Live - Like That presents quite simply the very best of the best numbers featuring Denmark's greatest rock band down the ages. The album not only shows us the band at its very best after many tough years of wear and tear on the road - it also manages somehow to capture those magical moments when the very nerve of live music catches the audience spellbound.
Enthusiasm and charisma
The producer has chosen to locate the singing and instruments in the very foreground of the sound picture. The dynamics of this make it absolutely impossible to remain passive. Even if you are just lying at home on the sofa. This is gripping, atmospheric American-inspired rock with links to the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix as well as to the Danish ballad tradition.
At the same time Live - Like That presents a group of musicians with a great zeal for playing, could you ever imagine finding a front man with the same charisma as that charming, cheeky Copenhagener Kim Larsen? So if you suddenly get the urge to sing along with such favourite hits as "Woman of Mine" ("Kvinde min"), "Buckets of Success" ("Masser af Succes") and "Shindy Street" ("Rabalderstræde"), you can be sure you won't be on your own.
Major penetration
Sales of Gasolin's records have long surpassed the million mark. But it hasn't all been one big party. Gasolin' was a rock orchestra with a big heart in the hippie era of the 1970s. It was ordinary people's way of life, the oil crisis and pollution which provided the inspiration for the band's human, folksy and easily grasped tales of everyday life, love and society in general.
After nine years, the party ended one autumn day in 1978. Gasolin' felt they just couldn't achieve anything more. The group finished at the top, with only the dream of reaching out to that ordinary, good time Charlie in the United States unfulfilled.
Peter Elsnab is a music journalist and Jesper Nykjaer Knudsen is a culture journalist.
Gasolin, 1976. Photo: Steen Jacobsen/ Scanpix.