Published on Mar 15, 1997
The late ’80s brought some of the best music in the acoustic
vein of rock; one of these artists, Melissa Etheridge, was reviewed
a few weeks ago here. The folkier side of this period,
Georgia-based Indigo Girls, take the power of two six-string
acoustic guitars and make them speak louder than you could
imagine.
I saw them on tour for their third full-length album,
Nomads Indians Saints (and, in a rare occurence in my
career, turned into a stuttering dork when I got the chance to meet
them), but I found myself disappointed that they were performing
with a full band, including the Ellen James Society (are they still
together?). But they could still make harmonies that brought tearas
to my eyes.
Their first live release,
Back On The Bus, Y’All, is a souvenir of that tour, and like
the live show, it shines at times and disappoints at others. When I
first bought this a few years ago, I hated it, and shoved it
towards the back of the Pierce Memorial Archives (reservations
required). But when I dug it out recently on a whim, I found out it
wasn’t a half-bad performance.
The CD opens with “1 2 3”, a song written with and performed
with members of the Ellen James Society. Never one of my favorite
Indigo Girls tracks, the guest vocal from Chris McGuire is
downright painful. (To add insult to injury, the disc is padded out
with the studio version of the same song.) To McGuire’s defense, I
didn’t know she was a backing vocalist on “Kid Fears” until I read
the liner notes… though I will always remember Michael Stipe
providing a companion vocal on this song.
The highlight of the disc is “Prince Of Darkness,” a song from
their self-titled major-label debut. The audience’s providing the
chorus at one point in the song (including the harmony, no less!)
is powerful, as is the guitar and vocal work of Amy Ray and Emily
Saliers. (Trivia time: can anyone name the band that bassist Sara
Lee played in before joining up with the Indigo Girls? Answer: The
B-52’s – she played on
Cosmic Thing.)
A song which gains new life in live performance is “You And Me
And The 10,000 Wars,” a cut off of
Nomads Indians Saints. Saliers’s vocal is alluring yet
haunting, and the track is carried to new levels they just couldn’t
reach in the sterility of the studio.
Of the remaining three songs, two are pretty but nothing special
(“Tried To Be True,” “Left Me A Fool”) and one is a rather bland
cover (“All Along The Watchtower”). The version of “Watchtower”
sounds like it could have come from the same show the home video
Live At Uptown Lounge was culled from. And while
Back On The Bus, Y’All seems like it was an extra push for
the at-the-time newer studio material, the Uptown Lounge concert
would have provided for a better live album. (Better yet, couldn’t
the folks at Epic have filled this disc out with some of those
cuts? At eight songs and just over 30 minutes, this is a rather
sparse disc.)
The Indigo Girls would release another live album not
ridiculously long after this mini-album, and seems to be the better
choice for the “definitive” Indigo Girls live work. For the true
fan,
Back On The Bus, Y’All may serve as a picture of a folk duo
beginning to hit the big time.