Amoeba's Secret (Live) - EP

Album Review

As part of the heavy promotion for his 2007 album Memory Almost Full, Paul McCartney played an intimate set at Amoeba Records' Hollywood branch — well, as intimate as a jam-packed set at a cavernous two-story store could possibly be. Ex-Beatles always tend to cause a commotion and this event was no exception, with fans waiting outside for days to get a spot for the June 27 concert — a day that just happened to coincide with Paris Hilton's first post-jail interview with Larry King at CNN's L.A. studios, thereby making the corner of Cahuenga and Sunset the epicenter of pop culture for a brief moment in addition to being sheer traffic hell for Los Angelenos thinking they might get a chance to rub elbows with Ringo in the audience. For those who weren't lucky or patient enough to get inside — or happened to not live in L.A. — the show was excerpted, not released in full, as the four-song EP Amoeba's Secret in 2009. Sadly, this is just a taste of the full 20-song set, but it's a good one, containing two songs from Memory (the best being "That Was Me," sounding randy and funny in a way it wasn't on LP), a giddy run through "C Moon," and an energetic closer of "I Saw Her Standing There." It's a little of everything from Sir Paul, all of it good, all enough to make you wish you were there, or at least that the whole thing came out.