I have this CD by Matthew’s Southern Comfort [sic] called The Essential Collection. It wouldn’t do to have called it Greatest Hits, because the group (actually called Matthews Southern Comfort) didn’t have all that many hits – one, in fact, if by “hit” we mean a song that did better than number 96 on Billboard. If we are more liberal, then the group can be said to have had three “hits.” So their greatest hits would have made for a very paltry collection indeed, especially given the fact the “greatest” is presumably a selection from a bigger selection, which I don’t know how you’d manage to do with only 3 tracks to begin with.So The Essential Collection it is, and here is where it gets interesting. The selections are taken from 3 albums, released in 1969 / 1970, and this is a bit odd because the group only released 2 albums. The 3rd, which was actually the 1st (confusing, see?) was a solo LP by Ian Matthews, called Matthews’ Southern Comfort. Good title, so good that he adopted it for his band (minus the apostrophe – though Whitburn included it), a six-piece unit which went on to record, as I said, 2 albums, one called Second Spring and one called Later That Same Year, the latter of which yielded Woodstock, the one real hit, and both of the other chart singles, which were, in case you are curious, and even if you aren’t, Tell Me Why, a cover of Neil Young’s song from After The Goldrush, and Mare, Take Me Home.
Another interesting point is that whoever put this collection together didn’t seem to have listened to it. The liner notes make several reference to this being “country rock,” which it decidedly isn’t – acoustic, yes; folky, yes; country, no.
And being the odd type of person that I am, I do this thing where I like to post YouTube videos of music I’ve been listening to on Facebook (no, not listening to on Facebook – go ahead, you reframe that sentence). And what I found in my quest to find some suitable postable content by MSC was this: 1. There are, altogether, not many songs by MSC on YouTube; 2. Most of the songs posted are not on The Essential Collection, and this makes me wonder how Essential the collection really is; 3. There are no live videos from the original group; 4. There are live performances from 2011, some in someone’s living room, and some in some concert hall somewhere, by group calling itself Matthews Southern Comfort, which patently and obviously is not Matthews Southern Comfort, having only 3 members (the original group had 6), one of whom is female (there were no girls in the group), and none of whom is Ian Matthews. Now it could be, possibly, that one or both of these guys were at one time in the original band, but so what? Imagine Ringo Starr picking up a kazoo player and the two of them touring as The Beatles; 5. There are more videos of Woodstock than of all the other songs together.
None of this is bad, I say. Their music is nice to listen to in the same way the Joan Baez’ early stuff is nice to listen to, well played, easy on the ear, not especially engaging. But there are exceptions, and if you’re going to post something, I suggest you start with their cover of James Taylor’s Something In The Way She Moves…
