I can still remember the first time I heard this album 20 years ago. I was turned on to Link Wray's _Bullshot_ by Bo Solomon, a guitarist for the Wild Seeds, when I was living in Austin. A couple of years later I was living in Lubbock and came across a used copy of this album. I didn't know what to expect but when I got the end of side one and Link Wray was doing the ultimate train wreck ending on "Rumble" I was just jumping around on the couch in the living room of my little house-a one bedroom converted garage-screaming at the top of my lungs "Go, old man, go! Rock on!! Ahhhh!!!!!!" and just losing my mind. (I mean, really, Eddie Van Halen will be lucky to have these chops when he is Wray's age when this record was made.)

Wray is best known, of course, for the instrumental "Rumble" which came out in the `50s. A brooding instrumental, the story goes that Wray invented fuzz tone by sticking a pencil through his amplifier speaker to make it rattle. The song charted in the Top 20 and was banned throughout the country because playing it at high school dances was believed to start fights. Wray had and up and down career-lots of acclaim (and you never would have had Jack White but for the grace of Link Wray) but not that many album sales-and late in life relocated to Scandinavia, a hotbed of fifties/rockabilly interest.

There are quite a few compilations of his work available that many cover the many stages of his studio work from `50s instrumentals, to proto-garage `60s psychedelica, to his home recordings in the `70s, the `80s collaborations with Robert Gordon plus some solid solo work, to his late-career European releases. But, although there are several live albums out there, the overall quality-production and playing-on them doesn't even come close to _Live at the Paradiso_. With a solid rhythm section, including David Letterman studio band alumnus Anton Fier on drums, these songs go to show how the skeletal arrangements of his `50s studio work could be nothing short of nuclear live on the stage. Long out of print in the United States and only available as a high-priced import, this album shows up periodically on Amazon in domestic release and is a must-have for any Wray aficionado in particular as well as anyone who loves the note-shredding guitar power trio format.

You can bet I'm ordering a copy to replace my worn-out vinyl version!

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Bert vanC Bailey

Link Wray playing rock at its rawest and very best

Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2013

This is one of the great live rock albums, and I mean rock 'n roll. It features one of its earliest warriors, Link Wray, who helped to forge a distinctive sound for the electric guitar while busily setting down rock's hardest sound--way beyond Elvis, or Buddy or Eddie Cochrane.

The audience sounds well-prepared for what Wray's trio puts out so fast and seamlessly over these two August evenings in '79, over two decades after Wray first hit the scene. Not least, there's sharp production (Richard Gottehrer and Toni Wadler) that gives us a demonstration-class feel for the energy on those nights at Amsterdam's Paradiso.

This first came to my attention as an LP, 30 or so years ago. It was spun only two, maybe three times, but the CD beckoned especially for a well-recalled version of I Saw Her Standing There, in a medley with a song called Walk Away From Love, by Anton Fig, Wray's drummer on this. Both left indelible earworms, although there's more here worth hearing: She's No Good (Wray/Fig), Blue Suede Shoes, his two biggest hits, Rawhide and Rumble, and a Wray instrumental called Run Chicken Run - a driven, 2-minute punkish number enriched by unique, oddly effective guitar scratchings.

This recording covers two nights, so let's also break for a bio sketch: Fred Lincoln "Link" Wray Jr, a North Carolina native, also lived in Virginia and Washington DC. Proud to be half Shawnee through his mother, with his brothers he began life in deep poverty. During the Korean War he served for two years in the US Army, and contracted tuberculosis. But he only learned about it in `55, and it cost him a lung. He was already making a name for himself by then in the rockabilly group the Wraymen, with brothers Doug and Vernon. Their 1958 instrumental hit Rumble launched a new sound for electric guitar-playing. Legend says he drove a pencil through his amp's speaker cone, helping to break out his distorted, reverberant, overdriven sound. Pete Townshend once said: "If it hadn't been for Link Wray and Rumble I would have never picked up a guitar." In '59, he had another hit with Rawhide, and in the mid '70s, teamed with Robert Gordon to release Robert Gordon w/Link Wray, and Fresh Fish Special.

Wray had a clique of very devoted fans, and with this group he probably exceeded their expectations. Punk was at its loudest around the late '70s, and Wray may have wanted to show that, even at 50 he could still feel the fever to assail his audience as musically hard as any angry young punker. Along with a handful of others, he seems to be saying, much of what punk has to offer was out there as far back as the late `50s. Certainly, he is out to show that there is nothing quite like this early music.

