Stephen Stills & Manassas - Winterland, San Francisco, CA, 10-7-1973 | Albums That Should Exist

 

Stephen Stills & Manassas - Winterland, San Francisco, CA, 10-7-1973

Paul says: Back in 2018, I posted a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY) concert is very closely linked to this one, taking place just three days earlier at the same venue. I'll explain more about that shortly. I was certain that I had posted this album at the same time. However, recently I was updating broken links, and I noticed there was no link for this album. I looked closer, and realized I'd never posted it. So better late than ever.

Manassas was a band led by Stephen Stills of CSNY. But included many other great musicians, especially Chris Hillman, formerly of the Byrds, who wrote and sang lead vocals on some songs. The idea was this would be Stills' main band for many years. They released the cleverly titled "Manassas" in 1972 and "Down the Road" in 1973. CSNY had been apart since late 1970. But around the time of this concert, they began getting back together.

A concert taking place on October 4, 1973 was billed as a Manassas concert. But CSNY basically crashed the band's first set and played a bunch of songs acoustically, which meant they didn't need Manassas to back them up. That reunion a very big deal in the music world. CSNY had been called the "American Beatles" and had sold zillions of albums, way more than Manassas. Chris Hillman later commented that this was the night he realized the future of Manassas was done, due to Stills naturally wanting to rejoin the much more popular CSNY. It would turn out Hillman was right. Manassas would break up not long after this, after they played a few more concerts to finish their tour.

Here's the link to the CSNY set (mostly) from that concert:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/05/crosby-stills-nash-young-winterland.html

However, "the show must go on." Despite being upstaged by the CSNY reunion, Stills and the rest of Manassas still had their second set to perform. But it must have been frustrating and bittersweet for them (except for Stills). Their encore, "Daylight Again - Find the Cost of Freedom," was performed by Manassas and CSNY together. That may have been awkward. By the way, I've included that song on both album, since it was both a CSNY performance and a Manassas one.

Then, three days later, on this date, October 7, 1973, the whole process repeated itself. CSNY performed another set in the middle of another Manassas concert at this same venue. For whatever reason, I believe only the Manassas set from this date is available, so that's what I'm posting here. This apparently includes everything that was performed except for the songs with just CSNY. As for CSNY, the album I've posted from them consists mostly from their October 4, 1973 concert, with a few different songs from October 7th added in.

At least some of two concerts were professionally filmed for some reason, and I think this one was broadcast live on the radio as well. That's why we have a recording with soundboard-level sound quality. I don't believe the film footage has been officially released in any way, but you can find it on YouTube. 

This album is an hour and 18 minutes long.

01 Song of Love 
02 Rock and Roll Crazies 
03 Jet Set [Sigh] 
04 Anyway 
05 So You Want to Be a Rock 'N' Roll Star 
06 talk 
07 Johnny's Garden 
08 talk 
09 Go Back Home 
10 talk
11 Six Days on the Road 
12 talk
13 Safe at Home 
14 Fallen Eagle 
15 Hide It So Deep 
16 You're Still on My Mind 
17 talk 
18 Pensamiento 
19 talk 
20 49 Bye-Byes - Drum Solo 
21 For What It's Worth 
22 talk 
23 Lies 
24 talk 
25 The Treasure - Carry On 
26 talk 
27 Daylight Again - Find the Cost of Freedom (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young & Manassas)

(all tracks Stephen Stills and Manassas except where noted) 

Jefferson Airplane - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 9-14-1970 | Albums That Should Exist

 

Jefferson Airplane - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 9-14-1970

Paul says: It's been many decades since what a consider a musical golden era of the late 1960s and early 1970s. You'd think that after all this time, all of the really excellent bootlegs would have either been leaked to the public or keep unaccessible in musician and/or record company vaults. But that's not so, and this recording is another good example. I found this on a bootleg site (Guitars101). It was made public there for the very first time as I write this in mid-September 2026. What's encouraging is the person who posted it said they'd recently gotten a bunch of recordings from a friend, and this is one of them. So hopefully there will be more like these. This is a really excellent previously unknown soundboard of Jefferson Airplane in 1970.

