BOBBY CONN & THE GLASS GYPSIES - Live Classics Vol. 1

So what you were thinking when you opened this page. But if the title struck you as pretentious, you clearly haven't looked at the tracklist. This record really does contain the best of Bobby Conn's output: it thus serves the double function of first live album and first best-of. A decade or so of a career, four LPs and one bizarre EP of far-fetched love songs. Maybe they're not "classics" in the strictest sense, but they're certainly his classics, from the first (a "Never Get Ahead" fished out of his debut) to the last.

The spirit of the Chicago man's concerts is already clear from the intro, where he explains to the crowd that he's recording a live album and therefore needs some audience noise. So he asks everyone to scream as if they'd just heard the best song of their lives, and launches into "Angels", one of his finest melodies.

And to keep the highlights coming, it's followed by "We Come In Peace", the standout track from his latest studio album, "The Homeland". Conn invites everyone to join the family, and what kind of family that is becomes clear if you follow the arc of his career and the way he presents himself live. His is, in fact, a clan in the style of Celentano or, to stay in an international frame of reference, of Prince. A sort of commune, cheerfully out of step with the times, decked out in silver and platform boots as if it were still 1972. Then again, in keeping with a certain hippie spirit, the glam component is perhaps what leaves the deepest mark on both Bobby Conn's work and his persona. After all, can a man who renamed his band The Glass Gypsies really have escaped the influence of Bowie?

Still, something does change between the studio albums and this live record. It's hard, after all, to preserve all the layers Conn manages to achieve in the studio. Something had to be worked out, then, so the songs wouldn't lose their original punch. The solution fits the character: a heavier dose of brazen guitars unafraid of kitsch, and a total unwillingness to drop even one vocal interplay found on record, even if it means having the band's most tone-deaf members sing along.

But as always with this artist, what saves him (indeed, what makes him unique and in his own way exceptional) is his complete awareness of what he's doing, his skill in applying the reflective mindset and know-how of post-rock to music as instinctive as glam and rock'n'roll. This makes some guitar theatrics - the kind that would have embarrassed even Europe in their heyday - not only bearable but downright fun. So "Axis '67 Part 2" isn't Hendrix-like only in name: it's still Hendrix, wildly reinterpreted according to the gospel of Bobby Conn. "Rise Up", the title track of his best album, instead carries all the decadent melodrama of Roxy Music before launching into a disco beat wrapped in falsetto vocals and towering guitar.

His campiest side flaunts itself shamelessly in the pairing of "Baby Man" and "Baby Man Refrain". The first is rock'n'roll without a shred of shame, while the refrain is glam to the nth degree (or post-glam, if you prefer), sung as if it were an unreleased number from "Rocky Horror", cut at the last second from Frank'n'Furter's repertoire. Too bad the other camp gem, "Home Sweet Home", can only be enjoyed in one of the two Quicktime clips.

Right, because Bobby Conn's concerts, just like those of one of his illustrious predecessors, are absolutely sound and vision. The spectacle, the staged show, the metallic jumpsuits are essential, inseparable from his music. That's why the two video clips are so precious, why we wish there were even more of them, why a single CD probably isn't enough to tell the whole story of Bobby Conn - even if it's a great place to start.

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30/04/2026