Ginger Baker’s Air Force is the eponymous début album by Ginger Baker’s Air Force, released in 1970. This album is a recording of a sold-out live show at the Royal Albert Hall, on 15 January 1970, with the original 11-piece line up. The gatefold LP cover was designed left-handed; i.e., the front cover artwork was on what traditionally would be considered the back and vice versa. (More from Wikipedia)
Billed as the first left-handed album (the gatefold album cover had the front cover printed on what was normally the back, though the album art was so extreme that it was a little hard to tell the difference), the first album by Ginger Baker’s Air Force, Ginger Baker’s Air Force was released in March 1970. In the 4½ star review of the album in Allmusic, Bruce Eder raves: “For a change, the late 1960s yielded up a supergroup that lived up to its hype and then some. Ginger Baker’s Air Force was recorded live at Royal Albert Hall in January of 1970 – in fact, this may be the best-sounding live album ever to come out of that notoriously difficult venue – at a show that must have been a wonder to watch, as the ten-piece band blazed away in sheets of sound, projected delicate flute parts behind multi-layered African percussion, or built their songs up Bolero-like, out of rhythms from a single instrument into huge jazz-cum-R&B crescendos. Considering that this was only their second gig, the group sounds astonishingly tight, which greatly reduces the level of self-indulgence that one would expect to find on an album where five of the eight tracks run in excess of ten minutes.”
(May 2014)
