Welcome to the Canteen

About Welcome to the Canteen

Welcome to the Canteen is the first live album by English rock band Traffic. It was recorded live at Fairfield Halls, Croydon and the Oz Benefit Concert, London, July 1971 and released in September of that year. It was recorded during Dave Mason's third stint with the band, which lasted only six performances. The track list includes one song each from the first three Traffic albums; two songs from Mason's first solo album, Alone Together; and "Gimme Some Lovin'" from Steve Winwood's former band, the Spencer Davis Group. (Winwood's organ and Mason's rhythm guitar are conspicuously out of sync for part of "Gimme Some Lovin'".) In the band's native United Kingdom, the album was a surprise flop, the first in a series of albums by the group that would fail to make an appearance in the charts. In the USA, however, it was a solid success, hitting number 26 in the charts and yielding the single "Gimmie Some Lovin' (live)", which reached number 68 in the Billboard Hot 100. Although regarded as a Traffic album, it was originally released without the name "Traffic" anywhere on it; credited instead to the seven individual musicians. Nonetheless the Traffic logo appeared on the cover (on the back, in this case) as on all of their albums. Most later issues retain the original front cover with its individual crediting, but credit the album to Traffic on the spine more »