Ry Cooder and Little Feat live - Rampant Slide Syncopation

Ry Cooder

Back in the 70s two of the hottest live bands around were the Ry Cooder band and Little Feat. When it came to rootsy rock’n’roll with the emphasis on the “roll” or relaxed funk with a touch of shuffle, both the Cooder band and Little Feat pretty much had it nailed.

Little Feat

Cooder and the Feat had a lot in common apart from their live prowess. Ry Cooder and the Feat's Lowell George were two of the best slide guitar players of their generation. Cooder actually played slide on parts of the the first Little Feat album after Lowell George sustained a hand injury and couldn’t play on the sessions.  Both bands also had a fixation on all things “south of the border”. Cooder incorporated the Tex-Mex style and featured Texan accordion player Flaco Jiménez in his band. The Feat used latin themes as lyrical inspiration in songs like Spanish Moon and Down Below The Borderline.

Throughout the 70s both bands put out a whole series of superb, critically praised albums that were commercial flops. Revered in Europe and almost unknown in the US they had pretty much given up the ghost by the mid 80s. Little Feat temporarily split after Lowell George’s untimely death in 1979 and Cooder went off into score film soundtracks, most successfully on Paris Texas. He also worked with John Hiatt and Nick Lowe in the band Little Village, and helped bring Cuban music to the mainstream with the Buena Vista Social Club film and albums.

Amazingly, Cooder has only ever released two live albums. 1977's Showtime and this year's excellent Ry Cooder And Corridos Famosos Live In San Francisco which features versions of classic live 70s material like Crazy 'Bout an Automobile and Dark End of the Street.

Little Feat put out the double live LP Waiting For Columbus in 1977 which has since been expanded into a double CD. The band have also, and most generously, made a whole library of concerts spanning their entire career available on the Live Music Archive for free download.

So, apart from the official releases (which you really should own), here are a handful of excellent officially unreleased video and audio recordings which show off why the two bands were such highly regarded live acts.


Ry Cooder
"Let’s Have A Ball" is an excellent 90-minute Ry Cooder concert filmed by Les Blank. It features Ry Cooder and a band which includes Van Dyke Parks, Jim Keltner and Flaco Jiménez playing at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz, California, on March 25th, 1987. It was broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK in 1988 but is unavailable commercially. Apparently Cooder doesn’t want it released. God knows why. It's brilliant. Check out Cooder's sublime and sensual solo around the 18 minute mark on How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live?

The band are; Ry Cooder: guitar, vocals. Jim Keltner: drums. Van Dyke Parks: keyboards. Jorge Calderon: bass. Flaco Jiménez: accordion. Miguel Cruiz: percussion. Steve Douglas: sax. George Bohannon: trombone. Singers: Bobby King, tenor; Terry Evans, baritone; Arnold McCuller, tenor; Willie Green Jr, bass

Let’s Have A Ball / Jesus On The Mainline / How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live? / Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb / Down In Mississippi / Maria Elena / Just A Little Bit
The Very Thing That Makes You Rich (Makes Me Poor) / Crazy About An Automobile / Chain Gang / Down In Hollywood / Good Night Irene.

Thanks to  yosh95wilde for uploading this YouTube

Ry Cooder Live in japan 1988
Here's another excellent show recorded a year later in Tokyo on 28th June 1988.

Ry Cooder - guitar, vocals, Van Dyke Parks - piano, Flaco Jiminez - accordeon, Steve Douglas - sax, Jim Keltner - drums, Jorge Calderone - bass, Bobby King - vocals, Terry Evans - vocals.

00:00 Low-Commotion / 03:40 Little Sister / 08:00 He'll Have To Go / 13:30 Jesus On The Mainline / 19:00 Down In Mississippi / 27:20 Do Re Mi / 32:00 Get Rhythm / 36:00 Chain Gang / 42:00 Goodnight Irene

Thanks to TheRockenroller for uploading this on YouTube

1970 Cooder Promo film produced by Van Dyke Parks
As a bonus here is a wonderful 14 minute short on Cooder produced by Van Dyke Parks in 1970 as "Warner Brothers Records Director of Audio Visual Services". Cooder sounds pretty folksy here.

Thanks to CaptainJos for the Youtube upload.

