Anthology 1967-1971
Say what you will, but England's Ten Years After certainly knew when to peak: their manic, 12-minute workout of "I'm Going Home" (included here) upstaged a veritable army of '60s superstars and remains one of the highlights of the filmWoodstock. As blues-smitten U.K. rockers go, TYA may not have been as inventive as theYardbirds, guitarist/frontman Alvin Lee neither as tastefully polished as Clapton nor as bombastic and exotic as Page, but their sheer dedication and steamroller determination (exemplified by nearly30American tours during the Woodstock era) were second to none. This double-disc, 26-track anthology spans the band's eight-albums-in-five-years prime, from its workmanlike 1967 covers of blues staples "I Want to Know" and "Spoonful" through a pair of rare 1968 singles (highlighted by Lee's quirky, country-folk "Portable People") to its 1971 pop hit, "I'd Love to Change the World." Lee's primitivist urges and legendary, lightning-fingered guitar heroics fuel everything from moody, simmering dirges like "Help Me" and upbeat Chi-town shuffles in the "Me and My Baby" mold to the Cro-Magnon riff-rock of "Love Like a Man" and the proto-psych-blues of "50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain." If TYA's music is often as nimble and slick as a stegosaur--and arguably as timely--it's equally as leathery, unrelenting, and hard to ignore.--Jerry McCulley