The Isley Brothers Live-- Still Funky After all these Years

...Posting a piece elsewhere about Jimi Hendrix and,more recently, James Brown (below) got me thinking about the Isley Brothers and how they fused R&B and rock back in their early days...I think it started with "Twist and Shout", their first mainstream hityou can really hear it on cuts like the original version of "Who's that Lady", "Fight the Power" and "Live it Up"...I got turned onto their stuff as kid while listening to the sounds pumping from the rent parties down in my uncle's basement and later, I'd check the Isleys on TV shows like American Bandstand, etc...nowadays the group can be checked on those "Power" R&B formatted stations where I couldn't imagine a lot of their guitar-laden early stuff would ever see the light of day...if you're unfamiliar with their funky stuff from the 70s-80s you should definitely check The Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 but if you've already been there, the album I'm checking right at the moment is The Isleys-- Live which holds "Work to Do", a sweet-ass version of "Lay Lady, Lay" and a medley of CSNY and Jimi Hendrix (!) on "Ohio/Machine Gun" cut back in '73, it clearly encapsulates where the Isleys were heading...continued