UFO (5) – Strangers In The Night

There were some fabulous live albums released in the late 80s by hard rock bands when such albums were how such bands would put out a "best of" compilation. Live And Dangerous - Thin Lizzy, If You Want Blood - AC/CD, Tokyo Tapes - Scorpions and plenty more I'm sure .... but Strangers In The Night was the best of all.

Here we have an really good recorded and produced live album by UFO and sounds great. I would like to have more songs from the first two "Space Rock" UFO albums, but okay, this is one of the best live albums ever.

UFO’s ‘Strangers in the Night’ is often cited as one of the greatest live albums of all time. I don’t know how many of the true blue UFO fans contribute to whatever surveys rock historians use to make such claims but I would guess a number of them are being truly objective. I guess I’m skeptical because I love this band so much and it seemed like they deserved so much more success and acclimation as one the best bands in the history of hard rock. ‘Strangers’ maybe hit top 50 Billboard in the States (though I’m pretty sure it hit Top Ten in the UK) and it has never been certified gold, never mind platinum but maybe that’s the reason UFO are so beloved; they’re such a niche band and they were never over exposed by FM radio or the other rock media. It still baffles me because Van Halen, Aerosmith, KISS were huge and talent wise - UFO were right there with them! They had Michael Schenker in his prime for Christ’s sake and they had so many awesome tunes. ‘Strangers’ of course contains the creme de la creme from the Schenker period of the catalog (1974-1978). “Lights Out”, “Rock Bottom”, “Out in the Street”, “Too Hot to Handle”, “Love to Love”, “Hot N’ Ready”, “Shoot Shoot” - I mean most bands would give half of their scrotums to be able to pump out these classics in the live setting. ‘Strangers’ should have kicked UFO into the stratosphere but it was not to be as the highly combustible Mogg/Schenker has reached its nadir and Michael split during the ‘Obsession’ tour (which ‘Strangers’ is a live record of) and not for the first but as it turned out - the last time. As much as the band tried to carry on into the 80’s (where they made some of their best music in my opinion), superstar status never came to . Ron Nevison also produced what would be his last record for the band (until both he and Schenker returned for 1995’s ‘Walk on Water’) and while there has been some quibbling about how much of ‘Strangers’ was live (“Mother Mary” and “This Kid’s” ittedly weren’t), most of it was and most live records are doctored in the studio anyway (that’s why they credit a producer, duh!) so, who cares! Hard rock fans certainly don’t and you may convert a few friends if you turn them onto this record (as Eddie Trunk has been doing for years). A number from our ‘Corset’ album? Oh surely you jest Phil Mogg, but forget the corny asides and appreciate a great front man and band at the peak of their powers, licensing laws be damned - if you like rock n’ rollers!

It's a great live album, the best track is Lights Out, and Rock Bottom.

Was this ever released in the US? My local guy says it has not.

Tracks 1,2,10,11,13 from October 17th concert
Tracks 3,4,8 from October 14th concert
Tracks 5,6 recorded in studio at Record Plant between 1-7 November
Tracks 7,9,12 from October 18th concert

Most of the releases from 1999 until nowadays are compilations, cause the have 2 bonus tracks (15 tracks!) The original album has only 13 tracks!