The Faces 1970

[neige]

Never seen this footage from German TV before!

I was never really a fan, and this is shambolic to say the least, but the riffs are great and it's full of soul.

... and I never knew how handsome Rod was back then (no wonder the camera can't get enough of him)

What do you think?

[fearlessfreap]

I missed them when they were around. I didn't know about them until the mid 70's through Creem. I knew Rod Stewart and his Mercury hits, though. I liked them a lot. I eventually tracked down the Faces albums. They went out of print in the US for some reason- makes no sense,  because Rod Stewart was bigger than ever and was now on the Faces' label.   I really like the Faces, and I don't listen to that sort of music very often any more.  They had a boxed set some time ago with a ton of unreleased material including live stuff. That's one of my favorite single artist boxed sets. They would have been fun to see in concert. They would get loose while drunk, while the Replacements, who obviously modeled themselves on them would get incapacitated. I always said the Faces, J Geils Band, early Aerosmith were doing the Stones better than the Stones at the time.

[Sneelock]

the Stones weren't doing encores. they thought that made them better or something.

I never saw the Faces but I came close a couple times. they played the Palladium in Hollywood a LOT in the early 70's
anybody I knew who went thought it was a HOOT & tried to drag me along next time. there was no age limit and it was 5 bucks or something.

my Dad forbade me from seeing shows at the Palladium. He insisted he'd heard from various sources that the building was not remotely up to code and that it would go up in flames any day. My Dad, rest his soul, is gone. The Palladium, so far as I know, is still there.

my shirt needs irony.

years later, a couple of the best shows I ever saw were the Kinks at the Hollywood Palladium. sorry Dad.

[quaco]

To me, they lacked many actually great songs, but maybe they proved you didn't technically need them. They're wonderful anyway and maybe songwriting would have gotten in the way.

[Stacy Heydon]

Watching that shows how massively inferior to The Small Faces they were.

[oh oooh]

Agree with the last two criticisms BUT Rod was a far, far better singer than foghorn Marriott

[Charlie O.]

Oh, man.

I'll get the "negativity" out of the way first. Their original material got a LOT better subsequent to this (particularly by albums three and four) - I can't imagine why they chose to open with "Devotion", or why that was in their live set at all. I wish there were fewer close-ups and more shots showing their interaction with one another. And I'd love to have a word with whoever edited this.

Now, then.

Even at this early stage, there are moments - as there are any time I hear/see the pre-Tetsu Faces - when I could swear they were the best rock band on the planet. As players (and I'm including Rod), they're UNBELIEVABLY perfectly counterbalanced and in step with one another.

This time I found myself focusing on the interplay between Woody and Mac - one underpinning the other, than the other underpinning the other, then both flying off in (seemingly) different directions, and somehow it all works - but the thing is, they're ALL like that, all the time. As with the Small Faces, you can hear and see how much love and respect they had for one another, that there's nothing they'd rather have been doing than what they were doing and no one they'd rather have been doing it with (Wood's Stone aspirations notwithstanding)... and you can hear and see why Lane's departure, even more than Rod's superstardom, doomed them.

And I'll tell you something else, too - their "Maybe I'm Amazed" is better than the original (if maybe not the Wings Over America version). There, I said it.

[fange]

Feb 2, 2024 1:41:13 GMT Charlie O. said:

Even at this early stage, there are moments - as there are any time I hear/see the pre-Tetsu Faces - when I could swear they were the best rock band on the planet. As players (and I'm including Rod), they're UNBELIEVABLY perfectly counterbalanced and in step with one another.

This. Emphatically, this.

What wonderful footage, thanks Felix.

For all their issues - shit, maybe a large part of it was because of those issues - they had moments where for me they are absolute gods and everything i want from a rock n roll band. There is so much going on in their chemistry that their peaks are just about perfect; so much feel, the riffs, the groove, the joy, the sadness, it's all there and then it's gone like cigarette smoke on the breeze.