Innovate never imitate - Music I Want in 2009, Part 7

In a year that electro-pop is back in favour in a big way here is a timely reminder of one of the most consistent and hard-working bands that has been tirelessly trying to raise the status of such music for six years now. They DJ in the UK and abroad, they run club nights, even their own club, and if that were not enough Command is their fourth album as a band and I have already mentioned their third album, Heartland, when it was released in 2007.

The defining streaks are command and control: almost military anonymity [band members are still officially Clients A, B & E] and the musical integrity remains untouched. If the agents at Station X had run riot, in the spare time that they didn't have, and used the machines to make music it would probably have sounded like this far earlier than it did.
I've got to get this - hence the post - as Heartland was in My Charts of 2007 and I can't understand why they are not better known already. It is of course released on the label Out of Line, which is their own, and also this...

Maybe they could run the country too.

Live by proxy - the rise and fall of the live album:

I have been thinking about this for a while, more particularly in the last few weeks during which I have had the pleasure to see almost forty bands truly live. I rather suspect that, on reflection, the decade 1975 -1985 was the zenith of the live album. These were almost always double albums and released on vinyl (but also on cassette and some in later cases, not to mention reissues, on CD).
While some were fairly genuinely live recordings of a single gig and some very much edited compilations from several sets, others were even extensively remixed but whatever their status some were genuinely worthwhile.
I have, in this regard, mentioned Live and Dangerous - Thin Lizzy (1978) already. This evening I was thumbing through the archives because we had, for some Friday afternoon reason, ended up discussing Tina Turner at work and in particular the track 'Nutbush City Limits'. Don't even think about asking how we got to this point but, as a result, and when I was browsing this evening I came across Live Bullet - Bob Seger and The Silver Bullet Band (1976) that you can fortunately still buy for a song, digitally remastered, on a sparkling new CD.
I'm even luckier still in that I don't have to wait for it to arrive, nor do I even have to download it. I can't remember when I last listened to it, probably late last century, but I am lucky enough to be able to enjoy the legal alternative again this evening and, as I paid pennies for it second-hand so long ago, to all intents and purposes do so for free. The opening track is, of course, a cover of Nutbush City Limits...

Live Bullet - Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band.

This album was recorded over two performances at the Cobo Arena in Detroit, Seger's home city, on the 4th and 5th September 1975 and released in 1976. The cover may be scuffed but the LPs inside are fine and to be able to listen to the original double vinyl set (EMI/Capitol E-STS161 & E-STS162) makes it even better and maybe, in 2008, it would seem that way to me regardless of any other considerations.
It now seems all the more so however, to me at least, because of the recent revival in all kinds of American music - not least Americana - and which, by seamlessly fusing genres from the last half-century, is quite remarkable on many levels.