On the Road:

Traffic (Festival Recording). Reviewed by Thomas McGrath.

This is a double album of Traffic recorded in concerts on tour in Germany. The content is drawn mainly from the LPs, "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" and "Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory". Despite personnel changes, the line-up still includes Steve Winwood, Roger Hawkins, Jim Capaldi, David Hood, Chris Wood and Reebop Kwaku Baah — all outstanding musicians in the British rock scene. That hideous record cover shows photographs of Hawkins wearing the perennial sunglasses from 'Fantasy Factory' and Capaldi sporting the same red shirt from 'Low Spark". And this to me indicates the tone of both LPs.

The first one is jazz oriented, and each track gains something from the live recording on account of the sustained technical brilliance and the group's prowess at jamming. The piano work is consistently strong and best shown on the slow, controlled "Sometimes I Feel So Uninspired".

Individual talent is the compensation for long and rather uneventful numbers. This brings me to criticism of the record. The tight and professional sound of the musicians must interest an enthusiast; but to anybody else the lack of life and the treading of paths three to four years old, altogether lowers both tone and calibre.

The second LP is more rock — but oh how disappointing! With 'Fantasy Factory' and 'Light up or leave me alone', good electronic effects produced in the recording studio are the guts of the melody arrangement. These cannot be reproduced on stage. The good performance of say Wood on saxaphone and flute, or Capaldi and Hawkins on drums, which holds the first LP together, is utterly lost on side 3 of the album. The pace of both those tracks reiterates the group's musicial ability, but there's no sense of that control or tightness of rhythm which characterised earlier albums. "Low Spark of High Healed Boys", which takes up side four entirely, absolutely expresses the worst features of "On the Road". The stage performance of this tune is tedious, as the recording studio version of two or three years ago, was lively.

Having heard most of Traffic's earlier albums, I cannot recommend this one. I was somewhat disillusioned to hear good melodies turned into hackneyed antiques.