BJH THROUGH THE EYES OF JOHN LEES: REVIVAL - LIVE 1999

No, Les Holroyd's NOT in the Line up... and you may miss him ( and his songs apart from "She said" ) as well as Mel Pritchard, but don't miss out on the Album if you love the music of BJH... no.

In spite of some mistakes made ( Woolly singing "Harbour" not to full perfection a.o. ) the feeling and sound is absolutely right and quite uplifting, as is the choice of songs... "She said", "Galadriel", "The Iron Maiden" and the newly arranged "River of dreams" to me are quite definite versions of well loved BJH-Oldies, and while "Mockingbird" in its new reading didn't quite convince me on "Nexus", here - if you listen without prejudice - it's at least AS good as it was in its original form ( I even like it better now though neither Les Holroyd's furious Bass nor Mel Pritchard's as furious drums could be replaced ).

"Poor man's moody blues" is a hard one to sing... the arrangement is nonetheless very beautiful featuring John Lees switching from acoustic to electric guitar during the song ( as far as I know he never did that apart from the "Nexus"-Tour ! ), "New Song ( Old story )" is exactly what you're told in the announcement, "unfinished" ( but beautiful ), while "Star Bright" may have been performed a little too slow ( compared with the studio-Version ) but still sounds ( and feels ) great.

The one track in which you really get to miss the other two original members is "For Noone", cause instead of being dramatically rocking it's "only" nice and beautiful, though always welcome.

After "River of dreams" and its tour "Revival" brought lots more stuff to the addict and, because of the good sound, is even superior to the old "BJH LIVE" album, but that's just my opinion, make up your own mind

Rupert