DISC ONE:

The Pretender w/Gary US Bonds, Central Park NYC 6/12/82

Jamaica Say You Will w/CSN, Brentwood CA 5/6/00

Lives In The Balance (ditto)

World In Motion w/Bonnie Raitt, Telluride CO 6/15/00

Your Bright Baby Blues (ditto)

The Road w/Danny O’Keefe, Paramount Thtr, Seattle WA 6/1/01

Soldier Of Plenty w/Bonnie Raitt, Nader Benefit 9/5/00

Across The Borderline w/Springsteen & Raitt, Shrine Aud. L.A.11/16/90

Crow On The Cradle w/Graham Nash, Voters Benefit 4/23/98

Alive In The World (ditto)

Before The Deluge w/Joan Baez, Saratoga CA 9/5/00

Kisses Sweeter Than Wine w/Bonnie Raitt, Pete Seeger Tribute

Will The Circle Be Unbroken w/Pete Seeger, John Hall, David Lindley 6/23/78

DISC TWO:

A very nicely-selected, good-sounding odds ‘n’ sods Browne collection that serves as a kind of sequel to Live Wire’s two 3-CDR The Other Side Browne volumes. (The Other Side is an ongoing series by Live Wire – other artists to date include Neil Young and Eric Clapton – collecting in non-chronological order assorted live rarities.) Not sure why When Friends Come To Play didn’t earn Vol. 3 Other Side honors since it is structured similarly; the only difference is that Friends focuses on assorted in-concert duets and collaborations from over the years.

While I wasn’t able to comprehensively source all the tracks on Discs 1 and 2, much of the material has previously surfaced on the following bootlegs: Golden Slumbers Vol. 1 (1996, White Rabbit # WR 96002), Golden Slumbers Vol. 4 (1999, White Rabbit # WR 99011), Springsteen Raitt & Browne (1991, Templar # TCD 16), Rally For Disarmament (a free 3” CD given away with an Italian Springsteen fanzine featuring three songs from Central Park 6/12/82). Other tracks have subsequently surfaced in the fan trading network. By and large, most of the team-ups are pretty interesting. Steve Earle and Browne singing the joys of Peruvian marching powder? Check. The Boss and Browne kicking it out and running on empty? Check. Tom Petty and Browne hooking up for the timeless Browne/Eagles hit? But of course! (That track, unfortunately, is the worst-sounding of the lot, a tinny audience recording – most cuts are very good to excellent.) Oddly, my fave cut is the Browne-Jennifer Warnes “Tonight Show” appearance; the treatment of the Beatles’ “Golden Slumbers” is fascinating. Live Wire didn’t provide the actual date for that and I wasn’t able to track it down myself, so it would have been nice if Live Wire had filled in the blanks a bit more thoroughly for all the tracklistings.

The bulk of Disc 3 hails from a famous FM broadcast from when Browne and Warren Zevon were on tour together in Europe and dropped into the VPRO studios for a session. It has been booted in the past as The Offender Meets The Pretender (label?), and while Live Wire’s dub is slightly hissy in places the show remains a crucial artifact for any Browne or Zevon fan. The last four tracks come from the following night’s concert in Amsterdam and are taken from Zevon’s opening set. Granted, their inclusion on what’s a Browne anthology seems curious; there exists a Browne bootleg titled Amsterdam 1976 (1995, Days Of Harvest # DH 002) of Browne’s headlining set the same night, so why not pull bonus tracks from it? A litt;E detective work, however, reveals the fact that a popularly traded CDR – judging by the number of times it appears on traders’ lists posted on the web – is identical to Disc 3 here, so it’s obvious that Live Wire simply copied it. Why do I spend so much time looking this kind of minutiae up? Because, dear subscribers, here at Hot Wacks, WE CARE – or at least we do when we have the spare time and enough caffeine in our systems to fuel our web-crawling info searches.

Usual Live Wire nominal-but-tasteful packaging, just a pair of one-sided tray panels with photo on front and full tracklisting on back. -- OSWALD