One Night Only-Live

Black 'N Blue released four studio albums over the course of their short career. Unfortunately, they just didn't have enough to get them to the next level and broke up in 1989. They never released any live material during that time. 1997 marked the year Black 'N Blue would reform to perform a live show on Halloween night at the club/restaurant Key Largo, located in their hometown of Portland, Oregon. "One Night Only-Live" covers material from the entire Black 'N Blue catalog: five songs from the debut, three from "Without Love", two from "Nasty, Nasty" and one from "In Heat". They even include a song called "Violent Kid"; a track that they recorded in demo format originally (which can be found on "Anthology-Demos Remastered"), but never made it to any studio albums and is presented here in a live version. "One Night Only-Live" is a good mix of rockers with a couple of the ballad types thrown in. Overall the performance is excellent. Black 'N Blue seemed like they never missed a beat. The quality is also very good. The only thing that threw me off was Jaime Saint James voice. At first, I was under the impression that Black 'N Blue got a new singer. James sounds an octave lower than he did on the original songs and as if he had a cold. But he pulls it off and it gives the songs variety in the live sense. Judging from the picture on the back of the CD , it didn't seem like the stage was very big and B and B didn't have alot of room to move around. Black 'N Blue recently reformed again, but without original guitar "ace" Tommy Thayer, whose duties seem to be committed to the ever changing KISS line up. Tommy currently wears the costume and make-up of the Space Man. It should be interesting to see how any new material by Black 'N Blue will sound as Thayer was a chief player in the band. I recommend this album to anyone that likes 80's style hair metal/hard rock like Motley Crue, Ratt and Dokken.