Little Feat - American Cutie (2011)

Left Field Media's 2012 set American Cutie is an official release of a relatively heavily bootlegged Little Feat recording from 1973: a set they played at Denver's Ebbets Field in July of that year as they supported their third album, Dixie Chicken. The Feat played two shows that night and this CD contains the entirety of the second set along with three songs they performed on their first set but didn't repeat on the second (odd that "Fat Man in the Bath Tub" was one of these but it had yet to become one of their signatures). This live date is leaner and tougher than the relatively luxurious New Orleans grooves of Dixie Chicken -- they dig out a lot of their harder, bluesier rockers, including "Got No Shadow," "The Fan," "Texas Rose Cafe," "Snakes on Everything," songs that would get pushed to the back burner by the time of Waiting for Columbus, so this becomes a better snapshot of how the Feat were in their earlier days than that admittedly superb live set. And that's also what makes American Cutie valuable. So often, the Feat are only seen as the dexterous jam band of Columbus when they could also get down and dirty, as they do here to thrilling effect.