Stephen Dale Petit: At High Voltage

Righteously (and suitably) titled live album gets full CD and exclusive digi release.

By Gavin Martin
( Classic Rock )
published

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The 2012 vinyl-only pressing of this show-stopping set from 2010’s High Voltage Festival has, understandably, attained semi-legendary status in contemporary blues lore.

Gibson-guitar-toting Petit (American-born, British-based), roof-raising mouth harpist Laurent Mouflier plus Pretty Things Jack Greenwood and Dick Taylor (the latter on bass for the first time since leaving the Stones in 1962) deliver a glorious and lethally primed brand of sonic devastation.

The seven tracks broker no fat – the steamhammer-driven originals (3 Gunslingers, People Talk) fire on a full-throttle-rush, and the covers (including Summertime Blues audaciously segued into Johnny Kidd’s Shakin All Over as per The Who Live At Leeds) complete a ‘plug in, turn up and blast off’ master class./o:p

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Gavin Martin
Gavin Martin

Late NME, Daily Mirror and Classic Rock writer Gavin Martin started writing about music in 1977 when he published his hand-written fanzine Alternative Ulster in Belfast. He moved to London in 1980 to become the NME’s Media Editor and features writer, where he interviewed the Sex Pistols, Joe Strummer, Pete Townshend, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Ian Dury, Killing Joke, Neil Young, REM, Sting, Marvin Gaye, Leonard Cohen, Nina Simone, James Brown, Willie Nelson, Willie Dixon, Madonna and a host of others. He was also published in The Times, Guardian, Independent, Loaded, GQ and Uncut, he had pieces on Michael Jackson, Van Morrison and Frank Sinatra featured in The Faber Book Of Pop and Rock ’N’ Roll Is Here To Stay, and was the Daily Mirror’s regular music critic from 2001. He died in 2022.