Little Feat - S&D, C/D

http://www.archive.org/details/lf1974-09-19.flac16

It was recorded for a radio station in Hempstead, NY, in Sept. 1974, and these MP3s were mastered from the only surviving pre-FM tape of the performance, which was salvaged from the radio station archives in 1978. This had been previously released as bootleg vinyl under the title "Electrif Lycanthrope".

There's lots of other live Little Feat on that site too, which I haven't listened to. I burned this one onto a CD-R and listened to it in the car this morning. It put a smile on my face.

The thing that makes me really appreciate LF, besides the pure chops aspect and George's songwriting and slide-guitar wit, is the weird fiction-making that they were engaged it. They shared it with The Band, and Credence Clearwater Revival, and The Grateful Dead (version 1970), and, to some extent, Dr. John (when he was The Nightripper): There was this imagination and invention of an American musical tradition to which they were the natural successors, but which never actually existed. In LF's case, something like a Disney version of New Orleans, in which Robert Johnson come down from the Delta sat in with Professor Longhair. It was a cousin to Shangri-La or Macondo, a magical source of all stories.

That's so right.
Listening to Feats Don't Fail me Now and wondering why Richie Hayward doesn't get the props he deserves. LF were the house band at a hotel where all American music worth the name came to stay - only the Band beat them on this one.

I just downloaded the live concert from up thread, and ohh-boy, is it good... They sound like the Band, if they'd been from New Orleans instead of Canada via Arkansas. Calling this dad rock is misleading. Maybe I could buy it if your dad liked going on month long speed, weed, and wine benders. Funky, weird and filthy.

aww, this is probably one of the first threads I ever started. Sailin' Shoes is so awesome. I wonder if a Little Feat albums poll would generate much in the way of votes/conversation (and if so, if I should include Waiting For Columbus or limit it to studio LPs).

Yeah, that live set totally rules, been enjoying it ever since I found it here.

"Waiting for Columbus best live album ever."

YES!

i can't stress enough how great they all are live to this day. they fuckin' rule. if they are playing some club or county fair near you, GO!

if you've never seen the tv clip from 1975 then damn you are in for a treat... Rock & Roll Doctor

and there is this one from the same show
Fat Man in the Bathtub. Sizzling.

"Waiting for Columbus best live album ever."

YES!

dunno 'bout that. B.B. King- Live @ the Regal tops my live list; but the expanded Waiting for Columbus really improves on an already terrific live set. i agree w/ X'gau that Lowell George wrote more good songs than great songs, but on this set the band is on fire

this is dad rock in the most literal sense ... my dad was a big fan and put me on to them

dug this back out to play "Easy to Slip," and while it's perfect, it actually frightens me more and more every time i listen back, in a solipsistic way. as in yes, it is so easy to fall into nothing at all.

I love "Easy To Slip." That and "Dixie Chicken" were both on the playlist at my wedding.

Fucking great band. I saw them in '90, long after their glory years of course, and they were incredible.

They've done an awesome job reinventing themselves over the last two decades.

Search: Inara George's version of "Trouble" on the Feats' new album Join the Band.

I really like Last Record Album. But i kinda knew them feore i ever heared The Band. I don't know if it worked the other way around.

For me, they kill the Band. The Band is not really my thing at all.

I heart Sailin' Shoes so much.

Don't know why I never posted on this thread - read it a few times over the years. Like everyone else said, Vornado's post about early 70s Americana myth-making OTM. Little Feat, to me, are the dank and dirty roots of it; leavethecapital's "Funky, weird and filthy" captures it wuite well.

What exactly was going on in the late 60s/early 70s with coutryfried-rock? The aforementioned Feat/Band/Dead, Tumbleweed Connection, the Stones, Parsons, Ronstadt, etc. Where did it all come from, exactly? Why then?

don't know if there is a thesis on this thread, but it's all right here:

Can we talk about early-mid70s West Coast post-psych/pop/rock/folk-rock/country-rock?

holy shit, how come nobody ever told me that Robert Palmer's first 4 albums are full of Little Feat covers and backing from members of LF? the "Sailing Shoes / Hey Julia / Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley" medley is incredible, I feel like I just stumbled on a box of records I never knew existed by one of my favorite bands.

Just got done listening the debut for the first time in a long time. It had never crossed my mind before, but is it just me or does "Crazy Captain Gunboat Willie" sound like a letter-perfect parody of The Band, especially the more mythological Robbie Robertson stuff ("The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" etc.)?

never thought of it that way, if anything i thought of it as a vestige of Feat's wacky Zappa roots -- i love that song, though, i think i put it on a mixtape for a friend who's way into stuff like Primus

for personal record: CLASSIC (as fuk). dudes totally epitomized southern carefree-itude in the same way that a lot of rap spawn from the south is doing now. seems like a fun place, if everybody's constantly releasing music under that ~lifestyle mentality~. i think.

I would say "Crazy Captain..." is very, very Band sounding (albeit with George's unique twist).

