Hey Hey River Chay
In the height of my music obsession (1993-1999), there were but a few albums that ALWAYS got airplay on my stereo. Oh, I’d go nuts for something for a year or so, but there were only a select few that just never got old. To this day, Grant Lee Buffalo’s “Mighty Joe Moon” remains one of my favorite albums of that decade and probably one of my top 10 of all time. At times gentle/acoustic and at other times forceful rock’n’roll, this was Grant Lee Phillips masterpiece. Nothing he or they did since or before even touches it, though a few came close.
So it was a huge, giant surprise when I saw that a great blog called Captain’s Dead posted an entire Grant Lee Buffalo show at the Troubadour in Los Angeles from November of 1996. It was a radio broadcast, so it’s clear as day and really gives you a sense of how powerful and passionate a musician Phillips is. It also gives you a sense of what a spaz he is, too. When I saw them at the Paradise in Boston on this tour, I truly thought he was coked up. But damn what a show they put on. Take a sample of the L.A. show here – this song is called “It’s The Life” and the last two minutes are quite funny – Phillips at his spastic best addressing an inaudible request from someone in the crowd.
[audio:life.mp3]