Ilmo Smokehouse...Plus !
Steven Bray | 09/12/2009
(4 out of 5 stars)
"This is really a trip back to the times when concerts were filled with "contact-high" smoke & the bands never played the song the same way twice!
*Ilmo Smokehouse* are very, very bluesy-with a hard rock edge and some proto-prog-rock tendencies sprinkled here and there. You can really tell that these recordings only hint at what the live band experience would have been, what with the jamming aspect and the supplemental drugs of choice.
I would recommend this CD to anyone who would like a glimpse of what "the scene" circa 1970 in the more adventurous midwestern dance halls surviving on local rock shows was like...with the following caveat:
The sound quality is not that of most contemporary releases, the cuts from their record album sound like they were taken from a vinyl pressing, apparently the master tapes could not be located...A shame, because the material experience of the first 8 songs is diminished by this. Surprisingly, the bonus songs are much better fidelity, and shine (they sound like they ARE from master tapes) !
The above information is intended to be as objective as I can be, now for my "personal taste" opinion-*Ilmo Smokehouse* are bluesier and jammier than I personally prefer, although they do it well. I "got into" the bonus songs much more than the released LP's material-they (the bonus songs) seemed tighter and sounded much better to me. I hope the LP's master tapes are located, and a superior reissue ensues. All in all, (and, by the way, I'm 55 years old and lived through these days myself right here in the midwest U.S.A.) I would say "check out *Truth and Janey*'s 'No Rest For The Wicked', a 1975 release by a Cedar Rapids, Iowa band, 1st". My reason is simple: I think it's a better effort. The songs are in a similar vein, but they rise almost to the heights of (dare I say) Led Zeppelin's finer works (high praise indeed). Granted, *Truth and Janey*'s record album came out 5 years later, so I'm not trying to say *Ilmo Smokehouse* wouldn't have been there by then, but they had broken up, so we'll never know. At any rate, if *Truth and Janey* does it for you, then maybe proceed on to *Ilmo Smokehouse*.
Original copies of EITHER *Ilmo Smokehouse* OR *Truth and Janey* on vinyl go for astronomical figures, fortunately affordable CD reissues are available.
I hope this info proves useful to you, the reader.
Peace & Love-
Steve Bray of Record Realm
"
Track Listings (15) - Disc #1