Dwight Twilley - vocals, guitar, keyboards; Jude Cole - guitar, vocals; Bernard Percy - drums; Bobby Genetti - bass, vocals; Kevin Blairey - keyboards, vocals; Bill Pitcock IV - guitar
When Twilley's first album (with musical partner Phil Seymour under the name of the Dwight Twilley Band) was released on MCA's Shelter Records in 1975, he was quickly heralded as a god of Beatles-esque power pop. Though his press hype rarely translated into substantial record sales, the comparisons made to him and the best of the British Invasion bands was not unwarranted.
This show, recorded in 1984 for the King Biscuit Flower Hour, nearly a decade after the success of his first hit single ("I'm On Fire") delivers on the promise that he writes and performs some of the best, intelligent pop music out there. Though no longer billed as the Dwight Twilley Band (Seymour had departed by this point for a short-lived solo career), he continued to work with DT Band lead guitarist Bill Pitock, whom many feel contributed greatly to the Twilley sound.
Many of the tracks here were from his new LP at the time, Jungle, which gave him his second substantial single, "Girl." Among the band members featured here are Jude Cole, who would emerge as a star on his own some years later on Island Records with the hit, "Start The Car."
Twilley's recorded career is not unlike that of so many other bad-luck music industry stories. He and Seymour were signed in 1974 to MCA's Shelter Records (also the home of Leon Russell and a then-unknown Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers). Twilley and Petty were friends and appear on each other's early discs, and when Petty became a superstar, Twilley often opened for him. Like Petty, he became entangled in legal disputes between Shelter and MCA, but eventually broke free and signed to Arista, and later, CBS/Sony. Unfortunately, ongoing legal hassles and lack of label support often plagued his releases. Twilley and Seymour reunited after this show was recorded, but their work together would be cut short in 1993, when Seymour died of lymphoma cancer.
Among the highlights of this show are a smoking cover of the R&B classic (and Elvis staple), "C.C. Rider," and a re-working of the Motown-come-Beatles classic, "Money."