Wednesday, August 28, 2024

Old Folks' Boogie? Everyone boogies to Lowell George & Little Feat

If you've been around here for a little while you'll know that the One Buck Guy loves nothing more than launching new series, so here we go again! Almost all of the tribute albums I posted so far have been either slimmed down editions of longer sets or ones where I simply changed the sequencing for a better listening experience. The Fleetwood Mac one was arguably the first entry in my homebrewed tribute albums, but hey, here's the official premiere of We've Got You Covered, a series of cover albums paying tribute to an artist or band. 

When I say homebrewed I'll be honest and say that some work has been done for this one, the first volume of what looks like it'll be three volumes dedicated to Lowell George and his merry men. The bulk of the tracks come from a playlist Farq shared over on his island (with a Farq-approved bit rate), but it came off as exactly that: More like a playlist on a computer than a music album, with several tracks having artists follow themselves in rapid succession, something I tend to avoid, and having the same songs repeated right after each other, another big no-no for me. So, there was a bunch of material there, but I felt it could be put into better shape. (Sorry, Jonder, just tagging the tracks right before publication and it looks like this is an old comp of yours!) Over the course of these discs I also added a bunch of additional tracks from various sources, including one or to you might not know or have. And I hope you're charmed by rather than ashamed for the admittedly DIY-looking album cover...

Impeccable look, impeccable song choices...

It's probably not necessary for you, dear experienced music blog reader, to talk about the greatness of George or peak Feat, so let's have a quick look at the line-up of this first volume, shall we? One part of contributors are Lowell George's friends and running mates like Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Nicolette Larson or Linda Ronstadt. There is of course also George's old compadre Robert Palmer, who not only had the good taste but also the skills to cover Little Feat several times and always come up with winners. Or label mate Claudia Lennear who launched her solo career (after years of background singing, both in The Ikettes and on a ton of classic songs, with a cover of "Two Trains", only to see it stall out completely after that single and one album. 

Country fans will find Kathy Boguss and The Golden Palominos and their lovely take on the eternally underrated "Brides Of Jesus". Americana fans will no doubt cherish the dream duo of Kelly Willis and Jay Farrar. Speaking of dream duos: How 'bout Susannah Hoffs and Matthew Sweet covering "Willin'". Yup, very good. 

And then there's the group of, well, miscellaneous artists like Cher, Whishbone Ash, dutch actress and singer Ricky Koole , John Sebastian, Dan McCafferty and Sandy Denny. Really, we got a bit of everything for everyone on this. Plus, obviously, some really awesome tunes courtesy of Mr. George. What's there not to like? 


19 comments:

  1. Lowell & the Feat Re-Covered

    https://workupload.com/file/FMzEQCCEJs8

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  2. What's your favorite Lowell George/Little Feat song?

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  3. Yep, one of mine. First posted as a single disc at Voodoo Wagon. Farq reposted it and wrote that he didn't remember where he got it. I contacted him to say that I had collected enough covers for a second disc. He did the cover art. Last year he reposted the 2 disc version and said (again) that he didn't remember where he got it. Now I have enough Feat covers for a 3 disc set, and that's not counting the new Lowell tribute in the Sweet Relief series.

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    1. Yeah, that's odd, 'cause I distinctly remember him saying he doesn't know where he got it from. Well, he is odd sometimes. So, imagine my surprise when I was retagging the files yesterday evening when a "compiled by jonder for voodoo wagon" popped up in the metadata.

      Anyway, I hope you don't mind I reworked this to my liking. It's interesting how between you, Stinky, Koen and me we all have slightly different philosophies on how yo compile discs...

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    2. I've learned more about tagging since I sent that post to Voodoo Wagon, but I think we (speaking on behalf of Stinky, Koen and myself) subscribe to the "more is more" philosophy, whereas you you exercise more quality control. I'm perfectly happy to see this grab bag reworked to your satisfaction.

      It's so hard to choose a favorite Little Feat song. If you put a gun to my head, I might say Strawberry Flats.

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    3. That is, unless Little Feat has a song called "Hey, put that gun down."

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    4. Apologies. I genuinely didn't know the original source - it was passed to me by a third party. I didn't snitch it from Jonder's blog, nor look at the metadata. So thanks to Jonder. The only thing I added was the cover.
      (As to "odd", OBG ...)

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    5. Amended text with credit here:
      https://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/2023/03/iof-spatial-additions-dept-little.html

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    6. Oh, don't worry, Jonder, all the tracks will show up on future volumes. I don't think there was a lack of quality control at all, I just didn't like the 'flow' of it as much as I wanted to and reworked that to my liking. That's all, and that's entirely a personal thing.

      Future volumes will acknowledge your collecting work for this...

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    7. How about if I post here a zip file link of the other covers I've collected (or a list of artist and title), and you can decide if there are any that you want to add to Future Volumes?

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    8. I have all the covers from your two-disc edition which if I'm not mistaken was 40 tracks. Does that sound about right?

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    9. I've added 15-20 more since then. Plus there's this:

      https://www.sweetrelief.org/longdistancelove.html

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    10. Oh wow, haven't you been a busy bee...well, if you want to post the 'third disc' material, go ahead...I've found about 8 to 10 others I believe, probably with some overlap, but I'm sure you unearthed some stuff I haven't heard or heard of...

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  4. Mercenary Territory

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  5. Used to be Teenage Nervous Breakdown. Later days it was Fat Man In The Bathtub or Tripe Face Boogie.

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  6. I got to see Little Feat twice with Lowell and once without. Great band either way live.

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  7. If a thought's as good as a thrill, but you can't buy a thrill, then why is it only a penny for your thoughts?

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  8. The opposite of a deep cut, "Easy to Slip" is probably my favorite Little Feat song even though it's pretty atypical of their style. Thanks!

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