Joan Osborne: “Early Recordings”

Early Recordings is an album by Joan Osborne released on November 5, 1996. Except for "His Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles," it consists of live recordings, mostly from Osborne's debut album, Soul Show: Live at Delta 88.  

The Alanis comparisons are off the wall. All comparisons are invidious, but if you had to pi­geonhole Osborne anywhere in the pantheon of U.S. female rock, then she’d end up somewhere near Melissa Etheridge — at least on this collec­tion of her pre-fame recordings. With her early 90s bar band Delta 88, Osborne revives the throaty roar of a Joplin for a romp through the Dusty Springfield hit “Son Of A Preacher Man”, and maintains the faintly retro feel for the other 1991 live cuts here. Also featured are 1993 stu­dio tracks, notably an ambitious reworking of Captain Beefheart’s “His Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles”. There’s an occasionally bratty edge to Osborne’s voice, and evidence that she was prone from the start to drop into vocal cliches. But “Early Recordings” aren’t the embarrassment of, say, Morissette’s pre-“Pill” outings.