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| Live at Schuba's | 
 enlarge | Artist: Handsome Family
Label: Dcn Records
Category: Music
Buy New: $19.79
New (4) Used (8) from $14.75
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 76774
Format: Live
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
UPC: 803913100528
EAN: 0803913100528
ASIN: B000068QU7
Release Date: July 9, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new factory sealed CD. We ship daily.
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| Tracks:
| • | Amelia Earhart vs. The Dancing Bear | | • | the good toothpicks (speaking) | | • | So Much Wine | | • | the czar bar (speaking) | | • | Tinfoil | | • | A Beautiful Thing | | • | vienna sausage hotline (speaking) | | • | The Giant of Illinois | | • | My Sister's Tiny Hands | | • | names for all his shirts (speaking) | | • | Cathedrals | | • | Weightless Again | | • | bony bread (speaking) | | • | Winnebago Skeletons | | • | Drunk By Noon | | • | magic balls, introduction (speaking) | | • | The Sad Milkman | | • | magic balls, conclusion (speaking) | | • | I Know You Are There | | • | Down In The Ground | | • | Arlene | | • | Moving Furniture Around | | • | freebird (speaking) | | • | My Ghost | | • | The Woman Downstairs |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Singing morbid mini-operas over simple country chord progressions and ungainly programmed rhythms, the Handsome Family were once a better concept than a live band. Their early shows, Rennie Sparks writes in this disc's notes, "elicited chair-throwing and death threats." Live at Schuba's Tavern is more than proof of Rennie and husband Brett's maturation as performers; recorded in December 2000, the set--drawn mainly from In the Air, Through the Trees, and Milk and Scissors--stands as a greatest-hits collection for a band that's as likely to hit the big time as an experimental bagpipe troupe. It's also a fine comedy album, rife with bickering shtick and oddball anecdotes. And not least, this document of one of the duo's last Chicago gigs (they moved to Albuquerque in 2001) is a typically macabre mash note to the city that served as both the Handsome Family's home and muse. Fittingly, it closes with "The Woman Downstairs": "I dreamed of lying down on the el tracks," Brett rumbles over Rennie's wheezing melodica. "The trains roared by under smoke-gray skies/Lake Michigan rose and fell like a bird." --Anders Smith Lindall
Album Description
With several critically acclaimed records already under their belt, The Handsome Family showcase their stripped down live sound with Live at Schuba's. The duo of Brett and Rennie Sparks combine Brett's haunting, baritone vocals with Rennie's hilarious in-between song banter to create a delicate balance of dark humor and sweet Americana balladry - a unique mix of vocals, guitar, bass, and the most creative use of a drum machine in the music business.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Amazing disc for fans and newcomers alike. July 26, 2002
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
If youre a Handsome Family fan, you'll love this disc. The live arrangements sound great (although there's a bit too much reverb on Brett's voice), and the track selection is wide and varied, doing a good job of covering the first 3 discs. If anything, the live versions of the songs sound a bit *too* much like the studio versions which is a good and bad thing, really. But the real kicker here are the tracks of banter and anecdotes between Brett and Ronnie. They run the gamut from poignant to the downright hilarious, and are almost worth the price of the disc alone.If you're new to the Handsome Family, this disc is a great introduction if you don't want to pick one particular studio album beforehand. While there's not much from their most recent album "Twilight", this live disc does a great job of cherrypicking some choice tracks from their first 3 discs that really give you a great feel for the Handsome Family sound. Lots of reverb, cheap keyboard drumlines, soft floaty organs, and deep accoustic guitar flutter along beneath Brett's sonorous voice singing backwoods death poems. There's really not much else like it today, and it only tenuously fits in the "insurgent country" movement it gets lumped into. Do yourself a favor and check it out.
 gotta have their live show July 15, 2002
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
helluva an album. we've always known the sparks were great live and it's so nice to have a clean, mastered album that captures a sort of greatest hits effort of songs as well as hilarious rennie on stage. and brett's voice is so powerful. great record, love it.
 creepy country October 19, 2005
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
country-tinged minor key gothic dirges with a low baritone singer and minimal instrumentation make this an intriguing and fairly creepy listen. it's like drinking beers with johnny cash and nick cave. things are not all sad and grim though, as the quirky duo show their lighthearted humor in the onstage banter. this cd suffers from an overlong tracklist. could have packed a better punch if trimmed down to about half the length; but this live album contains some wonderful and dark tunes and is a good representation of one of america's indie country bands.
Impossibly cool CD August 22, 2002
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
Great Cd by my favorite band. buy it while you can.
gris=^.^=
Next best thing to being there August 28, 2003
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
great album by my favorite band...the banter in between the songs is half their sweet charm. You won't be sorry with this one.
=^.^=
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