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Title: Perhaps the finest live recording from the late years...
Review: If you want to experience the Townes Van Zandt of strong voice and nimble guitar pickin', go straight for one of his early live recordings. However, if you want an exceptional live document from the end of Townes' career, where he "wore his skin like iron" and his "breath was hard as kerosene," then this is the cd for you. To hear the aged Townes sing a song like "Lost Highway" with its lyric "O'er a life of sin, I paid the cost," you can't help but feel like that man understood those lyrics like no other, and it's a kick in the gut. His version of "Ira Hayes" will tear you to pieces, and the song "Highway Kind" will leave you slack-jawed. It's the honesty of these recordings - warts and all - that leave me in amazement, because after all those hard years, Townes was running strictly on emotion.
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