What we have here is the old shedbuilder's mid-1970s aggregation privately recorded on location by sax man Alan Gauvin. It's a given that Rich organised his band with military precision to where it often resembled a pumped-up front line combat unit. So it wasn't by chance that he dubbed his trumpet section the ‘Killer Force’. There's no denying his band's collective skills, but it seldom achieved the colourisation of say the Duke, the Count or Kenton. Our Buddy often gave the impression of drumming with one hand while shaking his other fist at the world. Subtlety was low on the list of priorities. Here it only occurs during pianist Barry Keiner's solo features ‘Just Friends’ and ‘I Hear A Rhapsody’ plus baritone saxist Turk Mauro's reading of ‘God Bless The Child’. Other than that it's damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead with Steve Marcus and Bobby Mintzer wide-eyed and reckless. Perhaps Buddy used to force feed his musicians on a diet of raw red meat and steroids. How else can one explain such aggression? I'm sure that some of you reading this will regard all this as heresy!