Ah the days of The Bottom Line. The venerable small music club in the West Village of New York City has seen historic multi-night stands by Bruce Springsteen and Lou Reed record his Live: Take No Prisoners album; featured solo acoustic acts and comedians as well as songwriter nights of discussions and music hosted by well-known radio DJs. All this and the club suffered from overcrowding, tight seating, bad visibility in too many spots (the thick floor-to-ceiling support poles peppered across the room hinder the sightlines) and a “no smoking” policy in place years before it became law in New York City clubs. There is so much live performance history that happened on The Bottom Line stage, one tends to overlook the petty inconveniences. These days, anyone can experience a slice of what happened without leaving the house just by picking up The Bottom Line Archive Series.
This multi-CD collection features over a thousand shows recorded during the club’s 30-year run, from 1974-2004. There’s one disc featuring 13 songs of Janis Ian and her band from August 1980. There’s the very sweet solo “Jesse,” a jazzy “I Would Like To Dance.” and Ian’s wonderful piano playing under her wailing vocalizing on “The Other Side Of The Sun.”
An 11-song CD from the Becker Brothers highlights their horn assault from a show they played in March 1976. How about Kenny Rankin Plays the Beatles or Willie Nile 1980 & 2000? There are also the two In Their Own Words CDs on whihc New York City DJ Vin Scelsa hosts an array of artists including Graham Parker, Sir Mack Rice, Felix Cavaliere. Ric Ocasek, Joey Ramone, Graham Parker, Richard Thompson, Dion, Jimmy Webb, Lucinda Williams and Shawn Colvin.
Jimmy Webb manages the piano and vocal on “Wichita Lineman” and Lucinda Williams warbles through a jangly guitar version of Bob Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street.” There’s Ric Ocasek’s almost country “Just What I Needed” and the likes of Pete Seeger, Don Dixon, John Cale, Suzanna Vega and more. These discs are filled with superb, unusual and intimate performances.
And then there’s the expansive Harry Chapin three-disc offering from 1981, clearly the crown jewel of a pretty amazing series. It opens with a beautiful sounding “Taxi” with the instruments – piano, acoustic, drums, and cello – mixed so delicately. This might be the best version I have ever heard. I also can’t recall the live sound at the Bottom Line ever coming across this good, but that’s another story.
As the liner notes indicate, it was a near Herculean task to sift through what was only marked “Harry Chapin 01/08/81” on the tape boxes commemorating Chapin’s 200th performance. What the archivists, restorers and remasters Jessica Thompson and Gregg Bendian do here is present the already released remastered set from 1998, plus a previously unreleased 88-minute show. You really get lots of Harry Chapin: “Mr. Tanner” “W.O.L.D.” “If My Mary” “Mercenaries” “You Are The Only Song” and a bunch more. It’s truly glorious.
All The Bottom Line Archive Series releases were remastered and remixed at the legendary New York City studio The Magic Shop. These fragile pieces of music history have been restored with great loving care. With so many recorded shows at The Bottom Line, this is only the beginning of a series that is bound to turn up with something for every kind of music fan.
~ Ralph Greco, Jr.
