Five Live
Featuring Eric "Slowhand" Clapton on lead guitar, this concert recording  presents the Yardbirds at their most blues-wailing. Of the band's four actual albums, it's definitely aged the poorest; Clapton's playing is unquestionably sweet, and the extended rave-ups on "Smokestack Lightning" and "Here 'Tis" are genuinely exciting, but mostly the band just sounds like British art students earnestly negotiating their way through their favorite blues tunes--which is, in fact, what they were. As excellent a guitarist as Clapton was, the band didn't really come into its own until Jeff Beck signed on as his replacement, bringing with him an arsenal of fuzz tones, raga scales, and rockabilly licks; the blues-influenced pop mutations that followed are, in retrospect, far more interesting than the rote covers included here.--Dan Epstein