To me, Lagwagon has never been a band that has knocked me out with a stellar record – they’ve always had 12 song albums with 6 or 7 great songs and a couple of fillers. If you combined their ‘greatest hits’ into one disc, it would probably be one of the best ‘punk’ records ever. Fat’s latest ‘Live In A Dive’ release has a really good go at putting Joey Cape‘s best songs on one disc, giving it the Ryan Green make-over and yes, it comes out the mill smelling of roses. Fat Wreck don’t make bad live albums – the ‘Live In A Dive’ series is now the premier live album and this is no different.
Pretty much all of the band’s best songs are here – from the opening salvo of ‘Alien8’, ‘Violins’ and ‘Messengers’ the band cover old and new songs. The crowd sing along heartily and this is well captured, as it has been on all of the ‘Live…’ records. The band sound pretty good; Joey’s voice is as good as ever, while the guitars and bass buzz and blast. There are probably too many highlights to mention in full, but versions of ‘Sleep’, ‘Making Friends’ and ‘Islands of Shame’ are all quality. There’s even a rare outing for ‘Beer Goggles’. A few more songs from ‘Let’s Talk About Feelings’ would have been nice, but on the whole the Lagwagon discography is well represented.
Fat Wreck has nailed down the art of making a live record and the latest chapter in the ‘Live In A Dive’ series carries on the quality. This is a must for Lagwagon fans and proves to be a pretty good starting point for casual fans or newcomers to the band. Yes, there are a few noticeable tracks missing, but you can’t have everything. This sounds good, looks good and is well worthy of a four-star rating.
Paul