And concerning this quote : "Of course, sadly, we'll never have the LATM JLB back..."
It's a joke right ?? The vocals on LATM were "re-recorded" in the studio, this is a well known fact!!
Yeah, but that is still the release he sounds best on (in the opinion of many people), so I'm pretty sure the quote just refers to that performance by JLB, or JLB of that era. Not sure why that is hard to understand.
Yes, that is what I meant. Thank you Hef.
But even outside of LATM, if you listen to their Ytsejam bootleg from 1993, or watch Live in Tokyo, and all those shows around the I&W era, he may have overdone it a little on his gritty voice when performing, but still, the effortless range and power that he delivered the vocals with... Like, I was listening to it and (cheekily) I said, "Fuck! James! Stop being so good!"
Ironically enough, since he did stop being so good, because of that damn throat injury. Anyway, yeah, that was my point. As amazing as he is now, we'll never have the Images and Words era JLB back.