humble pie

The popularity and proliferation of live albums was a distinct phenomenon of '70s rock 'n' roll.

On July 11, 1971, Humble Pie had difficulty following their opening act, the Bruce Springsteen Band.

Humble Pie and the Faces would rise from these ashes.

The album was titled after a 17th-century slang term for toilet. Coincidentally, that's also where their sales were headed.

In 1971, the concept of a hard-rock band achieving its big commercial breakthrough with a double live album was nothing new. But the experience had to be a particularly satisfying one for Humble Pie.

Humble Pie's 1971 double live album 'Performance: Rockin’ the Fillmore' finally broke the British rock band in the U.S. after a couple years of missing the charts. The record reached No. 21 and gave the band the shot it needed to push forward.

Steve Marriott and his boys in Humble Pie were firing on all cylinders at the start of 1973, fueled by the career-high No. 6 chart placing achieved by the previous year’s aptly named ‘Smokin’’ LP, which appeared to indicate the British group’s de facto conquest of America. Now all they had to do was top it.

One could make a good argument that Humble Pie have in some ways lived out the prophecy of their name. Now frequently overshadowed by the same peers they once blew off the stage, the British group have indeed been forced to eat humble pie in the grand scheme of classic rock history...

Three of Humble Pie‘s early ’70s albums will be re-released this spring courtesy of Lemon Records –  specifically, their self-titled 1970 effort, 1973′s ‘Eat It’ and the 1975 double album ‘Thunderbox.’