Missing In Action / Collateral Damage

This is a hodgepodge collection of live tracks spanning the years 1979 through 1989 culled from performances in Chicago, Long Island, Essen, Toronto, and San Jose. These shows were in support of Ian Hunter's 1979 release You're Never Alone With a Schizophrenic, 1980's Ian Hunter Live/Welcome to the Club, and 1989's Yui Orta. On the positive side, the unifying element on these tracks is Mick Ronson's stellar guitar playing and Hunter's exhaustive "rock 'til you drop" effort; however, this collection is also defined by the substandard audio quality of virtually all of the selections. But the aim of this release was to unearth rare and previously unreleased live versions of classic Hunter songs. So despite this album's obvious deficiencies, the raw energy and attitude of an Ian Hunter concert was indeed successfully captured. Whether employing the classic Mott the Hoople flavor on "Woman's Intuition" or arranging "Day Tripper" as a slow grind, Ian Hunter's approach to rock & roll has always been one of unpretentiousness, or more succinctly, "what you see is what you get." In a strange twist, the initial release of Missing in Action also included a limited bonus CD of live Hunter material called Collateral Damage, which included several more tracks from You're Never Alone With a Schizophrenic as well as Mott the Hoople classics like "All the Way From Memphis," "All the Young Dudes," and "Rock and Roll Queen" and the Ronson shop stopper "Slaughter on 10th Avenue." This is curious because the audio quality of Collateral Damage is noticeably superior to that of the official release. Therefore, Ian Hunter and Mott the Hoople fans may wish to seek out the rarer two-disc version of this release. ~ Dave Sleger|