Cat Stevens - Boston Music Hall, Boston, MA, 4-26-1974 | Albums That Should Exist

 

Cat Stevens - Boston Music Hall, Boston, MA, 4-26-1974

Paul says: Here is a full-length bootleg Cat Stevens concert from 1974. He was backed by a full band.

There are tons of great Cat Stevens concert recordings from 1970 and 1971, both officially released and unofficial. Then there's a pretty obscure official live album from 1974, called "Saturnight." I don't like that one though, because it's far short of a full-length concert, and the song order is mixed up. It was only released in Japan (where the concert took place) until 2024, and still has only a limited release since then. Also in 2024, an official concert album from 1976 was released, called "Majikat." That one is very nice, but there's a lot of years between 1971 and 1976, considering that was the prime of his music career.

When it comes to concert bootlegs for him, it's very slim pickings between 1971 and 1976. The best full-length one I could find is this one, from Boston in 1974. It's an audience boot, which is disappointing, but it's a particularly good one. It occurred to me that, thanks to the advances in audio editing technology in recent years, I could bring this up to nearly soundboard level. So that's what I tried to do. I used the MVSEP program to clean up crowd noise during songs, boost the lead vocals that were low in the mix, and so forth. I think it sounds a lot better. It's not as good as the "Majikat" or "Saturnight" official live albums, but it sounds plenty worthy to my ears.

This concert took place a month after the release of his 1974 studio album "Buddha and the Chocolate Box." That's one of my favorite albums from him. (I've posted an alternate version of it at this blog that makes it even better.) So naturally he played some songs from that. This also contains an except from his long "Foreigner Suite" called "Sunnyside Road" that makes a nice song when all on its own.

One song here, "Sitting" has "[Edit]" in its title. That's because there was a particularly difficult section of the song near the beginning. You can probably hear it. I tried all I could to make that sound better, but I could only do so much. 

This album is an hour and twenty minutes long.

01 talk 
02 Wild World 
03 talk 
04 Longer Boats 
05 Oh Very Young 
06 Sitting [Edit] 
07 talk 
08 Foreigner Suite- Sunnyside Road 
09 talk 
10 Where Do the Children Play 
11 talk 
12 Moonshadow 
13 How Can I Tell You 
14 Bad Penny 
15 Later 
16 Lady D'Arbanville 
17 talk 
18 Peace Train 
19 Father and Son 
20 Music 
21 18th Avenue 
22 Bitterblue
23 Hard Headed Woman 
24 talk 
25 King of Trees
26 Sun-C79
27 Sad Lisa

 (all tracks Cat Stevens)

Not entirely sure why I have posted links to this one as I feel a tad ‘Meh!’ about Cat Stevens now despite enjoying his work up until Catchbull At Four at the time and introduced to him via my wife and now can take or leave his rather over worked, tired and sentimental schtick but hey . . . he was important once

Michael Hedges - Somerville Theatre, Somerville, MA, USA 12-11-1997 | ALBUMS THAT SHOULD EXIST

 

Michael Hedges - Somerville Theatre, Somerville, MA, 11-12-1997

Paul says: Here's a concert by the fantastic and underrated guitarist Michael Hedges. Guest poster Fabio from Rio was instrumental in having this album get posted. He's the one who found the video of this and suggested that we turn it into an audio album. He also has an interesting personal story about Hedges, so I've asked him to do the write-up and share that story. Take it away, Fabio:

"It's been almost 30 years since we lost one of the greatest guitarists of the last century in a fatal car crash on a slippery road near Mendocino, CA, on December 2, 1997. It is a pity that so many people have never heard of him or his music. Hedges was not only a remarkable guitar player, but also a hugely talented composer and singer. He practically reinvented acoustic guitar playing, and many of his techniques and innovations have since been embraced and incorporated by guitarists all over the world. So, it is about time that more of Michael Hedges' music found its way onto the Albums That Should Exist blog, and this - his last known recorded concert, just weeks before his death - seems like a good place to start!

I saw Hedges live once, during his only visit to Rio, Brazil, in 1996, about a year before his untimely death. He performed in a small underground bar at a hotel near Copacabana Beach. By then, I had only recently been introduced to his music by my brother, who is also a guitarist. There were perhaps 40 people in the tiny venue, and we were seated at a table right next to Hedges. If I had stretched out my arm, I could literally have grabbed his leg!

