Old school it may be, but ‘Live In Holland 1976’ is a sterling placeholder in the history of a classic band.

I assume there’s going be plenty of you out there that are only vaguely aware of Little Feat. After all, they’ve been knocking about since 1969, with three members having been in the band for forty years now including founder member Bill Payne. Many bands have had their tragedies and LF’s was the premature death of singer/songwriter/guitarist Lowell George in 1979. Luckily, he was alive and very much kicking in 1976 and this DVD stands as a testament to a great talent.

Recorded at the Pinkpop Festival, this DVD/CD combo will be a delight to LF fans, but I feel I should try and persuade those who don’t know the band of its attractiveness. LF are definitely what you would call a Southern Rock band, with a fair amount of Boogie thrown in. At their gentlest they produce perfect background music, relaxing and mellow, but at their hardest they throw out some storming guitar music that still holds up all these years later. Although George was heading into more of a solo career at the time of his death, you can almost taste the talent and chemistry within the band as a whole at this point. Also, any band that has a song called ‘Fat Man In A Bathtub’ is worth checking out, surely.

This is certainly a worthwhile package and although there’s barely an hour of music, it’s all first class stuff. A festival performance (in the daytime, no less) means there’s no great stage show or anything, but this does at least mean that there’s nothing to distract from the performance. Old school it may be, but ‘Live In Holland 1976’ is a sterling placeholder in the history of a classic band.

Alan Holloway