Review of Live At The Brattle Theatre/Griffith Sunset EP
By Matt Engel from The Wood
At the age of five I was kidnapped. This is my story: It was a cold night in Long Island, my family and I was staying with some friends. At ten o’clock I was disturbed from my sleep by my father. Still quite wary, I entered our crummy navy blue Camry and fell into a half sleep phase in which I watched the minutes go by on my dashboard clock. Finally at 11:30 we arrived at this broke down gym. In my most innocent five-year-old voice I finally spoke, “Dad, where the hell are we.” His genially responded, “Son, this is your first concert, this is the Lemonheads.” As the story goes, my first concert experience wasn’t my best. The first thing I was required to do was step over a passed out drunk guy. I prodded him with my walking stick that I had grabbed from outside. He didn’t move; thinking about it now, I’m convinced that man was dead. Anyway the good thing was I had spent much of my early childhood listening to It’s A Shame About Ray, the classic Lemonheads album. Now while the music was too loud for my taste it did mark a landmark in my life that I will never forget.
So, while my first encounter with Lemonheads music was at the tender age of five not stopped listening to their music. Naturally when I heard about the Evan Dando solo album I had to pick it up. The live disc is solid. It has such LH classics as Down About it, Stove, Buddy, and Big Star’s classic Thirteen. While it has those gems it lacks some of my other favorites such as If I Could Talk and Bit Part. So in sum the live album is well recorded and contains a good premise to the Evan/Lemonhead style. The Griffith Sunset ep, though, was somewhat disappointing. While the Hank Williams tribute is excellent I was hoping for at least one Gram Parsons cover. There were none! Oh well, this should hold us Lemonhead/Smudge/Sneeze/Tom Morgan fanatics until Evan’s next solo release.