A Band Rediscovered

I had some rare free time on my hands so I decided to search a live music archive web site called Live Music Archive. The site is committed to providing the highest quality live concerts in a lossless, downloadable format and to preserve and archive as many live concerts as possible for current and future generations to enjoy. There are hundreds of Grateful Dead shows here and a couple months ago, the Dead wanted to cease the trading of their shows on this site, but have since relented. Grateful Dead backtracks on download ban

I kept this site in my mind and decided to check it out last night. The band that caught my eye while surfing the site was Little Feat, a band which played a nice mix of R&B, blues, country and rock and roll. In the 1970's, they were extremely popular here in the Washington DC area. I listened to quite a bit of two concerts, one from Liser Auditorium here in DC on August 10, 1977 and another show at the Orpheum Theater in Boston MA on May 13, 1977. DC was a great venue for Little Feat. The Warner Theater and Lisner Auditorium shows were always sold out. They had a lot of support here. It seemed like everyone I knew and hung out with at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda where I grew up was a fan of this band.

A couple of the songs from the Lisner show made it onto their 1978 live album Waiting for Columbus. I do recognize long time DC area DJ Cerphe's voice from WHFS giving the intro. The quality of the Lisner show isn't all that great, but it's definitely worth a listen.

The second show is a much better recording. It's amazing that an audience recording in 1977 could be this good. The music in this show is raw and explosive. It was great hearing old favorites like Time Loves A Hero, Oh Atlanta and Red Streamliner.

While I listened to them a lot growing up, I never got to see them live.

More information on Little Feat can be found here:

All Music and the band's official web site Little Feat Web Site