Eagle Rock to release more "Live at Montreux" albums

On August 23, Eagle Rock Entertainment will roll out four more Live At Montreux CDs. Is there any doubt that the annual Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland is the greatest fest of them all?

Canned Heat Live At Montreux 1973 (which ERE previously released on DVD in 2006) captures the legendary ‘60s blues’n’boogie band in a wild’n’wooly set that features Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown on vocals and guitar for “Please Mr. Nixon” and “Worried Life Blues.” Led by Bob “The Bear” Hite (1943-1981), a mountain of a man, whose prodigious appetites offstage rivaled his larger-than-life onstage persona, the band choogles its way through 10 songs, opening with “On The Road Again” and ending with “Shake’n’Boogie.” True blues historians, they also perform “Night Time Is The Right Time” which dates back to 1937. [MSRP $13.98]

Average White Band Live At Montreux 1977 captures this Scottish band playing their critically acclaimed brand of R&B music. Totally funky, endlessly soulful, they strut their considerable stuff through eight songs, starting with their biggest hit, the Arif Mardin-produced “Pick Up The Pieces,” and closing with a jam-band-styled version of Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through The Grapevine.” Eagle Rock originally released a DVD of this release in 2005. [MSRP $13.98]

Rockpile Live At Montreux 1980 is an all-out rock’n’roll assault from Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds and company at the height of their collaboration. Edmunds (Repeat When Necessary) and Lowe (Labour Of Lust) each had solo albums out, while their Seconds Of Pleasure release (the one and only Rockpile album), had yet to be released. The double-disc CD emanates their passionate love of performing, evidenced in solo material favorites like “I Knew The Bride,” “Crawling From The Wreckage,” “Ju Ju Man,” “Girls Talk,” and “Queen Of Hearts,” and a cover of Fats Domino’s “I Hear You Knocking.” [MSRP $13.98]

Status Quo Pictures: Live At Montreux 2009, a manufacture-on-demand only release, has one of Great Britain’s longest-lasting rock’n’roll bands taking its Pictures tour onto the shores of Lake Geneva for a very special night of Classic Rock. This album, released on DVD in 2009 and Blu-ray in 2010, features Quo going ballistic on 17 songs including their 1968 psychedelic hit “Pictures Of Matchstick Men,” electrified by the twin Telecasters of guitarists Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt. [MSRP $13.98]

Since its 1967 inception, the Montreux Jazz Festival has hosted every imaginable genre and these days rages on for two weeks straight thrilling 200,000+ fans per year. In 1971, it even burned down during a set by Frank Zappa’s band, The Mothers Of Invention. The story is told in the Deep Purple song “Smoke On The Water.”