Wounded Bird Records
2009
Spooky Lady's Sideshow/Shake Hands With The Devil
About This Album
It's difficult to figure out Wounded Bird's scheme for its ambitious Kris Kristofferson reissue program. The four volumes in the series contain eight albums. Only half of them are issued in chronological order. Why they chose to skip around and not simply release these two-fers in historical release sequence is a mystery; it would have made it a lot easier for the listener.

This two-fer is a case in point. For starters, we get 1974's stellar, if truly misunderstood Spooky Lady's Sideshow paired with the utterly forgettable Shake Hands with the Devil. The former title is a kind of concept album. It reflects on the state of the songwriter's life journey to that point, from the hard road of slogging through bars and Nashville offices to the rough life lived in the process to the price of stardom and the dark side of fame. It also reflects on the lives and tragedies of people he'd met along the way. One need not go any further than "Same Old Song," the album's opening track, to get a snapshot of the entire album thematically. There are some real Kristofferson classics to be found here, including "Broken Freedom Song" and "The Lights of Magdala," just to name two.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15 and 16)

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