Tim Drake
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A missed opportunity
It's difficult to star rate this cd as the music is wonderful, stripped down acoustic versions of so many songs that in their original cd incarnations just ROCK, but without losing the vitality of the original versions.
But the sound quality is very poor and I can hardly believe that the release was actually approved, and ultimately it is a great and frustrating disappointment.
I love WN's music, and was so looking forward to hearing a live performance from someone who performs live relatively rarely, and seldom, if ever, on this side of the pond.
But if you're going to make a live recording surely you record it on equipment that will enable you to get it to sound even semi-professional at the production stage. This sounds as if it's been recorded on a mobile phone, and had no post recording production.
Some people with far less performing and recording experience have made better quality recordings than this in their bedrooms. Sorry, Willie, but with the depth of your experience you really should have known better than to allow this out.
So, 5 stars for the music and performance, 0 (yes, not even 1) for the recording, average 2.5, but as it's Willie it gets a 3.
Update : It has since been advised that the cd was issued as "homegrown bootleg thing". The 'bootleg' reference is very valid, as the overall 'feel' is that of those bootleg albums of the 1968-73 era that were recorded in the auditorium from speaker output. In retrospect my reference to it sounding like it was recorded on a mobile phone was harsh, but I suggest that those for whom sound quality is an important factor listen carefully to the samples before making a buying decision. I emphasise that my issue is with the sound quality, NOT the performance.
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Bill
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A Top 10 Disc You Need
Fantastic Disc, highlighting a great, intimate show. Great sound, very warm, feels like Willie's performing in your living room! Great to hear not only songs from Streets of NY, but older songs, and covers, too. If you have the chance to catch Willie live, DO IT! Looking forward to the next live disc, maybe next time with the full band!
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Brush Plunger
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Dynamite set list overcomes sound quality on live Willie Nile set!
By the end of Willie Nile's set at the Turning Point, captured on this CD, you forget that this was an acoustic performance. The rousing renditions by Willie and his mates reveal the obvious joy they have in performing these timeless tunes. Featuring many of the strongest songs from his recent "Streets of NY," the set also boasts Willie classics such as 'Vagabond Moon' and 'Les Champs Elysees' played with true bar-band gusto. And, like all great bar bands, their cover versions of Dylan, The Who and The Ramones are downright raucus--truly inspired adulation!
I often measure live rock 'n' roll performances on their energy level and by how closely the artist captures the original recording's essence; if they can then somehow transcend it, it is pure heaven...The version of 'Hard Times in America' captured here earns that distinction; what was tepidly produced on the original EP (damn those '80s studios!) became anthemic and cathartic at the same time, revealing the gem this song truly is. THANK YOU, WILLIE!
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lucidculture.com
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On Line Review
Hot on the heels of Nile’s career-best 2006 album Streets of NYC, the veteran NYC rocker shares the secret to his success. It’s called kicking ass. Backed by drummer Rich Pagano and tv gabfest studio guitarist Jimmy Vivino in an upstate New York yuppie folk club, the trio sledgehammer their way through a mix of songs from Nile’s latest studio cd as well as a few choice cuts from throughout his career. Don’t let the presence of Vivino scare you off – he plays mandolin and acoustic rhythm guitar here and does so competently, even passionately. Nile somehow managed to get him into the harness without completely muzzling him, and the results are impressive.
The set opens with two cuts from Streets of NYC, Welcome To My Head and Asking Annie Out. Nile has always been a hookmeister, and stripped to the chassis, these songs remain as instantly hummable as their original versions. Then they play Nile’s classic from way back in 1981, Vagabond Moon as if it was the single they’d just released. It’s sort of Nile’s Aqualung or The Thrill Is Gone: everybody wants to hear it, he’s played it a million times but he still usually manages to fit it into the set. How he manages to keep it fresh is the operative question: maybe because it’s so damn catchy and builds to such killer crescendos.
The following cut is another early one, Les Champs Elysees, and the version on Nile’s Archive Alive album is pretty forgettable: “Anybody like to do the twist?” he asks, and it sounds rote. Not this version, with its uncommonly nice acoustic intro. After that, we get what’s surprisingly the best song on the album, the coruscating, gorgeously lyrical Irish ballad The Day I Saw Bo Diddley In Washington Square. As with Nile’s best work, it’s a sprawling, Bruegelesque tableau set in a New York now pretty much buried under suburban chain restaurants and towering Lego condominiums selling for multimillions of dollars. Nile’s boast that “everyone will say they were there” on that vivid afternoon rings defiantly true.
The band also runs through a couple of hook-driven anthems, That’s Enough For Me and On Some Rainy Day, as well as Cell Phones Ringing (In The Pockets Of The Dead), another one from Streets of NYC. That’s the one cut here that misses the pyrotechnic Andy York electric guitar work that makes the studio version so unforgettable. But it’s still a good lyric and a good song, even if it doesn’t evoke the Madrid train bombings as well. The band recasts the following tune When One Stands as more of a swinging countryish song, as opposed to the blazing reggae take they made in the studio, but it works. .
There’s also a surprise, Hard Times In America, the title track from Nile’s little-noticed ep from the 90s, brilliantly recast as an ominous, skeletal delta blues as it builds into the verse. Nile virtually never plays it live: this version alone is worth the price of the album. Streets of New York, with Nile on piano is uncharacteristically quiet, with a good build to the conclusion. The album winds up with mostly covers, including a blistering, stomping version of the Dylan classic It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue: what seems to be a pretty clueless, sedate yuppie audience is suddenly adrenalized and roaring along with the band. Nile and his cohorts also tackle the Who classic Substitute as well as a Ramones song.
For devoted fans, this is a must-own. It’s also a good introduction to the artist, a suitable present for fans of rock songwriters ranging from Springsteen to Richard Thompson. Caveat: the Willie Nile catalog is highly addictive. After hearing this you will probably want the rest of his albums. This one is available online, in better independent record stores and at shows.
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