Jeff Beck - With Jan Hammer Group Live (1977)

 (U.K 1965 - 2023)

I was lucky enough to see their performance at Festival Hall in Melbourne, Australia on Feb 1st, 1977. I was literally Blow by Blown away! This album is a good representation of what I heard on stage and I was in total awe throughout the whole concert.

Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer group LIVE is an astounding performance captured. It has a really good sound for a live recording, and a wonderful range of music. They seem to be having so much fun on stage together playing this music. My personal favorite is "Scatterbrain" on the B-side, followed by the powerful "Blue Wind". So wonderfully tight, hot, and full of nervous energy. I can only imagine what it felt like to be on stage playing together. Jeff Beck knows how to play as an ensemble player as well as a lead guitarist. This you will hear throughout the performance.

Jan Hammer's uncanny ability to simulate the pitch-bending qualities of an electric guitar on his Minimoog synthesizer made him an explosive duet partner with rock's Jeff Beck on this live album -- the third of Beck's successful flirtations with jazz-rock. While leaning toward the Mahavishnu Orchestra brand of jazz-rock, with the word "rock" heavily emphasized, this is a looser, less lock stepped variant. The song selection is split almost equally between Hammer and Beck's repertoires, with Hammer's remake of his techno/mechanized "Darkness/Earth In Search of a Sun" making the biggest splash.

No precise dates and locations are given for the live recordings. The 'Wired' tour began in June 1976 and ended in February 1977, with 117 shows performed in total.

A&R man Tom Werman suggested that the date at the Astor Theater in Reading, PA (31 August 1976) yielded the best performances, and was going to provide the bulk of the album at the time of his involvement in the project. Beck mixed this along with other recordings at Allen Toussaint's studio in New Orleans. Then Jan Hammer decided to mix the album himself, and did so with Dennis Weinreich at Scorpio Sound Studios in London, England.

The stereo spectrum of this album duplicates the stage set-up with guitar positioned center right, keyboards center left, violin right and drums and bass center.

RIP Jeff Beck  (10/01/2023)

Jeff Beck, one of the most skilled, admired and influential guitarists in rock history, died on Tuesday in a hospital near his home at Riverhall, a rural estate in southern England. He was 78. The cause was bacterial meningitis, Melissa Dragich, his publicist, said.

During the 1960s and ’70s, as either a member of the Yardbirds or as leader of his own bands, Mr. Beck brought a sense of adventure to his playing that helped make the recordings by those groups groundbreaking.

Jeff Beck married Sandra Cash in 2005, and she survives him.

To his fans, and to himself, Beck was so deeply identified with his guitar — particularly the Fender Stratocaster — that he seemed inseparable from it.

“My Strat is another arm,” he told Music Radar. “I’ve welded myself to that. Or it’s welded itself to me, one or the other.”

He once stated “It’s a tool of great inspiration and torture at the same time. It’s forever sitting there, challenging you to find something else in it. But it is there if you really search.”

Jeff Beck was a true legend, an amazingly talented guitarist, and one of a kind. Heartfelt condolences to the Beck family, so very sorry for your loss.

This post consists of FLACS ripped from CD and includes full album artwork for both vinyl and CD formats.  This album is one of my favourite jazz rock albums and was a clever release at the time as it complimented his Blow By Blow and Wired LP's.  It stands as a wonderful tribute to his amazing musical career and contribution to jazz / rock in general. Jeff will be sadly missed.

Tracklist

Freeway Jam   7:22

Earth (Still Our Only Home)    4:38

She's A Woman 4:26

Full Moon Boogie   6:10

Darkness/Earth In Search Of A Sun   7:52

Scatterbrain 7:26

Blue Wind 5:47

Personnel:

Jeff Beck - guitar, bass guitar, special effects

(The Jan Hammer Group)

Jan Hammer - Moog, Oberheim and Freeman string symphonizer

synthesizers, electric piano, timbales; lead vocal on "Earth (Still Our Only Home)"

Tony "Thunder" Smith - drums; lead vocal on "Full Moon Boogie"

Fernando Saunders - bass, harmony vocals; rhythm guitar on "She's A Woman"

Steve Kindler - violin; string synthesizer on "Darkness"; rhythm guitar on "Blue Wind"

 

Jeff Beck/Jan Hammer Live Link (286Mb) New Link 19/06/2025

Jeff Beck - Beckfast (1976) Ex Bootleg

(U.K 1965 - Present)
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This bootleg is another one of my prize possessions which I acquired in the late 70's (probably from the Victoria Market, Melbourne or at Reading Records in Carlton, Melbourne), and I am certain that this will be the first blog posting for this concert.
Having seen Jeff Beck at Festival Hall, Melbourne; when he toured with Jan Hammer in the late 70's; I was keen to get as many of his releases as possible, including bootlegs. Unfortunately, this is the only bootleg I ever came across but is not surprising considering my trusty bible of boots, entitled 'Hot Wacks', only listed a half dozen titles being available for Jeff Beck at the time (1981).
Beck-fast (released by Trade Mark Of Quality) was also released under the name 'Beckelectric At O'Keefe: White Like Me' on the K & S label which helped me to identify the date and venue of the recording (as it is not listed on the Beck-fast cover).

