Review: Medicine Hat – Blue Moon Bootlegs

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Review: Medicine Hat – Blue Moon Bootlegs

Moose Records (2022)

Reviewer: Dan Mann

Medicine Hat and I go way back, over thirty years in fact, which can’t be right surly? Oh how time flies, or rapidly accelerates it seems haha! Anyway, before we veer off on a worrying tangent, let’s concentrate on matters in hand.

‘Blue Moon Bootlegs‘ is a live recording, the recording made at the Blue Moon, Cambridge and consists of a mixture of Medicine Hat songs and cover tracks.

Capturing the very essence of a band on a live recording is one of the trickiest things to do, no re-takes, no endless hours of polishing and buffing each song, it will be what it’ll be.

‘Blue Moon Bootlegs‘ pretty accurately captures the rawness and energy of a southern rock band giving it the beans. The album kicks of with ‘Cold Hearted Woman‘, taken from the band’s 2001 album ‘Bone Dry‘. It’s safe to say that this will immediately give someone unfamiliar with the band a strong indication of what’s to come. Call it southern rock, country rock, outlaw rock, or whatever’s currently trendy in the genre wars, it is a toe tapper, a head nodder, a bourbon sipper of a song that sums up Medicine Hat.

Medicine Hat has always been a band that’s mixed various genres, be it southern, country and also hard rock. Must be what I like about them. They’ve never been afraid to do things their way. Must be partly due to the stubbornness of singer Mark Jackson (sorry mate), but that is what you need if you’re going to survive this long.

There are songs on here that take me on a journey of great memories, be it ‘C’Mon Here‘ or ‘Fire In Muskogee‘ from the self titled debut album, an album I bought at the Marquee after seeing them live for the first time, or the cover of ‘La Grange‘, ZZ Top being one of my all time favourite bands, and it’s this that makes an album or song great. It may or may not have tip top production, be rough and ready, or polished to an inch of its life, it matters not, it’s the emotional connection, that’s what’s important, and ‘Blue Moon Bootlegs‘ delivers just that.

Tracklist:

  1. Cold Hearted Woman
  2. Lightning
  3. Indian Rose
  4. Bad Boy Boogie
  5. I Still Bleed
  6. La Grange
  7. C’Mon Here
  8. Fire In Muskogee
  9. It’s A Long Way To The Top
  10. Six Ways To Sunday
  11. Highway To Hell