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Now this one is fun.  Legacy/Columbia has started a series of “live  bootlegs” that showcase artists who seem to have been forgotten due to the ever-shifting musical scene.  Some of the band included are Living Colour, toad the wet sprocket, and Soul Asylum.

Soul Asylum’s disc highlights not only their career as a band, but their willingness to take themselves less seriously than many of the self-important “Artists” that prevail lately in the “industry”.  Led by frontman Dave Pirner, the Minneapolis band plays the Grand Forks, North Dakota prom as a typical high school prom band, performing covers mixed in with their own concert standards.  Some of the covers come across very well, as if the band grew up listening to them, others are more amusing and ironic, while yet another (“Sexual Healing”) is just not at all suited to Pirner’s vocals.

The hits are here ­ “Black Gold,” “Somebody to Shove,” and “Runaway Train,” are the radio mainstays, while “The Game” and “Just Like Anyone,” while not as famous, stand up as well as any of the Soul Asylum catalog.  The covers include “School’s Out” (Alice Cooper), “The Tracks of My Tears” (Smokey Robinson), and “To Sir With Love.”  A hilarious version of “Rhinestone Cowboy” closes the show.

With just the right touch of tongue in cheek, Soul Asylum reminds us of how they used to be thought of, a band that was a little rough around the edges, but with an energy that somehow made it all work.  _After the Flood_ provides a time capsule that is enjoyable and sometimes much more than that.

Brian A. Smith
21 November 2004