Fanny - Live on Beat-Club '71-'72 [peach vinyl]– New LP

"there has always been a piece missing from the Fanny fable; for while the band hooked up with big-time producers and engineers like Richard Perry, Todd Rundgren, and Geoff Emerick, their studio albums never really were able to capture the sheer excitement they could generate in concert. However, buried away in a vault thousands of miles away from their Los Angeles base there long lay a recording that could make the Fanny myth a reality, one that could provide the emphatic answer as to why these four ladies were the hottest ticket on the Sunset Strip during the early ‘70s. Now, over 50 years later, its time—and their time—has come. Live on Beat-Club ’71-’72 presents the two sets Fanny recorded for the German TV show, mastered by Mike Milchner of Sonic Vision from hi-res mono files taken from the original videotape. Aside from the incendiary and incredibly tight performances, what immediately becomes apparent is that all four of these women were powerhouses in her own right. June Millington’s stringbending Les Paul wizardry, her sister Jean’s driving, melodic bass lines and Janis Joplin-esque vocals, Nickey Barclay’s intricate yet somehow rocking keyboard work, and Alice de Buhr’s precise, piston-like drumming punctuated by ferocious fills—put together Fanny was an overwhelming display of talent, Yet somehow, as these shows reveal, live they were greater than the sum of their parts. That’s why getting these recordings released has long been a crusade for Alice, and why June tells the story in the accompanying liner notes (which feature contributions from June, Jean, and Alice) that the engineer who was assigned to do the transfers of all the Beat-Club material told her that their material was the best in the vault."

A1. Charity Ball
A2. Place in the Country
A3. Hey Bulldog
A4. Thinking of You
A5. Ain't That Peculiar
A6. Blind Alley
B1. Special Care
B2. Borrowed Time
B3. Summer Song
B4. Knock on My Door
B5. Young and Dumb

June and Jean Millington were from the Philippines and joined forces with Alice De Buhr and Nickey Barclay in Sacramento, the band originally called Wild Honey. They’d release five albums (with Patti Quatro joining for the last one when June would move to Isis) and then split in 1975. While the Quattro sisters and their Detroit band the Pleasure Seekers predate Fanny, few knew of them, and Fanny played a big part in inspiring female rockers, likely the rockers that rose in the second half of the 1970s, such as the Wilson sisters of Heart and the girls of the Runaways. In fact, many young girls growing up in the 1970s point out how this group inspired them to learn to play instruments and dedicate their lives to rock n roll.  -- winch