: Let’s start with the gripes and then get on to the fun part, shall we?
: I still don’t like the title. It is, perhaps, less repugnant to me than originally, but it just doesn’t sit well. You’ll notice that I don’t actually use the name often...I just can’t bring myself to say it without cringing. Maybe that will pass, but I’m not entirely sure that would be a good thing either ("Gee, there’s nothing like a decreased sensitivity to one of our more heinous social ills!"). I may change my mind as the months pass, but for now that’s where it stands.
: Tracey called the liner notes "minimalist." That’s putting it kindly. The liner notes are wussy. I’ll forgive them this time, because it’s a live album. Next time, WRITE STUFF!
: I still feel the lack of Auntie Mary on here. I think an almost-instrumental would’ve rounded out the album nicely. I also think it would’ve been a cool production choice to include a track that feels like an "encore" track, and Auntie Mary would’ve been ideal in this regard. OK, I may tread on my tongue if we get Auntie Mary on the next studio album...but I still have a feeling that a studio version wouldn’t be as cool as a live one, and I wish it had been there.
: Finally, I would’ve liked a little more banter. I understand that the large number of songs may have prohibited this, though. That said...Holy Smokes, I love this album. I’m really, genuinely, knocked on my arse surprised at how much I admire this album. And a humongous part of WHY I consider this an impressive album comes down to something that initially lowered my expectations for it: The Track List.
: Let me explain. Ever since someone in here posted asking us what our favorite live albums were, I’ve been puzzling and puzzling (‘til my puzzler was sore) over what mine are. To be honest, I couldn’t think of many. They started occurring to me much later. I think that’s partly because most of the live albums I have, or have heard repeatedly, fall into one of two categories, neither of which is wholly impressive in itself. The first category is what I would call simply the "crappy concert album." It takes tracks that appear elsewhere in the band’s repertoire, and simply repeats them in live version. This often translates into two things: horrid sound quality, particularly on the instrumentation, and a bunch of random crowd noise, where the clapping and cheering is so dense and jumbled that it could be the white noise you hear from the television when it’s turned to a non-station. Most of the albums I can think of in this category simply take one concert and record it in entirety from beginning to end. The trademark of the 70’s rock band unable to come up with new material, these albums are supposed to capture the rush of the live experience, but often end up sounding poor and repetitive to anyone already familiar with the band’s material.
: Then there’s what I would call the "artsy live album," which often puts forth newly recorded material, but also uses the live opportunity to try out experimental/departure versions of previously recorded material. I often like these albums for their creative instrumentation and banter with the audience. 10 000 Maniacs Unplugged, Nanci Griffith’s One Fair Summer Evening, and the recent VH-1 Storytellers leap to mind in this category. But all of the albums I can think of in this regard are structured like studio albums. The tracks are clearly separated, the crowd noise is minimized, and the "flow" from song to song feels deliberate...and thus un-concertlike, unspontaneous. They are notoriously low-key (and I don’t mean musically). Many of them actually are recorded live-in-studio, rather than in front of large crowds. This isn’t necessarily a drawback for these albums...the "liveness" is in the experimentation and the transition talking, not in the feel of the album overall. But it’s a quite different thing from a concert album, and something else entirely from a Great Big Sea show.
: So when I saw the tracklist for GBS’ album, it looked like the worst of both possible worlds. I knew from one glance at the tracklist that the "studio" style live album wasn’t going to happen...yet I knew that they were taking different tracks from different shows...so my biggest fear was that I was going to get all the hideous sound quality and gibberish crowd noise of the "crappy concert album," with none of its spontaneity and energy because of the studio-like construction, and was going to miss out on the variety of material and musical experimentation that marks the "artsy" albums in the process.
: Mark this on your calendars, I don’t say it often: I was wrong.
: This really is an entirely different category of live album. This album feels like going to a Great Big Sea concert. The way they were able to achieve that feeling is amazing to me. It may seem a simple thing to take distinct tracks from distinct shows, and smooth the transitions between them so that it sounds like one continuous show. It may seem like an obvious choice to order the tracks like the order of a standard show, as if it were taped in its entirety even when it’s not...to have the length, the selections, and the sequencing mirror a single live show from beginning to end. Yes, it makes perfect sense to try to capture all of the energy of the single-concert album while choosing the most creative/exciting versions of the various tracks, as one might do in a studio-style album. It seems perfectly logical to me...now, in retrospect. But it’s so different from what I’ve heard customarily done on live albums, so different from what I expected, that I’m shocked by both the retrospective obviousness of the choice, and the sheer quality of it. It looks simple, clearly "the way to go," after-the-fact...like a figure skater who spins four times in the air, and then glides away as if to say, "’tweren’t nothin’."
: Maybe it’s just my naivete that made me think it had to be either/or...energy and spontaneity VS. creativity and sound quality. And maybe, nowadays, this is "how it’s done." But I know from hearing a range of other albums that they had a choice when they went about piecing this work together. There is a risk involved here...the risk that the selection of different tracks from different shows would kill the spontaneous feel, and the risk that the decision to go with "standard" material threatens boredom if the versions chosen aren’t distinctive enough in their own right. Somebody made that choice. I don’t know exactly who. But it was a frickity-smart choice, it was a wicked bit of foresight on their part, and by God it works. The decision of how to put this album together, however obvious it may have been to them or anyone else, is for me the smartest and most enjoyable thing about it.
:Now, onto the songs!
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