James Taylor, One Man Band
Sweet Baby James mines his mellow gold in an (almost) unplugged setting.
"James Taylor Marked for Death," proclaimed Lester Bangs in the title of a splendidly bracing 1971 manifesto in the protean '70s fanzine Who Put the Bomp? Back in the protopunk wars of the early '70s, we were all supposed to revile James Taylor and his kind — JT represented all that was smugly narcissistic about singer-songwriter bards of the time. Forget the fact that James may have been a worse junkie than Johnny Thunders: this music was wallpaper balladry for the new consumers of the post-counterculture.
But we all mellow as we "ripen and rot" — to quote Annie Hall — and what sounded wimpily self-satisfied in 1975 now soothes and even moves. A stripped-down performance from the old Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, One Man Band has local boy Taylor revisiting 19 of his greatest songs. JT's pretty picking — backed by keyboardist Larry Goldings and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus — is perfectly caught by the crystalline recording, which beautifully frames his honey-smooth voice.
From early pastoral gems — "Country Road," "Carolina in My Mind" — to later marvels like "Never Die Young" and "The Frozen Man," One Man Band might just melt the heart of the most hardened punk-wars veteran.
