Surprisingly, Gillan was already a semi-experienced club band with a fetching record to its name by 1978, when they set up rockscrabble shop at The Marquee for a three day stint, a warm-up to their fabled Reading gig. Captured on tape here then, is a pre-classic lineup of oddballs almost as odd as the bombing Ian Gillan Band of the few years previous. The sound is quite bad – this ain’t much better than a boot, but at least we get to hear ‘Secret Of The Dance’, ‘I’m Your Man’, ‘Message In A Bottle’ and ‘Dead Of Night’ in all their punk/anti-punk glory. ‘Child In Time’ under the low fidelity circumstances sounds abysmal (plus it’s just boring), and why on earth ‘Lucille’… And I suppose ‘Smoke On The Water’ is a given, but ‘Woman From Tokyo’ is perennially over-rated by both Ian and his Purple pals. Glad to have this glimpse at songwriting genius though, and also in a positive light, the cover art and the booklet is a step in the right direction for Angel Air, supplier of usually quite low rent graphics. What a great band and band chemistry though, and in that I am including the one-record Steve Byrd, whose inventiveness and spark touching off the whole Gillan idea deserves more credit. Low grade reflects, simply, crunchy crap sound and only half the 11 songs truly stepping up to value.
