One Night in America - Romantic Getaway & Adventure Travel Guide | Perfect for Couples, Road Trips & Exploring the USA

It's one of the great mysteries of Plimsouls' history, well, maybe for Plimsouls completists, anyway. In the liner notes to the 2005 reissue, Peter Case says he thinks it was recorded in Cleveland, but that's all there is. Which got me to wondering ... .I'm pleased to report that this album was most definitely recorded at the Phantasy Nite Club in Lakewood, Ohio, a near-in suburb on the west side of Cleveland, on a coldish, rainy night, probably in the fall of 1981 or perhaps in early 1982. The theater was formerly a restaurant that had a pirate's ship built into it--which survived the transition to a music venue. I saw "A Hard Day's Night" there in 1964 when it was the Homestead Theater and visited the Phantasy a number of times to see/hear live music.So how do I know this is THAT show? It was broadcast live on a program called "Rock Around the Block," over one of Cleveland's FM stations, WWWM--M105. I taped it on my cassette deck that night since I couldn't get to the show, which was only a couple of miles from my house at the time.The show was taped while the band was promoting its self-titled first album, and well before the second album was recorded based on between-song banter from Peter Case to the crowd. In fact, in introducing "A Million Miles Away," he says, "This isn't on a record or anything...." The song was later released as a single before appearing on "Everywhere At Once" in 1983.I've treasured and played that old cassette pretty regularly for 30 years now. My tape includes "Every Day Things," "Women" and "Zero Hour" from the first album that didn't make it to this CD, and the song order on the CD is tweaked just slightly from the actual show. Their encore that night was a great, unexpected cover of Elvis' "King Creole." I'm happy to say that the 2005 reissue sounds LOTS better than my old tape and represents what a hot, ripping show this really was. The overall dynamics and gritty edge to those crunching dual guitars, especially, make this newer version literally jump from the speakers. Louder is definitely better here.Don't know if the band knew it, but their inclusion in this set of the Outsiders' classic, "Time Won't Let Me," was a great shout out to this hometown band, which charted this song nationally (#5) in 1966.This CD is a must-have for all Plimsouls fans and anyone who loves raw and hard, swinging, live rock n' roll. It's a great testament to the energy and enthusiasm that was rebirthing rock--post New Wave--in the late `70s and early `80s, while mining some of the great tunes that inspired the band. It's highly underrated and unknown to most but stands as one of the best live rock albums ever.