JANE AT HOME LIVE

Oh, the 70's! The decade of the double live album! So many masterpieces came from that time: Deep Purple with Made In Japan, Uriah Heep with Live, Wishbone Ash with Live Dates, UFO with Strangers In The Night, to name but a few. Even live triple albums were game in that category (Yessongs and Welcome Back My Friends..., were the prime ones). Well, it seemed a sure shot for everyone. And even some, say, "second league" bands did release some at least very good ones. So when I found out that Germany prog rocker Jane did theirs, I smelled something good. And, thankfully I was right. Jane never really got much of my attention at the time, for there were so many better and more creative groups releasing far superior albums at the time, even in that country (Triumvirat, Ammon Dull II, Eloy and others). But nowadays I tend to appreciate their work more. And as a live band they do sound better than in the studio, at least for me.

At Home Live was recorded at their hometown, Hannover, and so, the audience was truly a fanatical one. Everything work on this album: the cover the repertoire, the performances, the production, even (excellent picture of Mars landscape). I was drawn to this record mainly because it featured ex Eloy Manfred Wieczorke on keyboards, so I knew it would have lots of heavy Hammond runs, and sure enough they are there. Jane never really got too sophisticated or complex as its contemporaries, and it shows on the longer tracks, where it is clear they are not capable of long solos or jams and are relying a lot on Wieczorke's talent to hold things up. Although it does not always work, most of the time it does. And, what the hell, it is a kind of "best of" compilation, I guess the songs featured here are indeed their best so far. I'm not so fond of the last track, the unreleased Windows. With its 20 minute long running time it shows that it was a good idea not to commit that one of their studio album. Typical at the time it has its moments but could have been cut to one third of its length for a better result. But I guess they had to prove they could deliver their "epic". It was kind of obligatory in the 70's to do such thing, I guess, even if you could not really handle such undertaking.

All in all a real good live album, Not really a masterpiece, but a solid work with probably the best songs and performances of those guys. And I love those vintage keyboards sounds!

Rating: 3,5 stars, that I will round to four because of those great keys!