{"id":15119,"date":"2013-10-28T00:00:50","date_gmt":"2013-10-28T00:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=15119"},"modified":"2013-11-13T17:20:36","modified_gmt":"2013-11-13T17:20:36","slug":"album-review-lita-ford-the-bitch-is-back-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/album-review-lita-ford-the-bitch-is-back-live\/","title":{"rendered":"LITA FORD – The Bitch Is Back… Live (2013) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

LITA FORD
The Bitch Is Back… Live<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nSteamhammer (2013)<\/span>
Rating: 6.5\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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The arguable queen of rock \u2019n\u2019 roll returns with The Bitch Is Back… Live<\/em>. After attempting to revive her career with the laughable Wicked Wonderland<\/em> (2009), Lita Ford delivered the goods on her last record Living Like A Runaway<\/em><\/a> (2012), and this live show features all of her hits as well as a few from the latter. And, obviously, a cover of Elton John\u2019s \u2018The Bitch Is Back\u2019. For this show, recorded at the Canyon Club in Agoura Hills, California during October 2012, Lita is accompanied by Mitch Perry (guitar), Marty O\u2019Brien (bass) and Bobby Rock (drums). <\/p>\n

The show opens with \u2018The Bitch Is Back\u2019, raucously declaring that she is the queen bee. The sound is great here and I was surprised at how tight the band seems. Mitch Perry and Lita are a solid match; each one\u2019s playing really compliments the other. The mega-hit \u2018Kiss Me Deadly\u2019, the groovy nu-metal-ish \u2018Hate\u2019, and the new-found heaviness that finds its way into \u2018Can\u2019t Catch Me\u2019 (a song Lita co-wrote with Mot\u00f6rhead\u2019s Lemmy during a drinking binge at his apartment) is solid proof that the two are a force to be reckoned with. <\/p>\n

The songs that come off the best are the older ones though. \u2018Out For Blood\u2019 is a fury of neo-punk rock that is similar to The Runaways material but here it comes off as distinctly more rock \u2019n\u2019 roll. It\u2019s coupled with \u2018Dancin\u2019 On the Edge\u2019 which gets a more melodic facelift and features an old school \u201cface-melting\u201d guitar solo.<\/p>\n

This was the beginning of the platinum selling Lita years and you can hear that sound coming to the forefront. \u2018Close My Eyes Forever\u2019 is the highlight though, ending up with probably the best version of this song to date, with Lita handling the vocals all herself. I\u2019ve seen her play this song before and it\u2019s usually clunky at best, but here she nails it. <\/p>\n

Surprisingly, a few songs I expected to hear are absent. The Dangerous Curves<\/em> album (1991) is completely skipped over, without even a pinch of \u2018Shot Of Poison\u2019. \u2018Hungry\u2019 is the lone representative from the great Stiletto<\/em> album (1990), meanwhile. I would have loved to have heard \u2018Aces & Eights\u2019 or the title track here, and \u2018Lisa\u2019 coupled with \u2018Mother\u2019 from Living Like A Runaway<\/em> would likely have been awesome. Not surprisingly Wicked Wonderland<\/em> is entirely skipped, but Black<\/em> (1995) is as well and it had some truly excellent songs. That really is my main complaint here; Lita has a solid catalogue of material and very little of it is represented on The Bitch Is Back… Live<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In the end this is a good live album. The band are tight, the recording is solid (the drums are kinda weak truth be told), and there is a good bit of new material put forth. I just found myself wanting much, much more than the album delivered. This could have reintroduced fans to Lita\u2019s catalog but instead it focuses solely on the early albums. <\/p>\n

Mark Fisher<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LITA FORDThe Bitch Is Back… Live Steamhammer (2013)Rating: 6.5\/10 The arguable queen of rock \u2019n\u2019 roll returns with The Bitch Is Back… Live. After attempting to revive her career with the laughable Wicked Wonderland (2009), Lita Ford delivered the goods on her last record Living Like A Runaway (2012), and this live show features all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lita-ford"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15119"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15174,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15119\/revisions\/15174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}