discophile acquaintance who was alleged to have possessed "original LP from the West". To my huge disappointing, he never got back to me with that tape, with or without the "Golden Earring Live" recorded...

... Quarter of century later, thanks to internet and all that stuff, I got it finally in the digital form and listened again to Barry Hay's introductory words "...I know, I know...maybe this year, maybe next year, maybe the year after, I know... mad love is coming...". But, of course, there's much more to it than just this highlight of my youth.

Disc 1 contains excellent versions of "She Flies on Strange Wings", "Mad Love's Coming" and "Vanilla Queen" and a competent crowd-pleaser "Candy Going Bad". "Eight Miles High" is perfectly measured down to 10 minutes thus re-arranging the unnecessarily over- extended studio version from the namesake LP from 1969. Lengthy guitar jams perfectly match this psychedelic masterpiece and I am sure that even Roger McGuinn would have endorsed this adaptation of his probably key piece of work.

Disc 2 is slightly less interesting but the versions of "Fighting Windmills" and "Radar Love" are surely adding new energy to the set. The bulk of the songs are taken from the best ("Moontan") and the latest album ("Contraband") by that time. This made it commercially justified but at the expense of some other worthy material (particularly from albums "Golden Earring/Wall of Dolls" and "Seven Tears") that was omitted.

"Golden Earring Live" showed great potentials and strong performances of the band on stage and is highly recommended in the sphere of the heavy "arena rock". There are elements of American country and southern boogie rock (introductory guitars to "Con Man" sound like taken off an ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND album) as well as extended psyche guitar jams. All in all there is plenty of material here that most prog and classic rock fans should enjoy listening.

PERSONAL RATING: 3,5/5

P.A. RATING: 4/5