Melanie Before Woodstock
Long Branch Alt-Folk icon Melanie may be most known for her galvanizing 1969 Woodstock Festival appearance but four months before that she played The Troubadour in Los Angeles. Those tapes—made by her husband-producer Peter Schekeryk—are her earliest known live recordings. Take Me Home: Live At The Troubadour 1969 is the latest from the marathon Melanie reissue campaign of Cleopatra Records.
In a 2003 interview, Melanie called herself a “loose cannon,” going on to say, “I don’t believe Woodstock changed me in the slightest, but it did alter my record label’s perception of me, and the media’s, and the public’s. And that bled into everything else—promotion, photo sessions, and I guess the songs I was writing, because, as an artist, you can’t help but write for your audience as much as you do for yourself.
“A lot of my earlier songs,” she continued, “my first two albums especially, I think got lost. There were certain songs I’d written, like `Beautiful People,’ that resonated with what the label wanted from me, but there were others, like `Deep Down Low’ and `Take Me Home With You,’ that were allowed to fall by the wayside.” Bonus tracks include some from her tours in ’70 and ’71. The album ends with her delicious cover version of the 1967 Rolling Stones hit “Ruby Tuesday.”
(Advertisement)