NIGHT OF THE LIVING DREGS

When I first learned of the Dixie Dregs, and bought all of their albums, this was my least favorite. Now that I have matured, I like it at least as much as most of their other albums, maybe more than all but "What If". The engineering on this, even the original Polydor CD version is amazing. All the instruments sound crystal clear.

The album is set up in two halves. The first half is four studio recordings, and the second is four live tracks. The studio half includes "Punk Sandwich" (which isn't punk at all, thankfully), and "Country House Shuffle" (which doesn't sound very much like country to me, either), both of which became live staples for the Dregs. "The Riff Raff", primarily a violin/acoustic guitar duet, is a sort of baroque sounding tune which, to me, almost invokes Gentle Giant's "Funny Ways".

The live half is more raucous, with "Night Of The Living Dregs", a blazingly fasy version of "The Bash" and "Patchwork" (where the Dregs show they can play both kinds of music country and western).