As a West Coast rock band, Love provided Elektra Records a stepping stone out of the New York folk world, and served as the prototype for the label's breakthrough with The Doors. Love's first three albums for Elektra combined British Invasion, folk-rock, garage punk, blues, psych, pop, jazz and more, reaching a crescendo with 1968's "Forever Changes." Love's founder and mainstay, Arthur Lee, disbanded the group shortly after finishing that milestone. A fourth album for Elektra ("Four Sail") was released under the Love name, but it was recorded by Lee and hired hands, and failed to capture the magic of the original lineup.The "Four Sail" sessions produced enough material for another album, which was released by Blue Thumb as "Out Here." Lee continued to fashion new editions of Love around himself, and released a second Blue Thumb album in 1970 titled "False Start." Hip-O's 3-CD set pulls together both of the LPs and adds eleven live tracks from 1970 UK live performances. Lee's reconstituted versions of Love recorded some fine sides for Blue Thumb, expanding upon their leader's eclecticism if not recapturing the earlier lineup's heart and soul. Highlights of the Blue Thumb albums include a pained, crawling blues arrangement of "Signed D.C." that greatly elongates the 1966 original with a wailing Eric Burdon-styled vocal, and the CS&N-styled harmonies of "I Still Wonder." The jug band country-folk of "Car Lights on in the Daytime Blues" sounds like the Fugs crossed with Frank Zappa, and bubblegum "You Are Something" features a guitar solo that's either played on especially short strings (or a ukulele) or sped up in the studio.Lee's range remained impressive through the "False Start," album, taking in the heavy psychedelic guitar rock of the Hendrix co-write "The Everlasting First" (with Hendrix himself playing lead guitar), the Badfinger-esque "Gimi a Little Break," the funky "Stand Out," the sunny blues of "Keep on Shining," and the country chord changes of "Slick Dick." The albums are augmented by a previously unreleased 1970 concert recordings that reach back to some of the original band's song highlights. The recording and playing are both adequate, but the stretching out on stage doesn't favor the compact early compositions. In the end Love's tenure at Blue Thumb failed to match the brilliance of their first three album for Elektra, and though Lee's genius can still be heard, it wasn't kept sufficiently focused to render truly great albums. [©2007 redtunictroll at hotmail dot com]