THE BAND CALLED FREE ON DVD

Years ago, I was interviewing Warren Haynes of Gov't Mule and talking about some covers that his band had done, and we were talking about "Mr. Big" by Free. I didn't know much about Free other than "All Right Now" and that it was the band that Paul Rodgers was in before Bad Company. He was like, "Oh, man, you gotta check out Free."

I've always respected Paul Rodgers, but I didn't know much about him.  I thought that Bad Company was sort of the prototypical FM radio band. Hard rocking, but not too hard rocking or threatening, blues based but with a sort of very tight sound, they are kind of like the band that paved the way for Foreigner and groups like that. That's just my opinion. Having only heard "All Right Now" by Free, I kind of mistook them for the same kind of thing. Free were way more bluesy, and way more badass than Bad Company.  I'm not ripping on Bad Co.: they have tons of timeless radio hits.  But I could see why Warren Haynes preferred Free, and I prefer them also. I would say the difference between Free and Bad Company is like the difference between The Faces and Rod Stewart's late '70s slicker solo material.

All this explanation is leading up to Free Forever, a 2 DVD set on Eagle Vision that comes out next week. It's got a ton of cool stuff: their performance on the German TV show Beat Club, some music videos and the audio of their performance from the Isle Of Wight Festival from 1970. If you like the amazing blues rock scene of the late '60s and early '70s, this is highly recommended.  In fact, after watching this, it occurred to me that I don't have any Free in my collection.  I'm about to change that and get their Molten Gold: The Anthology, which came out in 1993.

TOMORROW ON OUTQ: THE PRETENDERS, OASIS, THE CURE, LABELLE AND "QUEEN + PAUL RODGERS"

Tomorrow on OutQ, I'll be discussing new albums by some classic bands. The only one I really like, though, is The Pretenders' Break Up The Concrete. It's sort of a '50s rock and roll inspiried album. For some reason, it doesn't feature drummer Martin
Chambers - instead, Chrissie Hynde uses session legend Jim Keltner (who was in Neil Young's band when The Pretenders opened for Neil). But, The Pretenders are whoever Chrissie says is in the band.

There are also new albums by Oasis and The Cure. Neither moved me much, I'm sorry to say. Funk/disco/rock band LaBelle released their first album in 32 years, the stuff I heard sounds nice, but it didn't floor me. I'm actually most familiar with the least famous lady in the trio: Sarah Dash. I saw her in Keith Richards' backing band. She sang lead on "Time Is On My Side" and tore that s*** up.

Finally, there's the album by "Queen + Paul Rodgers." I'm more of a "greatest hits" guy when it comes to Queen than a die hard fan, so I don't take the album as personally as some die hard fans might, but it's really not good, and borders on the embarassing. I think Brian May, Roger Taylor and Paul should have come up with a different band name.