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Unearthed, Vol. 2

RELEASE
February 08, 2005
LABEL
Demolition
GENRES
Pop/Rock

Album Review

A follow-up to Dave Meniketti's first trawl through the Y&T tape vaults, Unearthed, Vol. 2 contains 18 more Y&T songs recorded at various points between 1973 (when they were a Bay Area hard rock band called Yesterday & Today) and 1989 (the end of their largely failed Geffen-era attempt at an Aerosmith-style comeback appealing to the hair-farmer audience). The album opens with the snarling "Face to Face," a riff-rocker co-written by Ronnie Montrose of the titular band with whom Y&T were most often compared in the early days, and skips around non-chronologically from there. Highlights include early versions of a few familiar tunes: "Dance Dance Dance" was eventually re-recorded in 1987 as "L.A. Rocks," but this rougher-edged version is superior, as is the original acoustic version of "Hands of Time," which smokes the later power ballad version that appeared on a charity compilation in the late '80s. Meniketti's impressively honest liner notes promise a warts-and-all listening experience, the most bumpy-sounding being the sluggish, overlong "More" and "Help Me Hear Me," which is rather blatantly ripped off from Deep Purple's "Gypsy."
Stewart Mason, Rovi

Track Listing

  1. Face to Face
  2. Ashes to Ashes
  3. Get Tough
  4. Showdown
  5. Love Has No Cure
  6. Help Me Hear Me
  7. New Kid in Town
  8. Long Time Coming
  9. Dance Dance Dance
  10. Crazy Make Love
  11. Over Under
  12. Hands of Time [Acoustic]
  13. Bad Bad Girls
  14. Take Me
  15. More
  16. Lucky Night
  17. Love Don't Come Easy
  18. Cheap & Easy