Little Feat
The Feat are still going strong although now with Gabe Ford replacing the late Richie Hayward on drums. According to a friend of mine who saw them in London in February, they are still a live force to be reckoned with.

Here are two shows widely bootlegged in the 70s which contain arguably some of the best music they ever recorded with Lowell George. These albums, along with 1974's official Feats Don't Fail Me Now were pretty much my introduction to the band and I actually prefer both of these to the rather slick sounding Waiting For Columbus. Both of these are powerful electric funked up hard rock albums which demonstrate a band both inspired and very much at the top of their game. One of the tightest rhythm sections around coupled with Paul Barrere and Lowell George's snaky dual leads make this some of the best 70s live rock music ever recorded. No wonder Jimmy Page called them his favourite band in a 1975 Rolling Stone interview.


Little Feat Live at Civic Auditorium on March 20, 1973. Originally bootlegged in the 70s as Aurora Backseat. Eldorado Slim here was never officially released and Got No Shadow segues into the intense jazz rock of The Fan. Lowell is er... quite chatty.

Little Feat live at Ultrasonic Studios, Hempstead, NY. September 19th, 1974. Originally bootlegged as Electrif Lycanthrope in the 70s. The whole show is stunning. Particularly outstanding is the Spanish Moon > Skin It Back > Fat Man in the Bathtub medley. The Fan is a stunning blast of super rapid funked up jazz rock with the emphasis on rock.

And finally, with ex Rolling Stone Mick Taylor at the Rainbow in London on 3rd August 1977

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Celestial Voices - The Pink Floyd live at the Paradiso, Amsterdam 1969

 

Celestial is right. This is one of the best Pink Floyd live recordings from their under-rated post Syd Barrett pre Dark Side of the Moon lost in space era.

The first half of this disc is 40 minutes of absolutely gorgeous interstellar Floyd in full-on warp factor space rock mode. It was recorded at a gig at the Paradiso in Amsterdam in the summer of 1969. The Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun here is intense. The Careful With That Axe, Eugene is sensorially bewildering and the Saucerful of Secrets has an empyreal glory the album version merely hints at.

The set was recorded by Dutch Radio Hilversum but due to some kind of technical foul-up the vocals were not recorded or are so far back in the mix as to be inaudible. This doesn't actually matter. Most of what the Floyd were doing at this time was instrumental anyway and the lack of vocals just adds to the unearthliness. David Gilmour's guitar is well up in the mix so what you get is a powerful set of space rock instrumentals with some really incendiary guitar playing from the man himself. There might be a few rough edges; this does not have the finesse of the live disc on Ummagumma or the BBC In Concert shows but it more than makes up for it atmosphere. It's rough but remember this is the avant garde Floyd as space rock pioneers. Tangerine Dream must have been orbiting somewhere nearby because it's only a short space shuttle ride from here to their classic 70s trailblazing space rock albums Atem, Alpha Centauri or Zeit .

Listen to this. Believe me, this really is some of the finest and most intense Floydian space rock around. And for its age the sound quality is superlative.

Fasten seat belts and set the controls...


Pink Floyd live at the Paradiso, Amsterdam, Holland. Saturday 9th August 1969.
1. Interstellar Overdrive (part)        
2. Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun        
3. Careful With That Axe, Eugene        
4. A Saucerful Of Secrets

If you can find the bootleg CD two superb unreleased late 60s BBC sessions follow the Paradiso gig and make this one of the best Floyd boots to come out in recent years. These pastoral BBC recordings (more of which here) allow for a safe and gently floating reentry into the planetary atmosphere and subsequent happy landing.
   
Paris Cinema, Lower Regent Street, London. Monday 12th May 1969.
5. Daybreak (Grantchester Meadows)        
6. Nightmare (Cymbaline)        
7. The Beginning (Green Is The Colour) / Beset By Creatures Of The Deep (Careful With That Axe, Eugene)        
8. The Narrow Way (Narrow Way Part 3)
    
BBC Studios. 201 Piccadilly, London. Tuesday 25th June 1968.
9. Top Gear Introduction        
10. The Murderotic Women Or Careful With That Axe, Eugene        
11. The Massed Gadgets Of Hercules (A Saucerful Of Secrets)        
12. Let There Be More Light        
13. Julia Dream        
14. Top Gear Conclusion


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And
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