Featured Album | Alternative Liner Notes

370 | Little Feat | Waiting for Columbus | Warner Bros K 66075 | 1978

Audiences who witnessed Little Feat on stage back in the early 1970s insist they were watching the best live band in the world, some even complaining that the band should never have played second fiddle to the Doobie Brothers, who they joined on the infamous Warner Brothers package tour at the time.  There’s no question that the band could be tight, could be musically adventurous and could demonstrate several different sides to their approach to their music, which probably led to their later demise.  Recorded for the main part at London’s Rainbow Theatre, with extra material gathered from tapes of their later shows in Washington DC, Little Feat included songs originally released on their earlier albums up to this point, ‘Willin’ from both their first and second albums Little Feat (1971) and Sailin Shoes (1972), ‘Dixie Chicken’ and ‘Fat Man in the Bathtub’ from their third album Dixie Chicken, (1973), ‘Oh Atlanta’ and ‘Spanish Moon’ from their fourth Feats Don’t Fail Me Now (1974) and ‘All That You Dream’ and ‘Mercenary Territory’ from their fifth The Last Record Album (1975).  In places the band are on fire, especially on the lengthy ‘Dixie Chicken’ coupled with ‘Tripe Face Boogie’, which includes some incendiary guitar duelling between Lowell George and Paul Barrere, plus a little Dixieland brass courtesy of the Tower of Power horn section, just to sprinkle a little New Orleans into the mix, possibly their finest moment on record.  Rolling Stones completists might also be interested in Mick Taylor’s contribution to ‘A Apolitical Blues’.   

Playlist:

Four Day Creep – Humble Pie (Performance Rockin the Fillmore)

Statesboro Blues – Allman Brothers Band (At Fillmore East)

Dixie Chicken – Little Feat (Waiting For Columbus)

Tripe Face Boogie – Little Feat (Waiting For Columbus)

Stagefright – The Band (Before the Flood)

Rock and Roll – Lou Reed (Rock n Roll Animal)

Master of the Universe – Hawkwind (Space Ritual)

Magic Bus – The Who (Live at Leeds)