Glad you agree but there's one little thing I take issue with:
I love JM's resurgence so to speak in his playing, and his lyrics. The later is a direct MP thing, the former is what I suspect. And both are a product of MP leaving.
While it's evident that JM's stepped up to the plate more than on the last several MP-era albums, I think it's improper to assert that this was all because of MP. Unless you were around the band in the studio for most of the time, you don't know how much of JM's lack of participation was due to MP and due to his own quiet personality. Now I'm not saying that it's not possible that MP could've been over-bearing which caused JM to clam up while MP was in the band, but it's equally likely that the rest of the guys in the band told JM that they need to prove something w/o MP, so he needs to step up to the plate more now to make the band more united than before. No one knows for certain, so let's not just assume that it was all MP's fault.
In fact people had brought up the issue about the lack of JM lyrics in interviews they did with MP, and MP himself said he tried to encourage JM to write some lyrics, but he didn't. So it's not as if MP was trying to cut JM out of the lyric writing - just the opposite is true.
And as for the stipulation that the band had made to JM about how lyrics were to be submitted, yes MP was the one who explained to the public that the band was tired of having to re-write JM's lyrics into song form. But that doesn't mean that MP was the one (or the only one) who came up with the stipulation that JM couldn't just submit lyrics in poetic form any more. Curiously enough, the first lyric that JM did submit was for BAI, but it's interesting to note that JP is listed as co-author - likely because he had to re-write JM's words into song format and took credit for it, unlike in year's past (altho admittedly that is purely speculation on my part).
Once in a LIVEtime is friggin' amazing. Sure, JLB has one of his worst nights ever, but man this concert rocked. That Freebird jam in Take the Time, the Metallica riff in Peruvian Skies, the extended jam session in Just Let Me Breathe ... so much win! If I ever go to see DT again I wish they would play around and have FUN like they did that night in Paris '98.
While OiaL isn't JL's best performance, I think a lot of people exaggerate how bad his performance was that night. But yeah, I agree that this particular show was awesome. It's a shame that the "fun" factor of shows from this era are gone and likely will never come back. One interesting thing to note about OiaL too is that there weren't any overdubs at all - this comes from JL's mouth at the Aug 4, 1998 show (which I just listened to recently). So it's warts n' all, which should keep some of the purists happy (those that insist that live albums not be touched up in the studio whatsoever).
Topic: Your Controversial Opinions on DT (Read 999832 times)