By the way, the people who posted this (David Minches and Charlie Miller) also posted a soundboard recording of Jefferson Airplane in the same venue the very next day, September 15, 1970. I decided to only post this one because they have very similar setlists. But you might want to download the other one at Guitars101. I picked this one because I had a slight preference for the few songs that were different. Most notably, this was the only one with a performance of "Starship."

In 1970, at the time of this concert, Jefferson Airplane was coming apart. They were using a lot of drugs, especially cocaine, and the band members were having increasing conflicts with each other. The drummer, Spencer Dryden, was fired from the band in February 1970, and was replaced by Joey Covington. More importantly, Marty Balin, a key singer and songwriter in the band, was increasingly estranged from the other band members. He would quit the band in early 1971.

The band didn't release a new album in 1970, the first time that happened since it got started in 1966. They only released a single, "Mexico" backed by "Have You Seen the Saucers," both of which were performed here. But their record company released a popular greatest hits album, "The Worst of Jefferson Airplane," so they were touring to support that.

However, the band had come up with a bunch of new songs that were unreleased at the time. Some of them were performed here: "Emergency," written by Balin, "Up or Down," sung by Balin but written by Peter Kaukonen, brother of lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, "You Wear Your Dress Too Short," a blues cover sung by Malin, "Whatever The Old Man Does (Is Always Right)" by Covington, and "The Man (The Bludgeon of the Bluecoat)," also by Covington. When the band finally released their next album, "Bark," in 1971, none of those songs were included. The Balin-sung songs weren't included because he had left the band by then. I don't know why the two Covington-sung ones weren't included. Maybe he wasn't important enough in the band, being merely the new drummer, or maybe they weren't deemed good enough. Either way, it's interesting to hear them here. 

Additionally, the song "Starship" performed here is from the album "Blows Against the Empire." It was released about a month after this concert. Technically, it was billed to "Paul Kantner and the Jefferson Starship." That the first use of the name "Jefferson Starship." The name would return into 1974, replacing "Jefferson Airplane." Although it was billed as a Kantner solo album, it also had lots of involvement from Grace Slick, who wrote or co-wrote some songs, and sang lead vocals on many of them. 

I noticed that there's a version of "Blows Against the Empire" with some bonus tracks. One of them is the exact version of "Starship." I think it's the only officially released song from this concert.

Also at this time, two band members, lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady, had formed their own spin-off group, "Hot Tuna." Since they were on friendly terms with other band members, Hot Tuna often served as the opening acts to Jefferson Airplane concerts, or there would be a Hot Tuna section in the middle. For this concert, the first four songs are effectively a mini Hot Tuna set.

As I mentioned above, this is an excellent sounding soundboard. However, I think I improved it still further. It had one problem that is common to excellent sounding soundboards: they record what happened on stage wonderfully, but don't get much of the crowd cheering. That was very much the case here. So I ran every single song through the MVSEP program, boosting the cheering dramatically at the end of each song. Now, it sounds like a normal concert, with the expected amount of audience reaction.

It sounds like the recording for about the first thirty seconds or so of "We Can Be Together" was wonky. I improved it a bit, but most of it was beyond my ability to fix.  

This album is two hours and 19 minutes long. 

01 talk 
02 Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning
03 talk 
04 New Song [For the Morning]
05 Been So Long 
06 Hesitation Blues 
07 We Can Be Together 
08 Mexico
09 Crown of Creation
10 talk 
11 Whatever the Old Man Does [Is Always Right] 
12 The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil
13 talk
14 Emergency 
15 Come Back Baby 
16 talk
17 Somebody to Love 
18 Wooden Ships
19 talk 
20 Up or Down
21 talk
22 Have You Seen the Saucers 
23 talk 
24 The Man [Bludgeon of a Bluecoat] 
25 The Other Side of This Life 
26 Volunteers 
27 talk
28 Greasy Heart 
29 talk
30 You Wear Your Dress Too Short 
31 talk 
32 Freight Train [Instrumental Version]
33 Starship 
34 talk 
35 3-5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds 

(all tracks Jefferson Airplane) 

Really worth a read as Paul knows his stuff . . . . but download it and the companion from Guitars101 and see what you think. Being a soundbaord and all the tweaks Paul has done make this a doozie for Plane heads (like me!)

