[Dave, Melbourne,Australia]

As the album released in April in North America has still not been released here, I had it imported and collected it this week. Not every musician can release an "authentic live/not technically altered" concert album. (The best I've heard is Van Morrison's "It's Too Late To Stop Now".) This Lightfoot album is good and roughly what I expected, but I would have liked more banter between songs (no doubt edited out to enable inclusion of all of these 19 songs) and I thought Gord's singing was sometimes aiming too much for clarity rather than soulfulness/spontaneity. The short versions of "Christian Island" (1min58sec), "Carefree Highway" (2min06sec) and "Rainy Day People" (2min09sec) probably also prevented losing one of the 19 songs. For me, the highlights are "Canadian Railroad Trilogy", "Old Dan's Records", "Let It Ride" (with the percussion more "real" than on the EOM original), "Song For A Winter's Night" and "Christian Island". I can understand the retention of TWOTEF's hatchway line to avoid compromising the "authentic live/not technically altered" principle, but as Gord has been keen to publicise the new Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck findings, I'm surprised there wasn't a footnote about this on the album cover. Finally, I'm pleased Gord decided to release his "posthumous Lightfoot album" early, apparently due to the sad passing of Terry Clements and to avoid confusion after the later addition of Carter Lancaster to the band. Terry's family must be grateful for the decision and very emotional seeing and hearing the album. Imagine how we would all feel listening to it if it had been held back for its original purpose.