After the concert, we and two other guys stuck around at the bar. Before long, Hedges — drinking something that looked like an almond milk power drink — showed up and started chatting with us. He talked to us for what seemed like ages, as if we were old childhood friends. He answered our questions, accepted some CDs of Brazilian music (apologizing that he had nothing from his side to give us in return), and even tuned an acoustic guitar to one of his signature tunings, showing us how to play some of his licks. It was basically an impromptu 15-minute masterclass! That gives you an idea of what a great guy he was.

But that was a different concert, and unfortunately it wasn't recorded. (At the time, I didn't tape the concerts I attended.) Here, about a year later, we have a good example of one of his typical late-period concerts. It consists of original instrumental pieces and songs he sang himself, some excellent covers, the occasional oddity (such as the recitations of "Jabberwocky" and "Oklahoma," and the brief, jokey "Free Bird" rendition that precedes "All Along the Watchtower"), and an overall wonderfully relaxed atmosphere, with plenty of laughs from the audience.

Hopefully, we'll have more Hedges here at ATSE soon. Paul and I have compiled a great collection of almost all the live covers performed by Hedges into a four-volume set, which we'll be sharing soon. And I have around 50 of his live concerts in my collection, so there should be plenty more to come eventually, if there's interest."

---

Thank you, Fabio. The only that I'd want to add to that is some information about the audio editing. The video sounded pretty good at first listen, but it turned out it need a lot of work. There was a lot of hiss, so I ran all the songs through the MVSEP program to get rid of most of that. The vocals during the talking bits didn't sound good either, so I ran all of those through the Adobe vocal enhancer. I also ran all the songs through MVSEP again to improve the balance between the lead vocals and the instruments. On top of all that, it turns out the audience was very quiet during the songs, except there was a LOT of coughing. Pretty much every song had at least one cough, sometimes more. So I had to remove those one by one. There might be a couple that I've missed, but it's way better than before.

So ultimately, this was essentially sounding like an audience boot at first, given that it was a fan-recorded video instead of a professional one. But after all those edits, I believe this sounds as good as most soundboard boots. 

This album is an hour and 45 minutes long.

01 Aerial Boundaries [Instrumental] 
02 While My Guitar Gently Weeps 
03 talk 
04 Jitterboogie [Instrumental] 
05 Baal T'shuvah [Instrumental] 
06 Ragamuffin [Instrumental] 
07 talk 
08 Rickover's Dream [Instrumental] 
09 Free Swinging Soul 
10 Rough Wind in Oklahoma 
11 talk 
12 Silent Anticipations [Instrumental] 
13 talk 
14 Confortably Numb 
15 talk (Michael Hedges)
16 Arrowhead [Instrumental]
17 talk 
18 Shell Shock Venus 
19 talk 
20 Because It's There [Instrumental]
21 talk 
22 Ritual Dance [Instrumental] 
23 talk 
24 Like a Rolling Stone 
25 Jabberwocky
26 The Rootwitch [Instrumental] 
27 talk 
28 Gimme Shelter 
29 Oklahoma 
30 talk 
31 Free Bird 
32 All Along the Watchtower 
33 talk 
34 No Expectations 

(all tracks Michael Hedges) 

Paul also notes: There was a lot of difficulty making this cover image. Technically, it's a screenshot taken from this exact concert. However, the footage was very low-res. So using Gemini, there was some pretty creative filling in of details to get this result. But this is how he would have really looked, with that harp guitar (for a portion of the concert), those clothes, and so on. Even for his helmet, because the screenshot was dark and murky there, I relied on a different photo of the custom-made, strange, beat-up helmet (that worked with his microphone) he was using at that time to make sure it was accurate.

Michael Hedges - While My Guitar Gently Weeps 

Billboard Live in West Hollywood 9/24/1997, 

a few months before he died in a terrible car crash in California.

