Long before is band was treating stadium crowds to sax solos and jammy polyrhythms, Dave Matthews was a frat-house troubadour, playing freewheeling acoustic gigs with his buddy, guitar whiz Tim Reynolds. Matthews has kept doing the occasional unplugged show through the years, and on this two-disc live album, recorded in April, much of his material stands up just fine without full-band wizardry. Matthews highlights the warm, sensitive-dude beauty at the heart of cuts like the previously unrecorded "Sister" and the old staple "Don't Drink the Water," which here sounds like an eerily pretty lullaby, not the dark banger the Dave Matthews Band plays it as. Elsewhere, Matthews and Reynolds rock as hard as two guys with acoustics can on uptempos like "Dancing Nancies" and "Corn Bread," a tossed-off goof thick with overlapping upper-register riffs and Matthews' pidgin Cajun drawl. Of course, no amount of adornments can help snoozers like the bluesy "Save Me," and there's more than a whiff of hippie-dippy indulgence in Matthews' slack, syllable-stretching voice and the noodle-y solos on an eight-minute-plus "Lie in Our Graves." One cherry-picking disc would have been plenty — unless, that is, you're one of the die-hard fans this set (and the accompanying DVD) was made for.

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."