Review Summary: Live Champs! may still struggle to provide commercial success. There are no three minute nuggets suitable to sandwich between advertisements for haircare products and dog food. That said, it is engaging, moving and foot-stompingly wonderful.
It’s 3AM. Danny & The Champions of the World are slumbering in the bedroom of their shared flat, following an exhausting night on stage. Danny has fallen into a deep sleep, contemplating the thorny issue of how he and the band are ever going to capture the energy and emotion of their live performances in a studio recording. Suddenly he wakes. “I have it,” he yells at the slumbering Champs. “Why don’t we just make a live album?” Paul, the guitarist, opens one eye. “We’ve been suggesting that for years, you fool. Go back to sleep.”
And so, Live Champs! is born. Furthermore, it’s rather splendid.
Undoubtedly my imagination ran away with me there. Despite a photograph which recently appeared on social media showing most of the band constructing an apple crumble together on a day off, it’s unlikely that they do all live in a shared flat, like a musical Morecambe and Wise*; though it’s rather comforting, and in keeping with the level of camaraderie they exhibit on stage, to believe that this might be true. What is undoubtedly true, however, is that it is rather inexplicable that a live album didn’t happen earlier.
You won’t often hear the band on mainstream radio. With the exception of an occasional spin from ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris on BBC Radio Two, and perhaps the odd play on BBC Six Music, Danny & The Champions of the World are still firmly stuck in the ‘up and coming’ category, a label they’ve maintained over seven years and despite four studio LP’s. Their failure to make a mainstream breakthrough may well be because they are difficult to categorise. It is easy to sympathise with whoever wrote their Wikipedia entry and described them as a ‘Folk Rock, Rock, Soul’ outfit, because the confusion is understandable. Live Champs! does nothing to make this any easier, though I’d say that ‘Country Rock’ is perhaps a better fit. Mind you, the band themselves added to the confusion by recording it in London’s Jazz Cafe. Still, I suppose the ‘Folk Rock, Rock, Soul, Country Rock Cafe’ was unavailable.
Live Champs! may still struggle to provide commercial success. There are no three minute nuggets suitable to sandwich between advertisements for haircare products and dog food. That said, it is in turns engaging, moving and foot-stompingly wonderful, and exceptionally performed throughout. Indeed, there are guitar riffs here- particularly on ‘The Colonel and the King’ and ‘Stop Thief’ which, had they been performed by a Clapton or a Page, would be currently being raved about by the serious music press the world over.
The difference between Live Champs! and their studio work is marked. Each previous LP has been enjoyable, but each has also felt constrained; almost as if the band were trying to fit their sound into a neat package onto which someone else had already written a label. Live, each individual element is given the time and space to shine; the rhythm section groove merrily along whilst Danny provides his best vocal yet, though comfortable to share the limelight with the powerful-yet-intricate guitar of Paul Lush and the sweet sax of the man mysteriously only known as ‘Free Jazz Jeff.’ I’m not sure where he is otherwise incarcerated but I’m already making the protest placards and arranging the demonstrations.
The album comes in two parts. The first, perhaps with the exception of the opener, (Never Stop Building) That Old Space Rocket, has- with danger of adding a whole new genre to the list- a bluesy feel. The second is far more immediate, departing from this formula and moving you along at breakneck speed. The album appears to have the tracks appearing in the order they were performed, and that is understandable, but if I’m to be a little picky I’d have reversed the order of the discs as the second is far more immediate and will better engage a new audience.
Danny and his Champs may never get rich from their music. They don’t subscribe to a mainstream radio or music television friendly formula and that is unlikely to change. That said, Live Champs! features their best work, performed in the way it is best heard, by a band absolutely at the top of their game.
