Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Once more but with even greater certainty of what propelled Mike Zito to prominence, Live From The Top from 2009 is thankfully being re-released thanks to Gulf Coast Records and it is one that for fans of the St. Louis native that comes with pleasure and fascination stirred together to make up a musical feast that not many would have got to feast upon the first time round.
A reissue has to be done with care and attention, if it handled with the right considerations it can present objectivity, an homage to the past given fresh insight in the modern age; when it is released with nothing more in mind that cashing in on a name and a career, the public will see through such conceit and punish accordingly.
For Mike Zito, Live From The Top represents a warm and fruitful re-encounter, a chance to reacquaint British, as well as world-wide audiences with the power of Mike Zito’s early sounds and before the explosion of work that has come to dominate his career since. It is in this that the pleasure of hearing an early live recording is given extra prescience, and across songs and covers such as Natural Born Lover, One Step At A Time, 19 Years Old, Dead Of Night, Sugar Sweet, Superman and Hey Joe, that sense of timing that has come to mean so many, through bands such as The Royal Southern Brotherhood and his own stirring solo work, has always been, not just visible, but lively, persuasive and complete.
Recorded initially over two nights at the Smoking Moe’s after party in Winter Park, the detail in the tracks, highlighted by the appreciation of the band’s members, which included Curtis Salgado, Ana Popovic, who also gone onto produce her own sterling work, and Jimmy Carpenter, takes the hand of the energy provided and propels it onwards, the calling of the stratospheric already in evidence.
A terrific reminder of just how much Mike Zito has come to represent the genre, and like many of his illustrious companions, he continues to stand astride, guitar open to the elements, and with a sound that would make an angel weep with joy.
Mike Zito releases the reissue of Live From The Top on Gulf Coast Records on January 12th.
Ian D. Hall