Live at Sin-é (Legacy Edition)

by

Jeff Buckley

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This set is indecribably beautiful. This is what Jeff Buckley fans have been waiting for. As you know, Jeff performed at the Sin-e, a small coffee place in NYC in the early 90's, and some of it was recorded and released as the Live at Sin-e EP. This is an updated version with....a lot more stuff. The entire package is worth every penny - in fact, I'd pay a lot more for this stuff. You get 2 CD's, full of amazing music and hilarious monologues, and a DVD with an interview and videos of live performances at Sin-e.

The songs on the CDs are breathtaking, with great covers, some great blues guitar work on "Strange Fruit", epic versions of "Lover You Should've Come Over", "The Way Young Lovers Do", "Sweet Thing", and "Hallelujah", and hilarious in-between monologues (my favorites include his imitation of Miles Davis, and his "Musical Chairs" song). He even manages to do a good rendition of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's "Yeh Halka Halka Saroor Hai" (I highly recommend Nusrat's Intoxicated Spirit Album or his Greatest Hits). Almost all of these versions of the songs have never been released before, except for the few from the Live at Sin-e EP.

The DVD contains an interview, which unfortunately is the same as on the Jeff Buckley Live in Chicago DVD, so nothing new there. Also on the DVD are live videos of Jeff performing part of "The Way Young Lovers Do" and his cover of MC5's "Kick Out the Jams". He also reads aloud a beautiful poem he wrote hours before the show.

I cannot recommend this package highly enough.

NOTE: THIS CD PLAYS PERFECTLY IN COMPUTERS AND CAR CD PLAYERS. I have had no problems playing in my car, on my computer, and I easily made a digital copy to my hard drive without any problems. This CD is NOT copy-protected in any way.

LIVE AT SIN-E: LEGACY consists of two concerts played by Jeff Buckley shortly after being signed to Columbia at Sin-E, the Manhattan cafe where he first gained public attention. Four songs had been released before as the "Live At Sin-E" EP, but in celebration of the tenth anniversary we are presented with the full recording.

Buckley performs unaccompanied, a single man standing before a small crowd of cafe-goers. There are no barriers between the audience and the performer, and he even takes suggestions from spectators on what to play next. There are a large amount of cover versions, showing Buckley's vast knowledge of all kinds of music. In the second disc alone he covers Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Edith Piaf, and Leonard Cohen. But there are also early versions of his original songs that would take their final form on his only album GRACE. While the version of "Grace" here is, I feel, uninspiring, we hear solid versions of "Mojo Pin", "Lover, You Should Have Come Over", and "Eternal Life". The third disc is a DVD which consists of an interview and performances of three songs. The interview is the same as that from the Electronic Press Kit on the LIVE IN CHICAGO DVD, but there is more of it here. Unfortunately, the quality of the video on the performances is poor, as it appears to have been shot with a camcorder.

LIVE AT SIN-E is not something for the listener who merely liked a few songs of Grace. Instead, it is for the die-hard Buckley adorer who has also collected the various other posthumous releases. The Sin-E concert is of value not as a brilliant display of music in its own, but because it shows the genesis of Buckley's musical vision, and the monologues help explain turns that came in his career afterwards.

My only real complaint with the music of LIFE AT SIN-E is the sparseness of the sound. Buckley was an incredible artist, but his band was a key part of his sound. In this Sin-E we don't have Mick Grondahl's superb bass or Matt Johnson's drumming. As a result, the concert as a whole seems a little hollow and incomplete.

If you are a dedicated Buckley fan, and are interested in the work that led up to his major-label signing, LIVE AT SIN-E is an important document. If you're new to Jeff Buckley, this is a bit much for the moment, and I'd recommend GRACE or LIVE AT L'OLYMPIA to get started.