Ten Years After Album: “Undead”

When I first purchased this album a few monthes ago, I was a bit hesitant. But once I put it in my player I knew I had made a wise purchase. The lyrics are a little below par, but the musical virtuosity is hard to top. Listen to the great bass solos on "I may not always be right" and "at the woodchopper's ball." When you can hear Alvin Lee in the back screaming out "yeah!" you know these guys came to play and are no frills blues rockers. The absolute speed of guitarist Alvin Lee is incredible. He is sorely underrated in the group of 1960's blues guitarists. Song after song he churns out blues lick after blues lick at a pace which has to be heard to believe. The ending song-"I'm going home" is a bit subdued when compared to the essential 12 min version from Woodstock a year later. Reagardless, this album is one which you should buy if you love blues and want to hear some speedy guitar. The performances are great and will leave you wanting more from this seminal British blues band.

If you only intend to get one album of Alvin Lee's guitar work - THIS IS THE ONE! I first heard this as a kid rummaging through my big brother's record collection and was totally FLOORED. My dad, also a musician (it runs in the family), felt that this version of "Woodchopper's Ball" is some of the best guitar playing that he'd ever heard. I've enjoyed "SHHH", "Cricklewood Green", and "Watt", but this is the one that sums up what Ten Years After was all about. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Most people have only heard "I'd love to change the world" by Ten years after, and when you say "blues" in the same sentence as "ten years after" most people get a quizical look on their face, the simple truth is that they were a blues band that evolved into a blues/Rock band.

This live album Perfectly demonstrates this point.

My personal favorites on this recording are "goin home", "woodchoppers ball", and "I may be wrong, but I wont be wrong always".

Alvin lee's guitar playing is some of the fastest you will ever hear, especially on "goin home" and woodchopper's ball".

the rhythm section deserves a medal for keeping up with Lee.

they are all skilled musicians and deliver some great drum and bass solos.

all together this is an album that all blues lovers and guitar players should own, and if you've only heard "I'd love to change the world",you owe it to yourself to hear the best of their stuff.

Believe me, this was TYA recorded in top form live at the North London club, Klooks Kleek in 1968. I know many Americans believe that the performance at Woodstock was brilliant and Lee's best. But by that stage TYA had largely become 3 backing musicians massaging Alvin Lee's (by then) hugely inflated ego. His performance there was grossly overstated to the point of embarrassment, and alienated many of his Brit fans, myself included. But undeniably it did break TYA's career in the States if nothing else.

Meanwhile just over a year earlier this album shows what Alvin Lee and the boys were really capable of. Here, TYA work as a serious jobbing band and not just there purely to showcase Alvin Lee's virtuosity on lead guitar, although naturally he's still the major focus. Then, Lee had a more modest stage personna, and allowed the other members to do more of their thing. Chick Churchill's fine playing on Hammond organ, and Leo Lyon's hard pumping bass result in a strongly jazz flavoured blues set. Both of these guys are given plenty of opportunity to solo, eg I May Be Wrong...and Woodchopper's Ball, two of the most jazz influenced numbers here. WB is a pure instrumental taken at breakneck speed, and Alvin Lee's playing is awesome the first few times you listen to it. Other highlights are, I can't Keep From Crying (not on the original album) and the controversial I'm Going Home. This is how it was normally played pre-Woodstock. Spider In My Web is a decent slow blues track, penned by Lee, whose limited vocal style is exposed here. But to be honest, Lee's vocals were never his strong point.

There's no doubt that Alvin Lee was on fire that night, and sadly from '69 onwards, he never sounded as inspirational again. Those that accuse Lee of being a tasteless, cliché-ridden blues guitarist who could play fast had a point when I listen to his post '69 work. But Undead proves that before Alvin Lee got big-headed he was a guitarist to be reckoned with, and possibly more talented than most of his more famous white blues guitar peers around at that time.....Recommended especially for blues guitar fans.

After releasing their debut album and earning a reputation as an earth-shattering live band, Ten Years After decided to record their second album, UNDEAD, in a small club in England called Klooks Kleek (it was not recorded at The Marquee Club, as many people seem to think). It amply demonstrates the uncanny stamina of the band in concert.

This is primarily a jazz album, except for one song, the slow blues "Spider In My Web". All the other songs are pure jazz, and Lee plays them so damn good that you almost begin to wonder if the guy was born with a guitar in his hands! I'm telling you - no other guitarist in the world has ever played jazz like Lee does on this album. The best example, of course, is "At The Woodchopper's Ball", in which the boys take Woody Herman's jazz classic and turn it into a breathless jamming extravaganza. Just listen to those guitar licks, unbelievable or what?! Alvin's playing is so fast, smooth and fluid that you simply can't help but marvel at him. And if you listen closely, after Churchill's organ solo, he even inserts a few guitar lines from "Rock Around The Clock"! But with all due respect to Bill Haley, he could never match this in his wildest dreams. Anyway, Leo Lyons is also given a bass solo, although it's nothing spectacular (I'm MUCH more fascinated by the way he thumps his instrument on the Woodstock version of "I'm Going Home"). But you hardly even get a chance to contemplate his bass before Alvin comes back and rips into it one more time for the grand finale. AWESOME!

Ride on, Mr. Lee!