On Your Way Down

There are only a handful of essential live albums. A few that immediately come to mind are the Who's "Live at Leeds," the Stones' "Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out" and the Allman Brothers'"At the Fillmore East." Included on that elite list is Little Feat's "Waiting for Columbus." This is an out take from the 2002 deluxe edition double CD recorded at Lisner Auditorium Washington D.C. August 10, 1977, and is a cover of an Allen Toussaint tune.

What you hear on this expanded version of their 1978 release is a band at their peak. Lowell George's incendiary slide guitar playing, Bill Payne's rollicking keyboards, the funk of the Tower of Power horn section and the band's backlog of material make for a stunning live performance. Not only are "Don't Bogart That Joint" and "A Apolitcal Blues" restored to this reissue (deleted from the original vinyl release to accommodate a single CD), but a whopping ten outtakes are included, adding almost a full hour of music!

Of the outtakes on disc-2, tracks 6-10 were mixed for the original album, but not used. Tracks 13-15 first appeared on the odds and ends album "Hoy-Hoy!" According to the liner notes, tracks 11 and 12 apparently were never considered for use on either the original album or "Hoy-Hoy!" All outtakes were taken from the same series of concerts (The Rainbow Theatre in London and Lisner Auditorium in Washington, DC) as the songs on the original album.

This is the last Little Feat album which had the full involvement of Lowell George. It is quite extraordinarily sad that within a year 'Little Feat' were no more and Lowell George had left this planet, as many feared he would. But the legacy of music left behind is a fine one with this perhaps being the jewel in the crown. Several years later the remainder of the band reformed under the 'Little Feat' banner, but, although they were a popular live attraction, without George the magic had gone.