| Welcome to the Canteen | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
.jpg) | ||||
| Live album by | ||||
| Released | 10 September 1971 | |||
| Recorded | Fairfield Halls, Croydon, 6 June 1971 The Oz Benefit Concert, London, July 1971 | |||
| Genre | Rock | |||
| Length | 39:21 | |||
| Label | United Artists/Island[1] | |||
| Traffic chronology | ||||
| ||||
Welcome to the Canteen is the first live album by English rock band Traffic. It was recorded live at Fairfield Halls, Croydon and the Oz Benefit Concert in the canteen of the Polytechnic of Central London London, on 3 July 1971 and released in September of that year. It was recorded during Dave Mason's third stint with the band, which lasted only six performances.
The track list includes one song each from the first three Traffic albums; two songs from Mason's first solo album, Alone Together; and "Gimme Some Lovin'" from Steve Winwood's former band, the Spencer Davis Group. (Winwood's organ and Mason's rhythm guitar are conspicuously out of sync for part of "Gimme Some Lovin'".)
In the band's native United Kingdom, the album was a surprise flop, the first in a series of albums by the group that would fail to make an appearance in the charts.[2] In the USA, however, it was a solid success, hitting number 26 in the charts and yielding the single "Gimme Some Lovin' (live)", which reached number 68 in the Billboard Hot 100.[3]
Although regarded as a Traffic album, it was originally released without the name "Traffic" anywhere on it; credited instead to the seven individual musicians. Nonetheless the Traffic logo appeared on the cover (on the back, in this case) as on all of their albums. Most later issues retain the original front cover with its individual crediting, but credit the album to Traffic on the spine.[4]
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
CGwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Traffic in the UK Charts, The Official Charts. Retrieved 9 August 2011.
- ^ Traffic in the USA Charts, AllMusic. Retrieved 9 August 2011.
- ^ North American reel-to-reel editions of the album (Magtec/United Artists cat. no. UAT 5550-B) credit the album to "Traffic, Etc."