LIVE DATES VOLUME 2

Solid live album from British classic hard rock band, "Live Dates Vol. 2" encapsulates the good old twin guitar music style of the 1970s, marking the end of the era. Starting from 1981 "Number the Brave" WISHBONE ASH turned into awful arena rock dinosaurs, producing negligible records.

It appears that the German 2-LP version was released in Yugoslavia by Beograd Disk, but strangely enough, when I was looking for the cassette version (at the time I did not own a turntable) I found only the original album as the first half of the double-tape set (double albums on cassettes were available as two separate tapes).

So, the album kicks off with "Doctor" (from "Wishbone Four"), "Runaway" (from "New England") and two better tracks from the recent "Just Testing" album, "Living Proof" and "Helpless". There is nothing particularly progressive on this first side but very good and convincing hard rock music is performed with energy and style.

Second half contains two longer, 9-minute prog-rock inclined jamming suites, "FUBB" (from "There's the Rub") and "Way of the World" (from "No Smoke Without Fire"). Both are very good compositions with extended twin guitar solos, convincing bass and strong drums with frequent change of themes and rhythmic structure. They are real treat for prog rock fans, and even though WISHBONE ASH were never able to jump into the first league of progressive rock, with songs like these (and albums such as legendary "Argus"), they came rather close.