Little Feat’s ‘Waiting For Columbus’ Super Deluxe Edition (8 CD) Surpasses Ambitious Expectations

Little Feat’s live album Waiting For Columbus (Warner Bros., 1978) became very popular immediately upon its original release in 1978. Yet in its first configuration as a double-LP of vinyl, the title didn’t actually appear in the form first envisioned by the group: the band recorded and mixed enough material for a triple set, but for marketing reasons, the album was kept to just two records. 

As such, the album had neither the logic nor the length of a complete performance. But the 2002 “Deluxe Edition” of the album did justice to the shows and the Feats: its two compact discs featured versions of all the songs that were performed at the series of concerts recorded for the live project including, most crucially, four tracks of approximately twenty-five minutes, mixed for the original album, but not used. 

Now, a Super Deluxe Edition of Waiting For Columbus ups the ante even further, its eight CDs comprising a remastered version of the original release, plus three full live shows (more or less) presenting this much-beloved band in all its glory.  “Time Loves A Hero” indeed!

CDs 1 & 2: Original Album – The sound on this remastering of the original roughly sixty-minute album is even more spacious than that of its counterpart in the 2002 double CD. Yet it still lacks the length, not to mention the logic, of the consummate concert album: as a point of contrast, the Allman Brothers Band’s At Fillmore East is sixteen-plus minutes longer. Meanwhile, while all three of the other Feats performances here conclude at an increasingly frenetic pace, finally culminating with a headlong drive through “Teenage Nervous Breakdown,” this comparatively tame closer “Feats Don’t Fail Me Down” sounds stunted in comparison. That is, except for the late Richie Hayward’s drumming: his limber movement around his kit is such he sounds like two men playing in the utmost complementary fashion (an impression reinforced throughout this collection’s approximately four hours of playing time). 

CDs 3 & 4: Manchester City Hall, Manchester, U.K., 7/29/77 – This previously-unreleased recording is as revelatory for its rarity as the warm-up nature of its performance (described as such within the comprehensive timeline essay full of the bandmembers’ insight contained in this roughly eight-inch square box). At the outset, a clutch of numbers in a sequence composed by Bill Payne discloses that however elevated and versatile his skills as a keyboardist, the author of “Walkin’ All Night,” “Red Streamliner” and “Oh Atlanta” is hardly the idiosyncratic songwriter and singer Lowell George is. Meanwhile, the distinctively witty, heavily-syncopated likes of the latter’s “Fat Man in the Bathtub” is a far cry from the faux jazz-rock fusion of “Day At The Dog Races;” an instrumental authored by all members of the band except its titular leader, there was never any other tune so anonymous in the Feats repertoire. 

CDs 5 & 6 – The Rainbow, London, U.K., 8/2/77 – Performed in a hotbed of Feats fandom–the Stones and Led Zep were staunch admirers–this show is particularly noteworthy for the presence of the Tower of Power horn section (though the sweet snarl of guitarist Mick Taylor is immediately recognizable too). Lenny Pickett, Greg Adams, buoy the band tremendously by adding palpable atmosphere to “Mercenary Territory” and “Spanish Moon,” while the ominous air they conjure during “On Your Way Down” fulfills the intent of its homage to author Allen Toussaint, the iconic New Orleans composer/producer. Unlike on the final CD set here–almost worth the price of the package in itself–Little Feat almost sound like a lesser band without the horns accompanying them (though on the plus side, the oftentimes icy glaze of the synthesizer isn’t so prominent as on the first pair of compact discs).

CDs 7 & 8: Lisner Auditorium, Washington, D.C. 8/10/77 – It’s a conundrum of no small proportions that all but four of these seventeen total tracks went unreleased until the issue of this box. Or that this concert, in its entirety, wasn’t put out as Waiting For Columbus: certainly, its clearly-defined audio is superior to its counterparts (aside from an occasional vocal imbalance early on), and the mix accurately renders the precision of the musicianship in the spontaneity of the moment. The guitar duel on “Dixie Chicken,” in fact, is just one instance of the clear capture of the band’s fulsome passion and engagement: hear also the rich textures supplied by bassist Kenny Gradney and percussionist Sam Clayton (whose emigration from Delaney and Bonnie’s Friends to Little Feat is also chronicled in the thorough liner notes included in the thirty-eight-page booklet). 

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One Response

  1. Both the SBD & video of the 8/3/77 show confirm that the A Apolitical Blues was the one featured on ‘Waiting For Columbus’. The 8/2/77 version released on the Super Deluxe is a completely different & inferior version (possibly not even from London). There is no way that the jumble that is the 8/2 performance could be tweaked in the studio to create the WFC version & I see no confirmation that Mick altered his solo in the studio as it is present on the video. Solos are different, vocals are different, the lot. As well, there is a terrible cut at the end of the 8/2 performance before Teenage Nervous Breakdown.

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