C3S9CD12 This is a strange album, I’m really not sure what it is trying to be. The remaining members of Little Feat, plus a few noteworthy extra musicians. Guess vocals for each track, some famous and some not so famous. Classic Little Feat tracks plus some covers some new some old. So as you can see the album is a bit all over the place.
Little Feat rose to fame in the seventies with the tortured genius Lowell George at the helm, George left the band and then died from from a drug overdose, in 1981 I thimk. The band continued on but some would say they were never the same. Their live album Waiting For Columbus is seen as a bit of a classic and they have released some great moments of country tinged rock over the years.
The good bits of this album, Sonny Landreth, one of the world’s greatest slide guitarists guests on 3 tracks. The tracks sung by Bob Seger, Chris Robinson (Balck Crowes)Dave Matthews and especially Inara George (I suspect a relative of Lowell) are good and one of the covers is a song called Champion Of The World which is written by Will Kimborough, and English guy making a great living as a songwriter for hire in Nashville. The bad bits, why cover The Weight (The Band did it so well) and This Land Is Your Land (Woody Guthrie), it’s been covered some many times before there is nothing to add to it. Too many second rate vocalists, Bela Fleck and Mike Gordon, ok but not great!
Little Feat were a great band but sadly I don’t think this album is a reflection of the band and their history. Where guess vocalist albums have worked in the past, (Santana’s Supernatural being the yard stick to be measured by) this one fails to deliver on a number of levels and failed to ignite the career of Little Feat. If you want to look into Little Feat, try Waiting For Columbus or something else from their classic period.
This video is from 1977 from The Rainbow Theatre London, Lowell George front and centre, this is what Little Feat should sound like!
4/10
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