Y&T: Open Fire-Live(1985)

In what has to go down as one of the goofiest live album covers of all-time is rectified by the songs that are inside the album!

Y&T in the early 80’s were slogging it out in the United States playing coast to coast and opening for bands like Motley Crue  who in turn had outsold Y&T by a crazy amount.

The albums like 1982’s ‘Black Tiger’ and 1983’s ‘Meanstreak’ had made a dent on my listening radar,

England had taken to Y&T a lot more quicker than the States and definitely Canada.

But….

Once 1984’s ‘In Rock We Trust’ came out Y&T had finally got that kinda of a hit in ‘Don’t Stop Runnin’ and golly wouldn’t  you know that  even Tbone cracked open his wallet with his hard earned dough from pumping gas at the local Garage and  purchased ‘In Rock We Trust’!

So once 1985 came around Y&T punched out this live seven song album and one new studio track to push the live stuff and that track would be ‘Summertime Girls’. (more on this song later!)

No.	Title	Length
1.	“Open Fire”	4:26
2.	“Go for the Throat”	4:51
3.	“25 Hours a Day”	4:22
4.	“Rescue Me”	5:53

Side two
No.	Title	Length
5.	“Summertime Girls” (Studio Version)	3:30
6.	“Forever”	5:55
7.	“Barroom Boogie”	4:35
8.	“I Believe in You”	8:02

It boggled my mind when I originally purchased this on cassette back   in the Summer of 85 that Y&T had no songs included from the previous  ‘In Rock We Trust’ album. I didn’t get it at the time but perhaps these guys were trying to push the product from there earlier releases as so many people overlooked the early 80’s output.

 

Who knows what the reasoning was…

The seven live songs featured are great tracks. From opener ‘Open Fire’  Y&T cooked up a real cool batch of rocker tracks as in ‘Go For The Throat’,’25 Hours a Day’,’Baroom Boogie’. Dave Meniketti (lead vocals/lead guitar) had a real good knack at writing excellent catchy hard rock tracks and none is  more evident  than in the song ‘Forever’.

‘Forever’ packs a hard rock punch. Drummer Leonard Haze drives the tune with his drums. Big song for me off this album.

These guys could also show off their melodic rock side and that would be in the form of the songs ‘Rescue Me’ and ‘I Believe in You’. Meniketti who pretty much wrote all the songs himself could dial it down on the slower stuff but not make it so obvious to call it a power ballad!

For that Sir! dEke’s salutes you!

Now…

To push the album sales ‘Summertime Girls’ ( or as Mr 1537 calls it ‘Summertime Gill’s) the lone studio track on here  was released and was easily a move to push the more commercial slant of Y&T. I get it but as an 18-year-old in 1985 I wasn’t necessarily drinking the Kool Aide that Y&T was selling!

‘Summertime Girls’ was way to keyboard driven. To much fluff going for the hit, too obvious  even to me..I couldn’t handle it…haha

But the suits wanted hits so ‘SummerTime Girls crept up to #55 on the Single Charts and pushed this album to #70 on the album charts. Did ‘Summertime Girls’ do the trick?

Linked below is my review from about 4 years ago  of the next studio record of Y&T that they released in 1986 titled ‘Down For The Count’ in which you can read for yourself when friends get led down the “Wrong’ path of rock!

Just Click The Link Below!

https://superdekes.wordpress.com/2014/10/08/down-for-the-count-yep/

I still have steered clear of ‘Down For The Count’. I do have to add that even though this album wasn’t my thing. It was for many including my pal Pete from Australia who writes the excellent  ‘Destroyer of Harmony’ Blog! Maybe I’m the noob who missed the boat on ‘DFTC’?

Naaaa…it’s still fun bugging Tbone on it! That will never change!

Basically a real good live album for the times. Crap album cover! But the music inside does indeed do the talking! Well the live material that is!

Just a few weeks back I seen this album along with ‘Contagious’* sitting in the bins and it was a quick grab for both! Don’t worry folk’s the review for Contagious is coming! Thanks for asking! haha..

Too this day Dave Meniketti still has Y&T out on the road and releasing music so the dude has never given up carrying the flag!

But…

Hard to believe that 3/4’s of this band has passed on that being ,Joey Alves/Phil Kennemore /Leonard Haze. R.I.P Boy’s! 

*-I sent Tbone a pic of these two Y&T  records(Open Fire and Contagious) a few weeks back and told him ‘Sorry no Down for the Count’. 

Ha! 33 years later and he’s still getting Chirped about DFTC!

 

 

 

 

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