the second video, thanking the crowd for coming and adding that it was a larger crowd than they'd expected...
This show at London's Rainbow Theatre, which was being done both for charity and for a later radio broadcast, was more than three years after "Radar Love" had been a huge hit in the UK (it was released later in the US than in Europe, 1974 here instead of 1973 in Europe).
And at least one British rock journalist was surprised by how large the crowd was, given how much time had passed since that hit.
I got my remastered copy of that 1977 live double album today, and it came with a 30-page booklet that included the concert review in Britain's weekly music magazine Sounds, written by Geoff Barton, who later founded the heavy metal magazine Kerrang!.
Barton said in the first paragraph of the review that with no hits in the UK since "Radar Love," he'd thought the concert might be a "half empty, half hearted, rather dismal affair."
But he'd already contradicted that with the headline (well, if he'd written the headline himself; he was also an editor at Sounds): Searing Earring.
The review was a rave, with Barton writing about how the band "rampaged" through their material, with their music "impeccably balanced" and "immaculately played" from the start at a "frantic pace" to the ending with the audience "eating out of their collective hands."
Barton concluded:
Let's hope that the band will tour Britain in its entirety very soon, Concerts as good as this one shouldn't be reserved for London exclusively.
The whole country deserves to see 'em.
It's a shame that concert wasn't filmed, but at least much of it was released on that double album, which I've sometimes seen called one of the best live albums of all time.
And this remastered double album did come with a bonus, a DVD with video of 4 songs from their concert in Zwolle months later. This DVD should have better quality video than what I've seen so far of that concert - I haven't taken time to watch the DVD yet - but I already posted 3 of the 4 1977 videos from that concert here -
https://democraticunderground.com/103478520 - in the OP and replies 2 and 4 there, since the band was so great then.
And "Con Man" was part of how great that London concert was.
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