I’m a huge Thin Lizzy fan but I’ve really started to dislike that various band members won’t let the band ‘die’ a graceful death. It isn’t that I’ve given up on the band but I really believe that the Thin Lizzy name should have been put to rest with the “The Boy is Back in Town” show in Dublin in 2005. Going from memory, at the time of the tribute show Snowy White (guitar) made some comments that Thin Lizzy's time was over and he didn't need to be rehashing the band's old material (you would think I should be able to find the actual quote online somewhere but no luck). I think he was wrong about the Dublin tribute show but…did we really need John Sykes and now Ricky Warwick touring around the world singing “Whiskey in the Jar”. (This reminds me of a time in grad school in the early 90’s when I saw that The Byrds were coming through town. I was curious enough to call the bar and found the band featured Michael Clarke (drums) who was the only original member.)

The current lineup of Thin Lizzy is composed of Scott Gorham, Brian Downey, Darren Wharton, Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell, and singer Ricky Warwick (x-The Almighty) and this lineup toured both the UK and the States earlier this year. This new lineup is essentially equivalent to the millennium reunion lineup (- Sykes, +Warwick) and has more former members than the recent John Sykes fronted lineup but I’m not necessarily sure that one version is better or worse than the other. One somewhat surprising comparison though is that the John Sykes lineup played Don Hill’s while this new lineup played Best Buy Theater in Times Square (and the ticket prices for this later show were too prohibitive for me to go check it out).

The new lineup released two limited edition live CDs from their UK tour and, on a positive note, this version of the band rocks hard, sounds better than I would have thought and Ricky Warwick does a passable Phil Lynott impression. The material that the band covers is predominately from later period Thin Lizzy and is similar to what was on the band’s posthumous Live/Life double CD.

Thin Lizzy: "Live at Indig02" Track Listing:

DISC 1
01 Are you ready
02 Waiting for an alibi
03 Jailbreak
04 Do anything you want to
05 Don't believe a word
06 Dancing in the moonlight
07 Massacre
08 Killer on the loose
09 Angel of death
10 Still in love with you
11 Whiskey in the jar

DISC 2
01 Emerald
02 Hollywood
03 Sha la la la
04 Cowboy song
05 Boys are back in town
06 Rosalie
07 Bad reputation
08 Rocker
09 Black rose

The problem I have with all of this is that this disc breaks no new ground. I’d love to see more live albums like the Tower Theatre 1977 disc but this 2CD set is essentially a live re-recording of Thin Lizzy’s greatest hits by a band with a spotty claim to the Lizzy name, a new vocalist (who misses on some tracks – i.e., he butchers “Still in Love With You”) with a very expensive price tag ($30 on Amazon). I realize that the touring band and control of the back catalog are two different things but I’d rather see more deluxe editions reissues (like the recent reissues of Jailbreak and Johnny the Fox), legit issues of some of the brilliant sounding bootlegs from the band’s (real) final tour in 1983 or a legit reissue of the bootleg rarities series Philip: The Man and His Music.

For anyone who wasn’t old enough to have seen Phil play live (I was fortunate enough to have convinced my father to take me to the ’80 show at the Ontario Theatre in WDC as I was too young to drive), the current live band is close as you can get to the real thing. You don’t need a copy of this disc though unless you already have all of the other Lizzy live albums and are dying for one more live version of their greatest hits.

Check out this fan filmed video from the show and see what you think...



Links:
Thin Lizzy