Elliott Smith - Unlucky Charm (Live, 2002)

Elliott live at the Riviera in Chicago, on May 2, 2002.

A bit of advice from a huge Elliott Smith completist: Don't bother looking for or listening to the rest of this show.

The context itself is grim enough. Elliott is opening for Wilco, and you can tell by all the talking that's going on. To this crowd, Elliott was clearly yesterday's news, while Wilco had just released "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" a week before this, an album that would go on to sell half a million.

This song was the one bright spot that night. Absolutely stunning/emotional performance that, in my opinion, blows away the 1997 version.

Enjoy.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• elliott
• smith
• unlucky
• charm
• 2002
• riviera
• theater
• chicago
• come
• out
• now

[dreamerfadesawake]

Wow, I had absolutely no clue that there was another recording of this song. This is amazing. And it's really interesting that there are not only different lyrics than the other version, but different chords. I've never really heard him change chords to a song before.

I had heard about this show at some point, but never listened to it. Thanks for sharing this, and thanks for the warning.

[UnreleasedOriginal]

@dreamerfadesawake regarding him changing chords, he also did this with "Everything's Okay," "My New Freedom" and "You Make It Seem Like Nothing". Listen to the original versions of those songs, in 1996-1997. Incredibly complex chords and strumming patterns. When he pulled those songs out of the dustbin in 2001-2003, they had to basically be "dumbed down" because, depressing as it is to say, his fingers couldn't do what they used to. This might be a case of the opposite though...interesting.

[Bryce6789]

haha kind of a casey tatum thing at the beginning.

casey tatum-tim eric comedy troop

[Ebinification]

Thanks

[Kleasone]

omg ! this is awesome. 1 month ago popped this short intro from a studio live, then this one now. And this other chord progression is very interesting. I'm sure one day will appear a proper version of this song.

[dreamerfadesawake]

@UnreleasedOriginal I see what you mean in all three cases, but I feel like these changes are from finger-picking to just strumming essentially the same chords. And this makes sense for the way he writes songs; the core of them isn't the lyrics, but the shapes of the progressions and the melodies that they make. This aspect seems to stay constant after he first writes a version of a song. The changes here, though, seem different to me, whatever that means.

[pressureofdays]

Thanks, as stated, this was very emotional.