First of all, this is the single vinyl version of the album - probably how the LP would appear if Gallagher hadn't changed his mind and decided to shelf these recordings. I'm stating this because usually reviews concern the 2CD format in which it was first released in 2011, coupling the studio sessions with a live show recorded the following year in the same city. Of course extra material is always welcome but there's no shortage of live Gallagher CD's in my collection, so in this case I went with the vinyl. This way one can compare this album to the one that did get released later that year, Photo Finish. 5 songs feature in both collections, albeit with a different producer and band - only Rory and bassist Gerry McAvoy remain the same. Not that there was anything wrong with the other musicians, who had accompanied Rory through career highlights like Tattoo, Irish Tour and Calling Card. As for producer Elliot Mazer, Gallagher had heard his work for Neil Young (many albums including Harvest) and Janis Joplin (Cheap Thrills) and was so eager to work with him that he flew from Japan to San Francisco immediately after wrapping up his tour (on December '77) to record with him. As it happened, he wasn't happy with the direction Mazer took. Rory wanted a rawer sound, so he ditched keyboardist Lou Martin, drummer Rod De'Ath and the session extras to form a power trio in the style of his first band, Taste. The result was Photo Finish, his hardest rocking LP thus far. So how does it compare to Notes...? First of all, the track listing is different. The anthemic "Shadowplay" isn't here, and neither is live favorite "Shin Kicker" and a couple of other tunes. But we do get the beautiful blues/country ballad "Wheels Within Wheels", later the title track of an excellent acoustic compilation of outtakes and collaborations, also curated by Rory's brother/manager Dónal. Some songs are also familiar to fans from being added to other Rory CD reissues as bonus tracks. A cursory listen doesn't clarify whether these are different mixes of the same performance, or alternate performances. E.g: opener "Rue The Day" is a Lynyrd Skynyrd-like rock and roller with rolling piano and saxophone, while the version appended to Calling Card has less prominent piano and harmonica instead of sax. "B Girl" is one of his specialties: a noir crime story in song form. This version has the organ more upfront than the one included as bonus track in Calling Card, while the song would also resurface in more hard rock form on Top Priority (1979) under the title "Public Enemy No.1". A starker version of "Persuasion" has been added as a bonus track to the Deuce CD. Once again I can't make out if it's a different mix of the same performance. Here the guitar's fiery but bit less loud in the mix, there's more piano and some backing vocals. Of the songs that did make it to Photo Finish, the country-ish "Overnight Bag" is a more nuanced but overall weaker performance, and the frantic rockabilly "Cruise On Out" seems to prioritize Martin's Jerry Lee-like piano over Rory's guitar. Heavy blues "Mississippi Sheiks" references the same-named 30's black guitar/fiddle duo, so it's nice to hear it spiced up with the addition of a violin solo. "Brute Force & Ignorance" has already been among my favorite Gallagher numbers with its classic riff and chorus. This version is longer, and the horns give it a mariachi tint which suits it much better than you'd think. The story is about a bunch of visiting rockers causing a commotion in town, partly inspired by the Sex Pistols' infamous last concert in San Francisco, which he witnessed during the recording of this album. Both albums close with the emotive slow blues "Fuel To The Fire". Generally, while the guitar solos on the San Francisco recordings are as stupendous as ever, the addition of other elements (piano, organ, sax, violin etc) seems to make Rory's guitar appear less forceful - or so he must have thought at the time. Reportedly he found the arrangements too busy and the mixing process "too complicated", so he abandoned them to go for a more aggressive sound that metal fans must surely appreciate. One might say that Photo Finish turned out to be more in-your-face while Notes San Francisco is more nuanced. If the latter was released at the time, it'd be rated as a solid album like 1975's Against The Grain, rather than a classic one like next year's Calling Card. It's nevertheless great they made it available even decades later, as it's much much better than the average posthumous LP. Kudos to Rory's brother Dónal and nephew/album remixer Daniel for serving his legacy well by only releasing top notch stuff on his name, rather than scraping the bottom of the barrel to make a quick buck.
***** for Brute Force & Ignorance
**** for Rue The Day, Persuasion, B Girl, Wheels Within Wheels, Fuel To The Fire
**** for Rue The Day, Persuasion, B Girl, Wheels Within Wheels, Fuel To The Fire
*** for Mississippi Sheiks, Overnight Bag, Cruise On Out
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