Live At The ANZA Club - Rich Hope (Planned Obsolescence Recording & Novelty Inc)
There was a time when you could walk into a designated rock and roll club in most sizeable North American cities and try your luck, knowing that you might just stumble on a band that would make it the best night of your month.
It may still be the case in musical hotbeds like Austin and Nashville. No idea because it’s been such a loooong time between long-haul trans-Pacific flights. But that's the scenario that Canadian rocker Rich Hope tried to replicate on “Live At The ANZA Club”.
Rich Hope is a previously unknown quantity to me so his live album is being reviewed with no preconceptions and strictly on its merits. He’s from Vancouver (that’s in Canada for the geographically challenged) and he plays rootsy rock and roll that's a little garage-y, blues and country rock.
Is it cultural misappropriation to label a Canuck’s music as “Americana”? Damn sure Neil Young - Canada’s most famous musical export behind Joni Mitchell and Chris Masuak - couldn’t give a rat’s arse, and Rich Hope doesn’t either.
The album blurb tells me that Hope plays with some of Canada’s best musicians “including City & Colour’s rhythm section, Leon Power and Erik Nielsen…(and) Vancouver scene mainstays Scott Smith on electric and pedal steel guitars, and Darryl Havers on keyboards”.
The venue for their live recording, judiciously done over two nights, in April 2025 was the ANZA Club on Mount Pleasant, Vancouver’s West 8th Avenue which an online search shows equates to most Australian small bars, with a capacity in the low hundred.
The ideal stomping ground for rocj and roll.
“It Come Alive” opens “Live At The ANZA Club” in emphatic style, with Darryl Haven’s swirling keys adding a touch of Lyres to a roaring garage stomper.
(Not sure about the crowd noise that sounds stadium-esque in places but that’s a post-production stunt that everyone from the Yardbirds to the Stones have pulled. Apologies if not the case and the punters were just hopped up on Moleson.)
There’s plenty to like on “Live At The ANZA Club”. Hope once told a bandmate to make a song sound like a cross between Springsteen and The Replacements and the tale rings true throughout although not as cliched/loose, respectively. Brooooce gets his due on “3 Minute Song”.
Country licks (the Commander Cody-like “The Ballad of Black Eyed Suzy”) comfortably rub aup against slide-flecked dirty blues (“When My Light Comes Shining” and “Whip It On Ya”). The band is cooking on any measure.
The closer is “Searching For Lewis and Clark” which is a Long Ryders cover, and that should give you a clue as to where Rich Hope and his mates are coming from at least some of the time, if this review hasn’t already.
Yes, the ANZAClub is a link to the Antipodes, representing a hang-out for Aussies and Kiiws. And the album’s available as a Bandcamp download (link below) or as an LP. 
