Eric Burdon - F#ck me! I Thought He Was Dead! (1999) Lossless

This live recording is drawn from two different sources. The bulk of it, the first nine of the ten tracks, comes from a performance by Eric Burdon at the Metropol club in Berlin in the early '80s that was staged specially to be filmed for the 1982 documentary Comeback. The singer is backed by a sextet consisting of guitarist Snuffy Walden; pianist Ronnie Barron; saxophonist, organist, and harmonica player Bobby Martin; guest saxophonist Rosa King; bassist Terry Wilson; and drummer Tony Brunagel. The final track, a version of Burdon's biggest Animals hit, "House of the Rising Sun," was recorded in the early '70s at the Whiskey-a-Go-Go in Los Angeles. Here the backup band is a quartet consisting of guitarist John Sterling, organist Terry Ryan, bassist Kim Kesterson, and drummer George Suranovich. Despite the title, which annotator Bruce Ginsburg says is a variant on a remark made to Burdon by a cab driver, the singer seems alive and even lively on these performances, which do feature some of the hits he scored with the Animals. "We Gotta Get out of This Place," "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," "Boom Boom," "Don't Bring Me Down," "It's My Life," "I'm Crying," and, of course, "The House of the Rising Sun" were indeed chart hits for the Animals between 1964 and 1966. From the sound of it, Burdon had been singing them ever since, and, 15 years on, the arrangements had gotten loose and the singer himself had transformed the songs into vehicles of personal expression. This is not the album to buy to hear letter-perfect re-creations of old hits; it is for anyone who wants to hear what Burdon has made of his legacy. At around the age of 40, he is a self-possessed blues singer with his own style, just as his models were.