SOME ENCHANTED EVENING

This second live album was a bit surprising as it came fairly soon after On Your Knees, but this was only a single album, so it was exaggerating either. And it wasn't redundant either since it concentrated on Treaties, Agents and Spectres. Such a pity it was so short, though. Armed with an unrelated artwork (especially for a live album), this album is a bit overlooked upon, since most Cult fans took it as a waiting bait, when they were expecting another studio outing after Spectres, which would be terribly deceiving (Mirrors), but that's another story.

One of its major flaws was that it was clear and so obvious this was an assemblage of live tracks coming from different sources, so much that it seemed more of a "Best Of Live" than a "real live album". Indeed the different live takes sound so different from one track to the next, that it takes the magic out of a live album like Purple's Made In Japan or Genesis' Seconds Out, when all the material was taken from two or three days' gigs. Opening with the extended but built-for-that-purpose RU Ready t2 Rock, the album doesn't forget the deliciously superb Astronomy (lacking so much in the previous Live album) then gives us the 1-2 punch or Godzilla and Reaper, before giving us the60's anthem of Get Outta This Place (Animals) and Kick Out The Jams (MC5), this last one being a strange twist of fame since Patti Smith was dating Eric Bloom and ended up marrying MC5's leader.

Recent reissues have this album going double with a bunch of bonus tracks that would've added been almost redundant to then-fans (four tracks are present of the previous live and one is redundant with this one), but they actually allow this proghead to buy at least one Cd from the Cult, provided I listen to them first.. Personally, if you're not a big fan (like me) of BOC, provided the bonus tracks are of good sound quality, this expanded live album might just be all you'll need (with maybe the exception of Telepaths) in your shelves.