Janis Joplin & The Kozmic Blues Band w/ Johnny Winter - 1969-12-11 - Boston, MA | Heavybootz

 Janis Joplin & The Kozmic Blues Band w/ Johnny Winter - 1969-12-11 - Boston, MA

Janis Joplin & The Kozmic Blues Band w/ Johnny Winter
Boston Tea Party, Boston, MA
1969-12-11 (early show)

sbd
mp3 @ 320 [122 mb]
sq: A

artwork included
"One Hot Winter Night" [Gardener Remaster]

01 Raise Your Hand

02 Hey Bo Diddley

03 Kozmic Blues

04 Port Arthur Blues*

05 Help Me Baby*

06 Maybe

07 Try

08 Piece of My Heart

tt: 51:37

* featuring Johnny Winter

drthc 

Blondie - Paradise Ballroom, Boston, MA, 11-4-1978 | Albums That Should Exist

Blondie - Paradise Ballroom, Boston, MA, 11-4-1978

Paul says: Here's an excellent concert by Blondie. I've posted a couple of Blondie concerts, but I've been wanting to post another from earlier in their career. (The earliest one I've posted is from late 1979.) 

This is arguably when they were at their peak. Their most acclaimed album is "Parallel Lines," released in September 1978. So this was part of the tour to promote that album. "Parallel Lines" has been widely acclaimed as one of the best albums of all time. For instance, Rolling Stone has put it in their list of the top 500 albums of all time, at No. 146 in their most recent list (as of 2020). NME magazine has gone even higher, putting it at 45 on their list of the top 500 albums of all time.

I believe this comes from an FM radio broadcast, so the sound quality is excellent. One problem though was that the lead vocals were too low in the mix. So I fixed that with the use of the MVSEP audio editing program.

This concert is unreleased.  

This album is an hour and three minutes long. 

Any excuse to feature this track mostly because of the drummer! R.I.P Clem Burke!

01 talk by emcee
02 In the Sun 
03 talk 
04 X Offender 
05 Hanging on the Telephone 
06 Detroit 442 
07 talk 
08 Fan Mail 
09 Picture this 
10 11-59 
11 talk 
12 Pretty Baby
13 [I'm Always Touched by Your] Presence Dear 
14 Sunday Girl 
15 Denis 
16 I'm on E 
17 talk
18 Will Anything Happen
19 Fade Away and Radiate 
20 One Way or Another 
21 Youth Nabbed as Sniper
22 Heart of Glass 
23 Bang a Gong [Get It On] 

(all tracks Blondie) 

Blondie Live on TOTP 1978 - Denis

Blondie - I’m Always Touched By Your Presence Dear

Toots & the Maytals - Paul's Mall, Boston, MA, 10-22-1975 | Albums That Should Exist

Toots & the Maytals - Paul's Mall, Boston, MA, 10-22-1975

Paul he say: In my opinion, reggae music peaked in the 1970s, especially the first half of that decade. It's very uncommon to find bootlegs from reggae musical acts that far back, but I've found one here from one of my favorites, Toots and the Maytals.

If I had to pick an ideal time for a live album from this band, it would be right around 1975. If you look at the crowd-sourced ratings of their albums at the rateyourmusic.com website, their two highest rated albums are "Funky Kingston" in 1973 and "In the Dark" in 1974. So they were firing on all cylinders at this time.

One interesting thing about this band is that while they were a Jamaican reggae band, they were more influenced by soul music than most. Lead singer Toots Hibbert in particular idolized Otis Redding, creating a kind of reggae-soul hybrid. One can see that here with a cover of Redding's "I've Got Dreams to Remember."

This concert is pretty short, at 47 minutes. But virtually every song is a classic. The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. This must have been a soundboard or radio broadcast. The only snag is that there's virtually no audience noise. 

01 Monkey Man 
02 Time Tough
03 In the Dark 
04 Funky Kingston 
05 Pressure Drop 
06 I've Got Dreams to Remember 
07 Do You Reggae 
08 Take Me Home, Country Roads 
09 54-46 Was My Number 

Linda Ronstadt - Lenox Music Inn, Lenox, MA, USA 1972 | ALBUMS THAT SHOULD EXIST

Linda Ronstadt - Lenox Music Inn, Lenox, MA, 8-12-1972 

Paul says: Linda Ronstadt had a hit single ("Different Drum") in 1967 with the band the Stone Poneys, when she was 21 years old. In 1970, after starting her solo career, she had another small hit with "Long, Long Time." But otherwise, she struggled a little bit. She didn't really have a big hit until late 1974, when "You're No Good" reached Number One in the U.S. As a result, there aren't many bootlegs from the earliest years of her music career, and no official albums from that time. 

