Live at the Palace

AMG Review of Live at the Palace

Stephen Thomas Erlewine
All Music Guide

Continuing the flood of posthumous Blind Melon product released in conjunction with the tenth anniversary of Shannon Hoon's death in 1995, Live at the Palace captures a show the quintet gave in Hollywood on October 11, 1995, a mere ten days before Hoon's passing. The group was on the road promoting its second album, Soup, and this live record logically leans heavily on that LP; six of the 12 tunes here were from that sophomore effort, which was only two months old at the time of the show. Blind Melon sound leaner, rawer on-stage than they did on record, which does have a nice effect of serving as an appropriate accompaniment for Hoon's raspy vocals, which are the first sign that things weren't necessarily all right in the Blind Melon camp. Hoon never sounds completely out of it on Live at the Palace, but he sounds as if he's teetering on the brink of losing it, particularly in the rough sandpaper tones of his voice and how he occasionally slips into a slight slur. Given his fate, it's a little easier, in retrospect, to hear how his performance shows signs of wear and tear, but at the time, this show must have sounded like just another solid concert. And to a certain extent it still does, while for hardcore fans there is a poignant undercurrent due to Hoon's early death.