Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer Group – Complete Cape Cod 1976 (Wardour 071)

Complete Cape Cod 1976 (Wardour 071)

Cape Cod Coliseum, Hyannis, MA – August 27th, 1976

Disc 1 (72:34):  Intro., Oh Yeah?, Sister Andrea, Country And Eastern Music, Darkness – Earth In Search Of a Sun, Earth (Still Our Only Home), Freeway Jam, Scatterbrain, Diamond Dust, Full Moon Boogie, You Know What I Mean

Disc 2 (11:58):  Blue Wind, Train Kept A Rollin’, Led Boots

Last April Wardour released Cape Cod Jam (Wardour 061) from an uncirculated, incomplete tape (missing “Led Boots.”)  The surfacing of the Dan Lampinski tape has forced the label in to releasing the show yet again on Complete Cape Cod 1976.  Like all of the other tapes, this is an excellent three-dimensional stereo audience recording that truly captures the atmosphere of the performance.  This tape is more complete since it has the encore missing from the earlier tape.  There are a few little gaps in the tape which are patched by the inferior sounding tape.  The cuts are in the introduction and several seconds at 3:15 in “Scatterbrain.” 

Jeff Beck’s fruitful collaboration with Jan Hammer produced some of his more interesting performances in the middle of the seventies.  The integration of Beck’s guitar and Hammer’s keyboards bore interesting results both on the studio effort Wired and Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer Group Live album from the resulting tour.  The August 27th show in Cape Cod comes from the middle of their intermittent touring throughout the year on a very hot and sticky night.  Hammer especially can be heard complaining about the heat throughout the show. 

There is a two and a half minute intro on the tape when the Jan Hammer Group sets up.  They begin the show with an energetic “Oh Yeah?” which is followed by “Sister Andrea” which Hammer calls “some good old unadulterated piano rock and roll.” His opening set ends with “some country and eastern music.”

Jeff Beck comes on stage for “Darkness – Earth In Search Of A Sun” and proceeds to dominate the rest of the show.  It becomes easy, while hearing these tapes, to understand the clash in egos between the two artists.  It is apparent the audience are there to hear Beck play.  However the weight of the show rests upon all of the talent musicians on stage.  Hammer is key, but also the violin of Steve Kindler carries much weight in the arrangements which add contrast to the electric voices of the others. 

“Darkness – Earth In Search Of A Sun” segues nicely into “Earth (Still Our Only Home).”  “Freeway Jam” is one of the more melodic pieces played in the set and sounds very pretty.  “Scatterbrain” contains the most jamming of the night.  “Diamond Dust” carries a gorgeous guitar / violin duet in the middle in the most sublime moments of the evening.  “Full Moon Boogie” sounds more disco than blues, which was the popular music style at the time.   It does speed up in the middle with Beck, Kindler, and Hammer each trading and duelling riffs in a pure adrenaline rush to the end.  It’s the virtuoso performance of the night. 

“You Know What I Mean” from Blow By Blow is a great piece of funk augmented by Hammer’s electronic contributions and Kindler’s violin.  The final song on the tape is the great “Blue Wind,” perhaps the catchiest of the Jan Hammer and Jeff Beck collaborations.  There is an interlude in the middle where the band get into a few bars of “Train Kept A-Rollin'” in acknowledgement of the Yardbirds.  The show ends with the final encore “Led Boots.”  This is another sterling release on Wardour worth the upgrade over their previous release of this show.