Jefferson Airplane - featuring Papa John Creach - San Francisco, 1970

"In 1970, Dean and Dudley Evenson moved to San Francisco with their newly purchased Sony Video Portapack. Their very first video with their new camera had been of Jefferson Airplane at the Fillmore East in NYC. Once in the Bay area, they became involved with Jefferson Airplane and set up a meeting at their mansion near Golden Gate Park with their manager, Bill Thompson. They were sufficiently impressed with this media form and gave a few hundred dollars to purchase a 16-foot camera cable so their concerts could be videotaped.

That opportunity came up rather quickly with a big event at Winterland which brought together the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and Quicksilver Messenger Service. The concert the night before had been broadcast live on PBS but this night they were allowed to videotape it. There was an intensity surrounding the evening because the day before, Janis Joplin's death had shocked the tight knit San Francisco rock world.  Marty Balin had been a close friend of Janis and was not going to perform, but the other band members felt the show must go on.

It was an electrifying concert with everyone in rare form. The Quicksilver Messenger Service and Grateful Dead played first. The "Workingman's Dead" had become very popular over the summer so the crowd was wild with excitement. Then the Airplane came on. An additional twist was the introduction of Papa John Creech, an elderly blues fiddler who added an incredible power improvising on his violin as Grace Slick wailed away in a song dedicated to Janis. Dean was on the stage in all sorts of contortions, getting weird angles at the feet of the performers. No one seemed to mind our presence in the midst of all this energy.”

Soundings Mindful Media 

#JeffersonAirplane

The Steve Miller Band with Paul Butterfield - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 12-29-1968 |Albums That Should Exist

 

The Steve Miller Band with Paul Butterfield - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 12-29-1968

Paul says: I recently came across this Steve Miller Band concert bootleg that seemed relatively unknown on popular bootleg sites. The sound quality was excellent except for one major problem, but I was able to fix that problem, so here it is.

The problem I just mentioned is that the vocals were very low in the mix. Nowdays, that's usually an easy fix, thanks to programs like MVSEP. So I boosted the vocals volume relative to the instruments on all songs.

This concert took place at a time when the Steve Miller Band lost band member Boz Scaggs, so they were reduced to a trio for a while. But this was somewhat compensated by the fact that Paul Butterfield guested on harmonica for three songs.

This also was a time when the Steve Miller Band was much more into the blues than the later, much more famous, 1970s version of that band. Nearly all the songs are quite bluesy, with a mix of originals and covers. 

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 Stepping Stone 
02 Mercury Blues
03 Blues with a Feeling (Steve Miller Band with Paul Butterfield)
04 Butterfield Blues [Instrumental] (Steve Miller Band with Paul Butterfield)
05 Song for Our Ancestors [Instrumental] (Steve Miller Band with Paul Butterfield)
06 Roll with It [Instrumental] 
07 Your Old Lady
08 Drivin' Wheel 
09 Bad Little Woman 

(all tracks Steve Miller Band unless indicated otherwise) 

Now it may be worth mentioning as I haven’t posted much Steve Miller but I always look for his doing Song for Our Ancestors live. It is a track/composition that means a lot to me in that I once went on an early ‘journey’ to which this was part of the soundtrack and it is written indelibly in my soul, so to find it here was a treat and I had to go for it! 

most of the live version on YouTube are this one featured above at the Fillmore and not a patch on the album version but hey . . . . . .

