Bootleg Review: Jason & the Scorchers' Absolutely Mannheim (2000)

JASON & THE SCORCHERS
Absolutely Mannheim
(Massive Attack CD-R #990167, 67:56 min)

SOURCE: Tracks 1 – 16, Mannheim Germany, June 10, 1985. Tracks 17-19, Farm Aid II, Austin TX 1986.

SOUND QUALITY: German set is fair audience (5) with significant drop-outs, clicks, fade-aways and enough hollowness and echo to make one wonder what sort of cave they recorded the songs in. Nevertheless, Jason’s vocals are reasonably clear and Warner’s guitar is up front in the mix. Farm Aid tracks are fair audience (5) with tinny sound, abrasive top end and a bit of distortion.

COVER: Typical Massive Attack packaging, with a B & W shot of Jason Ringenberg on the front and a pretty cool “American Gothic” styled B & W shot of the entire band on the back along with tracklist and venue info.

TRACKLIST: Lost Highway/ Last Time Around/ Are You Ready For The Country?/ Can’t Help Myself/ If You’ve Got The Love (I’ve Got The Time)/ Shop It Around/ Broken Whiskey Glass/ Help! There’s A Fire - Hot Nights In Georgia/ Pray For Me Mama (I’m A Gypsy Now)(incorrectly listed as “Still Tied”)/ Travelin’ Band/ Change The Tune/ You Win Again (incorrectly listed as “This Heart Of Mine”)/ Harvest Moon/ Absolutely Sweet Marie - If Money Talks/ Amazing Grace/ Shotgun Blues (incorrectly listed as “Far Behind”)/ Are You Ready For The Country?/ Broken Whiskey Glass (incorrectly listed as “Harvest Moon”)/ White Lies       

COMMENTS: From the dank ambience of Cantrell’s and the beer-soaked stage at Phranc-n-Stein’s, Jason & the Scorchers broke out of the primal early ‘80s Nashville club scene to hit the world stage, their 1985 tour of Europe earning them a considerable fan base in England, Germany and points north. Although the band worked consistently throughout the ‘80s – in fact, demand for their live shows kept the wolves from the door when EMI bankrupted them – they never quite crossed over to the mainstream. A couple of spins of Absolutely Mannheim show why the Scorchers earned such a rabid cult following, however. Their audience is so loyal that a couple of years ago, the live recording sessions in Nashville for Midnight Roads and Stages Seen drew Scorchers fans from across the U.S., South America. and northern Europe to take part in the fun.
 
Although the sound on Absolutely Mannheim, quite frankly, sucks, the performance is typical high-energy, high-octane Jason & the Scorchers. Touring Europe for the first time, supporting their first full-length album Lost & Found, the setlist here is almost identical to that on the rare Rock On Germany LP, an album that writer Clint Heylin considers one of the best bootlegs ever made. I’ve got a tape of that album, smuggled out of Germany by band members, and I believe that Absolutely Mannheim is even better. The performances are both exciting, but by the time of the Mannheim show, the Scorchers had been in Europe for three weeks and the live sets had really jelled. The set is pretty much normal for 1985-vintage Scorchers, the band performing most of the Lost & Found album mixed with cuts from the band’s critically-acclaimed Fervor EP and a couple tunes from their original Praxis label 7” EP, Reckless Country Soul.

With fifteen years of retrospection, original Scorchers songs like “Shop It Around,” “If Money Talks,” “Last Time Around,” and “Broken Whiskey Glass” are comfortable favorites; at the time they were precious cowpunk rave-ups that fused traditional country with punk energy and attitude, providing Nashville rockers with something to believe in. Inspired covers performed here include Hank Williams’ “Lost Highway” (which opened most every Scorchers set) and “You Win Again” (which would eventually be dropped from the set), Neil Young’s “Are You Ready For The Country?” and Dylan’s “Absolutely Sweet Marie.” A Scorchers signature tune, the video for “Absolutely Sweet Marie” would introduce the band to early-eighties MTV audiences.

An early version of “Shotgun Blues” from the Scorchers second album (incorrectly listed here as “Far Behind’) shows the band still fine-tuning the song while the rendition of CCR’s “Travelin’ Band,” sung by Scorchers guitarist Warner Hodges proves that Hodges should stick to his six-string wizardry. The Mannheim set presented here is probably a couple of songs shy of complete – missing is “White Lies,” the first single from Lost & Found and a staple of the band’s performances at the time. In a summer of high points, however, the Mannheim show stands as one of the highest, the 1985 European tour peaking with an appearance in front of 40,000 people at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark where Link Wray joined the band onstage.

Whoever put this disc together made a few glaring errors in terms of song titles. Who could ever confuse “Broken Whiskey Glass,” one of the band’s first songs and a signature tune, with “Harvest Moon,” a ballad from the Fervor EP (as they did here on the Farm Aid tracks)? Other songs are also misidentified, either by title or by confusing them with other Scorchers’ songs. There are also a couple of indexing errors where the band jumps from one song right into another, as with “Absolutely Sweet Marie” and “If Money Talks” with the producer/manufacturer missing it entirely. These ridiculous mistakes and generally aggravating sound quality aside, it’s nice to finally see a Scorchers show on disc. Absolutely Mannheim is an important document of one of rock’s most underrated bands. With the wealth of live Scorchers’ material circulating on tape, some of it of pretty decent quality, maybe we’ll see more of Jason & the Scorchers on CD in the future.

Review originally published by Live! Music Review zine, 2000