Bonnie Nelson “Live”

Subtitle: “Live at the Country Palace with Speedy Haworth and the Stateside Express”—kinda prepares you for the 100-yard-dash. This is the kind of record I love to find—1979—never heard of Bonnie Nelson, but it’s country, on a small label (“Hop-A-Long”)—homemade feel with good sound—it probably captures one of her live shows very well. But for me, personally allergic to “jauntiness” as I am—not my thing at all. Most of the songs are that kind that sound like someone’s going to yell “hoedown” any second and leave you in the dust. Nice version of “Sealed with A Kiss”—one of those hits from my childhood that I can tolerate—same with “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue.” There’s a ballad called “Love from a Woman’s Point of View” that makes me wish the whole record was ballads. Bonnie Nelson has the kind of voice that, if you were in a raucous crowd of hundreds, you’d be able to make out every word she said, clear as a fucking bell, even speaking in conversational tones. Certain songs (like uninspired covers of overly-familiar hits) can really sink a side of a record, but at least if it’s at the end, you can lift the needle, like “An American Trilogy” at the end of Side Two. But “The Streak”—dead in the middle of Side One—is like a turd on the living room carpet—I’m not even going to look up who recorded that novelty song that plagued my youth days of AM radio. I don’t remember, but I do remember every line, every inflection, every pause and stupid sound effect—it’s a song that even gives novelty songs a bad name—not to mention streaking and “humor” and levity. But the fans seem to like it.

4.30.25