Live In Aught Three

構成数 : 1枚
合計収録時間 : 01:17:48
Full performer name: James McMurty & The Heartless Bastards. James McMurty & The Heartless Bastards: James McMurtry (vocals, guitar); Ronnie Johnson (bass, background vocals); Darren Hess (drums). Recorded live at The Zephyr, Salt Lake City, Utah; The Orange Peel, Asheville, North Carolina; and 12th & Porter, Nashville, Tennessee, 2003. Personnel: James McMurtry (vocals, guitar); Ronnie Johnson (bass guitar); Daren Hess (drums). Audio Mixer: Stuart Sullivan. Recording information: 12th & Porter, Nashville, TN (05/16/2003-11/15/2003); John Barleycorn's, Wichita, KS (05/16/2003-11/15/2003); The Orange Peel, Asheville, NC (05/16/2003-11/15/2003); Zephyr Club, Salt Lake City, UT (05/16/2003-11/15/2003). Photographer: Alan Pogue. James McMurtry's written plenty of great songs, but he's never made a great album. His character sketches and stories have always rung true, and he's as perceptive a chronicler of the disaffected and alienated as you'll find, but his limited vocal range and sometimes almost-indifferent delivery have made even his best discs, Too Long in the Wasteland and Where'd You Hide the Body a struggle to get through. Live in Aught-Three isn't a great album, but the live setting lets McMurtry and his backing group, the Heartless Bastards, breathe real rock & roll life into many of these songs for the first time. "Levelland," an account of stasis in the fly-over land, aches with a longing for something, anything, that's more exciting than high-school football games and farms, and "Red Dress" burns with an angry intensity that you'd never have guessed McMurtry had in him. We also get a dose of McMurtry's deadpan humor on a few between-song asides ("I used to think I was an artist. Come to find out I'm a beer salesman") and a hilarious delineation between intellectuals and good ol' boys. In fact, the strongest material here -- and McMurtry's best work overall -- are the ones in which he finds both the humor and the pathos in quirky, nasty characters like the ticked-off heir to the worthless farmland of "60 Acres," or the twisted crew at a family reunion in "Choctaw Bingo." If McMurtry's albums haven't caught your attention before, Live in Aught-Three is a perfect opportunity to reassess him. ~ Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen
録音 : ステレオ (Live)