Little Feat: Feats Don't Fail Me Now (Deluxe Edition) (3CD)

Inside the twenty-page booklet enclosed within the Feats Don't Fail Me Now (Deluxe Edition), an erudite essay by esteemed author/biographer Dennis McNally gives due recognition to artist Neon Park's outlandish front cover image for Little Feat's fourth longplayer. As with the other imagery of this artist that adorns the group's various longplayers, it is a thought-provoking yet unsettling combination of humor and cultural commentary that deserves the insightful notation, so, like the period photos of the musicians adorning the triple-fold package, the prose composed by the long-time media maven for the Grateful Dead is directly in line with the best of the wealth of music herein.

In fact, the remaster of the original album is only slightly less tantalizing than the rare and/or unreleased material accompanying it. Like their expertise with the other recordings here, Dan Hersch and Bill Inglot's engineering of the 1974 studio album reveals an almost granular level of detail. Accordingly, the minutiae of the mix highlights, on this title song among others, reveals keyboardist Bill Payne's uncanny ability to fill holes in the sound—and not just on his own composition "Oh Atlanta." Equally nuanced in that regard is the way Paul Barrere's and Lowell George's guitars snake in, out and around the other instruments during, for instance, "Skin It Back."

Eight cuts in the three-to-four minute range formulate a continuity comparable to the live material included in this package. Yet it also enhances how the studio track sequencing so accurately captures the dynamics of the sextet, including the odd imagery in the song lyrics: especially in Lowell George material like "Down The Road," the verbal wordplay piques the curiosity as much as the instrumental interplay. And those virtues coincide with the imagination evident in arrangements such as the earthy horn charts from Tower of Power on "Spanish Moon." The production on such a take, courtesy of titular bandleader George, along with his non-conformist kindred spirit Van Dyke Parks (plus Erik Jacobsen), nevertheless lent itself handily to stage performance.

While Electrif Lycanthrope: Live at Ultra-Sonic Studios, 1974 (Rhino Records, 2021) remains the definitive demonstration of Little Feat's shared instincts at this juncture of its career, the concert content contiguous with this reissue reaffirms the various bonds of the band in the spirit of the moment on stage. Each performance, in fact, is remarkable in its own way and no less so on the complete show from l'Olympia in Paris, France on 2/1/75, despite a sound quality that, in contrast to its corollary, captures as much of the room as the sound of the band.

Beginning with Allen Toussaint's "On Your Way Down," the sextet builds momentum almost imperceptibly over the course of its fifty-four some minutes, picking up the pace through "Rock And Roll Doctor" (a tribute to the author of the aforementioned song). The frenzied finish that is "Teenage Nervous Breakdown" carries all the more impact precisely because it follows the subdued take on "Willin'" (the song that purportedly moved Frank Zappa to ask author George to leave The Mothers of Invention).

Equally edifying in its own way is a limited edition compact disc (available separately through the Rhino label) containing more previously unreleased performances. Recorded at The Rainbow Theatre in London in January of the same year as its companion piece, the sextet's musicianship flows effortlessly after its fade-in. The shared gusto of Little Feat makes room for multiple impromptu jams over the course of its slightly less than half-hour duration before the coy denouement "Bag of Reds" (a play on the Gene Chandler's "Duke of Earl").

Labeled Hotcakes, Outtakes, Rarities, the second compact disc of the set features eight previously unreleased tracks that, combined with some culls from the similarly-titled four compact disc set released in 2000, give a glimpse of future Little Feat albums (it might well have been disc three of the set for that reason). An outtake of "All That You Dream" (from The Last Record Album (Warner Bros., 1975) and an alternate version of "Front Page News" (only ever released on the compilation issued after George's passing Hoy-Hoy (Warner Bros., 1981) suggests how the creative axis of the band was shifting.

Payne composed the former with Barrere and the latter with George. Meanwhile, an unfinished and abbreviated version of "Day At The Dog Races"—eventually issued on Time Loves A Hero (Warner Bros., 1977) is credited to everyone in the band except the latter (who would leave the stage in subsequent years when the finalized arrangement of this fusion-oriented instrumental was played).

Little Feat's preternatural grasp of groove otherwise abides throughout the dozen tracks. It is nothing less than remarkable how, even at the halting tempo Feats apply to Hank Williams' "Long Distance Love," Richie Hayward sounds like more than a single drummer. And it is only a little less fascinating to hear how percussionist Sam Clayton and bassist Kenny Gradney Jr. find places for themselves to play in the midst of the late co-founding member's deceptively casual and altogether dense motion around his kit.

As much through the sonic detail as the writing and playing, the uniformity of Feats Don't Fail Me Now renders the original thirty-four minutes-plus, recorded at engineer George Massenburg's Blue Seas studio in Maryland, a virtual template for Little Feat 2.0 (the band was originally a quartet). It was thus poetic justice indeed for the record to excel in the commercial marketplace, even if it is less of an adventurous creative statement than the album from the preceding year Dixie Chicken (Warner Bros., 1973).

Produced by Jason Jones with a team of admirable curators, this third Little Feat Deluxe Edition is a labor of love as affectionate in its own way as the devoted loyalty of the group's longstanding fan base. Like the prior deluxe editions of Sailin' Shoes (Warner Bros., 1972) and the aforementioned third album of the group's (originally issued the next year), this collection serves to further illuminate the attractions of one of the most eccentric bands in rock history.

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