[purchase Shake Me Up]
Little Feat was/is/has been one of my favorite sounds of all. From my reading, critics seem to fall into two categories: thems that think the band could never be the same after Lowell George's passing (and they are right ... but wait: "be the same" means just that) , and thems that give them a chance without their original (burned out) star.
Like many others, I kind of stopped tracking them about the time of the 1979 album Down on the Farm. Probably had something to do with the fact that that's when I left the US. But I cant offer any excuses for not continuing to follow them. Well, no ... I did follow. Over the years, I have returned again and again to the Internet Archive's incredible collection of free Little feat concert recordings, but almost all of it is from before '79.
I'm not really truly stuck in the pre-79 age, but in many ways I am. You hear folks say that the music that comes out these days just doesn't rate compared to the old days. But it's not so. It's more that a lot of music from the "old days" has become classic. As has Little Feat.
The Little Feat on the '91 Shake Me Up album is disparaged by some: it's Paul Barrere, Craig Fuller, Bill Payne, Richie Hayward ... - the same guys as the old days. There are some songs on the album that I agree are not so good, but then there's others like <Don't Try So Hard>, that IMHO match the quality of anything earlier: solid emotion, quality vocals and slide guitar that may not be Lowell George, but doesn't leave much to be desired.
