Search - John Hiatt :: Hiatt Comes Alive at Budokan

Must have for all rock fans...

ron bennett | Austin, Texas | 12/11/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This CD is terrific. The live version of Memphis in the Meantime is much better than the original (So much more fire). All of the songs on the CD take me back to the concert. It is incredible how well the CD is engineered. I usually shy away from live CDs because they just don't sound very good. This has to be the best live recording I have ever heard. Oh, and if you are new to John Hiatt, this is a great first CD."

The Best Of John Hiatt Live! Great band as well!

Infiltrator | Radec | 11/22/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"John is at his best in this CD recorded at concerts around the United States (not Tokyo). John strays a bit here from traditional down home country driven songs and adds loud electric guitar and extremely emotional vocals. The result...a perfect CD for the guitar lover and for someone who wants to know how to write songs. John is best known for writing songs with which other artists have major hits. His backup band here, "The Guilty Dogs," has a lot of volume and sounds very good! The best selection of John's songs on any CD he has out. You will not be dissapointed with this CD. I have only a handful of CDs which I feel are worthy of this 5 star rating."

One of the Best Live Rock Recordings of the Last Ten Years

jimnypivo | west of Chicago, USA | 06/08/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I admit I'm a John Hiatt fan. The first time I saw him, I was awestruck as he and his band backed Ry Cooder, no musical slouch himself. Almost 20 years later, Hiatt has gotten better and better, and has even scored some significant airplay with *Slow Turning* and *Walk On*.



You get some of his best songs from the last ten years or so. *Real Fine Love* is done even better with his expressive 'in-concert' vocal style. *Icy Blue Heart* slays me, with a sexy, snakey Davey Faragher bass line to match the sexual tension of the lyric.



*Your Dad Did*, one of my favorite Hiatt 'family' songs, cracks me up when he sings, " the two year old says grace. She says 'help the starving children to get well, but let my brother's hamster burn in Hell."



This disk is full of Hiatt 'car songs'-*Drive South*, *Tennessee Plates*, *Slow Turning*, You can't beat JH for cruising music.



His live version of *Perfectly Good Guitar* is an Air Guitar song of the first magnitude..



Why is this disc so good?

It's the absolute best live rock recording I have ever heard ---not at all spacey and inconsistent or fraught with feedback.

All the songs are quite different than their studio versions, and every bit as good if not better.

The songs are well-picked if you want a good sampling of Hiatt music.

John's live performance voice is really a lot different than his recording voice, so that even makes them sound like 'new' songs.



The band is what makes this record smoke. They are so tight you can hear their eyelids squeak. Hiatt mainstays Faragher and Michael Urbano on drums forge a solid rhythm section, while Michael Ward whips it out on lead guitar and John plays steady rhythm the way he does so well. They never step on each other's licks, they start and stop on precisely the same note, and Hiatt uses his wide-ranging, raspy voice like another instrument.



Hiatt Comes Alive at Budokan (it actually was recorded in 1994 at various US gigs) is the perfect disc to put on the stereo on a hot summer day , move the speakers out to the driveway, and boogie to while you wash the car"