 

I think you’ll get me

John Cipollina: COPPERHEAD The Longbranch, San Francisco, CA 1972 | Heavybootz

 More in the study of Johnny Cipollina music! We looked at QSMS and John Cipollina and the gang some time ago now but here’s a soundboard gem from Heavybootz

Copperhead - 1972-03-17 - San Francisco, CA

Copperhead

The Longbranch, San Francisco, CA

   1972-03-17

sbd
mp3 @ 320 [266 mb]
sq: EX-

__Set I__

01 tuning

02 Kibitzer

03 Back Roads

04 Pete's Instrumental

05 Rock 'n' Roll Party

06 Drunken Irish Setter

07 Wang Dang Doo

08 Rider > 

09 Cobra >

10 Rider (reprise)

__Set II__

11 noodling and tuning

12 I'm Not The Man I Used To Be

13 unknown

14 Good Time Boogie

15 Spin-Spin

16 Hogan's Goat

17 Exuberance

18 Keeper Of The Flame

19 Bigelow 6-9000

20 Roller Derby Star 

tt: 1:56:07

John Cipollina - guitars
Gary Philippet - vocals, guitars, organ
Jim McPherson - vocals, piano, bass, percussion
David Weber - drums, percussion
Pete Sears - bass, keyboards

from the Doc : drthc 

Back Roads (Live) · Copperhead · John Cipollina

Live At Pacific High Recording Studios, Jan 23, 1972

Robyn Hitchcock - Performs JOHN WESLEY HARDING - The Chapel, San Francisco, CA, 12-27-2018 (John Wesley Harding) | Albums That Should Exist

 

Robyn Hitchcock - The Chapel, San Francisco, CA, 12-27-2018 (John Wesley Harding)

Paul says: Robyn Hitchcock has written many hundreds of songs himself. But even so, he loves performing cover songs as well, so much that he sometimes performs entire classic albums by others from start to finish. I've already posted a bunch of those, and here's another. This time, he did "John Wesley Harding," the great 1967 album by Bob Dylan. 

Most of the cover albums I've posted by Hitchcock so far were performed at the Three Kings club in London, with a full band. But this one took place in San Francisco, and is in solo acoustic format. Dylan's original album was with a band, but the backing was pretty sparse, mostly just Dylan on acoustic guitar, harmonica, and/or piano, plus bass and drums. So Hitchcock, also on acoustic guitar, harmonica, and/or piano, wasn't that different.

The original Dylan album is only 38 minutes long. This concert, however, is almost two hours long. In addition to performing the entire album, he warmed up with three other Dylan covers. 

Strangely, he also did two more covers during the album, "Dear Prudence" by the Beatles and "Dear Doctor" by the Rolling Stones, after playing "Dear Landlord" by Dylan. (He thought the Beatles and Stones were inspired to write songs in the "Dear..." format. I don't know if that's true, but the timing lines up, since the other two were written within a year of the release of Dylan's song.)

Then, after the album finished, he did still more Dylan covers ("I Threw It All Away" and "Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)"), but also songs by the Band ("Caledonia Mission") and John Lennon ("God"), plus two songs he'd recently written himself ("Serpent at the Gates of Wisdom" and "Those Guys Are All Dead Now"). On top of all that, there's plenty of banter between songs, in his usual entertaining stream-of-consciousness style.

This originally was an audience bootleg. It was a pretty good one though, helped by the fact that it's easier to record a solo acoustic show, especially with a small, polite audience. But I improved the sound of every single track, so much so that this sounds as good as a soundboard or FM radio broadcast. For all the talking tracks, I ran them through the Adobe speech enhancer, and improved the clarity a long. Then, for all the songs, I ran them through MVSEP's "Reverb Removal" filter. That made a big difference as well.

This sounds really excellent now, even though everything here is unreleased. These filters are steadily improving with updates. Writing this in August 2026, this wouldn't have sounded this good if I had done these same audio edits even two years ago.  

This album is an hour and 58 minutes long. 

01 talk 
02 Mr. Tambourine Man 
03 Visions of Johanna 
04 talk
05 Clothes Line Saga 
06 talk 
07 John Wesley Harding 
08 talk
09 As I Went Out One Morning 
10 I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine 
11 talk
12 All Along the Watchtower
13 talk 
14 The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest 
15 talk
16 Drifter's Escape 
17 Dear Landlord 
18 talk 
19 Dear Prudence 
20 talk 
21 Dear Doctor 
22 talk 
23 I Am a Lonesome Hobo
24 talk
25 I Pity the Poor Immigrant 
26 talk 
27 Wicked Messenger
28 talk 
29 Down Along the Cove
30 talk
31 I'll Be Your Baby Tonight 
32 talk 
33 I Threw It All Away
34 talk 
35 Caledonia Mission 
36 talk 
37 Serpent at the Gates of Wisdom 
38 talk 
39 Senor [Tales of Yankee Power]
40 talk
41 Those Guys Are All Dead Now 
42 talk 
43 God 