.Thanks to a bit of web searching, I have discovered that the bootleg was recorded at the O'Keefe Centre, Toronto July 23rd 1975 during 'The Blow By Blow Tour', with the support band 'Small Wonder'.
I really love the cover of this bootleg. In true 'Pig Trade Mark of Quality' humour, the bootleg has been marketed in the same way that a packet of Breakfast Cereal is. Just have a look at what is inside the bowl of cereal or the track listing being referred to as "Nutrition Information per Track' and the band referred to as 'Ingredients'. And of course the play of words with Breakfast and Beckfast is fairly obvious but I love their slogan: "A nice big platter of Beckfast for breakfast gives you more 'jam' per gram & more bounce per ounce to start you on your day" !
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TMQ, TMOQ or Trade Mark Of Quality was a bootleg record label that originated in the Los Angeles, California area during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The label was responsible for many underground records of Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane, Devo, Grateful Dead, The Beatles, Frank Zappa, Rolling Stones, The Who and many other popular rock artists of the era. The major record labels were shocked and dismayed that any anonymous person could obtain or make a bootleg recording of one of their artists and press up records and release them for sale.

"Trade Mark of Quality" was established in 1970 by two bootleggers, "Dub" Taylor and Ken Douglas (now an avid sailor and author.) They were quality-conscious perfectionists who pressed all their albums on coloured, virgin vinyl, and perhaps the first bootleggers to start doing real, printed picture covers, and later colour picture covers (printed - not inserts under the shrink-wrap as seen on "head shop" bootlegs). Dub & Ken had released several albums under different names before settling on "TradeMark Of Quality" in 1970, the first being the (in)famous "Great White Wonder" by Bob Dylan. According to Ken, "Dub" recorded several of TMQ's releases himself, including The Rolling Stones' "Liv'r Than You'll Ever Be" and Led Zeppelin's "Live On Blueberry Hill". TMOQ also employed the services of William Stout, whose unique artwork graced many of TMOQ's albums. In fact, the cover of Beck-fast is credited to the very same person.
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Concert Review
If you felt that Jeff Beck was on top of the game when he released Blow By Blow in 1975, you would not be disappointed with this live show. There are many stories of Beck returning to the studio to overdub his guitar parts for this album but there is no such worries here - live, he is both fluid and mercurial.
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According to The Rolling Stone Record Guide (1979), “After the stormy demise of Beck, Bogert and Appice, Beck changed course once again, and under George Martin’s production recorded Blow By Blow, an all-instrumental album (no more vocalists to worry about) that shows off Beck’s consummate abilities as a guitarist as never before. All styles served here, from to funk to jazz, and its success has led Beck into jazz-rock circles.”
On the other hand, music critic J.D. Considine didn’t mince words when he wrote that “An eloquent player with absolutely nothing to say, Beck isn’t much of a jazzman, but Martin works around the guitarist’s limitations, elegantly framing the solos with sympathetic rhythm arrangements and lush string orchestrations.”
But for the fan listening to this show, it is quite sublime. As taper Dan Lampinski noted: “Jeff Beck’s performance was one of the single greatest guitar performances that I ever witnessed… only rivalled by Zappa on his guitar solo blitzkrieg tour with Adrien Belew in tow.”
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The concert was also reviewed by Bruce Kirkland who wrote for the Star Newspaper in Toronto.
He noted that Beck was a reserved performer, writing that " he never looked at the audience in the face when he performed but rather played eyed games with drummer Bernard Purdie and the two cajoled each other into higher and greater and more intense bursts of his tension power rock, then guided each other through the smoother passages of jazz rock" [thanks to Dusty Hat for the newspaper review and concert advert]
It is interesting to note that while researching the concert, there has been some discrepancy regarding the price of the concert tickets ( $6 - Music in Dorseyland and $5.50 - Dusty Hat) but the ticket stubb above clearly shows that the price to be $5.50. Oh for the days when concerts didn't cost a fortune hey.
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Rip was taken from almost mint Vinyl bootleg at 320kps and includes scan of front cover, along with review article and all photos depicted.
Because the tracks tended to run into one another with audience applause and occasional dialogue, I decided not to segment the tracks so as not to loose the true atmosphere of this great concert. Instead, I have posted the album as two separate mp3's - Side A & B. Hope you enjoy your next Beckfast!


.Track Listing
01. Constipated Duck
02. She's A Woman
03. Freeway Jam
04. Superstition
05. Air Blower
06. Power
07. Got the Feeling
08. You Know What I Mean
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Band Members
Jeff Beck (Guitar, Airbag vocal guitar distorter)
Max Middleton (Keyboards)
Bernard Purdie (Drums)
Wilbur Bascomb (Bass)
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Beckfast Link (120Mb) New Link 23/12/2023
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Jeff Beck - Live at the Palais Theatre, Melbourne (2009-01-26) Ex SB

(U.K 1965-Present)
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It was 1977, when Jeff Beck made his first trip to Australia, 32 long years ago for his legion of fans.
I am one of those fans and can proudly boast that I saw him play (alongside the Jan Hammer Group) when he performed at Festival Hall, Melbourne. I was 18 at the time and was heavily influenced by his 'Blow By Blow' and 'Wired' albums.
Finally, in 2009 guitar legend Jeff Beck returned to Australia for a series of rare and very special performances. Regrettably, I was unable to make the concert, but did managed to acquire a live recording of his concert played at the Palais Theatre in St.Kilda, Melbourne.