Little Feat are from Los Angeles, not The South. Lowell George was born and raise din Hollywood.

yeah but the number of references to southern towns/states in LF lyrics outnumbers California references probably at least 10 to 1, so i think they were courting that kind of (mis)perception

Very true! But I would say those references def make them uniquely Los Angeles and that city's tradition of cinematic imagination. George was a Californian who fell in love with New Orleans, it's culture and music. Lyrically, he exuded a rich sense of romance for New Orleans that only an outsider could truly muster. I would say George was more like a classical composer incorporating "folk" touches into his/her compositions. He was kind of like Aron Copland.

(Aaron Copland)

Boogie Rock for the Common Man

that's kind of appropriate since my dad is a huge fan of both Feat and Copland

http://www.littlefeat.net/news.html?n_id=3174

Will these be actual remasters?

I have no idea. Only Waiting for Columbus has been remastered, right? The current discs aren't horrible, but I hope they take this chance to give them the once-over.

cool, there are some of those i haven't heard.
been meaning to get the similarly styled Ry Cooder box set too.

just got this a couple days ago, excited to jump into it:
http://www.amazon.com/Willin-Story-Little-Ben-Fong-Torres/dp/0306821311/

I had no idea that existed. Let us know if it's good.

Decent book. More of a Lowell George bio.

anyone buy the box? Wondering about remastering and can't find squat online.

^^Was wondering about this myself.

I streamed some of it on Rdio and it sounds better than my old cd rips, but I don't know what "loudness" button they insert in their audio chain.

yeah i dunno. may pick it up just because i don't have most of the albums on CD.

book was flawed but a great read. didn't feel it was anymore about Lowell George rather than the band than it inherently had to be to work.

From Stephen Erlewine on twitter: They seem to be remastered but I’m thinking it was done around the time of the Hotcakes box; individual CDs never were issued.

Guess I'm buying it.

Nice interview with Bill Payne on the Rhino site:

http://www.rhino.com/article/talkin-with-bill-payne-of-little-feat?eml=rn/030614/feat4

These are definitely remastered. They sound good on cd for the first time ever.

Got the (great-sounding) box last week. Been working through it--Let It Roll (the album) isn't very good, is it? Too much Craig Fuller.

i heard it a lot growing up and have a soft spot for "One Clear Moment" and "Listen To Your Heart." Representing The Mambo is the better of of the 2 big comeback albums, though.

one clear moment is nice.

i've been listening to a harry hosono box set a lot recently and I swear there are what sound exactly like hosono/little feat collaborations on there but the liner notes are in japanese.

i don't think LF made a record--at least not in the lowell george period--that didn't have at least one classic track.

how come nobody ever told me that Robert Palmer's first 4 albums are full of Little Feat covers and backing from members of LF? the "Sailing Shoes / Hey Julia / Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley" medley is incredible

certainly one of my favorite 10 minute stretches of music of all time

for the curious, here 'tis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNw8U4aCgjE

that 1974 live Ultrasound Studio set aka "Electrif Lycanthrope" mentioned under the fold is so damn good

I’ve been Feat-ing it up for a few weeks now after politely enjoying the debut for more than twenty years. And I have some observationz.

I can’t figure out what it is that makes Rock and Roll Doctor so irresistible. It doesn’t have a chorus. The lyrics are about … the power of rock I guess? It doesn’t even really have a hook to speak of. I guess I just like the sound of shufflin’ feet?

Spanish Moon is another one. Here again the groove (what the fuck is that filtered delay on the beat?) is just this colossus. Here again, there’s no chorus. Like at all. Meanwhile Lowell seems to be singing about the druggiest, haziest bordello in history. I’m willing to bet 99% of their songs are about dope actually.

Sailin’ Shoes I knew from Van Dyke Parks and the Palmer medley. While I love the slinky version they laid down here, if I was Mo Ostin I’d have fired Ted Templeton on the spot for turning what should’ve been a surefire hit into the sly stumbling miniature it is here. By the time we get to Waiting for Columbus, the tune has been completely subsumed into an arrangement resembling the slowest 12-bar blues in history.

Teenage Nervous Breakdown deserves way more props than it gets. This is some punk shit.

Ultrasonic ftw

"Teenage Nervous Breakdown" kicks ass. I love how on Hoy-Hoy they sequenced the slower early version of the song before a faster live recording, it's almost like they reverse-engineered something like the Ike & Tina version of "Proud Mary."

“Did my time in your rodeos…”

Yes, some dude! I was completely confused when I first heard it. But it’s awesome.

Roll Um Easy is another kind of fascinating miniature. I’ve known the horribly overwrought version Glen Campbell did on the Reunion album with Jimmy Webb (titled “Roll Me Easy” for some reason). This has a bit of the debut’s solitariness in it, all acoustic picking and yearning slide, with an exquisite George vocal and lyric.

I find it often hard to separate what George is singing about with how he sings them – neither seems on its surface to be particularly extraordinary but together he has this ability to turn a simple or even cliche or stock turn of phrase into something resonant. And it feels like (perhaps from Zappa) he has just enough oddball literacy that he knows how to drop a line like how eloquent profanity rolls right off his tongue.