Stevie Ray Vaughn – Unplugged And Jamming
This is a somewhat bizarre collection of music spanning five years of Stevie Ray Vaughan's career. To my knowledge, all of the tracks are live. A few notes about this album: One, this album was released by Red Robin Records and is listed on Amazon. These facts make it even more appalling that the album was produced with the blatant typo on the cover (Vaughn instead of Vaughan). Second, the album is only partly unplugged. About half of the album is electric blues at its finest. And lastly, two of the instruments (tracks five and ten) are actually Stevie's track "Rude Mood." I sort of get the impression that the people that released this album had absolutely no interest in Stevie's music as "Rude Mood" was a well established song at the time of his death. The album comes complete with a short blurb about the tracks on this album - complete with a few typos. I entered the tracks for this album as they appear on the bootleg CD.
The music on Unplugged and Jamming is pretty decent. It brings many of the rare and famous SRV performances to the listener: His ill-received performance of "The Star Spangled Banner" at the Houston Astrodome in 1986 (his only known performance of the song?), some of his tracks from MTV's Unplugged series, a collaboration with Stevie Wonder and Salt-n-Pepa (spelled incorrectly on the album) on "Superstition," and part of a concert in New Orleans with BB King and Albert Collins. This is certainly a wonderful pickup for an SRV fanatic. I bought a copy about ten years ago I believe and the album is somewhat hard to come by, but it might be found on internets.
As for the tracks themselves, one through three are from the New Orleans concert with BB King and Albert Collins in 1988. At this point Vaughan has sobered up and he gives his usual 'stay clean' speech during "Life Without You," a speech he often recited during performances of this song in his late career. His work with BB King and Albert Collins on "Boogie" and "Texas Flood" is wonderful. "Texas Flood" is not as energy packed as say the El Mocambo performance, but having BB sit in and do some of the solo work is priceless. Tracks four through seven are taken from a benefit concert in 1985. This set is entirely acoustic and similar in flavor to the upcoming MTV Unplugged performance. His version of "Lenny" is quite good. "Superstition" was taken from an MTV performance in 1988 with the artists mentioned above. This is one of my favorite "Superstition" performances of all time. I had doubts, serious doubts, about Salt-n-Pepa performing along side two musical legends, but they actually do a very nice job. Track nine is a performance taken from MTV in 1990 not too much before his death. Unfortunately, the track starts in the middle of the song and you do not hear the beginning. Tracks ten through twelve are the famous MTV Unplugged tracks. I was not a giant MTV fan around this time, but I started listening to the Unplugged series after hearing his performance. These three tracks a quite a testament to his ability as a guitarist and musician as the performance is just him - no drums, no acoustic bass, just him on a twelve-string playing some very difficult songs meant for electric guitar. Tracks thirteen through fifteen were taken from his performance on Night Music in 1989. The recording of "Sailing Shoes" was new to me so I really enjoyed listening to it. Vaughan is more of a backing musician for much of the song; there is a small female group singing and the solo is shared with a sax. The last track is one of the most famous Vaughan performances - his performance of our national anthem on opening day (baseball) 1985. Although the crowd seems to enjoy it on the album, the performance was not well received in Houston and there were apparently many boos. The entire song is done on slide guitar, much to my liking. Apart from the noticeable hiccup in the middle of the song, I think the performance was quite good. For some reason, the beginning of this track includes a bizzare live interview (ten seconds in length or so) where Vaughan rattles off his 'favorite things' to the tune of "These are a Few of My Favorite Things." Okay, a bit weird, but it gets better as the list of his favorite things includes arugula, multi-vitamins with iron, shag carpet, and eskimo dialects.
The quality of the records ranges from track to track, but as far as bootlegs go, they are all pretty good. Probably not something you want to seek out if you are a casual SRV fan, but this album offers a lot to nuts like myself.
