Owing to the cricket happening on the other side of the world, I found myself watching Letterman late one night a few weeks ago. As it happened, Lucinda Williams was on that night, and while I enjoyed it, I thought that if I hadn't already been a fan, there was a chance that I would've hated the performance. She did "Changed The Locks", which is a good song, but, as Williams comments in her notes to the album from which it came, it's also a song without a bridge or a refrain; moreover, her singing was basically a rough, grinding, ragged growl. So I had some idea as to how this live cd might sound.
Actually, I was torn between buying this and the live dvd which is in stores at present. The obvious advantage of the cd is that it's portable - I can listen to it in my room, on my discman, in the car, and so on. Additionally, I'm not one who generally gets much out of watching recordings of musicians' performances. But the big 'plus' in favour of the dvd was that its track list is skewed towards Car Wheels, whereas Live @ The Fillmore is very much weighted towards cuts from World Without Tears, which is my least favourite of the Williams albums I've listened to. In fact, across this double cd set, near the whole of World Without Tears gets a run; most of the other songs are from Essence, with only "Changed The Locks", "I Lost It", "Pineola" and "Joy" from the earlier recordings.
Having gone ahead and gotten the Fillmore cd, I'm pulled in two directions in my response to it. On the one hand, it's good simply in that it's Lucinda, giving her songs a different complexion. And the roughness of her singing enhances its expressiveness (the straining, gravelly vocal on "Blue" and the cracked notes on "Changed The Locks" are prime examples) while also giving it a feel of authenticity. But, on the other hand, I'd have enjoyed it much more were it not so strongly slanted towards World Without Tears. And while the voice is less cleaned-up than on the studio versions, and the instrumentation a bit more immediate, all giving the live cuts quite a different feel from their studio counterparts, I don't feel that these interpretations take me anyplace new with the songs (at least not when listened to on cd, as opposed to actually live).
Still, ultimately the Lucinda factor outweighs all else, and these are such great songs, and it's different enough from the familiar album recordings, so it's all good.
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A brief comment on Lucinda Williams-listening more generally. I still haven't got around to buying her first two albums, Ramblin' On My Mind and Happy Woman Blues (I've been a bit money conscious lately), but lately my preferences have definitely shifted to the earlier end of her back catalogue. World Without Tears never really struck me, and while I still find the highlights of Essence - "Steal Your Love", "Out of Touch", and "Essence" in particular, as well as a couple of the ballads like "Blue" - amazing, I don't have any hesitation in rating Car Wheels as her best, and these days listen to Sweet Old World, which I'd initially found underwhelming, more than any other (Lucinda Williams I liked from the start).
