Little Feat, "Waiting for Columbus" (Warner Brothers, 1978)

Copies of several albums - invariably double- or even triple-record sets - mysteriously disappeared off the shelf in my dorm room during my freshman year of college. We suspected a floormate who mysteriously disappeared himself after the first semester.

His replacement was an amiable fellow who owned, as I recall, two albums. Ironically, they were both two-record sets. And he attempted to play them as often as he could slap them onto a turntable.

We quickly put the kibosh on his attempting to serenade us with Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band's "Live Bullet." I know what I'd like to do with a bullet and those slabs of vinyl!

His other album was "Waiting for Columbus," the live album Little Feat released about a year before founder Lowell George left the band and died shortly afterward (as it turned out, about a year before I started college). While we recognized the talent involved in the recording, we quickly tired of one guy trying to play the same thing over and over again.

After sufficient recovery time had passed and the album's owner had long since flunked out of school, my buddies and I rediscovered "Waiting for Columbus." (Rediscovered. Columbus. Get it?) And it was fantastic. So was the rest of the Little Feat catalog. Too bad the band was gone for good. (Actually, "Little Feat" re-formed in 1987 is still playing and recording today. But purists dismiss anything calling itself that without Lowell George.)

At the time of its release, fans who had been tuned in to Little Feat complained a bit about the sound being "slick." The addition of the horn section from the San Francisco-based Tower of Power probably helped give that impression. And after listening to some recently unearthed live recordings of Little Feat from a few years earlier, I can understand what the detractors mean.

But, hey, that's nitpicking. "Columbus" is a fine document of a band that was capable of putting it all together: songwriting, singing, playing, working an audience - you name it.

Along with the horns, this was the "classic" six-piece version of the band: Lowell on slide guitar and vocals; Paul Barrere on the other guitar; Bill Payne on keyboard wizardry; Kenny Gradney on bass; Richie Hayward on drums; and Sam Clayton on various percussive beat-keepers. They knew how to mix it up: a little bit country, a little bit soul, a lot of good, old-fashioned rock 'n' roll.

Music fans with a cursory knowledge of Little Feat know songs like "Dixie Chicken" and "Willin'," songs that weren't hits (although I guess the latter was, courtesy of Linda Ronstadt) but show up on "classic rock" playlists. Both those tunes are in good form here: "Dixie" as an extended jam segueing into the show-stopping "Tripe Face Boogie"; "Willin'" as a ballad leading directly into an a cappella version of Fraternity of Man's underground classic, "Don't Bogart Me" (aka "Don't Bogart That Joint").

But some of the highlights come with lesser-know material: Barrere's "Old Folks Boogie," Payne's "Day or Night" and George's "Spanish Moon," complete with lyrics that don't show up on the studio version: "There's whiskey and bad cocaine/The poison gets you just the same." Unfortunately for Lowell's sake, the words were very prophetic.

My own favorite part of the album takes place right off the bat: another a cappella jaunt, "Join the Band," leads right into Lowell sliding away into his good-time anthem "Fat Man in the Bathtub." ("Juanita, my sweet chaquita, what are you up to?")

When Warner Brothers committed "Waiting for Columbus" to compact disc in 1988, the folks who make such decisions had the bright idea of stripping off "Bogart" and "A Apolitical Blues" ("the meanest blues of all"), and including them as "bonus tracks" on the band's "The Last Record Album." Finally, Warners wised up and included the original album sequence on a 2002 reissue, along with several more tracks, including Allen Toussaint's "On Your Way Down." Of course, it's a two-CD set, so it costs more money, but it's worth it.

Then again, with it being a two-CD set, I'd better hide it before that kleptomaniac from college finds me. I'll miss this one a lot more than some of that stuff he stole in 1980!