Ready An Willin [Original recording remastered, Import]

What people don't realize when they're listening to this album for the first time in this day an' age, when we're so saturated with crap music, or even a Whitesnake fan that bought the 1987 album as their first...
This album came out in 1980.
Just think of all your favorite bands and figure out when they came out...
In 1980, very few great rock bands were around, compared to what came out since...
I was a fan of Coverdale when he was in Deep Purple.
I found the first Whitesnake ep "Snakebite" when it first came out,
It was pretty good, just loved his voice.
I lost touch with the band intil I heard "Fool For Your Loving" on Hartford, CT radio.
I went out and found "Ready an' Willing" that day...
My point is, that when this is the current Whitesnake album, you listen to it over and over and over and over... in the car, in your room, with a beer, with a smoke...
That's when you zone into the album and really appreciate and love what you're listening to...
This album has no bad songs...
Every song is perfect, the band was perfect at this point...
Ian Paice on drums, what taste...!!!
Neil Murray on bass, Whitesnakes finest bassist ever...
Jon Lord on keyboards, greatest player in all of rock playing some great riffs on this album...
Mickey Moody & Bernie Marsden are great blues-rock guitarists... just think of when Zeppelin actually played blues songs over their first 3 albums...
Coverdale's voice is at his finest...
"Fool For Your Loving" blows away the 1989 version...
My favorite tracks are "Love Man", great blues song... "Blindman", great 'ballad' in the vein of Deep Purple's "Soldier of Fortune"... "Ready an' Willng", a great straight-out rock song...
I'd have to put this album as my favorite album in their catalog...

Wild Man (former roadie & Rochester radio dj)

This CD is by far the best Coverdale and Co. ever put out. This is the blues rock Whitesnake of early 1980's. The addition of Ian Paice on drums makes this the classic lineup. At least 4 of these songs were concert staples. So much more soul and substance than the MTV crap of the late 80's Whitesnake. I can't begin to count how many people I turned onto this era of Snake music. Most Americans never even knew they put out any music before Still of the Night.

`Ready an' Willing' should be seen as the peak of the first era of Whitesnake as it is their finest collection songs and would be seen as their most accomplished album until maybe `Slide It In' released three years later. Ian Paice rejoined his former Purple mates Coverdale and Lord and completed `Snake's best lineup (arguably) and this lineup would last for a for a few years until Whitesnake the band succumbed to their leader's whims to become another Rainbow as far as musical chairs are concerned. `RnW' contains many great examples of the classic Whitesnake sound, as they were originally conceived - a hard driving blues rock band (before the age of hair metal). For those who prefer the later platinum selling Whitesnake, there is a perfect point of comparison as `RnW''s first song and single "Fool for Your Loving" was later remade nine years later as a pop metal/MTV extravaganza. You can guess which version I prefer and can maybe understand why when the '89 redux came out I wanted to throw up in my mouth! Other great songs on the LP include "Sweet Talker" and the title track which makes for a killer first three songs on any album. "Ain't Gonna Cry No More" is sort of the album's sleeper track as it builds from ballad to rocker fluently and "Blindman" is a classic Coverdale ballad (that original came from his first solo record). Much like the previous Whitesnake efforts there is a ton of blues here which while gaining popularity in the UK and the Continent did not make much of a mark in the US and that was probably the biggest reason the Coverdale would change the band by mid decade and make it more palatable to the glam metal market. Commercially he was absolutely correct but for fans of the original band, at what cost? If you are a fan of hard blues rock in the Free/Bad Company tradition then you will love `RnW'....be my friend be my brother...