Scream In Blue - Live

Reviewed in Rock World

You can't win with live albums: die-hard fans expect a between-song-raps-and-all document; the rest of us would settle for a glorified 'Greatest Hits' trip. Midnight Oil's go at making a credible live album attempts to straddle both points of view, and almost succeeds, too.

Recorded at various junctures in the band's long career, from the Capitol Theatre, Sydney, 1982 (Only the Strong) to the Boondall Entertainment Centre, Brisbane, 1990 (Dreamworld, Sell My Soul, Hercules), taking in such memorable perfromances as the televised 'Our Common Future' concert in Sydney in 1989, providing the definitive version of Beds are Burning. My personal favourite, though, is a crazed and slit-eyed Progress blasted out from atop a flat-back trcuk outside the Exxon buliding in New York to protest at the appalling oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska in 1990.

This ain't the greatest live album you'll ever hear... just the greatest live Midnight Oil album.

Mick Wall 8/10 (voted Album of the Month for June 92, by Rock World magazine)