August 20, 1973
Schaeffer Music Festival
New York
Review of Schaefer Music festival show
REVIEW 1
New Music Express concert review (exerpt)
by Linda Solomon
This could run like a shaggy dog story: Robin Trower played Schaefer Festival and gave a superb performance (yay!) which I (boo, sob!) missed (hiss!), having got to Central Park late. The bill was Mark-Almond, Foghat, and Trower, and everyone assumed that Trower would be the second act.
Not so. Trower went on first, blew everybody out. Aaron Fuchs, - rock writter friend, says it was a solid power-trio, firmly rooted in early Hendrix and "Disraeli Gears" Cream, with B.B. King influences present, but genuine Trower power.
Reg Isadore had a keenly developed sence of time and punctuation on the drums, Trower was, evidently , brilliant, and bassist Jimmy Dewar did them proud on vocals, with dark, husky tones and contemporary R&B directional signals - particularly on "Man Of The World".
As Aaron put it: "Al Green meets heavy metal".
( By the way, the Trower band has not played Max's, much less "destroyed "it, as Trower was reported as saying in NME recently. I checked with Max's, and it never happened. My Max's source didn't even think the band had played a guest set. If they'd been there, I would have known about it and been there myself - or sent a scout)
REVIEW 2
Variety 8/29/73
British night at the Schaefer Music Festival last Monday(20th) came up aces as Foghatsfirst local appearance brought the young crowd after the long -awaited Gotham return of Mark - Almond. The Wolfman Rink, Central Park drew about 5700 in the 7000 seat rink.
Robin Trower, ex- Procol Harum lead guitarist, was impressive in his first Gotham date as the Chrysalis disk artist, aided by Reg Isidore on drums and James Dewar on bass guitar and vocals, rocked in fine style, meritting their encore.
click the images to enlarge