Ian Hunter,still cool after all these years!

He's playing this Thursday at House of Blues in Chicago. Anyone hear about how his live shows are these days? Does he play Mott and early solo songs, or just focuses on his latest album?

I was looking for his Diary of a Rock 'n' Roll Star autobio, but it's out of print and selling for ungodly amounts of $ on Amazon.

you MUST go see him, he's amazing live. i saw him and he was on fire. i wanted to BE him. i think he played many of the newer tunes actually.

I recently thumbed though my old copy of Diary Of A Rock And Roll Star, and was charmed by the tradition Mott had of taking all the free LP's they'd get from music biz people, put them under the bed covers, and have everybody blindly grab a couple, and then barter/bicker among each other...oh, the days!...

fast, he did play the old stuff too. and i don't know his work very well - was there for the Zombies that night - so he may have played a lot of it and i didn't recognize.

His new record is really really good.

the A Mountain of One edit of Bastard is amazing.

He is awesome. And the best part? Fucker's pushing 70.

So I want to buy some solo albums! Where should I start – the eponymous debut? You're Never Alone with a Schizophrenic?

those are the only two i have, and like them both. i think short back n sides is supposed to be good, too.

xp Yep, those two. Exactly. In either order.

And honestly, they're all you need, LP-wise. Once Bitten Twice Shy is a decent, if too long, two-disc CD compilation, if you want more. I've also got Short Back N Sides from 1981 on vinyl, but never listen to it. (Maybe will soon, though. You just convinced me to pull it off the shelf.)

Yep, those two. Exactly. In either order.

I was about to say just that!

My Hunter-loving friend said the Mick Jones ones that xhuxk mentioned is "pretty awesome."

He's still making good music! Shrunken Heads and Man Overboard are both excellent.

They sounded mediocre to me. Here's what I wrote about them (cut Man Overboard more slack than I should have, probably):

http://www.rhapsody.com/ian-hunter/man-overboard#albumreview

Shrunken Heads (two posts):

Rolling country 2007 thread

Played Short Back N' Sides a couple/few times in the past couple weeks, and it's okay I guess, but nowhere near the level of the solo debut or Schizophrenic. Only track that really sticks with me as an Ian Hunter song is "Central Park N' West", which can't touch the best songs on those two albums. Really want to love "Old Records Never Die " (a ballad) because of the title, but it never even holds my attention no matter how many times I try to listen really close to it. Then there's a couple quasi-Sandinista/proto-Big Audio Dynamite new wavey electrofunk trifles that have a bit of bounce to them ("Lisa Likes Rock'n'Roll" and "Gun Control," the former being cuter); a long sort of avant-collage experiment that's interesting in theory I guess ("Noises"), a long sort of dub reggae experiment that's ditto but less so ("Theatre Of The Absurd"), more fake reggae, some fake gospel rock, and a song with Todd Rundgren on it. So maybe people like it for being varied, or something? Can't be because of the songs. Still a whole lot better than Ellen Foley's Mick Jones album, though.

And oh yeah, left out "Leave Me Alone," where Ian sings in this stilted low register that sounds like bad '80s Bowie. Really hated that one.

"Central Park N' West" is pretty good. He played it last year at his miraculously un-rained-out free show in the park behind Stuyvesant and introduced it by saying "This is David Letterman's favorite song" which presumably was based on some bit of business between Dave and Paul Shaffer.

I hope he's still got it at 83. From wiki, this I didn't know:

Hunter was born in Oswestry, Shropshire, England.[3] Due to the onset of war, the family moved to Hamilton, South Lanarkshire to live with the family of his Scottish father. Hunter was brought up there until the age of six and has stated that he considers himself a Scot,[4] but also identifies as English and British.

oswestry i knew (of all places to be from lol)

On bass!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cALwEaH-tlU

WTF?

Dunno if this leaves off any solo keepers (though why does xgau refer to "Ian's Two solo albums" when he's already got three reviewed on this same page? Blocked memories of All American Alien Boy? He really didn't like that one), but yeah it's a good comp:

Shades of Ian Hunter: The Ballad of Ian Hunter and Mott the Hoople [Columbia, 1979]:
Exemplary discophilia. The Mott 45s on side one are all the young stiffs--great album tracks edited down for an AM exposure that was rarely forthcoming, they race along with an almost punky punch on LP. The B sides and miscellaneous on side two are uneven, natch, but worth getting to know (as owners of Greatest Hits have already learned with two of them). Those circumspect enough to have passed up Ian's two solo albums are now rewarded with side three's best-of. And side four excerpts the solo Ian that was never released here to impressive effect. A genuinely obsessive compilation. A-

Oh wait, AAAB was *also* a 1979 release, maybe from later in the year (na ga look it up). Diary of a Rock Star was good("David Bowie came back stage, not eating again I see. He's the only rock star I know who suffers regularly from malnutrition.") Haven't read Reflections of a Rock Star because title.

it should be mentioned that he's still tossing out rockers like this, at a few weeks away from 84.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx_sH3E-kuQ