Full show 5/3/1974 Pasadena High School

[DLR Bridge]

Remarkable.

https://youtu.be/zkriBgKPhQs?feature=shared

[VHscraps]

Remarkable.
https://youtu.be/zkriBgKPhQs?feature=shared

Absolutely killer performance.

You know, I remember back in the 80s buying all these bootleg tapes of VH before 78 and for a while it was interesting to hear what they were like. But I haven't listened to any pre-78 bootlegs for years and if I see them posted on forums will usually not bother checking them out.

For some reason I checked this one out and was stunned by it.

This is VH at a point of transition, before they were filling their sets with 'dance' friendly Top 40 kind of material to keep the Gazzaris residency, and before they were doing full sets (or nearly full sets) of originals that were moving into that short song format kind of territory.

The playing is pretty mind-blowingly good. Ed and Al especially, ... but all of them. It's quite a good quality recording, and Dave sounds great. While it has proggy hard rock kind of covers - Captain Beyond - there is a really late 60s, early 70s vibe of the Who Live At Leeds, and Alvin Lee and Ten Years After to the extended treatments of certain tunes.

I don't think VH were ever like this again once they sunk themselves into the club era that led up to the first album.

I'm no expert on what is out there in terms of VH boots of the pre-78 era, but someone should release this. This is an important historical document and probably one of the best concert recordings of VH - for those reasons - that there is.

Save it before it disappears.

[DLR Bridge]

I have a good many bootlegs from the club days, mostly where you can tell Dave had begun checking the brothers cover pics for “danceability.” This really smacks of Al and Ed still steering the ship at this point. It’s unreal just how good and capable Ed was by only age 19 and there aren’t any flubbed notes anywhere on here, at least that stand out to my ears. I’ve been playing for 40 years and have still not achieved the level of competency he had reached before his 20th birthday. All innovations of his aside, his command of the instrument alone made him God like.