Boz Scaggs : Loan Me A Dime (Live Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, 27th August 2003)

 Now I came to Boz Scaggs late I reckon (late eighties maybe even nineties?) and don’t feature him enough but check this version of an early 1969 song he covered . . . . . . the facebook algorithm threw this one at me . . . . .so I’m throwing it right back at choo! (Bless You! - ED)

Boz Scaggs : Loan Me A Dime (Live Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, 27th August 2003)

Stone me check this out!

If you play one thing today make it this!

Fifteen (count ‘em ) minutes of pure Bliss!

Love - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 11-23-1970 | ALBUMS THAT SHOULD EXIST

 Love - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 11-23-1970

Paul says: Here's a concert of Arthur Lee and Love in 1970. It's actually two concerts, and early and late show. Track 10, with an emcee talking, is the start of the late show.

In my opinion, "Forever Changes" by Love is easily one of the top 100 albums of all time. Many music critics have said the same. Unfortunately though, Love didn't play live much when the concert came out in 1967, actually never leaving the Los Angeles area, and when the did, it seems nobody was there to record it. As far as I can tell, it's not until 1970 that there are concert bootlegs. So I tried to find the best one from that year in order to post it here.

In 2015, an official live box set was released, called "Coming Through to You: The Live Recordings 1970-2004." But three out of the four CDs are from the 1990s or 2000s. The first CD is all from 1970, but it's two or three songs each from five different concerts. I wanted to hear a single concert all the way through. This Fillmore West concert was the best sounding one I could find. There's no overlap with the official box set, although it includes three songs recorded at that venue a couple of days prior to this concert. 

This is a soundboard recording, but not the greatest in terms of sound quality. The main issue is the vocals were very low in the mix. That probably explains why this hasn't gotten around much on bootleg trading sites. But that's something that can be easily fixed these days, so I fixed it (using the UVR5 audio editing program). I also cleaned things up, like extra low volume of banter, and song titles being wrong. It's a much better listen now, in my opinion.

One song, "Find Somebody," has "[Edit]" in its title. It was split into two files, with a gap in between. However, I managed to patch it back together in a way that hopefully should make the split totally unnoticeable. 

I assume the people who made the live box set mentioned above looked for live material prior to 1970, and didn't find any. So this is probably as close as we're going to get, chronologically, to hearing Love in 1967. (Along with the 1970 disc of the official box set.) Mostly, the band was playing different songs. In fact, there are only two "Forever Changes" songs here ("Andmoreagain" and "Bummer in the Summer"). But Love was still making very good music at least through 1970. All the songs here are solid.

By the way, three of the songs repeat between the early and late shows: "Product of the Times," "Stand Out," and "Singing Cowboy." I decided to keep both versions in each case.

This album is an hour and seven minutes long. 

01 Product of the Times 
02 talk
03 Stand Out 
04 Keep On Shining
05 talk
06 Andmoreagain 
07 Singing Cowboy 
08 talk
09 Good Times
10 talk by emcee 
11 Stand Out
12 Product of the Times 
13 Bummer in the Summer 
14 Find Somebody [Edit] 
15 Signed D.C. 
16 Slick Dick 
17 Always See Your Face 
18 talk
19 Singing Cowboy

Decent live Love in their prime is rare as . . . so this . . . .  

earlier that same year . . . . . 

Arthur Lee & Love: Love is more than words - Live 1970

Love Live in Copenhagen March 1970. 

Arthur Lee, Gary Rowles, Frank Fayad & George Suranovich

Arthur Lee & Love - Old Man (Live) Glastonbury 2003

[with Baby Lemonade]

Arthur Lee & Love - Bummer in the Summer

 2004 Glastonbury Festival in the U.K.

Fairport Convention - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, USA 31st August 1970 | Albums That Should Exist

 Fairport Convention - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 8-31-1970

Paul says: First off, I have to warn that this concert is not up to the usual song quality of this music blog. It sounds pretty good to me, but not excellent. It's from an audience boot, not a soundboard, and it shows. I'm posting this for two reasons. One, a commenter named Chris repeatedly asked me to improve and post this specific concert. Two, early Fairport Convention is great, and recordings like this need to be preserved, so I decided Chris's idea had merit. 

