Live @ The Fillmore - Dark Publications

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Similar Items:

•	West
•	Lucinda Williams - Live from Austin, TX
•	Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
•	World Without Tears
•	Essence

Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.com
Few artists take the sort of emotional risks that Lucinda Williams does. Pouring her all into songs of hurt, need, and desire, she turns every live performance into an adventure, as the first concert recording of her career attests. Coproduced by Williams, Live at the Fillmore showcases her raw wound of a voice and the rough edges of her band in all their unvarnished glory, as the music cuts across conventional categories of country, blues, folk, rock (and rap) to strike a distinctly personal chord. Even the pacing is risky. Whereas most artists plan their sets to hit hardest at the beginning and end, Williams inverts the dynamic, sustaining a mood of reflective melancholy for extended stretches that open and close the album, while building to an explosive climax in the middle. With the selection dominated by recent material, the first eight numbers are like a sweet ache, as the wistful country of "Ventura" and "Reason to Cry" and the folkish minimalism of "Lonely Girls" explore the fringes of emotional fragility. Then Williams and band flex their musical muscles, shifting into the bluesier side of her artistry on "Change the Locks" and "Atonement," extending the desperate intensity of "Joy" over almost eight minutes, and offering homage to Neil Young's Crazy Horse on "Righteously" and "Essence." Backed by the barbed-wire guitar of Doug Pettitbone over the bare-bones rhythms of bassist Taras Prodaniuk and drummer Jim Christie, Williams tells the crowd, "We got the mojo workin' tonight." --Don McLeese

Recommended Lucinda Williams Albums

Lucinda Williams	Sweet Old World	Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
Essence	World Without Tears	Ramblin'

Album Description
Grammy Award winner Lucinda Williams is releasing her first live album titled Live @ The Fillmore. It was recorded at the legendary Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco CA in early 2004. The double album includes such favorites as "Joy", "I Lost It", "Essence" and "Blue", but Williams digs even deeper into her past with gritty versions of "Pineola" and "Changed The Locks". Other songs featured are from the highly-acclaimed, Grammy-Nominated 2003 release World Without Tears.

Live @ The Fillmore features one of the best bands on the road today, with guitarist, pedal steel and background vocalist Doug Pettibone, anchored by Taras Prodaniuk on bass and Jim Christie on drums and percussion. Their performances of Williams' songs are an extraordinary balance of aggression and finesse that perfectly complement Williams' unique vocal style and songwriting.

Customer Reviews: Read 49 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Further into the mind and soul of Lucinda Williams August 22, 2005
31 out of 31 found this review helpful

"Car Wheels on A Gravel Road" was a Grammy-winner that introduced millions of new fans (including me) to the brilliant performer Lucinda Williams whose poetic lyrics, memorable tunes and country-rock sound seemed both fresh and timeless, especially to fans of Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Her subsequent albums, however, did not seem to reach her new fan base. The spare but evocative lyrics turned stark and minimal, and the emotions they revealed seemed extremely personal. The music was somewhat the same, but darker, more claustrophic, an accompaniment to the obsessive mood. I liked these albums ("Essence" and "World Without Tears") but if you didn't find them a little disturbing, you really weren't listening.

With "Live @ the Fillmore," Lucinda seems to be breaking all ties to the "Car Wheels" gal, and saying to her fans that this intense, internal, obsessive space is where she's at and where she's staying. This album is not a recap of her career, a greatest hits collection. It is almost completely devoted to the last two albums, and the few earlier songs that she includes either predicted her current direction, or are reinterpreted here in a darker vein than the originals.

Does she sell these songs? I would say yes, completely. They benefit from the greater expressiveness of live performances. Her vocal delivery is even harsher, the incredible steel guitar/electric guitar work of Doug Pettibone is even more expressive, at times sheer metal noise, at other times lonesome sobbing. These songs seem very close to the bone; I almost felt I was a Peeping Tom hearing her bemoan a hit and run lover in "Those Three Days," instruct a too-selfish lover in "Righteously," or paint a dark picture of solitude in "Ventura." This is a full-grown woman in three dimensions, a woman who has not found love to be much more than a momentary release followed by aching disaster. It can be scary. But it is artistically brilliant and satisfying.

3 out of 5 stars

Adequate May 10, 2005
23 out of 26 found this review helpful

A good listen, but in many cases the studio versions of these songs were more satisfying to me. I thought a strange thing was going on with this recording. On one hand, the vocals sometimes didn't show enough restraint and went to some place beyond the rawness that we like from Lucinda. On the other hand, the band showed too much restraint much of the time - they duplicated the studio sound well but didn't really tap into the kind of extra energy that a live show can convey. This dynamic works alright on the more low-key songs that start disc one and finish disc two, but it falls down on the faster/harder songs in the middle of the set.

Lucinda fans will buy it and like it well enough (I did and do), but...

