On Black Friday, 16 members of my family went to Zoo Atlanta.  It was a great trip and some great times were had.  However, my mind was elsewhere.  I wanted to venture over to Criminal Records over in Little Five Points and check out this great Atlanta record store.  At 2pm, my daughter and I were going to leave are family behind and head over to the store.

While at the Zoo, we missed the new Reptile house and we were planning on going back around to check it out before we left.  Well, being at the zoo with 16 people and a lot of those people are children, it was very slow going.  2pm started creeping up on us and I started to think, we weren’t going to make it to the reptile house and of course, we didn’t.  I was a little disappointed I didn’t get to see any of the “Snakes”.

So, my daughter and I start our adventure over to the record store and as I am getting old, my sense of direction is not the best.  I was using the Waze app, so I was sure we were going in the right direction, however, it felt like we were going completely in the wrong direction from where I thought the store was and I was getting worried.  It didn’t seem to be the safest part of town.  Lo and behold, Waze was correct.

I hadn’t been to Little Five Points in forever, so I couldn’t remember anything about it.  It is a very trendy area.  People of all different races and types and my daughter looked at me and said “Yeah, we don’t look like belong here”.  Everyone was either really cool looking with their colored hair and piercings or were old with their little toy puppy walking along with them.  I only have the old part down pat. She thought the store was completely awesome and loved it and so did I.  I would go back as they had some great collectible LPs that I would love to have if I had a little money.

As we were going through the used records, I wasn’t actually having much luck.  I found a copy of the Monkees’ first album, however, I passed on it.  But what was really cool was I finally got to see some “Snakes”.  There was a bootleg of a Whitesnake concert from Battle Creek Michigan back on July 26, 1987.  It wasn’t the Live snakes I was hoping to see at the Zoo…well…that is technically wrong since these “snakes” were recorded live.  I guess I did end up getting to see some Live snakes or at least hear some Live snakes.

Maybe I should talk about the LP.  I love how the name of the band is listed as SNAKE!!  I guess they couldn’t officially use the Whitesnake name since it is not an official Whitesnake release.  There really isn’t a whole lot to the packaging.  The front cover shows all the band members which were the hired guns that came in after the album was released and John Sykes and everyone else was fired.  The band was of course, David Coverdale as well as Rudy Sarzo, Adrian Vandenberg, Vivian Campbell and Tommy Aldridge.

The set list is very similar to the set list that Whitesnake actually released on their ’87 35th Anniversary Edition Super Deluxe box set with maybe a few less songs.  I am glad I got this as now I have a live show on vinyl.  I only had several on CD so a nice change of pace.

The sound quality wasn’t the greatest as I had to turn the stereo up pretty loud to hear it, but was actually really good at the same time.  David sounded great and he still uses a lot of F*Bombs throughout the show.  His vocals were actually better sounding then the instruments even though the songs still sounded exceptional.   I also love how for the Bad Boys song they claimed it included “Change of Night” when it was really “Children of the Night”….close enough.

With only 8 songs, you get a short compact concert.  “Crying in the Rain” is exceptionally long due to the guitar and drum solos included and it is a highlight of the release.  I have been getting in to bootlegs lately and I now appreciate these releases for what they are.  They are a snapshot of a band at a point in time.  The audio might not be perfect, but that is the charm of the whole thing.  If you are a Whitesnake fan, grab it if you ever see it out.

Now, before we go I have another story to add to this review.  As we were walking back to the car after our purchases, there was a nice homeless gentleman walking towards us.  The man had his fly down and his hand inside his pants.  He was also mumbling to himself words that I couldn’t quite comprehend.  As he drew closer, I had my hands ready to quickly move my daughter past this gentlemen and cover her eyes should he pull anything out of his pants that might be slightly inappropriate.  Luckily, he kept his “Snake” in his pants!!