Little Feat
As Time Goes By

THE REVIEW

Browsing the shelves of my favorite record store, my attention was captured, years ago, by the surreal album covers of a band unknown to me, Little Feat, characterized by curiously intriguing illustrations by an artist known as Neon Park: a cake on a swing, a car driven by George Washington with Marilyn Monroe, a living tomato, a sexy duck by the poolside, a duck dressed like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.
This very album ('86) I decided to buy, as it was indicated on the back cover to be an official anthology of the group, which I had meanwhile learned was one of the most significant and eccentric American bands of the '70s, an era that, personally, I deemed and still deem to be the source of the most interesting innovations in contemporary pop music.

One might wonder, sometimes, if an album cover reflects its content: this is true, for example, for certain works of Pink Floyd (I think of the disorientation of the “flying pig” in Animals, the liquid cover of Meddle), the Clash (the roots rock à la Elvis of London Calling revisited in a modern and violent key), the Talking Heads (the treated faces of the four in Remain in Light mirror the electronic “treatment” undergone by their music) as well as, conversely, for all the anonymous covers of certain albums sold today, serial and plasticized like the music contained within them.

The cover of this anthology is no exception, in delivering to history and, back then, to the archives, a band that was no longer around, due to the untimely death of leader Lowell George (1945-1979), and, at that time, surpassed by the trends, fashions, and market demands of the mid-'80s. At the same time, the past to which the cover referred must have been among the most innovative and interesting, blending tradition and modernity with irony.

This is precisely the recipe of Little Feat, a Californian band active between '70 and '78 (then reformed at the end of the '80s by some surviving members and currently on the scene with an honest southern rock), created from a branch of Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention like bassist Roy Estrada, and from an atypical singer and slide guitarist, Lowell George, who was, in turn, a collaborator, for a time, of the genius from Baltimore.

The music of Little Feat can indeed be presented as a mix of blues, gospel, southern rock, cajun, jazz, country, placed intellectually and geographically at the center of the triangle “Los Angeles – New Orleans – Memphis”, where the group’s extraordinary ability for rhythmic, instrumental, and executive synthesis emerges, joined over the years by guitarist Paul Barrere, keyboardist Bill Payne, the dynamic rhythm section of Kenny Gradney (bs, replacing Estrada), Sam Clayton (percussion), and Richard Hayward (bt), still around under the Little Feat moniker.
An example of this is given by tracks from the '72 – '74 period, such as "Dixie Chicken", where counter accents and blues with an undeniable southern flavor merge, or the well-known "Willin’" (much loved by our Ligabue) and "Trouble", manifestos of certain middle States country rock that would have greatly appealed to Meat Puppets and the like, to the syncopated "Rock ‘n’ Roll Doctor", "Spanish Moon", "Feats Don’t Fail Me Now" with jazz blues rhythm sections and measured guitar and keyboard interventions, always careful not to compromise the compactness and cohesion of sound, and therefore not inclined to excessive solos. A special mention should be made for the quirky "Sailin’ Shoes", almost a psychedelic gospel with an unpredictable progression and a melody less simple than it seems at first listen. The remaining tracks, drawn from the band’s last albums during the '75 – '78 period, might be less fresh and more aligned with certain blues/jazz directives, with gems like "All That You Dream" and "Long Distance Love" where Payne’s jazzy attitude emerges, or the more rockish "Mercenari Territori", or the skewed and moody boogie of "Old Folks Boogie". The concluding and acoustic "20 Million Things", taken from Lowell George’s first solo album, "Thanks I'll Eat It Here" [which already has an excellent review on Debaser], has the melancholic tones of farewell since the undisputed mind and creator of Little Feat’s sound would soon die suddenly, due to a life of excess.

An excellent collection to approach the band, solely as a path towards the denser and more significant albums of the great Little Feat of Lowell George.