LIVE UK TOUR 1975

This live recording was made a few months after the band had released "Cunning Stunts" in 1975. By that time keyboard player David Sinclair had left the band and was replaced by Jan Schelhaas. It is the same line-up that would record "Blind Dog at St. Dustans" a year later.

Although this is not the most famous period of the band, live they were very good. And so is this live recording. It contains the obvious classics (For Richard, Love in Your Eye) and of course tracks from "Cunning Stunts" (The Show Of Our Live, The Dabsong Conshirtoe). The tracks are very long, so there is plenty of room for instrumental interplay. The sound quality of the recording is excellent, so I recommend this to every Caravan fan.

This is a concert from the Cunning Stunts tour, with Jan Schelhaas newly arriving on keyboards. Capturing the band shortly before they knuckled down to record Blind Dog At St. Dunstans', it's an artifact of an era when the conventional wisdom is that Caravan were turning away from prog and taking their sound in a more pop direction.

Whilst that might have been true in the studio, the track listing here tells a more complicated story: after the opening Show Of Our Lives, the remainder of the set consists of epic tracks - nothing less than 9 minutes, in fact - so and there's little doubt from the performances here that the band's prog component.

I wouldn't put this on the level of Live At the Fairfield Halls - which has a lot of overlap here - but getting a live rendition of The Dabsong Conshirtoe when it was still fresh is nice. Collectors may wish to note that this show is included in remastered form on the Who Do We Think We Are? boxed set - but if that's too rich for your tastes and you can pick this up at a reasonable choice, I'd say it's a pretty reasonable addition to a Caravan collection, and is certainly evidence that the band still had their old magic during this time period.