The B-52's - US Festival, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 9-2-1982

I like the B-52's a lot, but unfortunately there isn't an official concert album from their 1980s prime. (There is one from 1979.) I checked to see if they ever did any shows for the BBC. It appears they did not. There aren't even that many good bootlegs from the 1980s, though there are many from later years. The best one I could find was of a video of their performance for the 1982 US Festival. I split it up and converted it into mp3s.

I don't know where this video is from exactly. It's definitely professionally done (you can watch it on YouTube), with excellent sound. There are even about four instances between songs where there is a cutaway from the concert to interview the band members. I removed all of those, which were rather brief and not that interesting. There also were some occasions where the applause after the songs were cut short. I patched in applause from the ends of other songs to make sure all of the songs ended naturally.

There were two US Festivals, one in 1982 and the other in 1983. They were very big deals at the time, though they seem to have faded from memory, probably due to a lack of any movies or albums. Apple Computers co-founder Steve Wozniak was behind them. He paid big money for tons of top name acts to play at the festivals. He paid so much money that he lost millions of dollars each year, despite the fact that about half a million people showed up each time.

I would love to post more concert albums from both US Festivals, but the bootlegs I've heard tend to have sound quality that's good but not great. This is a rare exception, due to whatever professional video it comes from. If you know of more of the performances with excellent sound, please let me know.

As for the B-52's performance here, keep in mind that they were playing to an audience of hundreds of thousands of people! But they clearly had become a tight, professional band by this time, because you can't tell. The same goes for the sound quality. This doesn't sound boomy and echoy, like many shows recorded in massive spaces. There's a popular bootleg of the band playing in Jamaica in 1982, but I like this better, in part because this one is longer.

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 Planet Claire Intro [Instrumental] (B-52's)
02 Party Out of Bounds (B-52's)
03 Give Me Back My Man (B-52's)
04 Planet Claire (B-52's)
05 talk (B-52's)
06 Throw That Beat in the Garbage Can (B-52's)
07 talk (B-52's)
08 Lava (B-52's)
09 talk (B-52's)
10 Mesopotamia (B-52's)
11 6060-842 (B-52's)
12 talk (B-52's)
13 Big Bird (B-52's)
14 talk (B-52's)
15 52 Girls (B-52's)
16 talk (B-52's)
17 Dance This Mess Around (B-52's)
18 talk (B-52's)
19 Private Idaho (B-52's)
20 Rock Lobster (B-52's)
21 talk (B-52's)
22 Strobe Light (B-52's)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15277941/TB5Twos_1982_USFestvalGlenHelenRegionalPark__9-2-1982_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.