THE FROST
The Best Of The Frost (Vanguard)
Reviewed by Shaun Dale

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Unless you're a mid-western rock fan of a certain vintage, odds are you haven't been waiting up nights for this one. If, however, you spent the late 60s with one eye on the coming events ads for Detroit's Grandee Ballroom, an appearance of The Frost was almost certain to brighten your day. Although they recorded a pair of albums and toured the country, the band never gained the stature outside its regional base that the music they produced merited. There's plenty of proof on this disc, recorded live during the Grandee Ballroom homestand that was arranged for the production of their second album. These tracks were absent from that release, largely because several of them had already appeared on the band's debut.

This is a band that on any given night could outdraw and out-rock anyone in a scene that was producing acts like the Stooges, the MC5 and Ted Nugent's Amboy Dukes. That's saying a bunch, but I think the performances here will bear me out. Dick Wagner, the lead guitar player who wrote half the material on the album, went on to further glory as the lead guitar player for acts like Lou Reed and Alice Cooper, but on the night in 1969 that these songs were played, he was in a band that were the kings of their world, playing their hearts out for a hometown crowd and creating an album that stands today as emblematic of a scene that became a rock and roll legend, even as the legend of The Frost faded. This disc, which, if it isn't actually the best of The Frost, is almost certainly The Frost at their best, is a fine way to refocus on four guys we should never have lost sight of.

Track List:

Opening Announcement * Rock And Roll Music * Sweet Lady Love * Baby Once You Got It * Donny's Blues * Black As Night * Fifteen Hundred Miles * Take My Hand/Mystery Man * Black Train * We Got To Get Out Of This Place

© 2003 - Shaun Dale