The extraordinary blues-rock band Steamhammer was formed at the end of 1968 in Worthing. Martin Quittenton (g) and Kieran White (voc., g, harm.) came out of the British folk circuit. Quittenton had worked together with the Liverpool Scene and, like the other members Martin Pugh (g), Steve Davy (b) and Michael Rushton (dr), had played with numerous R&B groups.
Blues hero Freddie King ordered Steamhammer as his backing band on tour through Great Britain. Come Spring time, 1969, they signed a record contract with CBS. The first album, "Steamhammer", was a mixture of classic blues by B.B.King and Eddie Boyd and modern blues written by White and Quittenton with the help of Pugh. At the end of the British blues boom, only a few hardcore fans took interest on the finest lyrical blues-rock statement of the century.
Not selling as many records as they'd hoped to, Steamhammer nevertheless became a top European open-air attraction, mainly due to their brilliant live performance. For over two hours each night they would indulge in wide excursions in instrumental improvisations, embodied by the impressive guitar riffage of Martin Pugh and the sensitive harmonica of Kieran White. In the Summer of 1969, Quittenton left the band, followed by drummer Michael Rushton. They were replaced by Steve Jollife (sax, fl.) and Mick Bradley.
Jollife's feel for precise arrangements and jazz influences especially inspired the recording of Steamhammer's second, "Mk II", album. Overstepping the boundaries of traditional blues forms, they unleashed their own musical creativity and imagination without resorting to any technical trickery. These highly professional and creative musicians performed many live shows at various festivals in Scandinavia, West Germany and the Netherlands. On the continent, it turned out, they had become more popular than in England.
In the Summer of 1970, Steamhammer recorded their "definitive album" (rock session), called "Mountains", as a quartet. White, Pugh, Davy and Bradley were really working as a team and offering electrified white urban blues of highest quality. The live cut, "Riding On The L&N", is one of the highlights of the "Mountains" album, which contains straight-ahead blues numbers with a healthy dose of rock'n'roll. It was only with the release of this album that Steamhammer began to be noticed by the rock world. After the Altamont and Fehmarn fiascos, the era of open-air events of such calibre was ended at least for quite a while.
In the late Summer of that same year, Steamhammer toured for the last time in Germany and the Benelux. The following Autumn, the line-up changed again. Only Pugh and Bradley stayed together and engaged ex-Renaissance member Louis Cennamo (b) for the recording of one more album. "Speech" was recorded in the Winter of 1971 and released in the beginning of 1972. By that time, Steamhammer had ceased to exsist. "Speech" was a disappointing, partly chaotic album, and the negative reception of the record led to the end of the group's popularity. Mick Bradley died in February 1972 of leukemia. Kieran White released a solo LP, "Open Door", in 1975 and Martin Pugh and Louis Cennamo put together a cult band Armageddon (with Keith Relf on vocals), which released only one album.
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Here's another of my all-time fave TYA shows, and hopefully - and most likely - a major upgrade to what most fans have; I got my source tape in a trade sometime in the late 90's from my low generation god Larry Clark - thanx again for this, Larry!
TYA arrived on June 13, 1968 in America to begin a seven week US tour, their first of not less than reputedly 28 until their farewell tour in 1975.
They had recorded their May 14, 1968 Klook's Kleek Railway Hotel show and released parts of it in August as their second album "Undead" in order to have a fresh product to promote during their tour - even nowaydays promoters usually demand a new album for touring.
This show here is one of their very first dates, and their first at Bill Graham's Fillmore Auditorium. As it turned out, this was the last weekend of the original Fillmore before Bill moved his venue to the much larger Carousel Ballroom the next weekend (on which TYA also played!), now renamed Fillmore West; since Bill had opened his Fillmore East in March 1968 in NYC, the renaming had become necessary.
TYA's two sets differ nicely from the original UNDEAD set: you get the - AFASIK - only known recorded live rendition of "I WANT TO KNOW" from their first album plus the almost equally rarely played traditional version of "I WOKE UP THIS MORNING" (i.e. not the "Sssssh!", variation). Exactly these two numbers were left off the floating-around bootleg CD that was made from a higher gen. copy of this tape. Funnily BTW, Wolfgang's Vault used that CD for their upload although one would imagine they had access to better and more complete versions in their ...well, vaults.
Like on the boot CD, my source tape started off with HELP Me which is nonsense and I put at the end of the second set where it belongs. This had been their closing number until they developed I'M GOING HOME as their anthem and show stopper; at that point in their career, ROCK YOUR MAMA was the standard opener and proposed next single (which was shelved). It seems someone early in the copy line placed it at the start to make the two shows fit on the two sides of a C 90 cassette. It is safe to assume TYA also did I'M GOING HOME to end their 2nd set but it is missing from both my tape and the boot CD.
It's real nice to hear TYA doing such a variety of still fresh numbers many of which would disappear from their set for good soon after.
Enjoy early, raunchy, jazzy, bluesy, rocking, jamming TYA! (Th:-)mas)
CD 1
First set:
01- Rock Your Mama
02- Spoonful
03- I May Be Wrong, But I Won't Be Wrong Always
04- No Title
05- Summertime - Drum Solo
06- I Woke Up This Morning
CD 2
Second set:
01- I Want To Know
02- Spider In My Web
03- Crossroads
04- Woodchoppers Ball
05- Help Me
