Sweet - Strung Up (Live + Studio) Japan Edition 1975)

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Source: Japan SHM-CD Remaster

Strung Up is a 1975 double live/compilation album by Sweet released by RCA Records in 1975. The first disc contains seven songs recorded live during a concert at the Rainbow Theatre, London on 21 December 1973. The second one contains ten selections of their songs recorded since 1973, including three songs that have not been released previously on any album, ("Burn On The Flame" and "Miss Demeanour") but only one ("I Wanna Be Committed") is brand new. The album also includes a unique mix of "Action" that comes to an abrupt end, and does not include the final decaying echo of the shorter single and longer Give Us a Wink album versions.

Strung Up was not originally released in the United States. In Japan it was released by Capitol Records under the title Anthology. In Italy it was released as 2 separate albums - the studio set entitled Strung Up (released 1975) and the live set entitled Live In England (1976).

By late 1975, the Sweet were no more the power in pop land that they had once seemed to be. It was nine months since they broke away from songwriters Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, with whom they'd enjoyed almost unfettered success -- since that time, only "Fox on the Run" had suggested that the Sweet's own songwriting prowess was even vaguely capable of competing with the masters, and two further singles ("Action" and "The Lies in Your Eyes") had emerged as the band's worst performing efforts since their very earliest days. Time, then, to dig into the vault and see what could be done to salvage the situation -- time, then, for Strung Up, a double album comprised of three-year-old live material plus a mishmash of old and new studio work. 

The concert recordings are the revelation. For all their reputation as mere purveyors of whatever their puppet masters offered them, the Sweet had developed into one of the most exciting live bands on the mid-'70s U.K. circuit, as sonically dynamic as they were visually alluring. Not for nothing had the band's sexually charged stage show been banned from one of the country's leading ballroom chains; not for nothing did Ritchie Blackmore join them on-stage in California one night. No matter how far their crown slipped in chart terms, in concert the Sweet would never let you down and, though the Strung Up tapes dated back to 1973 and a phenomenal show at the London Rainbow, they had not dated in the slightest. 

The studio cuts are less alluring, concentrating in the main on the self-composed B-sides that the band had long insisted upon, a few recent singles ("The Six Teens," "Fox on the Run," and "Action"), and a couple of songs laid down during the sessions for the band's last studio LP, Desolation Boulevard. In modern terms, it's the kind of compilation that would form the basis for a tremendous box set; at the time, however, it spoke more of the uncertainty with which the band's record label, if not the bandmembers themselves, viewed the future. And, tellingly, it sank like a stone.

Live album:
01. "Hellraiser" Nicky Chinn, Mike Chapman  03:51
02. "Burning"/"Someone Else Will"  05:41
03. "Rock 'n' Roll Disgrace"  04:08
04. "Need a Lot of Lovin'"  02:52
05. "Done Me Wrong Alright"  08:06
06. "You're Not Wrong for Lovin' Me"  03:10
07. "The Man with the Golden Arm" Elmer Bernstein, Sylvia Fine  07:50

Compilation album: 
08. "Action"  03:43 
09. "Fox on the Run"  03:22
10. "Set Me Free" Scott  03:56
11. "Miss Demeanour"  03:26
12. "Ballroom Blitz"  Chinn, Chapman  04:00
13. "Burn on the Flame"  03:34
14. "Solid Gold Brass"  05:27
15. "The Six Teens"  Chinn, Chapman  03:58
16. "I Wanna Be Committed"  Chinn, Chapman  04:01
17. "Blockbuster"  Chinn, Chapman  03:12

Bonus Track:
18. "A.C.D.C."

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