Lots of insults have been lobbed at LINDA McCARTNEY since the day she entered husband Paul’s life. “She broke up The Beatles,” “she can’t sing,” “she’s a bleedin’ vegetarian,” etc. This reissue of the posthumous compilation Wide Prairie may not go far in turning that tide, but it will – at the very least – go a ways to helping the Macca nerds of the world fatten up their collections a little more.
This 16-track album was first released in 1998, and 21 years later it’s still an interesting yet slightly troublesome undertaking. There’s a number of great songs here, including “Seaside Woman” (recorded in ’72-’73 during Wings’ Red Rose Speedway sessions), “Cook of the House” (which first appeared on Wings at the Speed of Sound in ’76) and album closer “Appaloosa,” but the rest of the material is cute yet not crucial. A few songs are just not good, like “The White Coated Man,” a screed against lab testing of animals (not a bad cause, mind you) and the bulk of the rest is just fair-to-middling. I do like “I Got Up” and “The Light Comes from Within,” both dust-yourself-off-and-get-back-up-on-the-horse ditties, and “B-Side to Seaside” (another previously released track, the [ahem] B-side to “Seaside Woman”), but at 16 tracks this album is a handful of tracks too many. It’s highly likely that this compilation consists of every single track Linda finished before her death, six months before Paulie first put out this collection.
Wide Prairie has a nice lightness to it, with humor abounding, and some nice cover versions (“Mister Sandman,” “Poison Ivy”), too. You even get two tracks that were co-produced by reggae legend Lee Perry (reggae is actually part of the foundation of this elpee)! Whether you care for Linda McCartney’s girlish singing (flawed but fun) or not, it’s not a bad record at all. It’s just not that great. As for the Macca collectors out there, they’ll want the milk/blue vinyl limited edition (may already be sold out), but there’s also a regular black vinyl version and a compact disc. However, there are no more tracks on this reissue than there were on the ’98 release, so you’re gonna have to be an accomplished aficionado to want to pick this version up.
2.5/5 (Capitol 7728542, 1998/2019)
NuDisc 