JOHN PRINE : LIVE AT THE BOTTOM LINE 1978

 

Disc One (62:16)

  1. Fish and Whistle
  2. Angel From Montgomery
  3. My Own Best Friend
  4. Crooked Piece of Time
  5. Blue Umbrella
  6. Donald and Lydia
  7. Illegal Smile
  8. Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone
  9. The Bottomless Lake
  10. Sam Stone
  11. That's the Way That the World Goes 'Round
  12. There She Goes
  13. I Had a Dream
  14. If You Don't Want My Love
  15. Chinatown

Disc Two (71:15)

  1. Pretty Good
  2. Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)
  3. Hello in There
  4. Grandpa Was a Carpenter
  5. Ballad of a Teenage Queen
  6. Paradise
  7. Please Don't Bury Me
  8. Sleepy Eyed Boy
  9. Treat Me Nice
  10. Sweet Revenge
  11. How Lucky
  12. Sailin' Around
  13. Saddle in the Rain
  14. Onomatopoeia
  15. I'm Not That Good at Goodbye
  16. Mexican Home

Label : no label

Venue : The Bottom Line, New York City, New York, USA

Recording Date : July 10th, 1978

Quality : Soundboard recording (A+)

Review : Coincidentally, lots of John Prine's best sounding shows are from his "Chicago band" era in the late-70's. Johnny Burns, who led Prine's band at the time, has been sharing a lot of John Prine memories on Facebook recently. Prine did 4 shows at the famous Greenwich Village nightclub, the Bottom Line, on two nights back-to-back in 1978. One of the shows on 11th July has been very widely circulated for decades, yet the shows on the previous night had been relatively unknown to collectors. Actually, the 10th one sounds evidently better than the 11th one!! This concert promoted Prine's "Bruised Orange" album. It featured the only known electric full-band recording of "Donald and Lydia", a song Prine almost always did acoustic. It also included several rarely-done covers: Johnny Cash's "The Ballad of a Teenage Queen", Elvis Presley's "Treat Me Nice" and Lefty Frizzell's "I'm Not That Good at Goodbye". This show might have been in circulation for a few years, but I believe this speed-corrected version has never been circulated before. All these Bottom Line shows were recorded for the King Biscuit Flower Hour radio show. The band : John Prine - guitar, vocals. Howard Levy - piano, organ, harmonica, pennywhistle, mandolin. Johnny Burns - lead guitar. Tommy "Pickles" Piekarski - bass. Angelo Varias - drums.