Highway Song Live

Album Review

Like their Native American ancestors before them, the members of Blackfoot must have known what it felt like to be exiled from their homeland. Only, rather than being forced into an Indian reservation, the world's first all-Native American hard rock band found itself trying to scrape together a good wage across the pond, where U.K. audiences couldn't seem to get enough of its uniquely metallic, Skynyrd-derived Southern rock. Despite experiencing diminishing returns in the good ol' U.S. of A., all three of their studio albums for Atco had been warmly embraced here, leading to nearly two years of incessant touring. Such acclaim eventually led to demands for a live album, which the band duly recorded with the help of the Rolling Stones' mobile studio during a three-month jaunt across the British Isles in 1982. Named Highway Song Live after the band's biggest (and most "Freebird"-like) hit, it was recorded in the spirit of the classic live albums of the '70s, with explosive performances of such Blackfoot favorites as "Road Fever," "Every Man Should Know (Queenie)," "Gimme, Gimme, Gimme," and the title track. Additional highlights include a couple of supercharged blues numbers ("Rollin' and Tumblin'," "Trouble in Mind") and frontman Rick Medlocke's friendly rapport with the audience. Sadly, the album wasn't issued in America until 20 years later — long after Blackfoot's bright promise had faded into anonymity.