You may find this as King Biscuit Flower Hour Presents Humble Pie In Concert which was released four years earlier with a different cover and added “I Don’t Need No Doctor” to the track list. But no matter what version you have, the material comes from a concert at San Francisco’s Winterland Theatre in either May or June of 1973. So, that means we are dealing with the post-Frampton/Clempson/Blackberries lineup of the band, which is interesting, in that we get to contrast between that and the “super group”/Fillmore live album and see what happens. In some respects, there is no contrast at all. Many of the characteristics of Fillmore – Steve’s singing banter between songs, the carryover of material itself, the sheer energy of the experience – are either firmly in place or only further amplified. But I do sense one big difference between Fillmore and Winterland – desire. No doubt the band playing the stage at Winterland is still big, tough, meaty, and packs tons of thunder, but at the end of the day, it’s a Vegas-revue compared to the hungry, make-or-break bunch that stormed the stage at the Fillmore East. At one point, Marriott introduces the Blackberries and I feel like all of their names should be flashing behind them in lights and sparkles. This is just before they cover the ‘Stones “Honky Tonk Women”. It all smacks vaguely of Elvis and the jump suit crowd, not the rough and tumble Humble Pie I’ve come to know. However, the band does deliver where it matters most – in the music department. I do, by and large, like most of these songs, and furthermore, the quality of recordings is very nice and clear. You just have to understand, compared to the Fillmore experience, this is the slicker, more professional sounding Humble Pie on stage now – far more concerned with sheer audience interaction and back-and-forth bantering than putting any new spin on overplayed material like “30 Days in the Hole” or “C’mon Everybody”.
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