Spirit - Boston Tea Party, Boston, MA, USA 1969 | Albums That Should Exist

Spirit - Boston Tea Party, Boston, MA, 10-11-1969

Paul says : "Does the album cover here look familiar to you? If you answered "yes," you have a good memory, because I used this exact cover when I posted a Spirit concert back in 2020. All I've changed is the text at the bottom. But today I've deleted that concert from this blog, because it's part of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival. I plan on posting the entire festival soon, so the Spirit set will be reposted as a part of that. I have a different cover for that version, taken from that festival, so I'm recycling this cover here.

I had previously mentioned there are almost no good live recordings of the original version of Spirit, which existed from 1966 to 1970. The only ones with excellent sound quality are the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival one mentioned above, and a 1970 Fillmore show that I've posted here. But now this concert too can be added to that very short list. It's an excellent sounding soundboard bootleg. I had come across this concert years ago, but I had decided not to post it because it had one major sonic flaw: the vocals were too loud. That's unusual, because I've come across dozens and dozens of concert recordings with the vocals too low, but almost not where they were too loud. And it wasn't just a little bit too loud. No, the vocals went way into to the red.

Back then, that was a killer for me. But since then, audio editing technology has improved. Using the UVR5 program, I split all the songs into two, then lowered just the vocal track to a reasonable level. Luckily, the vocals weren't so loud as to have gotten badly distorted, so this sounds perfectly fine now, about as good as a typical soundboard bootleg from the era.  

There has been some confusion about the date and location of this concert. The bootleg has been passed around with a date of May 1970 from Boston, as well as May 1970 from Seattle. But I looked into this, and found solid evidence that it actually comes from a three date stand at the "Boston Tea Party" venue in Boston on either October 11th, 12th, or 13th.

At first, I didn't know which of the three dates this concert was from exactly. But then I remembered that one song from this show was included on the 2022 deluxe edition of the band's "Twelve Dreams of Doctor Sardonicus" album. The liner notes showed that was from October 11th. I checked that version to the bootleg version, and they were identical, so the whole thing must be from the 11th. And no, I don't know why only that one song was officially released. Perhaps they also had trouble with the vocals, and that song was an exception since it was mostly instrumental. (That version includes a long drum solo, while I have included it as a separate track.) Maybe now the technology exists to fix the vocals, we can hope to see the full concert officially released someday.

The one snag about this recording is that it was missing the last song, "I Got a Line on You." One can tell it's the last song because the very last few seconds of the bootleg are the start of that song, and right before it gets cut off, you can hear the vocalist say "We're going home." I think it's a good assumption that means the concert is coming to an end. So since that song definitely got played at this concert, I found a different live version of it to fit there, from a French TV show appearance in early 1970. That didn't have any applause at the end, but I added in some from earlier in the concert to help it fit in. I carefully edited it to fit with the tiny portion that exists at the start from the bootleg, including the "We're going home" comment. That's why it has "[Edit]" in the title.

Finally, I've added in "1984" from an appearance on the German TV show "Beat Club" in January 1970 at the very end. I wasn't going to do that, but I did add it at the end of the Spirit set from the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival that I had previously posted, and if I didn't include it here, I wouldn't have anywhere else to put it. I also added some crowd noise at the end to help that one fit it as well.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 It's All the Same 
02 Fresh Garbage 
03 talk 
04 Jealous 
05 It Shall Be
06 Poor Richard
07 talk 
08 Groundhog 
09 I'm Truckin' 
10 New Dope in Town
11 Drum Solo [Instrumental] 
12 Mechanical World
13 I Got a Line on You [Edit] 
14 1984

I still don’t fully understand how come I managed to see these guys (well Randy*) at my local pub next door to where I worked for so many years after returning to my home town at the Penny Farthing Pub basement! 

But I am assured that I did!

*Randy California Guitar Vocals / Scott Monahan keyboards vocals / Mike Shepherd Bass Vocals/ Les Warner Drums 1985