The Black Crowes sounded like a truly great rock and roll band in their first of two nights at Higher Ground. The new members of the band, especially guitarist Luther Dickinson, sounded fully integrated into the lineup, while Chris and Rich Robinson appeared as creative complements rather than the combatants of years past.
What should we expect from a live recording of a band within a year of its own demise, a band who had recently dismissed its heroin addicted drummer and was already splitting apart at the seams in the wake of its own internal turmoil? Will it show the band burning out or fading away? With Live at Shea, we get neither. Instead it finds the Clash in their prime, a prime that lasted their entire career from its earliest rumblings out of the ashes of the 101ers to the near bitter end preserved here.
Guitarist George McConnell has been playing guitar since the age of fifteen. He learned the ways of the world under the tutelage of Lulu— Mississippi’s first black female beer-truck driver.
