I would get Irish Tour and Calling Card. Both of those are great records. Against The Grain is nice too, though I think that's the one where, if I remember correctly, they used the "wrong takes" on the CD because apparently nothing had been cataloged correctly in terms of which takes of which songs were used on the original release, and I guess the reissue label didn't have the budget to go through all the tapes (and apparently there were tons of them) to find the right takes. At least that's the way it was in the late 90's when it was first reissued. I don't know if a more recent reissue hasn't rectified that "problem".
And yeah, the mid 70's albums started pushing into slightly more mainstream rock areas, but not that much. It wasn't like what happened with Gary Moore during the 80's, where he went whole hog into the world of hard rock (he said years later he went a lot further in that direction that he intended, probably from record company pressure). Rory always kept the bluesy side of things going, even paying homage to the Delta blues stylings in his shows by doing a couple acoustic things.
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