Earlier this year, alt-rock/power pop pioneering singer-songwriter Matthew Sweet released a new live album, Live at Grant Park Chicago July 1993. It was originally recorded by Metro Mobile Recording for Chicago radio station WXRT and features performances by Richard Lloyd (Television) on lead guitar, Will Rigby (The dB’s) on drums, and Tony Marsico (Cruzados, Bob Dylan) on bass and background vocals.
Below Sweet discusses revisiting a vintage performance in the midst of his surge in popularity in the early ’90s (make sure to read the rest of Josh’s interview with Sweet in his concert preview for the Capital Times):
We’ve been looking for years to find the original tapes from that show, and that finally happened really recently, I think, later in the fall. So, once they found the tapes, they could have somebody go through and wade through it all and get it as good as you could. I’m not huge on listening to myself. I know that sounds weird. It’s like I don’t go back very much usually after I record something or I do something. So, by default, I’ve never listened to live recordings of myself very much. I’m kind of like, I was there, I don’t want to hear it now.
But it’s something we’ve wanted to do a long time because a lot of other people have put out shows. And this particular show was kind of a well-known show. It was a big weekend in Chicago and the next morning the newspaper headline was the Pope, the Bulls and Matthew Sweet because I guess the pope was in town and the Bulls must have had a big win. And I played at their giant festival, which is called The Taste of Chicago, where it’s just a huge outdoor thing with just so many people. And so that was exciting. Mainly I could show my mom, “Hey look, the Pope is in my same headline because she grew up really Catholic.” So out of anyone in my family, she would be the one who would’ve been excited about it. She’s no longer with us.
It’s amazing how long ago it was too. I also like that it’s kind of an unusual band for me. There aren’t that many live recordings with Richard Lloyd and there aren’t that many live recordings with Will Rigby from the dB’s playing drums, who’s playing drums on it, a left-handed drummer and very interesting. It was really fun playing with all the folks that we were playing together with at that time. I remember the Jayhawks were there who we did a lot of dates together during those early years probably. I’ll bet they were on the bill.
So yeah, it’s a thing I’m totally positive about, but I haven’t listened to it enough to really give good commentary on it. I wanted it to be called “Matthews Sweet Live In Chicago 1893” instead of 1993. I thought that would be funny because it might as well, it seemed like 1893 to me. But I got a lot of pushback on it that people would think it was a typo. And I was like, “so what? Would you not listen to something if you saw a typo on it or whatever?” And I of course demanded they change it when I found out they didn’t call it that.
Even though that isn’t the title, to me, it’ll always be called “Matthew Sweet Live in Chicago 1893.”
Joshua is co-founder of Scummy Water Tower. He’s freelanced for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and websites, including: Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Guitar World, MTV News, Grammy.com, Chicago Magazine, Milwaukee Magazine, MKE Lifestyle, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, A.V. Club, SPIN, Alternative Press, Under the Radar, Paste, PopMatters, American Songwriter, and Relix. You can email him at josh@scummywatertower.com.
