Little Feat
Hotcakes & Outtakes: 30 Years of Little Feat
(Warner Archives/Rhino) Little Feat has always been an anomaly among rock bands. They were clumped in with the Southern rock movement that was popular in their Seventies heyday primarily because one of their biggest songs was “Dixie Chicken.” Yet they hailed from Los Angeles, not Florida, Georgia, and even Maryland, as some thought. The band’s fusion of rock, jazz, funk, boogie, and whatever else fit in came from someplace else entirely, and to this day, their fans aren’t sure where that place is/was or why they should care anyway. Hotcakes & Outtakes is a 4-CD set celebrating this hard-to-classify but easy-to-love band’s 30th anniversary, and while its heart is in the right place, it can hardly be called essential. To many, the place to start is still Waiting for Columbus, an epic live set that captures Little Feat onstage, at the peak of their powers, and in front of a totally deranged-and-loving-it audience. Hotcakes & Outtakes isn’t likely to change that opinion. It tells the band’s whole story, from the time when former members of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, along with singer/songwriter Lowell George and bassist Roy Estrada, formed the band, through the glory years until George’s untimely death in 1979, and then on to the group’s re-emergence nearly a decade later and beyond. There’s even a nifty disc devoted to previously unreleased George-era demos and rarities. And while latter incarnations of the band have had their moments — “Let It Roll” still jumps from the speakers — they’re few and far between, as demonstrated by the disc solely devoted to post-George Little Feat. As a whole, Hotcakes & Outtakes does a fine job of telling the story of one of rock & roll’s important bands, but ultimately, it’s a guilty pleasure for completists. Or perhaps for those fans that don’t already own their favorite albums on compact disc and want to spring for a fancy enchilada.
This article appears in December 15 • 2000.