According to Guitar World Magazine "Beck and his group turned in rapturous performances on material that covers every portion of the guitarist’s career… Beck’s finger-picking technique, tone and touch have always been astounding, but this bootleg demonstrates that, some 40 years into his career, he is a peerless master of his craft".
Earlier this year in London, 64 year-old Beck was awarded the Blues Artist of the Year Award, and has been nominated for 2009 induction into the Rock and Rock Hall of Fame as a solo artist [http://wots-on.info]

.Jeff Beck last toured Australia half a lifetime ago. In 1977, Beck, one of the great electric guitar virtuosos, was a 32-year-old who was spending a year outside Britain to change his tax status. These days, the 64-year-old is happily ensconced in his homeland.
Most of the band that played at Ronnie Scott's will be joining Beck in Australia, most notably Tal Wilkenfeld, the 22-year-old Sydney bass prodigy who has rapidly built an international reputation. "She has the adult phrasing of a mature black funk bass player coming out of a child. It's bizarre," says Beck, who took it as a compliment when Wilkenfeld first started gigging with him and fans assumed she was his daughter.
"I never thought there would be anybody like her, this little figure standing around my kitchen just wanting to play." [Craig Mathieson, The Age, January 22, 2009]
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Concert Review:
The night started off with Australian guitar virtuoso Jeff Lang and his bass player, a fine choice of support for Jeff Beck. It’s easy to draw parallels between the two Jeffs, both possessing outstanding guitar technique and, of course, the same first name, but it’s more important than that. Both are songwriters and they use their virtuosity to enhance their songs. This shows through for Jeff Lang on tracks like "The Road is Not Your Only Friend", inspired by banjo players to the point where his guitar sounded like a banjo, and the nice steel lap guitar work on "Some Memories Never Die".

After Jeff (1) departed, Jeff (2) and his group took to the stage, opening with Jeff’s "Bolero" which made for a pretty fine opener. Speaking of Beck, for a guy in his sixties he’s in pretty good shape, but more importantly he plays just as good as ever. Speaking of his playing, it’s just like Eric – Captain Boring’ Clapton says; it’s all in his hands. In fact I even saw him continuing a solo while shaking out a cramp in his right hand. But the important difference between Beck and other so-called guitar virtuosos is that Beck knows when to show off and when to play melody, he doesn’t fill every second with a torrent of notes. When he does it’s not to excess, i.e. soloing with his teeth every five minutes. Such as in the cover of Goodbye Porkpie Hat , in which he took a solo with just his left hand, he had this big old happy grin which was just adorable. His band mates have the same mentality as Beck, they’re there mainly to entertain and have fun, not just to show off.

Of special note was bass player Tal Wilkenfeld, acting more like a rhythm guitarist that just a bassist on songs like "Led Boots"; although the drummer and keyboardist were both quite good, with the keyboardist playing a fine solo during "Blue Wind". Speaking of his band mates, he’s clearly enthralled by them; at one point getting down on his knees and faux-worshiping the bassist, and during the final bow out he stepped aside and applauded them.

Alas the night had to come to an end, and perhaps as a reference to Neil Young’s choice of ending song at BDO, Beck & Co. also finished with an amazing version of "A Day In The Life". After a standing ovation, and two encores with one song apiece, finally Beck and Co huddled together and took a bow, with Beck thanking the audience (the third time of the night in which he spoke, not that he needs to, he could probably order a cup of coffee using nothing but his guitar and left hand), and departed the stage.
In short and without so much of my verbose Jeff Beck ass-worshiping, he’s still got it.
To see some amateur video footage of the concert, have a look at this website
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The posting contains mp3's ripped at 320kps and includes full album artwork along with choice photos taken from the concert by Mandy-Pixels (with thanks)
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Track Listing
[Disk 1]
101 - Beck's Bolero
102 - The Pump
103 - Eternity's Breath
104 - You Never Know
105 - Cause We've Ended As Lovers
106 - Behind The Veil
107 - Blast From The East
108 - Stratus
109 - Angels (Footsteps)
110 - Drum Solo
111 - Led Boots
[Disk 2]
201 - Nadia
202 - Bass Solo
203 - Snake Oil
204 - Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
205 - Brush With The Blues
206 - Big Block
207 - Blue Wind
208 - A Day In The Life
209 - Scottish One
210 - Where Were You
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Band Members:
Jeff Beck - Guitar
Vinnie Colaiuta - Drums
Tal Wilkenfeld - Bass
David Sancious - Keyboards
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Jeff Beck Live In Melbourne (176Mb) New Link 12/11/2024
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