Little Village - Orpheum Theatre, Boston, MA, 4-26-1992

Little Village was a roots rock "supergroup." It consisted of John Hiatt on guitar, piano, and vocals, Nick Lowe on bass and vocals, Ry Cooder on lead guitar and vocals, and Jim Keltner on drums. They first got together to play all the songs on Hiatt's acclaimed 1987 album "Bring the Family." Then they got together again for Lowe's 1990 album "Party of One." The third and final got together, they released the Little Village album "Little Village" in 1992. Most of the songs were sung by Hiatt, but Lowe sang two and Cooder sang one.

You may not have heard of Little Village because they only stuck around for that album, and it was a disappointing one. Even Lowe later said about it, ""Little Village was really good fun. Unfortunately, the record we did was no good. I suppose on some level, it worked, but [our record company] kind of gave us too much time to do it." However, the band promoted the album with tours of the U.S. and Europe. And I repeatedly heard that they were much better live and on that album. For instance, if you read the write-up about the band at allmusic,com, it states, "Although the record was a bit of a disappointment, the live shows were superb."

So if you like the artists involved, you should listen to one of their concerts. There aren't that many bootlegs of their shows (and no official releases). This is the best sounding one I could find. It was professionally recorded and broadcast on the radio.

One reason the concerts were better than the album was because the album was dominated by Hiatt's songs, while the concerts were more evenly split between songs by Hiatt, Lowe, and Cooder. Naturally, they played most of the songs from the album, but also many songs from their various solo careers. They had to, since the album was 45 minutes long, and this concert was almost two hours long.

More specifically, this album is an hour and 56 minutes long.

01 talk (Little Village)
02 She Runs Hot (Little Village)
03 talk (Little Village)
04 The Action (Little Village)
05 talk (Little Village)
06 Fool Who Knows (Little Village)
07 Crazy about an Automobile (Little Village)
08 Inside Job (Little Village)
09 talk (Little Village)
10 Do You Want My Job (Little Village)
11 talk (Little Village)
12 Alone in the Dark (Little Village)
13 talk (Little Village)
14 Take Another Look (Little Village)
15 talk (Little Village)
16 Solar Sex Panel (Little Village)
17 Don't Think About Her When You're Trying To Drive (Little Village)
18 talk (Little Village)
19 Memphis in the Meantime (Little Village)
20 Crying in My Sleep (Little Village)
21 talk (Little Village)
22 Don't Go Away Mad (Little Village)
23 talk (Little Village)
24 Big Love (Little Village)
25 talk (Little Village)
26 Little Sister (Little Village)
27 talk (Little Village)
28 Across the Borderline (Little Village)
29 talk (Little Village)
30 Don't Bug Me When I'm Working (Little Village)
31 talk (Little Village)
32 Half a Boy and Half a Man (Little Village)
33 talk (Little Village)
34 Thing Called Love (Little Village)
35 Lipstick Sunset (Little Village)
36 talk (Little Village)

https://www.imagenetz.de/a2cTy

The cover is from a concert in Brussels, Belgium, on July 2, 1992. Left to right: Lowe, Hiatt, and Cooder. In the original picture, there was a big gap between Cooder and the others, but I eliminated that gap in Photoshop.