Compare Bless Its Pointed Little Head

's first live album demonstrated the group's development as concert performers, taking a number of songs that had been performed in concise, pop-oriented versions on their early albums -- -- and rendering them in arrangements that were longer, harder rocking, and more densely textured, especially in terms of the guitar and basslines constructed by and . The group's three-part vocal harmonizing and dueling was on display during such songs as a nearly seven-minute version of 's folk-blues standard here transformed into a swirling rocker. The album emphasized the talents of and singer over the team of , who had tended to dominate recent records: the blues song was a dry run for , the band would form in two years, and turned in powerful vocal performances on several of his own compositions, notably was still at its best in concise, driving numbers, rather than in the jams on 's (running 7:35) or the group improv (11:21); they were just too intense to stretch out comfortably. But served an important function in the group's discography, demonstrating that their live work had a distinctly different focus and flavor from their studio recordings. ~ William Ruhlmann