The 100 Best Live Recordings - No. 99: The Guess Who - Live At The Paramount

No. 99 - The Guess Who - Live At The Paramount (RCA/Victor, 1972 - Buddha, 2000 Re-release)

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Christopher was askin' the astronomer
"Can your telescope tell me where the sun's gone?"
And I'm still sittin' with my next door neighbour sayin'
"Where'd you get the gun, John?"¹

I was supposed to include this recording in my The 25 Best Live Rock Recordings. But not the original seven-song single LP release. Everything that could be wrong with that release was. No, the Buddha re-released and expanded version (2000). It is a grand lesson about how cavalier were the attitudes of the producers programming these live releases.

The original 1972 LP release included seven songs, so few because of the mammoth 17:05 live version. It is an exciting piece of work, but it left space only for six shorter songs. My problem with that is the choice of those six songs. This original release was thus,

Side one

1. "Albert Flasher," 3:32

2. "New Mother Nature," 4:39

3. "Glace Bay Blues," 3:21

4. "Runnin' Back to Saskatoon," 6:16

5. "Pain Train," 6:10

Side two

1. "American Woman," 17:05

2. "Truckin' Off Across the Sky," 7:15

This programing includes only two pre-Share The Land (RCA Victor, 1970) selections. There is no “Share The Land,” “No Sugar Tonight,” “No Time,” or “These Eyes.” These songs were much more memorable, more essential than “Albert Flasher,” “Glace Bay Blues,” or “Pain Train.” When re-released in 2000, the song number doubled and the order reprogrammed to better reflect the actual concert.

1. "Pain Train," So Long, Bannatyne (RCA Victor, 1971)

2. "Albert Flasher," Single Release (RCA Victor, 1971)

3. "New Mother Nature," American Woman (RCA Victor, 1970)

4. "Runnin' Back to Saskatoon," Live At The Paramount (RCA Victor, 1972)

5. "Rain Dance," So Long, Bannatyne (RCA Victor, 1971)

6. "These Eyes," Wheatfield Soul (RCA Records, 1969)

7. "Glace Bay Blues," Live At The Paramount (RCA Victor, 1972)

8. "Sour Suite," So Long, Bannatyne (RCA Victor, 1971)

9. "Hand Me Down World," Share The Land (RCA Victor, 1970)

10. "American Woman," American Woman (RCA Victor, 1970)

11. "Truckin' Off Across the Sky," Live At The Paramount (RCA Victor, 1972)

12. "Share the Land," Share The Land (RCA Victor, 1970)

13. "No Time," Canned Wheat (RCA Victor, 1969)

Four tracks from the show remain unreleased: "Get Your Ribbons On" (the original show opener); "Heartbroken Bopper" (Rockin’ (RCA Victor, 1972)); "Guns, Guns, Guns" (Rockin’ (RCA Victor, 1972)); and "Follow Your Daughter Home" (Artificial Paradise (RCA Victor, 1973)).²

The recording of Live At The Paramount took place in August 1972. The band released Rockin’ in February of the same year, having recorded the material on May 22, 1972. Then came So Long, Bannatyne in July 1971. In January 1973, RCA Victor released Artificial Paradise. The tour producing Live At The Paramount was closest to being a promotional tour for the release of Rockin’, which contributed three of the four songs not released on the original LP or the 2000 Buddha re-release. This manic calculus amounts to nothing in explaining the poor LP programming. The tour producing Live At The Paramount was not associated with the promotion of these releases, making it a question why so little of the earlier, more fundamental Guess Who material as ignored in the original release.

Madness.

The original programming of the LP release of Live At The Paramount made no more sense than that of Elton John 17-11-70 or The James Gang Live In Concert (ABC, 1971). The 2000 Buddha re-release corrected this, giving Guess Who fans back “These Eyes,” “Hand Me Down World,” “Share The Land,” and “No Time.” Burton Cummings was a beautiful amalgam of rock singer, rhythm and blues shouter, jazz crooner, and lounge stalwart back in the day, and still sounded pretty good 40 years later.

No subsequent live recording of the Guess Who and/or Cummings is comparable to the gritty, organic sound stirred during the Live At The Paramount performance. That 16-plus minutes of “American Woman” followed seamlessly by the jazzy “Truckin’ Off Across The Sky” revealed a very talented and clever band and band leader. This live recording deserves far more recognition; it has been vastly underrated. Burton Cummings never sounded better.

1. “Rain Dance.” Burton Cummings, Kurt Winter, from So Long, Bannatyne (RCA Victor, 1971).

2. To, Contributors. “Live Album by the Guess Who.” Wikipedia.org, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 11 Oct. 2009, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_at_the_Paramount_(The_Guess_Who_album). Accessed 11 Feb. 2025.

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