Customer Reviews

Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas [Vinyl]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is one of those classic live ones form the seventies, as good as "live rust", or "it's too late too stop now".
Just one man, one voice and one acoustic guitar. Sounds like he's performing before you in your room.
The album has allmost all of Townes' famous songs, so it's also perfect to start with if you are not familiar with his repertoire.

I bought the vinyl reissue by Fat Possum Records: gatefold sleeve, flat vinyl, 180 gram each, comes with polylined inner sleeves. And most important of all: it sounds great. Get it!

Who remembers "Foozeball" these days? But in 1973, it was still cool to play foozeball.
This double album is all you need to crown Townes Van Zandt as the greatest folk singing writer who ever lived! I remember seeing this record all over the place in 1977 (when it was first released) and NEVER BOUGHT IT. But then Townes never played the Rio Grande Valley in deep south Texas where I grew up, nor did the radio stations play him. A real shame. 20 years later and you couldn't FIND A COPY!
If you can find an original on Tomato Records (with the paper brown inner sleeves) GO FOR IT!
Otherwise, this reissue will do just fine.
4 sides of classic Townes, singing folk, blues, country and soul piercing poetry.
And always with the jokes, several here, but that was Townes......
Recorded in hot Houston, Texas during the summer of 1973, you can hear the bottles on the tables as the waitress picks them up.....

The record is great but it arrived new with dust and fingermarks all over the vinyl. Whoever is in charge of inserting the records into the paper sleeve should be reprimanded.

The main points of this review have been used to review other Townes Van Zandt CDs.

Readers of this space are by now very aware that I am in search of and working my way through various types of American roots music. In shorthand, running through what others have termed "The American Songbook". Thus I have spent no little time going through the work of seemingly every musician who rates space in the august place. From blues giants, folk legends, classic rock `n' roll artists down through the second and third layers of those milieus out in the backwoods and small, hideaway music spots that dot the American musical landscape. I have also given a nod to more R&B, rockabilly and popular song artists then one reasonably need to know about. I have, however, other than the absolutely obligatory passing nods to the likes of Hank Williams and Patsy Cline spent very ink on more traditional Country music, what used to be called the Nashville sound. What gives?

Whatever my personal musical preferences there is no question that the country music work of, for example, the likes of George Jones, Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette in earlier times or Garth Brooks and Faith Hill a little later or today Keith Urban and Taylor Swift (I am cheating on these last two since I do not know their work and had to ask someone about them) "speak" to vast audiences out in the heartland. They just, for a number of reasons that need not be gone into here, do not "speak" to me. However, in the interest of "full disclosure" I must admit today that I had a "country music moment" about thirty years ago. That was the time of the "outlaws" of the country music scene. You know, Waylon (Jennings) and Willie (Nelson). Also Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash and Jerry Jeff Walker. Country Outlaws, get it? Guys and gals ( think of Jesse Colter)who broke from the Nashville/ Grand Old Opry mold by drinking hard, smoking plenty of dope and generally raising the kind of hell that the pious guardians of the Country Music Hall Of Fame would have had heart attacks over (at least in public). Oh, and did I say they wrote lyrics that spoke of love and longing, trouble with their "old ladies" (or "old men"), and struggling to get through the day. Just an ordinary day's work in the music world but with their own outlandish twists on it.

All of the above is an extremely round about way to introduce the "max daddy" of my 'country music moment', Townes Van Zandt. For those who the name does not ring a bell perhaps his most famous work does, the much-covered "Pancho And Lefty". In some ways his personal biography exemplified the then "new outlaw" (assuming that Hank Williams and his gang were the original ones). Chronic childhood problems, including a stint in a mental hospital, drugs, drink, and some rather "politically incorrect" sexual attitudes. Nothing really new here, except out of this mix came some of the most haunting lyrics of longing, loneliness, depression, sadness and despair. And that is the "milder" stuff. Not exactly the stuff of Nashville. That is the point. The late Townes Van Zandt "spoke" to me (he died in 1997) in a way that Nashville never could. And, in the end, the other outlaws couldn't either. That, my friends, is the saga of my country moment. Listen up to any of the CDs reviewed in this space for the reason why Townes did.

Townes Van Zandt was, due to personal circumstances and the nature of the music industry, honored more highly among his fellow musicians than as an outright star of "outlaw" country music back in the day. That influence was felt through the sincerest form of flattery in the music industry- someone well known covering your song. Many of Townes' pieces, especially since his untimely death in 1997, have been covered by others, most famously Willie Nelson's cover of "Pancho and Lefty". However, Townes, whom I had seen a number of times in person in the late 1970's, was no mean performer of his own darkly compelling songs. Listen here to some live work done in an old time "honky-tonk".