Live: You Get What You Play For

Live: You Get What You Play For
Live album by
ReleasedMarch 1977
Recorded1976
VenueSoldiers and Sailors Memorial Building, Kansas City, Kansas; Convention Center, Indianapolis, Indiana; Kiel Auditorium, Saint Louis, Missouri; Alex Cooley's Electric Ballroom, Atlanta, Georgia
GenreRock
Length77:47 (LP edition)
68:35 (CD edition)
80:34 (Two-CD edition)
LabelEpic
ProducerJohn Stronach, Gary Richrath, John Henning
REO Speedwagon chronology
R.E.O.
(1976)
Live: You Get What You Play For
(1977)
You Can Tune a Piano, but You Can't Tuna Fish
(1978)

Live: You Get What You Play For is a live album by rock band REO Speedwagon, released as a double-LP in 1977 (and years later as a single CD omitting "Gary's Guitar Solo" and "Little Queenie"). It was recorded at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Building in Kansas City, Kansas, the Convention Center in Indianapolis, Indiana, Kiel Auditorium in Saint Louis, Missouri and Alex Cooley's Electric Ballroom in Atlanta, Georgia. It peaked at number #72 on the Billboard 200 chart in 1977. The album went platinum on December 14, 1978.

This album's live version of the song "Ridin' the Storm Out" (an earlier studio version of this song appeared on the band's third album Ridin' the Storm Out) reached #94 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart, and has since become a classic rock radio staple. The song refers to the band being stuck in a harsh winter blizzard, after a show in Boulder, Colorado at a bar named Tulagi (now closed). The band had decided to prank its tour manager by intentionally getting lost, but then inadvertently became genuinely lost as a dangerous winter storm approached.

Producer John Stronach was fired by the band after his mix of this album "sounded like a studio album". The band then did its own mix of this album, which became their first album to sell over a million records. Afterward, the band continued to mix its own albums, all of which reached either gold or platinum sales results.

The Japanese CD reissue, released in 2011, restores the album and songs to its original full length by including both "Gary's Guitar Solo" and "Little Queenie", which were omitted in the original single CD release due to time constraints. Sony Music also released the unedited double LP Epic master on its Legacy Label for Compact Disc in 2011 as well.

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Allmusic