{"id":452,"date":"2011-02-22T05:42:29","date_gmt":"2011-02-22T10:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=452"},"modified":"2026-03-31T08:38:42","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T12:38:42","slug":"album-review-thin-lizzy-jailbreak-deluxe-edition-disc-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2011\/02\/22\/album-review-thin-lizzy-jailbreak-deluxe-edition-disc-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Thin Lizzy – Jailbreak Deluxe Edition (disc 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2011 Universal released a Deluxe Edition of Thin Lizzy<\/strong>\u2019s legendary Jailbreak<\/em> album<\/a>, filling a second disc with related and relevant goodies.<\/p>\n

For the most part, the remixes of \u201cThe Boys Are Back in Town\u201d and \u201cJailbreak\u201d offer up minor differences; the production aesthetic is slightly, ineffably, more modern-sounding. A few guitar flourishes are added, and their presence brings up an interesting point. On first listen, my assumption was that these were guitar parts laid down by Scott Gorham<\/strong> and Brian Robertson<\/strong> but mixed out of the final version. Were that the case, I\u2019d argue that the band and producer John Alcock<\/strong> made the right decision: the mixing approach throughout Jailbreak<\/em> is one of scraping everything to the bone: there\u2019s not a single bit of overplaying in evidence, and the silences between the notes are every bit as important and valuable as the notes. But in reality, that scenario is not the case here: instead, some modern-day revisionism has taken place, with re-recording of parts.<\/p>\n

Remixed, \u201cThe Boys Are Back in Town\u201d is exciting, but doesn\u2019t add a great deal to the band\u2019s history. It\u2019s a curiosity and little more. The \u201cJailbreak\u201d remix also offers more guitars \u2013 lots more, in fact, and they too are exciting \u2013 and while it benefits from brighter production, the extra guitar fiddling borders on gratuitous. Its ever-so-slightly alternate vocal take is mildly interesting.<\/p>\n

An \u201calternate vocal remix version\u201d of\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cThe Boys Are Back in Town\u201d illustrates that Phil Lynott<\/strong> had a surfeit of lyrics for this wordiest of songs. And while the unused lyrics aren\u2019t quite up to the par of the finished words, they\u2019re not bad. The remix of \u201cEmerald\u201d serves mainly to make the song sound slightly more contemporary.<\/p>\n

A live performance of \u201cJailbreak\u201d is far more interesting and of historical import. While the arrangement is kept quite close to the studio version, the band sings and plays the song in A, a half-step higher than the official version. Whether the song slowed-down for the released version isn\u2019t clear, but the pitch change renders the song with a very different feeling.<\/p>\n

A BBC performance of \u201cEmerald\u201d is the only one of four John Peel<\/strong> session cuts on the set not previously released (the other three are on the Peel Session<\/em> CD). Its\u2019 a boxier-sounding rendition, but benefits from being an actual live-in-the-studio performance, illustrating the band\u2019s ability to play with power and nuance. Lynott\u2019s bass is more prominent in this version as well. The live takes of \u201cCowboy Song\u201d and \u201cWarriors\u201d showcase the dynamics inherent in those songs.<\/p>\n

The disc wraps up with some rarities (or almost-rarities). An extended rough mix of \u201cFight or Fall\u201d places the acoustic guitar more prominently in the mix, and adds a good bit of Allman Brothers<\/strong>-style slide guitar. The guitar work is nice enough (if not too tightly played) but it\u2019s needless filigree; the decision to leave the slide guitar noodling off the finished versions was the right one. Lynott\u2019s alternate vocal take sounds a bit weary, almost like a \u201cscratch\u201d (reference) vocal performance. The extra minute-plus is mostly the repeated phrase \u201cBrother, brother\u201d atop a two-chord vamp.<\/p>\n

The previously-unreleased \u201cBlues Boy\u201d is a standard blues with a slight lyric; while it comes from the Jailbreak<\/em> sessions (hence its inclusion here), chances are it was never under serious consideration for a place on the original Jailbreak<\/em> record. Four and a half minutes is about three too many.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s not much of a rarity now (it was included on Thin Lizzy\u2019s UK<\/em> Tour \u201975<\/em> album), \u201cDerby Blues\u201d belongs on this disc. It\u2019s a live prototype of \u201cCowboy Song.\u201d The lyrics are unfinished (though the central theme is well established), but the song\u2019s musical motifs are already carved into stone. The performance is arguably the most exciting thing on the bonus disc.<\/p>\n

Taken as a whole, the Jailbreak<\/em> Deluxe Edition bonus disc is good, solid music. It rarely approaches the brilliance of the original album, but as a supplement it\u2019s a worthwhile item. In terms of pure listening quality, it\u2019s better than your average bonus disc.<\/p>\n

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

In 2011 Universal released a Deluxe Edition of Thin Lizzy\u2019s legendary Jailbreak album, filling a second disc with related and relevant goodies. For the most part, the remixes of \u201cThe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[2199],"class_list":["post-452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","tag-thin-lizzy","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31201,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions\/31201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}