Another Night Has Gone (Godfatherecords G.R. 854)
Stadthalle, Basel, Switzerland – February 1st, 1970
(78:32) Morning Sun, Sugar Mama, I’ll Remember, Walkin’ Blues, Eat My Words, Railway And Gun, I Feel So Good, What’s Going On, Catfish/I Just Want To Make Love To You/Catfish, Same Old Story, Pontiac Blues (Same Old Story)
Another Night Has Gone from Godfather captures Taste’s show in Basel, Switzerland during the band’s last European Tour. This is the second incarnation of the band and consisted of Rory Gallagher on guitar, vocals, and harmonica, Richard McCracken on bass, and John Wilson on drums. It comes from a very good to near excellent soundboard recording. The performance is outstanding and the band comes out blistering right from the beginning. There is some noticeable buzzing in Rory’s guitar amp but is only evident in quieter passages and is a non issue otherwise.
The recording cuts in during the MC’s introduction just before the band start “Morning Sun”. Its tender sounding choruses are in stark contrast to the rocking verses. After a brief greeting, Rory introduces “Sugar Mama” and blasts through a few licks before being joined by the band for the heavy blues classic by Chester Burnett. This is one of a few blues covers recorded for their self titled debut album. The band is as tight and powerful as Led Zeppelin and the Jeff Beck Group were and Rory duly introduces McCracken and Wilson afterward. “I’ll Remember” has Gallagher in an extremely experimental mood during the solo in the middle (perhaps he caught a Richie Blackmore performance recently).
“Walkin’ Blues” features bottleneck slide. Rory gives a solo guitar performance accompanied only by a little footstomping and is very well received by the audience. He introduces “Eat My Words” and can be heard retuning his guitar for the track. He adds a little extra grit in his vocal for this one and continues with some more slide guitar. They hit some extreme highs and lows dynamically and Rory rips it up on harmonica and guitar simultaneously during the ten minute arrangement.
“Railway And Gun” starts off mellow but turns into a heavy 12 bar blues where Gallagher lets loose and plays some of his best soloing of the evening. “I Feel So Good” is a great driving number that breaks down during the solo, Rory has some fun playing and singing in unison ala George Benson style. This also highlights the talents of Richard McCracken and John Wilson with short solos of their own before they all come back in strong again. “What’s Going On” continues with more light and shade dynamics and shows the substance a busy rhythm section needed for this type of power trio.
“Catfish” is introduced as the last song and the band play a sludgy slower blues with enormous attitude. This traditional blues can be traced to Robert Petway, Muddy Waters, and later covered by Hendrix too. Muddy Waters is most likely Gallagher’s influence here as he references “Rollin’ Stone” and later gets into “I Just Want To Make Love To You” also recorded by Muddy (but written by Willie Dixon). The guys are really feeding off of each other during this show stopper and McCracken and Gallagher get into some impressive call and answer. The track still reaches 12 minutes even though there is a small cut at 5:02.
They return to the stage for a nice funky “Same Old Story”. The three minute encore is no way satisfying enough for this crowd. They bring the band back for a second time for a walk through “Pontiac Blues”.
Godfather’s packaging for Another Night Has Gone employs their usual tri-fold cardboard sleeve with some nice live shots of the band and a short essay pertaining to this particular lineup inside. This is another great Godfather title featuring a band that gets very little attention in this market.
