Loudon Wainwright III:: Clockwork Chartreuse... Live (unauthorized live CD)

[Review by Bill Glahn]

 Wainwright III: Clockwork Chartreuse… Live (Echoes CD2056)

Venue: Liberty Hall, Houston, TX, November 3, 1973

Cover: 8-page booklet including liner notes and photos with tray card in traditional jewel case

Sound Quality: very good to excellent, clean with a little digital residue. In pre-digital days, it would be the equivalent of being on normal bias tape vs. high bias. The liner notes state that this was broadcast on KPFT-FM (a community station which the KKK had already tried to bomb out of existence twice by this time), but more likely a soundboard or a KLOL-FM broadcast (a commercial station which already had a working relationship with Columbia artists for live broadcasts).

Tracklist: Down Drinking At The Bar (fades in)/ In Am The Way (New York Town)/ Have You Ever Been To Pittsburgh?/ New Paint/ Nocturnal Stumblebutt/ Bell Bottom Pants/ Clockwork Chartreuse/ Liza/ AM World/ Muse Blues/ Be Careful, There’s A Baby In The House/ Unrequited To The 9^th Degree/ Lullabye/ You Hurt Me Mantra/ The Man Who Couldn’t Cry/ I Know I’m Unhappy-Suicide Song (cut)

Comments: “Crossing the highway late last night…” – I was 17 in the fall of 1972, travelling through rural Mississippi or Arkansas late on a Friday night, when I first heard those words coming on KAAY, a powerhouse AM station with Beaker Street providing an FM-style mixed format show for the Midwest when there were few of those type stations in the heartland. KAAY broadcast at 50,000 watts making its late-night programming influential throughout the Midwest. Beaker Street introduced America to such diverse acts as Loudon Wainright III and Black Oak Arkansas. (So influential was Beaker Street in breaking the first BOA album that the band recorded a couple of promotional songs to be played exclusively on the program). Six months later, you couldn’t play a Top 40 station anywhere without hearing “Dead Skunk.” It would take Black Oak Arkansas a little longer.

Loudon Wainwright III released two albums on Atlantic that featured just him, his guitar, and his songs. Although a few critics lauded his unusual approach to folk songwriting, for the most part there was little of note to appear in the music journals of the day. Add the complete lack of radio play and both albums stiffed. Atlantic dropped him and Columbia picked him up. Encouraged by the great response to the song on Beaker Street, who’s format was half picks by DJ Clive Clifford and the other half chosen by listener call-ins, Columbia would issue it as a single in the summer of 1973 and then a fourth album, Attempted Mustache, later in the year. Back in New Jersey by this time, I couldn’t listen to Philly or New York radio without hearing the song. And apparently, neither could prople anywhere else. With the added elements of banjo, fiddle and drums, - absent from the Atlantic albums, “Dead Skunk” shot up to #16 on the national Top 40 (#12 in Cashbox). I bought the single that summer. I bought Attempted Mustache later that year. Filled with tragicomic songs where structure didn’t seem to matter or rhyming either, Wainwright seemed to never find it in his thought process to throw out a good joke or a good turn of a phrase. Everything fit, even when it didn’t. I had to backtrack for the rest. I imagine that was the path for a whole lot of other fans as well, because Wainwright ended up developing a hard-core following that exists to this day. That rarely happens for “one hit wonders” who hit the charts with a novelty song.

“Dead Skunk,” being a novelty tune with conventional song structure, is the kind of song an artist can tire of performing rather quickly. And audiences can tire of hearing with overexposure. With Attempted Mustache now in the record racks, Wainwright already had removed the song from his setlist in late 1973. His audiences didn’t seem to mind.

 Lloyd Maines tells a story about producing Terry Allen. When producing Terry Allen for the first time, Maines mentioned that not all verses were of equal measure, in some cases partial measures. Allen replied, “It’s a song, not a math problem.” Mains says that it changed his way of hearing music forever. That revelation came to me a few years earlier through Loudon Wainwright III albums.

1973 found Columbia Records in the unenviable position of losing their greatest artist, Bob Dylan, who had one foot out the door, heading for Asylum Records. They were eager to promote “the new Bob Dylan,” of which they had two potential candidates on the roster already, Loudon Wainwright III and Bruce Springsteen. Neither, of course, entirely fit the bill, but both were uniquely talented songwriters with a “folkish” (not folk) pedigree. Springsteen seemed to offer a greater potential for a mass audience and the label threw their support behind Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ. Wainwright was kept on as a “backup plan,” so to speak. Once again, no advance singles were released and Columbia waited until the following year, once two songs from Attempted Mustache, “Down Drinking At The Bar” and “I Am The Way” gained favor on the FM airwaves. In 1974, both were released as a double a-side.

Those are the two songs that Wainwright starts off this set with. Unfortunately, Clockwork Chartreuse… Live only includes the last minute of “Down Drinking At The Bar,” a fact not noted on the track listing. That’s unfortunate, because you miss his penchant for twisting a phrase in his own unique way – “Tear jerkers are jerking your tears.” Instead, the CD enters with a taste of Wainwright at his accusative and vindictive worst. No worry. The first full song on the CD captures Wainwright at his comical best, the rewrite of Woody Guthrie’s “New York Town,” reset in Jerusalem with new lyrics, “I Am The Way.” It was an instant crowd favorite and one that receives more requests these days than “Dead Skunk.”

Wainwright is clearly focused on promoting his latest release with this performance. 10 of the 12 tracks on Attempted Mustache are included in the setlist. Only “Muse Blues” (III), ”Be Careful, There’s a Baby In The House (II),” and “I Know I’m Unhappy-Suicide Song” (II) are from previous albums. “Unrequited to the Nth Degree” and “You Hurt Me Mantra” were works in progress, and “Have You Ever Been To Pittsburgh?” is an off-the-cuff ditty with no connection to his 1^st album’s “Ode To Pittsburgh.”

Attempted Mustache is probably the best example of Wainwright’s overall approach to writing at a time when he was comical, self-focused, engaged in new responsibilities and in possession of an unusual ability to write entertaining songs about everyday occurrences (for example, raising children). Emotional maturity would come later.

Unfortunately, as accurate a portrait as this disc is of Wainwright’s live act during this period, it exits the way it entered – with a clipped final track. No mention of that, either, on the tracklist.

Grade: B (docked a full point for the incomplete tracks)

Bonus concert: