Live album bridges Waters and Stones

Whoever said rock music's supergroups never reach their potential missed The Yardbirds. The rough and sloppy blues of their Five Live Yardbirds connects the dots between Muddy Waters and the Rolling Stones.\nThe group earns the term "super" with one-time members Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, though all three were never in the band at the same time.\nClapton would soon be replaced by Beck (who would later invite and be fired by Page), but not before recording Five Live. He wasn't "slow hands" yet, thankfully; his later song-writing tendencies had yet to take full shape. With Clapton romping through the set, the band tears through mostly short songs for a long, frenetic album.\nThe band plays like bees trapped in a glass box filling with smoke -- no one has any idea where they are going, but they are sure as shit going to knock themselves out trying. Is this pop? Blues? Rock? Folk? Who cares? They are burning down the walls of traditional music, exploring instrumentation that would become Led Zeppelin and so many others. \nThe recording quality is so-so and the production value is zero. Five Live is a raw blues-turning-to-rock album that doesn't let up. Crying-in-your-liquor wails that sully so many other blues albums can't be found.\nClapton didn't do pop, and psychedelic rock was a few years off. Instead, singer Keith Relf leads them somewhere between instead, pulled toward screaming, simple rock riffs. The 'Birds' passion rattles that part of a person's soul made to dance and celebrate.\nAnd even though The Yardbirds "borrowed" much of their material (just like Led Zeppelin would), few greater live discs exist, especially from that era.\nHow their name isn't synonymous with rock in the vein of the Rolling Stones, I'll never know. But as the world's fashion turns back to Luke Skywalker haircuts, gray and black trilbies and turncoats, it will need a simple, posh, energetic soundtrack to match.\nFive Live Yardbirds could fill that role nicely.