On ICYC Live 2005, there's a track by the Iowa City world-music ensemble Euforquestra called "Tramba" that illustrates what's so great about live recordings: In a live setting, anything can happen, and strange things often do. When I first heard "Tramba," the snare drum sounded a little out-of-time. Then, about 35 seconds into the song, the band stops playing and one of the members says, "Okay we're going to start that one over again," and another member says, "That guy knocked the cymbals over!" With a snappy drum fill, the band jumps right back into the groove and takes the listener on an Afro-Cuban journey à la Buena Vista Social Club.

I love the fact that the entire episode was left on this new album, which features regional and touring artists captured live at the Iowa City Yacht Club last year. (Well, most of them were recorded in 2005.) In the liner notes - authored by Scott Kading, the club's co-owner and chief album producer - we learn that the person who actually knocked those cymbals over was Kading's "friend and tattoo guru Ray 'Stingray' Parrish." Cool.

Via those liner notes, Kading claims that more than 20,000 people saw more than 200 shows in 2005 at the Yacht Club, and that the venue released this compilation because it thought it "appropriate to try and document some of those memorable nights - especially since it is sometimes hard to remember what happened anyway ... ."

Kading and his crew did an admirable job. The recordings aren't stellar, but they're pretty close, especially for a live application; you can tell that the sound in the room was good and there is a lot of energy packed into the songs that were chosen to represent what goes on at the Yacht Club. Most of the artists included on this disc are from the Iowa City area (at least originally), and you've probably heard of popular acts such as Kelly Pardekooper, David Zollo, Public Property, Shame Train, Joe Price, and the aforementioned Euforquestra.

The tunes on ICYC Live 2005 range from rootsy, blues-oriented numbers to funky, world-beat grooves to hip-hop-laced reggae, and it all works well together, demonstrating that, though sense of place has a lot of impact on the process of making music, it doesn't dictate what genres that music will fall into. The Yacht Club has been a haven for these original, yet diverse, performers to converge and share their interpretations of what being a Midwestern band means since Kading and company opened the doors in 2003, and ICYC Live 2005 is a good showcase for regional talent.

Much of the album consists of the kind of music you might expect to hear from Midwestern musicians, illustrated perfectly by David Zollo & the Body Electric kicking off the album with "Shake It in My Face," a fairly straight-ahead, upbeat blues number made popular by Dave's first band, High & Lonesome. Jensen Connection follows with a similarly flavored boogie tune called "Distracted," on which Mike Tallman and Adam Grasso of Euforquestra sit in on mandolin and steel drum. This allows the reggae-influenced breakdowns in the song to emit more of a Caribbean flair than they might otherwise, but the rest of the song is a sturdy study in two-chord progression, and it relies primarily on its energy for effect.

No compilation featuring Iowa musicians would be complete without Kelly Pardekooper, Joe Price, and Shame Train, and this one features Pardekooper doing his haunting dirge "House of Mud" by request; Price churning out a shuffling, Delta-blues instrumental appropriately titled "Yacht Club Boogie"; and Shame Train performing its somber ballad "Homewrecker." The biggest standout is Public Property's track, "What's Goin' Down," mostly because it's so different from everything else on the album. A combination of reggae-inspired instrumentation and current-event-laden lyrics delivered through hip-hop stylings, the song sounds like the lovechild of 311's Music-era material and something off Dr. Dre's The Chronic.

Though it's the standout on the disc, "What's Goin' Down" doesn't exactly steal the show here - but none of the other tracks really does, either. After listening to ICYC Live 2005 several times, I felt like I'd heard all there was to hear from this album, and being at least somewhat familiar with many of the artists, track selection had a good deal to do with that. Though there are 11 tracks on ICYC Live 2005, there are only nine artists featured, with two tracks each going to Jensen Connection and Dennis McMurrin & the Demolition Band, and both of the latter band's tracks are cover songs. I would think that, with more than 200 shows performed at the Yacht Club in 2005, it would be easy to select 11 different bands and their original songs to feature on the album, and the decision to use only nine artists lowers the album's marketability and bang for the buck.

In the liner notes, Kading concedes that the producers did "cheat" a little when they put ICYC Live 2005 together. A few of the tracks weren't actually recorded in 2005 but were included because the producers felt that artists such as Pardekooper, Dennis McMurrin & the Demolition Band, and Derek Perez and Brad Rieks of Clean Livin' were so integral to the success of the Yacht Club that they shouldn't be excluded. A fair statement indeed.

While I wasn't overly impressed with all of the tracks selected for ICYC Live 2005, Kading's liner-note comments about each of them do shed some light on the inclusion of certain songs, as well as lend personality and a great sense of time and place to this album. Kading, for example, explains that McMurrin's outfit is "so special to us because we thought we would never be so lucky to get to see these guys together again but miraculously, starting 2/1/03, we were graced by their R&B ... ." In reading these liner notes, it's clear that Kading and company are true live-music fans and that they love what they do, and knowing that makes up a little bit for the potential that ICYC Live 2005 never quite reaches.

For someone who would like to find out more about regional artists and the music they're producing, ICYC Live 2005 is a good primer. Many experienced, reputable acts are featured on the album, and thanks to the quality of the recording, it's easy to get a sense of what they're all about. It's also nice to know that there are clubs out there recording the great original music that can be found right in our own backyard, and the Yacht Club should be proud of its effort to spread the word about the performers it features.

For more information about the Iowa City Yacht Club or ICYC Live 2005, visit (http://www.icyc.net).

Tom Swanson is lead singer and guitarist for the Quad Cities-based Jim the Mule.

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