There are many ways one could look at
\nDouble Trouble Live<\/i>, the seventh release from Molly Hatchet.
\nOn one side, it was the first “official” live document from the
\nband, neatly wrapping up close to a decade’s worth of rock from a
\nband who should have been the next standard-bearers for the
\nSouthern rock genre. (There had been limited-edition bonus discs of
\nlive material included on two of their studio albums.) On the other
\nside, one could argue that this set was a “closet-cleaner” for the
\nband, as it was their final release on Epic, and they were coming
\noff of a lackluster effort with
\nThe Deed Is Done<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Yet
\nDouble Trouble Live<\/i> does help to re-establish Danny Joe
\nBrown and company’s reputation as a powerful band who are a force
\nto be reckoned with, even if they do make the near-fatal mistake of
\nchoosing to cover “Free Bird” at a time when neither the song
\nneeded the exposure nor the band needed to rely on covers.<\/p>\n
Okay, the last statement might seem a little hypocrytical,
\nespecially when one considers that their take on “Dreams I’ll Never
\nSee” has always been a high point of Molly Hatchet’s discography,
\nand the live take here lives up to the hype. Maybe it’s because
\nMolly Hatchet was able to put their own unique stamp on this track,
\nmaking it sound fresh without appearing to tread too firmly on the
\ntoes of The Allman Brothers Band. But their rendition of “Free
\nBird” sounds like the listener has stumbled onto a bar band trying
\nto whoop the audience up, and it just doesn’t work. Let Skynyrd
\nhandle Skynyrd; let Hatchet handle Hatchet.<\/p>\n
That being said, the bulk of the set (truncated by two songs
\nfrom the original vinyl – which I ran out of time to listen to) is
\nrather enjoyable, with Brown sounding the most at ease his vocals
\nhave ever been, even on the material he originally didn’t perform,
\nsuch as “Bloody Reunion”. At times, the band sounds like they’re
\ntotally in their comfort zone, plowing through songs like “Bounty
\nHunter,” “Gator Country” and “Fall Of The Peacemakers” as if they
\nwere born to play this material. This does make
\nDouble Trouble Live<\/i> fun to listen to, even nearly 20 years
\nsince these gigs were recorded.<\/p>\n
Yet there are still some stumbling zones. “Beatin’ The Odds”
\nstill sounds more like an incomplete thought than a song, and Brown
\nisn’t able to add any support to this track. “Satisfied Man”
\ndoesn’t translate too well to the stage as one would have hoped,
\nand “Edge Of Sundown” sounds a little too sleepy for my tastes.<\/p>\n
If anything,
\nDouble Trouble Live<\/i> serves as a decent, if slightly flawed,
\nsummary of Molly Hatchet’s career to this point, and it does leave
\nthe listener with some hope that there are still many more good
\ndays ahead for the band. History would prove, however, that the
\nband’s greatest challenges were still waiting for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5906],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-37951","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-molly-hatchet","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37951"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37951"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}