ALBUM: Thanks I’ll Eat it Here
MVC Rating: 4.5/$$$$
Here’s another bargain bin find. One takeaway I am having doing this blog and going one-by-one through my 678 albums is that I was not a bad ‘picker’ of records. I could find some good ones for a couple of bucks.
Lowell George, the lead singer of Little Feat, put this one out in 1979 just before he died of a drug overdose in a Virginia hotel room while on tour for this record.
I agree with AllMusic.com that at first this record seems slight, and it didn’t follow in the jazz-fusion direction that Little Feat was heading (part of the reason he did the solo thing.) But back to being ‘slight’ or not so slight. Some really good renditions of songs here. “What Do You Want that Girl to Do,’ an Allen Toussaint – penned song, is excellent. The Ann Peebles song ‘I Can’t Stand the Rain,’ though oft-covered, is done well by George.
“20 Million Things,’ a George original, is gorgeous and should be a classic. George was a multi-instrumentalist prodigy from childhood. Born in Hollywood, Calif., he was a binge eater, binge alcohol consumer and then, of course the drugs. He weighed more than 300 pounds when he died. Sad we only have this one solo album from him. But there’s a lot of good Little Feat music, which I’ll review when I get to the ‘L’s.”
If you do find this record you get the bonus of having a very cool cover by Neon Park that apparently has several pop culture references including Bob Dylan in there.
I’m including a live video of George with Little Feat backed by Bonnie Raitt and Emmylou Harris to show you just how good that George and Little Feat were.