"It's Comic That It's All So Tragic" 40 Odd Years with Loudon Wainwright III

Disc 1 (1969 – 1983)

1) School Days 2) I Don’t Care 3) Uptown 4)Be Careful There’s A Baby In The House 5) Saw Your Name In The Paper 6) Dead Skunk 7) New Paint 8) Drinking Song 9) The Swimming Song 10) Dilated To Meet You 11) Down Drinking At The Bar 12) The Man Who Couldn’t Cry 13) Whatever Happened To Us? 14) Crime Of Passion 15) Kick In The Head 16) Summer’s Almost Over 17) Just Like President Thieu 18) Golfin’ Blues 19) The Heckler 20) Natural Disaster 21) Red Guitar 22) Hollywood Hopeful 23) IDTTYWLM 24) The Grammy Song

Disc 2 (1984 – 1995)

1) Westchester County 2) I’m Alright 3) Screaming Issue 4) Unhappy Anniversary 5) Your Mother And I 6) Synchronicity 7) Hard Day On The Planet 8) You Don’t Want To Know 9) Bill Of Goods 10) Thanksgiving 11) Your Father’s Car 12) When I’m At Your House 13) The Picture 14) Men 15) So Many Songs 16) Tip That Waitress 17) I’d Rather Be Lonely 18) April Fool’s Day Morn 19) The Acid Song 20) IWIWAL 21) A Year 22) Dreaming

Disc 3 (1996 – 2010)

So Damn Happy 2) Primrose Hill 3) Bein’ A Dad 4) Four Mirrors 5) It’s Love And I Hate It 6) Christmas Morning 7) Pretty Good Day 8) White Winos 9) Bed 10) Surviving Twin 11) The Shit Song 12) Between 13) My Biggest Fan 14) When You Leave 15) Make Your Mother Mad 16) Daughter 17) Grey In L.A. 18) Muse Blues 19) Motel Blues 20) The Deal 21) Rowena 22) High Wide & Handsome

Disc 4 (Rare and Unreleased)

1) Weave Room Blues (with Kate McGarrigle) 2) McSorley’s 3) Black Uncle Remus (demo) 4) Funny Having Money 5) The Hardy Boys At The Y (with The Boys Of The Lough) 6) Laid (live) 7) Outsidey (live) 8) That Cat 9) Surfin’ Queen (demo) 10) Newt 11) 4X10 (live) 12) Somethin’ Stupid (with Barry Humphries) 13) The Miles (live) 14) So Good So Far (live) 15) Big Fish 16) No Sure Way 17) Hey There 2nd Grader 18) More I Cannot Wish You 19) Florida (Lucky You) 20) Hank & Fred (live) 21) Your Eyes (demo) 22) Dead Man 23) At The End Of A Long Lonely Day (with Suzzy Roche)

Disc 5 (DVD: Filmed Performances)

Menu – Grown Man / One Man Guy / Heaven / When You Leave / Half Fist / Reciprocity / Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms (two versions) / Unrequited To the Nth Degree (two versions) / Dump the Dog & Feed the Garbage / Glad to See You’ve Got Religion / Motel Blues / Rufus is a Tit Man / Cardboard Boxes / Thanksgiving / Hitting You / Career Moves / Dead Man / The End Has Begun / Needless to Say / My Mother and my Sweetheart / Menu – I’m All right / Grey In L.A. / Daughter / Passion Play / Menu – Men / New Paint / Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder / June Apple / Unhappy Anniversary / Kings and Queens/ IDTTYWLM / Tonya’s Twirls / OGM / Menu-So Many Songs / Kick In the Head / Bicentennial / Fear With Flying / Lullabye / Living Alone / Homeless / A Father and a Son / Menu – IWIWAL / Documentary “One Man Guy” contains sections of these songs; TSMNWA / The Home Stretch / Hollywood Hopeful / Fear with Flying / Hitting You / The K.C. Moan / He Said, She Said / I Went To the Doctor / Do Not Speak Softly (?) / Talkin’ N.Y (?) / Talkin’ Bob Dylan / School Days / Reciprocity / I’m All Right / Rufus Is A Tit Man / Father & Son / Red Guitar / Career Moves / One Man Guy    

          Loudon Wainwright III is best remembered for “Dead Skunk”, a rare novelty number among the hundreds of brilliant songs the man has written since his debut in 1968. He has a great voice and a powerful way with an acoustic guitar. He has a gift for melody, and stylistically his songs cover singer – songwriter type material, rockers, country, jazz, old time country, sambas, Dixieland blues, pretty – much – you – name – it. Yet, as perfect as his music and performances are, his lyrics are his masterpieces.

           Lyrically, he is a master manipulator of the comic and the tragic, occasionally writing solely one or the other, but usually combining both to varying degrees, always to startling effect.

           He loves women so much that he will stoop to being a shameless cad to get them into his bed – consequences be damned.

           We can assume he lives by a double standard -- when he is out on the road and alone, he is desperately lonely, and pathetically paranoid imagining the cheating behavior of the woman he has left at home. In “The Home Stretch” he sings to himself;

“Your girlfriend is in a city, thousands of miles away,

And it’s full of male models,

Not all of whom are gay.”

           He remained spiteful and angry for DECADES after his first marriage ended – even long after the children had grown into adulthood. The Wainwright family is now on at least its fourth generation of dysfunctionalism. The saddest irony about his music is that he is utterly, painfully honest with us, the strangers in his audience, yet he seems to be incapable of expressing these feelings in real life to his closest loved ones.

           Still, the guy is truly cool. His honesty, his humor, and his irrepressible bad – boy attitude are irresistible. No matter how deceitful and unapologetic he is with the people in his real life, he is completely honest and sincere with us in his art.

           40 Odd Years is a lavish four CD one DVD boxed set, with a play list selected by Loudon himself. Understandably, he chose the most heartfelt songs for this collection as they mean the most to him. These tend to be tender songs aimed at his children or his ex-wives. As such, they tend to fall into the acoustic singer – songwriter genre. A different approach would have been to put emphasis on LW3’s ability to write convincingly in wildly eclectic musical styles. I am not criticizing The Genius’ approach to song selection, I am just pointing out that the HUGE sampling of material here still represents only the tip of the Loudon iceberg.

           The jewel of the collection is the DVD, containing a staggering three hours and twenty minutes of television performances. One Saturday my mom & dad, my brother and I watched the entire DVD in a single afternoon. They had not heard of him before, but we watched the entire thing and they were never bored. I have had this set for about a month now and I’ve watched the DVD all the way through five times.  

          If you’d like to sample Loudon, but don’t want to spring for more than a single CD, most fans consider “History” to be his masterpiece, but I prefer “Grown Man”. Really, all of his 24 albums are excellent.