In the end, I was able to make a lot of sonic improvements. (If you think this sounds rough, you should have heard it before.) There was a lot of muck in this recording. I used a few different audio editing tricks to reduce that, but I couldn't get rid of that entirely. I made a particularly big impact on the banter between songs. Before, that was barely intelligible. Now, most of what they're saying can be understood.

Frankly, there are some other live recordings from 1970 with similar set lists that sound better. But if you're a big fan of the band, especially in their early years, you'll want this one too. Richard Thompson was still in the band. He and violinist Dave Swarbrick had some good instrumental "duels" on some of the songs.

The music here is unreleased. As mentioned above, the sound quality is decent, but not the best. 

This album is an hour and 21 minutes long. 

01 talk
02 Walk Awhile 
03 talk
04 Dirty Linen [Instrumental] 
05 talk
06 Staines Morris 
07 talk 
08 The Lark in the Morning [Instrumental]
09 talk 
10 Now Be Thankful 
11 talk 
12 Matty Groves 
13 talk
14 The Banks of the Sweet Primroses 
15 talk 
16 Drums [Instrumental] 
17 Flatback Caper 
18 talk 
19 Sloth
20 talk 
21 Instrumental 
22 talk 
23 Tam Lin
24 talk
25 Sir Patrick Spens

Now as regulars will know I don’t post audience recordings (any longer) so spoilt am I but if Paul has done an engineering job on this recording for a fan/visitor it has to be worth checking out . . . . I couldn’t download it here so will leave it to you guys until I can get the VPN up and running

Now I finally got it crikey this is rough and after all Paul’s hard work too. The original must have been bloody awful! I don’t think I will keep this it is loud over blown and ‘hot’ noisy and borderline unlistenable! But hey, you decide and go check it out anyhoo!

To make up for it here are some pictures!

Richard and Sandy - young young YOUNG!

Sandy and Dave - you can see why dear Dave Swarbrick fell in love with Sandy here and sad to say unrequited but it never quite left him. Bless 'im

Fairport

Sandy in happier days

Sandy 1976

Love - 1970-11-21 - Fillmore West, San Francisco | HEAVYBOOTZ

Love - 1970-11-21 - Fillmore West, San Francisco

Love

Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA

1970-11-21

aud

mp3 @ 320 [149 mb]

sq: A+

__Set1__

01 Product Of The Times

02 Stand Out

03 Keep On Shining

04 Andmoreagain

05 Singing Cowboy

06 Good Times

07 Announcements

__Set2__

08 Stand Out

09 Product Of The Times

10 Bummer In The Summer

11 Find Somebody

12 Signed D.C.

13 Slick Dick

14 Always See Your Face

15 Singing Cowboy

Arthur Lee - Vocals, Rhythm Guitar

Gary Rowles - Lead Guitar

Frank Fayad - Bass

George Suranovich - Drums

Arthur Lee & LOVE Fillmore West SF 1970 - Heavybootz

Love Live in Copenhagen

Now the above is not my favourite incarnation of Love but hey, here they are (above) in Copenhagen the YouTube of them in support to The James Gang and Black Sabbath at Fillmore West in 1970 is nowhere near near as good as this but hey . . . . . the mystic master is gone so whatcha gonna do! The guitar solos are actually worth checking out but the vocals are poorly recorded and the sound poorly mixed but then its 1970!

Bob Dylan, Neil Young and The Band SNACK Benefit Vol 8 1975 | Albums That Should Exist

SNACK Benefit, Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA, 3-23-1975, Part 8: Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band

Paul says This is the eighth and last major act to perform for the 1975 SNACK benefit concert in San Francisco. In my opinion, it's the most interesting one, because it was a very rare collaboration between Neil Young and Bob Dylan, with three members of the Band assisting for good measure.

