Exciting live document of “etheric celestial sounds”.
At the start of 1977, and in the wake of his latest album, , going Top 10 in the UK, Steve Hillage travelled to California for the first time as, somewhat incongruously, ELO’s support act, playing to audiences of thousands, most of whom had never heard of him. Yet as this recording from the second of two shows at the LA Forum in Inglewood clearly shows, Hillage and his band were in uncompromising form on this tour, with the crowd treated to an energised rendition of most of , mystical interludes and all. This is the front-of-house desk mix as recorded on cassette, so the quality is that of a superior bootleg, but the vibrancy and tightness of the playing is often quite astonishing. In particular, Hillage’s tone is flawless throughout, shifting seamlessly from melodic noodling to hard riffing to metallic soloing with some aplomb. He does a pretty convincing job of communing with the etheric plane on and despite being in a hall of 15,000 people waiting to hear , before gliding down to Earth with a joyous version of George Harrison’s It’s . Cosmic bliss rock par excellence.
