At first glance, you might mistake this for unused material from the same late-1968 concerts that supplied the material for The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield & Al Kooper. But no, this was recorded about two and a half months later at a different venue, and with a different backup band (
Paul Harris on piano,
Jerry Jemmott on bass, and John Cresci on drums). There's still some similarity to the repertoire, though, and a good deal of similarity to the music, which is blues-rock with a late-'60s improvisational bent. Little original material was offered, the only song falling into that category being
Bloomfield's "(Please) Tell Me Partner," a routine ten-minute blues. The soul-pop cover "Together Till the End of Time" comes off the best, in part because of its relative economy at four and a half minutes in length, and the cover of
Sonny Boy Williamson's "One Way Out" isn't bad. But the interpretations (including a nine-minute "Season of the Witch," which
Kooper and
Stephen Stills had done on the popular
Bloomfield-
Kooper-
Stills Super Session album) run long and sometimes lack imagination. This preserves a historic moment of sorts, when
Bloomfield introduces then-unknown guest guitarist
Johnny Winter, who takes some of the guitar duties on "It's My Own Fault." This was the appearance that, according to
Kooper's liner notes, alerted Columbia to
Winter, after which the label quickly offered him a contract. ~ Richie Unterberger