Little Feat - Hellzapoppin: The 1975 Halloween Broadcast (2013)

It's not surprising that Little Feat are on such blistering form during this 1975 WCBN broadcast, transmitted from the prestigious Orpheum Theatre in Boston on that year's Halloween Night, as the band had been honing their already-considerable skills to razor-sharp perfection during a consecutive 5-night residency at Paul's Mall - a smaller club in the city - prior to moving to the larger, 2,500-seat Orpheum for this concert. The North American tour of which these shows were part, was in support of Little Feat's fifth LP, The Last Record Album, released just days after this gig.

Little Feat's first two albums were firmly rooted in the Blues, with the first featuring a medley of Howlin' Wolf numbers, Forty-Four Blues and How Many More Years. Released a year later, Sailin' Shoes, was another highly acclaimed release. Unfortunately, at this stage, critical success had yet to translate into sales, and the band split up. They quickly reformed - Estrada was replaced by Kenny Gradney and the line-up expanded to include second guitarist Paul Barrare and percussionist Sam Clayton. The new members brought new influences and the group's Blues roots were now tempered with New Orleans style R'n'B and funkier elements. The first recorded evidence of this was the 1973-released Dixie Chicken album. The anthemic title track is a stone cold classic and undoubtedly the band's best known recording.

The band's fourth album, Feats Don't Fail Me Now was released in 1974, and was notable for the inclusion of new recordings of Cold Cold Cold and Triple Face Boogie. Little Feat only completed one more studio album (1977's Time Loves A Hero), before the untimely death of Lowell George from a heart attack - whilst working on the posthumously released Down On The Farm. But thankfully recordings like this remain to remind us how great they were. So crank up that amp and witness the mighty roar of Little Feat in their prime, with Lowell and his compadres firing on all cylinders!