I'd never come across any bootleg concerts from her prior to 1973. So I was pleased to discover this one from 1972. It's a soundboard bootleg, and sounds great. Yet it's never been widely shared as far as I know, since I couldn't find it on SoulseekQT or popular trading sites. I got it from a streaming source, and had to convert it to audio and cut it up into mp3s. So if you're a fan of her music, this is a great find, with mostly different songs than when she hit it big a couple of years later.

By the time of this concert, Ronstadt had released three solo albums, with "Linda Ronstadt" released in January 1972 being the most recent one. Naturally, most of the songs are from those albums. But one song, "Mail Order Dog," was written and sung by one of the band members, Richard Bowden, and he also talked for about three minutes before it started.

Overall, this sounds excellent, but there were a few problems. The first minute of the first song, "I Fall to Pieces," was missing. I found another version of the same song from a 1973 bootleg, and I used that to fill in the missing section. But I have to admit I didn't do that good of a job with it. The versions were performed somewhat differently, and the sound quality difference is stark, so I'm sure the transition point will stick out for you. But I figure that's better than only half a song. 

It was a similar situation with the last two songs, "Rose City Chimes" and "Rescue Me." That's why all three have "[Edit]" in their titles. For "Rose City Chimes," I mostly just had to patch in some applause at the beginning and end of the song. For "Rescue Me," I had to do that as well. But I also had to patch in about the first minute as well. I took that from her 1972 album "Linda Ronstadt," since the version on that album actually was from a concert.

This album is 40 minutes long. 

01 I Fall to Pieces [Edit] (Linda Ronstadt)
02 Silver Threads and Golden Needles (Linda Ronstadt)
03 talk (Linda Ronstadt)
04 Rock Me on the Water (Linda Ronstadt)
05 Lightning Bar Blues (Linda Ronstadt)
06 Crazy Arms (Linda Ronstadt)
07 How Long (Linda Ronstadt)
08 talk (Linda Ronstadt)
09 talk by Richard Bowden (Linda Ronstadt)
10 Mail Order Dog (Linda Ronstadt)
11 Lovesick Blues (Linda Ronstadt)
12 Long, Long Time (Linda Ronstadt)
13 Break My Mind (Linda Ronstadt)
14 Rose City Chimes [Instrumental] [Edit] (Linda Ronstadt)
15 Rescue Me [Edit] (Linda Ronstadt) 

I didn’t come to Linda overnight and we didn’t see her so much (at ALL? - ED) in the UK (shamefully somehow) and it took me the longest time to really get into her .. . . . . that awesome soaring peerless voice and taste in songs choices to cover,  that I feel like I am making up for it now . . . . listen to this you limey Brits!

DYLAN OF THE DAY :: "Under the Red Sky" Bob Dylan [ Great Woods, Mansfield, MA, September 12, 1993]

 

the Facebook poster notes 

"Under the Red Sky" is one of several songs on Dylan's 1990 album "Under the Red Sky" that sounds quite a bit like a fairy tale - albeit a rather disturbing or at least unsettling one. I can't help wondering if this characteristic of his a number of his lyrics at the time was at least somewhat related to the fact that his daughter Desiree was a young child at that time. Despite its mild, innocent-sounding start, the song wanders through some rather sad, forlorn-sounding twists and turns. Although even at the start, the "red sky" that hangs over the little boy's and little girl's alley does sound kind of foreboding. 

When I ponder the song's story, I also can't help being reminded of an anecdote I read a number of years ago, which described how for a while, Bob kept dropping into one of his grandson's kindergarten class to play for the kids. The children used to call him "scary guitar man" and after a while, the teacher asked his grandson's parent to tell him to please not come anymore, because the songs he sang frightened the children and made some of them cry. 

Makes you wonder what exactly he was playing for the little ones. Probably not "Froggie Went A-Courtin' or "This Old Man," both of which Dylan recorded for release. I hope it wasn't something like "Precious Angel," with this verse: "Can they imagine the darkness that will fall from on high When men will beg God to kill them and they won’t be able to die?"

by Artur Artist presents "The Casper Collection"