Tracy Chapman & Natalie Merchant - Donmar Warehouse, London, Britain, 3-25-1988
I had been aware of this concert for a long time. I put the duet of Merchant and Chapman singing " Where the Soul Never Dies" on a stray tracks album a few years ago, in fact. But I never considered posting it because I thought the sound quality was a little lacking. However, with the improvements in audio editing technology in recent years, I thought I'd give it a try. I think it sounds very good.
Before I say more about the recording, let me share the interesting story behind how this concert came to be.
In 1987, Tracy Chapman was a struggling musician living in Boston, performing in small clubs and sometimes on street corners. But that year, she finally got her big break and got signed to a major record label, Elektra Records. Meanwhile, Natalie Merchant was becoming a star as the main singer and songwriter for the band 10,000 Maniacs. In the summer of 1987, they released their third album, "In My Tribe." It made the Top Forty in the U.S. album charts, putting them on the map as a nationwide popular act.
It so happened that 10,000 Maniacs was also signed to Elektra Records. One day, in late 1987, she discovered a demo tape of some of Chapman's songs while visiting the record company's New York City office. She was very impressed, so much so that she actually cried from being emotionally moved by the songs. In late 1987 and early 1988, Chapman recorded her debut album. It would be released in April 1988 under the title "Tracy Chapman."
Then, in late February 1988, Elektra Records had Chapman perform a special concert in Boston to help build anticipation for her upcoming album. Even though only 150 people could fit in the club, lots of journalists and music industry insiders were invited. Merchant heard about the concert. She was so interested in that demo tape she'd heard that she flew to the concert and met Chapman after the show. Merchant later said, "I felt a kinship because her record was made from the soul rather than to make money. There was similarity between us in the lyrical sentiment and musical quality." A few days later, Merchant sent Chapman a copy of her "In My Tribe," album, and the two began communicating.
This soon led to Merchant inviting Chapman to a concert in London the following month. Actually, it was two concerts, on March 24th and 25th, both at the Donmar Warehouse, which only held about 200 people. This was designed to introduce Chapman to a European audience, as she'd never performed outside the U.S. before. At this point, Merchant had never really done any solo concerts, only concerts with 10,000 Maniacs. But she pushed herself to perform solo in order to help Chapman promote her upcoming album in this way. And even though Merchant was a star and Chapman was an unknown, Merchant opened the concert to help give Chapman a bigger spotlight. The effort worked, because some British journalists attended one or both of the concerts and started to spread word about her music in Britain. Chapman then played a few more solo concerts in Britain, opening for John Martyn, before returning to the U.S.
When Chapman's debut album was released in April 1988, it was out of step with the musical trends of the time. So at first, it did reasonably well, but not great. The album sold 250,000 copies by June. That month, she got to take part in a concert honoring Nelson Mandela that was broadcast worldwide. That caused her sales to skyrocket. A couple of months later, her album reached Number One in the U.S. album chart. Eventually, it went on to sell over 20 million copies. It also helped open the door for many other acoustic-based singer-songwriter types.
So it turns out this concert (and the one at the same venue the day before) was important for both Merchant and Chapman. For Merchant, it was the start of her doing solo work, though it would still be a few years before she left 10,000 Maniacs. And for Chapman, it helped build her reputation at a key time, when her debut album was still a few weeks away from being released.
Merchant further helped Chapman by having her be the opening act for 10,000 Maniacs for a few months, back before the Nelson Mandela concert. Merchant later commented, "She certainly doesn't need any help from me in retrospect. I played with her in England and had her tour with us to get my crowd to see her rather than have her relegated to women's bins or folk bins in the stores. When she toured with us not many people had heard the album, but people sat completely enthralled and she got standing ovations most nights."
Now, let's get to this recording. I found recordings of the two sets separately, and put them together. But I'm sure they're from the same source. It's an audience bootleg, but a pretty good one. Because the crowd was small, there was almost no crowd noise during the songs. However, the big problem that stopped me from posting this in the past was hiss. So I tried something new. MVSEP has a conversion setting called "Denoise." I tried it, and it did a really great job of getting rid of the hiss, even during the songs, while keeping everything else. This works better than "noise reduction," which often harms the music.
So that fixed most of the problem. However, the sound of Merchant's set was a bit rougher. The songs sounded pretty good, but the banter was often hard to understand. So I ran the talking tracks through Adobe's "Enhance Speech" program, which specifically helps with the clarity of speech. That helped a lot. The one remaining problem after that was that the first minute or so of Chapman's "For My Lover" was missing. Luckily, that song has some repetition in it, and the verses that were lost were repeated later in the song. So I just copied parts of the song to fill in the missing portion. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in its title.
On a final note, some of the songs performed in this concert still haven't been officially released. "After Talking to Myself" by Natalie Merchant has been performed in concert a few times, but it's not even known what the song title is. And Chapman played some songs that would show up on her second album "Crossroads," like "Born to Fight" and "This Time," plus, "If I" and "Be My Baby," which remain unreleased. And their duet of the traditional song "Where the Soul Never Dies" also remains unreleased by both of them.
This album is an hour and 38 minutes long. The Natalie Merchant set is 43 minutes long, and the Tracy Chapman one is 56 minutes long. (Also, just as a nitpicky thing, some versions of this bootleg I've seen list March 20th as the date, but I believe the more accurate date is there were two shows, on March 24th and 25th, and this is from the 25th.)
By the way, note that on the same day I'm posting this, I've added three songs to the Chapman "Acoustic Demos" album I made. All three of them are still unreleased songs recorded way back in 1986, in great sound quality, so you really should give those a listen. Here's the link:
https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/10/tracy-chapman-acoustic-demos-1986-1988.html
01 talk (Natalie Merchant)
02 A Campfire Song (Natalie Merchant)
03 talk (Natalie Merchant)
04 Gun Shy (Natalie Merchant)
05 talk (Natalie Merchant)
06 Everyone a Puzzle Lover (Natalie Merchant)
07 talk (Natalie Merchant)
08 Don't Talk (Natalie Merchant)
09 talk (Natalie Merchant)
10 The Painted Desert (Natalie Merchant)
11 talk (Natalie Merchant)
12 Lilydale (Natalie Merchant)
13 What's the Matter Here (Natalie Merchant)
14 Maddox Table (Natalie Merchant)
15 talk (Natalie Merchant)
16 Verdi Cries (Natalie Merchant)
17 talk (Natalie Merchant)
18 Like the Weather (Natalie Merchant)
19 After Talking to Myself (Natalie Merchant)
20 talk (Tracy Chapman)
21 Why (Tracy Chapman)
22 If I (Tracy Chapman)
23 Across the Lines (Tracy Chapman)
24 This Time (Tracy Chapman)
25 Behind the Wall (Tracy Chapman)
26 Baby Can I Hold You (Tracy Chapman)
27 talk (Tracy Chapman)
28 Fast Car (Tracy Chapman)
29 talk (Tracy Chapman)
30 If Not Now (Tracy Chapman)
31 For My Lover [Edit] (Tracy Chapman)
32 Born to Fight (Tracy Chapman)
33 talk (Tracy Chapman)
34 Mountains O' Things (Tracy Chapman)
35 talk (Tracy Chapman)
36 Talkin' 'bout a Revolution (Tracy Chapman)
37 talk (Tracy Chapman)
38 Be My Baby (Tracy Chapman)
39 Where the Soul Never Dies (Tracy Chapman & Natalie Merchant)
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