Live, High Noon is as good as any rockabilly combo currently on earth. The authenticity of their Elvis, Scotty & Bill rock ‘n’ roll trio-derived sound is so pure that should they ever find themselves transported back to 1956 and sandwiched between, say Carl Mann and Warren Smith at the Skyline Club, they’d be sure to drive all the cool cats (and their real gone chicks!) wild.
But what feels like soul-cleansing transcendence at a gig often sounds like mere competence at home on one’s hi-fi. High Noon, like thousands of other popular live acts before them, fall prey to this turn of fate. Blame it on their aforementioned purity. Hosts of bands through the years (CCR, the Clash, X, Flat Duo Jets, SCOTS, and, perhaps most impressively, the Blasters) have proven that incorporating rockabilly a musical stew can actually fortify the material, giving it a vitality that less rootsy fare lacks. And while it’s possible to overdo it (Rev. Horton Heat, anyone?), the purists have a tendency to, likewise, underdo it.
Ergo, the plight of retrodom. When a band treats its influences with such reverence, it is doomed to come in a distant second to them. And since rockabilly is such an inherently limited form musically, it’s admittedly damn tough to breathe new fire into it some 40 years after its prime. As a result, some songs here are so close to vintage classics that it’s hard to accept them as separate entities. (“Slow Down, Baby” is basically Hank & Eddie’s “Slow Down” slowed down, and “Call of the Honky Tonks” is just too damn close to “Close Up the Honky Tonks” for comfort, cats!)
Other tracks echo High Noon’s influences more positively, however. “I’m Done, I’m Through” takes Elvis’ slow alternate arrangement of “I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone” for a ride through Everlys and Buddy Holly territory, and “Fishin’ Hole Boogie” does the memory of Johnny Horton proud.
Whether you need this in your collection depends on how much of an appetite for such grooves you have. If Gene, Eddie and Carl are your own personal musical holy trinity and you swallow Sun and King-Federal compilations like candy, then this is for you; if not, well, you still might want to make it down for the boys’ set sometime.