It's not entirely clear how this collaboration came about. Only Neil Young was billed as the final act for the concert. Promoter Bill Graham later said that Young and the Doobie Brothers were the biggest draws. Bob Dylan seemed to a last minute addition because this group probably didn't practice much. I'm guessing the Band members joined due to their connection with Dylan. They'd never played with Young before, as far as I know, but they'd been Dylan's most frequent backing back from 1966 all the way until a big tour in 1974. Only three members of the Band were there though: Levon Helm, Rick Danko, and Garth Hudson. That meant Robbie Robertson and Richard Manuel were missing. But the key thing was that Helm was there, because he was the lead vocalist on most of the songs by the Band. And indeed he sang lead on a couple of the songs here.

According to Rolling Stone Magazine's account of the concert, Dylan wasn't expected by the crowd whatsoever. When he showed up on stage, very few people recognized him until Bill Graham introduced the band members. Then a huge roar went up, naturally, since he was arguably the biggest name of all the acts in the concert.

But what's curious is that one normally would have expected Dylan to dominate the set, but for this concert he seemed content to be just one member of a group. For most of the songs, he just played guitar and/or harmonica, and sang backing vocals some. He only sang lead on two of the nine songs, his "I Want You" and "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," which was inexplicably renamed "Knockin' on the Dragon's Door" for this concert only. He also sang lead on some of the verses for the traditional song "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," but he forgot how a verse went, so the song finished more as an instrumental.

Young sang lead on three songs: "Are You Ready for the Country," "Lookin' for a Love," and "Helpless." "Lookin' for a Love" wouldn't be released until it appeared on the "Zuma" album towards the end of the year. This was its concert debut. The Band dominated the singing on "Ain't That a Lot of Love," "Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever," and "The Weight." "Helpless" flowed directly into "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" (er, "Dragon's Door") in an interesting way.

Unfortunately, there was one very big problem with the audio of this set that I think has prevented it from being much better known: Bob Dylan's microphone was turned off or malfunctioned for the entire set! As a result, he was practically inaudible at times. The only reason he could be heard at all was because he was singing in a particularly shouty style (perhaps because he noticed the microphone problem?) and his voice was picked up somewhat by some of the other nearby microphones.

Luckily, in this day and age there are things that can be done to fix this. Using the UVR5 audio editing program, I did my best to boost Dylan's voice up to normal levels as much as possible. However, in some cases there wasn't enough there to do any boosting. For "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" (sorry, "Dragon's"), and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," I was able to get by with just boosting. It doesn't always sound great, but it's way better than previous versions. 

However, I had a lot more trouble with "I Want You." His voice was nearly totally gone for the first verse. So I found a soundboard of him singing the song from 1976 and pasted his vocals in for that part. But for the bridge and the second and third verses, I was able to get by with just boosting the existing vocals. The choruses were also a problem. Rick Danko sang backing vocals, and that was picked up very loudly, totally drowning out Dylan. So again I used that 1976 version and pasted in Dylan singing on the choruses, trying to match it with Danko's timing. I think the end result more or less works, but you can tell the difference in style between the 1976 parts, where he was singing the song normally, and the parts from this concert, where he was much more shouty. 

So that's why the three songs with Dylan lead vocals all have "[Edit]" in their titles. With "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," the last verse didn't have a chorus following it due to Dylan forgetting the words, so I pasted in the chorus from earlier in the song.

I'm afraid there are probably other songs where Dylan sang backing harmonies that are now totally lost due to the microphone problem. In such cases, his quiet voice would have been totally drowned out by whomever happened to be singing lead. Oh well. 

It's too bad that Dylan and Young in particular didn't collaborate more, but at least we have this.  

This album is 36 minutes long.

73 talk by Bill Graham (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
74 Are You Ready for the Country (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
75 Ain't That a Lot of Love (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
76 talk (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
77 Lookin' for a Love (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
78 Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
79 I Want You [Edit] (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
80 The Weight (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
81 Helpless (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
82 Knockin' on the Dragon's Door [Knockin' on Heaven's Door] [Edit] (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)
83 Will the Circle Be Unbroken [Edit] (Neil Young, Bob Dylan & the Band)

here . . . .