Ten Years After (1967)

I suppose I should start with the easy joke about how now they should be called Forty Years After, something like that. Moving along, I am always surprised by the confidence and poise of this debut, lost in the roaring acclaim of the follow-up live Undead and what became their signature song, "I'm Going Home," on which Alvin Lee demonstrated how quickly he could move his fingers and with such coordination and precision, and which act he took to Woodstock. And so they became rock stars and released some baker's dozen LPs over the years until now. The only one of them that I care about, the fallback position throughout this one is a kind of smoky roadhouse jazz -- a Hammond organ taking lead on many of the tracks, the vocals surprisingly understated, and a really tidy, efficient rhythm section. Everything moves forward constantly, and it all ends too soon.