London glamsters Girl weren't exactly renowned for their on-stage prowess during a brief and oft-forgotten career, so it's easy to question the necessity of a concert document such as 2001's Live at the Marquee. Then again, perhaps the 20-year lag is exactly what was needed to elevate this performance -- recorded at the hallowed London venue on October 23, 1981 -- from maudlin to mandatory, and if just a few rabid fans get their wished-for trip down memory lane, who are we to rain on their parade? In any case, this performance captured the members of Girl as they attempted to shake off the rust accumulated over nearly six months of studio work, preparing their as-yet-unreleased sophomore platter, Wasted Youth, which would finally emerge in January 1982. But if opening number Ice in the Blood was any indication, rust was the least of Girl's worries in light of the overall mediocrity of additional new songs like the shameless Saxon rip-off Overnight Angels, the tepid lounge experiment Old Dogs, and the chorus-as-an-excuse-for-a-single that was Thru the Twilight. To be fair, other preview material from the new LP, such as Sweet Kids, Wasted Youth, and Nice'n'Nasty, fared quite a bit better, though, tellingly, not quite as well as album cut-outs Mad for It and Big Night (whose studio counterparts wouldn't be released until 1997's odds'n'sods Killing Time CD). And with no more than first single My Number representing the band's first album fan favorites, Live at the Marquee is simply nowhere near as satisfying a concert document as 2001's Live at the Exposition Hall, Osaka release -- even though guitarist Phil Collen had already departed for Def Leppard by the time it was captured in 1982. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia, Rovi

1		Ice in the Blood
2		Icey Blue
3		Mad for It
4		Overnight Angels
5		Old Dogs
6		Big Night
7		Sweet Kids
8		Wasted Youth
9		Nice & Nasty
10		My Number
11		Standard Romance
12		Thru the Twilite

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