Bill & Dan Squash Another One!

squeezing the life out of good recordings, one at a time!

Of course this wasn't Little Feat's "last album" any more than boomer rock band "final tours" are ever final. As Dennis McNally's well-illustrated excellent annotation points out without actually saying it, Lowell George was not exactly ebullient about things when this was recorded and the songs weren't either though there are a few classics like "All That You Dream" and "Long Distance Love". In fact all of side one qualifies but the vibe was much improved when they played them live on Waiting For Columbus. Long time Feat fans--a great concentration of them were in Boston-- recognized the enthusiasm downturn but no matter, Feat fans were a loyal bunch.

The sound was kind of down too. Not bad, but not great either though the engineer was George Massenburg and the studio belonged to the great Dave Hassinger. And Doug Sax mastered it at The Mastering Lab on the main lathe. The recording lacked "sparkle" but in retrospect the midrange was pleasingly honest so vocals shone and the sound was better than I originally thought.

This reissue mastered by Inglot and Hersh and cut by Bernie Grundman is so grossly dynamically compressed notes almost stop before they start. All the life is drained from the music. I hadn't played the record in a while and started with the reissue. I almost didn't recognize it. "Is that what it really sounds like?" I thought. I pulled the original and played. No, that is not what it really sounds like.

I do not understand why these guys feel the need to compress the crap out of recordings. They did same on the Lotti Golden Motor-Cycle reissue. If you like that, you'll enjoy. Otherwise find an original and hear what it was meant to sound like. The bonus disc of outtakes the first two of which first appeared on Hotcakes & Outtakes from 2000, demos, alternate versions and the single version of "All That You Dream" is definitely fun for Feat fans and glad to have it but unless the tapes were in rough shape, why cut from digital files? And worse, why compress the life out of them?

And now I'll repeat the story some of you know: when the band played Paul's Mall I for permission from Fred Taylor (who owned Paul's Mall and the adjacent Jazz Workshop) to record the show on my Sony stereo cassette recorder. Lowell George okayed it too. (I didn't know WBCN was also recording it!). I had a front row table and it was sounding great. As I was packing up following the show, I turned around and when I looked back the tapes (Advent Chromium Dioxide) had been stolen!

I felt really bad since this was the bootleg record era. I encountered Lowell at the bar and apologized. He said "Don't worry about it" and handed me a fat joint. I went home and didn't worry.