5 out of 5 stars

Incendiary Devices May 12, 2005
17 out of 21 found this review helpful

The little blurb by label mate Elvis Costello on the packaging calls Lucinda the closest link we have to Hank Williams recording today. Yes, her honesty as a performer is intense and if each note is not perfect, on a soul level it certainly makes sense. "Ventura" that opens is a slow song where Lucinda's vocals sail peacefully over the lovely melody, "I want to get swallowed up in an ocean of love." "Reason to Cry" is another slow gorgeous melody where Williams' voice seems worn with world-weary worry, "I thought things would stay the same, I thought things were right on, then our sunny days, how could we go wrong?" Lucinda starts to let loose on the emotional belter "Sweet Side" with the talk-sing verses and the wild chorus. The band lets loose on "Changed the Locks" with Lucinda's wild electric lead searing the speakers and her ravaged vocals pouring more power into a lyric than anyone since Janis Joplin, "I changed the kind of car I drive so you can't see me when I go by & you can't chase me in the street & you can't knock me off my feet." Disc 2 must have been re-sequenced since the computer lists the opener as "Essence" rather than her classic "I Lost It." "Pineola," the tale of a suicide, is not the most pleasant of songs, but is ripped to shreds by Lucinda's bloodlust performance that gores the jugular & never lets loose of her grief. Her snarl and vocal fierceness on this track adds new levels to the studio version. Lucinda's electric lead is like an incendiary device in the emotional gasoline of "Righteously," "Be my lover, don't play no games, just play me John Coltrane." "Joy" is another startling assault with the band in crack form and Lucinda's primal vocals violating the musicality to arrive at an apex of desperation. "Are You Down" takes the pedal off the metal as Lucinda's bluesy electric guitar jolts the melody, milking it like a classic Grateful Dead treatment. "These Three Days" is another strong melody where Lucinda explores feelings of being used by a lover. "Bus to Baton Rouge" from the "Essence" album sounds good in this live rendition. Lucinda Williams shows some incredible sides of her talent that come through in a more replete manner than in her studio recordings. We hear her as a guitarist, sometimes as adventurous as Hendrix; and we also hear an incredible vocal performance, rivaling Janis Joplin for sheer no-holes-barred emotion. Bravo!

1 out of 5 stars

Filled with more screeching than singing May 26, 2005
16 out of 25 found this review helpful

I love Lucinda. Period. Her CDs are the only music that I play in my car, in my house, in my MP3. I rip her CDs onto my computer as soon as I receive one and leave the original in a locked box to keep it as pristine as possible.

As far as Live @ The Fillmore, I could just as soon put each disc through my shredder and the sound of the shredding would be more soothing than her screeching.

Let me give M-W's definition of "screech": Screech: noun: a high shrill piercing cry usually expressing pain or terror

What happened to her for those three days/nights at the Fillmore? Did she only screech for those three days? Was she in as much pain as her voice leads me to believe and the only way she could emote her pain was by screeching? Or could it be that she's over her original "essence" of her pain that she's written of in these songs and needed a new twist to make the listener feel a new kind of pain? A pain of, "You're embarrassing yourself, Lucinda."

Yes, it must be hard for singers/songwriters who have the depth Lucinda does to have to sing the same songs over and over. But she went way over the wrong board with this approach. I would have rather waited five more years for a mediocre studio release than for this screech fest to be digitized onto a CD.

Disc 1 is tolerable with the slower ballads but Disc 2 sounds as if she's a backwoods mom, liquored up, b!tch-slapping the heck out of some kids with a cigarette going up and down out of her mouth. Do not play this CD for anyone who has never heard Lucinda. She sounds as if she needs to be singing in a rubber room with a straight jacket.

Yes, she's a raw woman. That's why I love her. In her previous CDs her pain comes out eloquently raw in her lyrics blended with her beautifu music delivered in that only-Lucinda way. When she sings these songs, she's not singing about loves lost or the pain of the death of a loved one. She's singing as if she's out of her mind. Her delivery is just plane weird. Someone heeded her call in Essence to find her and got her @#$%$# up. Too bad it had to be while she was singing live.

This is not "raw" Lucinda; this is awful Lucinda. I am perplexed at what she is trying to show musically. Why did she choose this concert to make into a live CD? Is it just because she thinks it's cool because it was a concert performed in CA? She should have waited until she either came back from her "trip" or chosen another concert where she was at least coherent enough to try to sing instead of screech.

Everyone, including me, kept griping that it was taking so long for this CD to be released. Be careful what you wish for...

Her voice was wrecked. She was way out of tune. She didn't couple the right emotions with the right songs. The only emotion she emoted was AARGHH. Most of the time it sounded as if she needed a throat lozenge.

I think she lost it.

4 out of 5 stars

Grit, Spit , A Poet and A Beautiful Mind May 28, 2005
14 out of 28 found this review helpful

4.5 stars
"The perfect man" A poet on a motorcycle. You know the kind who lives on the edge, the free spirit. But he's also got to have the soul of a poet and a brilliant mind. So, you know good luck." -Lucinda Williams in her own words-

Lucinda's new and first "live" album was recorded November 20-22 at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore Auditorium last year during her World Without Tears tour. It features twenty-two tracks from Williams' twenty-five-plus-year career. Included in the set list are "Change the Locks," from 1988's Lucinda Williams and later recorded by Tom Petty; "Pineola," a poignant song about a family friend's suicide from 1992's Sweet Old World, and interestingly enough Lucinda William's fathe, Prof. Miller Williams, found the friend's body, how poignant is that?; and "Those Three Days," from Williams' most recent studio album World Without Tears.
Disc One:

Ventura
Reason to Cry
Fruits of My Labor
Out of Touch
Sweet Side
Lonely Girls
Overtime
Blue
Change the Locks
Atonement

Disc Two:

I Lost It
Pineola
Righteously
Joy
Essence
Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings
Are You Down
Those Three Days
American Dream
World Without Tears
Bus to Baton Rouge
Words Fell

"Lonely Girls" and "Righteously" are the best known songs of Lucinda, and they speak of Lucinda's world. Lucinda was born 50 odd years ago in Louisiana. Her father was a poetry professor and her mother a pianist. They traveled all over the US and South America for her fathers work. Lucinda hung on her to music that was her friend. She went to college at The University of Texas at Austin and began her musical career. She sang with Townes Van Zandt and met George Jones a friend of her fathers. She worked her way through the business and with her beauty, wit and fabulous voice she finally made a name of herself. This CD is a compilation of her tunes, and were hand picked by Lucinda. Lucinda Williams is a true poet and her voice brings her music to life.
Highly recommended. prisrob

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