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Little Feat – Waiting For Columbus

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Reviews and Commentaries for Waiting for Columbus

This is an amazingly well-recorded concert, and what’s more, the versions the band does of their earlier material are much better than the studio album versions of those same songs in every case.

Fat Man In A Bathtub on this album is out of this world, but you could easily say that about a dozen or more of the tracks on this double album. Which simply means that you will have a very hard time listening to any of the studio versions of these songs once you’ve heard them performed with the kind of energy, enthusiasm and technical virtuosity Little Feat brought to this live show. (I saw them twice with Lowell and they were amazing both times.)

This is some of the best sounding live rock and roll sound you will ever hear outside of a concert venue. In fact, on a great copy, it’s just about as good as live rock’n’roll sound gets.

What The Best Sides Of Waiting For Columbus Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

No doubt there’s more but we hope that should do for now. Playing these records are the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find pressings that sound as good as these two do.

What We’re Listening For On Waiting For Columbus

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don’t have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that’s certainly your prerogative, but we can’t imagine losing what’s good about this music — the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight — just to hear it with less background noise.

A Must Own Rock Record

We consider this Little Feat album a Masterpiece. It’s a recording that belongs in any serious Rock Music Collection.

Others that belong in that category can be found here.

TRACK LISTING

Side One

Join the Band 
Fat Man in the Bathtub 
All That You Dream 
Oh Atlanta 
Old Folks’ Boogie

Side Two

Time Loves a Hero 
Day or Night 
Mercenary Territory 
Spanish Moon

Side Three

Dixie Chicken 
Tripe Face Boogie 
Rocket in My Pocket

Side Four

Willin’ 
Don’t Bogart That Joint
A Apolitical Blues
Sailin’ Shoes 
Feats Don’t Fail Me Now

AMG 4 1/2 Star Rave Review

Little Feat was one of the legendary live bands of the ’70s, showered with praise by not only their small, fiercely dedicated cult of fans, but such fellow musicians as Bonnie Raitt, Robert Palmer, and Jimmy Page. Given all that acclaim, it only made sense for the group to cut a live album… there’s much to savor on Waiting for Columbus, one of the great live albums of its era, thanks to rich performances that prove Little Feat were one of the great live bands of their time.

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