If this is a great album it's not least due to South African Anton Fig's drumming. Fig, who'd later grace the Letterman show, is appropriately punchy, simple and impactful, and in close synch with Wray throughout. Even playing out the simplest 60s, AAB beat, as on Rawhide, he lays out a solid backbeat for the guitar, only now and then adding in fills and solos. Jimmy Lowell plays the driving bass in the trio, taking his moment when Fig sits back after soloing on Rawhide; after that, the drums again set a driving pace moving to the end.

Wray's razor-sharp execution, almost as much as his unique sound, made him one of the great rhythm guitarists. That sound that he invented on Rumble was apparently thought so scary to the parental crowd back in the '50s that the song was banned from the airwaves - despite having no lyrics! This menacing element he helped to forge is revived on this night, and spectacularly. Wray also knows to use his voice sparingly, however eager his youthful tone remained. He well knew that it's the guitar work - the twanging clangor, his vivid strums, the occasional soloing forays - that got him an enduring fan base. On this album, and even on Rumble, he ventures into Hendrixland, complete with flings with feedback, and pulls it off well.

Wray alone is credited for vocals, although a punkish, choral backup (Fig and Lowell?) frequently adds to the proceedings. The slowest number is a Wray tune called Subway Blues, featuring Link scat-echoing his own guitar licks, and he's also game here for some later-60s electric soloing. Fig stretches out his longest solo in this number - intent always on scene-setting definition, not so much on poetry (so, like Roach more than Blakey).

The audience is cranked up for its spell of 1950s rock standards, even if a great many singers and bands had championed several of them. Lennon's Money to this day remains unmatchable, and very true renditions of Shake, Rattle and Roll and Be-Bop-A-Lula cannot so easily be ignored. One might have asked instead for a restoration of repeat takes of the trio's best items.

Still, at several points this album captures some of the greatest live rock music ever recorded: US rock at its rawest and very best.
****½

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woody

Link Wray R

Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2013

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This is one of the all-time GREAT live rock albums! Link handles vocals and smokes on guitar! Jimmy Lowell on bass and Anton Fig on drums are mighty in their own right. CD arrived in great condition.

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James Hamilton

Link Rocks Amsterdam !!!

Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2008

Back in 1980 the owner of the local record store in Owensboro Ky. said he had recieved an album he thought I would like. He was right. Up until that point I had heard of Link Wray but never listened to him. I was an aspiring guitarist very much into punk rock. To me, Link was the piece that connected early rock and roll to punk.
The album opens with Link's trio blasting through Carl Perkin's classic "Blue Suede Shoes," then on to Link's own "Ace of Spades." The band is incredibly intense. This record feels like you are at the venue. No slick production, just an excellent recording of Link and his band in tip-top form. (Anton Fig on the Drums, and Jimmy Lowell on Bass)
I have since collected many of Link's recordings. This is my favorite. This is punk rock. Link's playing is at its best. The band is fantastic. All of Link's classics are here in their wreckless glory, Rawhide, Run Chicken Run, Rumble, as well as a couple of Link originals that I have not found anywhere else.(She's No Good, and Walk Away From Love) There are also butt-kicking versions of the rock and roll classics"I Saw Her Standing There" and "Money."
I was wearing out my vinyl copy of this album so I am grateful to own a CD copy. Do yourself a favor and get this disc. It may very well change your life. (as it did mine)

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Harald Mausa

Klasse Musik, Tonqualität (leider) unterirdisch

Reviewed in Germany on September 29, 2010

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Über Link Wray bin ich irgendwann in den 80er Jahren mal gestolpert. Ein Kumpel von mir, der leider später tödlich verunglückt ist, war absoluter Fan von LINK WRAY.
Mit dem zusammen habe ich mir mir damals die LP " Live At The Paradiso" reingepfiffen und auch auf eine meiner Kassetten aufgenommen. Mann, das war damals noch "state of art"- unglaublich für
heutige Generationen!!

Die Musik ist heute immer noch über jeden Zweifel erhaben. Aber tontechnisch?
Ich würde mal sagen, die LP ist mir damals n i c h t aufgefallen besonders schlecht zu sein. Oder meine Erinnerung ist einfach verblasst.
Diese CD aber ist soundtechnisch sowas von mies, daß es kaum zu glauben ist, daß dies eine "offizielle" Veröffentlichung ist und kein Bootleg.
Daher kann die Bewertung (leider!) nicht über drei Sterne liegen.
Musik: 5
Sound: 1
Macht 6 geteilt durch zwei= Drei. Schade. Das Teil rockt ansonsten super. Speziell "Rawhide",
"Rumble" , "I Saw Her Standing There" gehen ab wie Schmitz' Katze.
Da "Link Wray" heutzutage leider nur Eingeweihten ein Begriff ist, wird es wohl auch in Zukunft kein Remastering geben, was sehr zu bedauern ist.

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