I looked up Rogers' discography, and I was surprised to find that although he's released dozens and dozens of studio albums, he only ever released three live albums. And all three seem to be surprisingly bad, coming late in his career with complaints from reviewers of poor sound quality. One specifically is a Christmas album. So that probably makes this his best live album, if only due to a lack of competition. This also appears to be the only BBC recording from him that I could find, although who knows, sometimes others pop up later.
At the time of this concert, in early 1979, Rogers was near the peak of his popularity. He'd just had a massive hit in late 1978 with "The Gambler," which became his signature song. He'd had some other big hits too, like "Lucille" and "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town." However, some other big ones were still to come, like "Coward of the County," "Islands in the Stream," "Lady," and "We've Got Tonight."
In the middle of the show, Rogers left the stage to allow a country pop act called "Dave and Sugar" to perform. I wasn't too impressed with this duo, which never had much commercial success, and it kind of ruined the flow of the concert, in my opinion. So I cut out those two songs. Sorry to all the hordes of Dave and Sugar fans out there. ;)
Weirdly, back in 1968, Rogers had a minor hit with an unabashedly psychedelic song describing an L.S.D. trip, called "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)." It was his very first hit, while he was lead singer to the band the First Edition. Weirder still, Rogers performed this song at a prime spot towards the end of this concert.
This album is 44 minutes long.
01 Desperado (Kenny Rogers)
02 talk (Kenny Rogers)
03 Love or Something like It (Kenny Rogers)
04 Lucille (Kenny Rogers)
05 Daytime Friends (Kenny Rogers)
06 talk (Kenny Rogers)
07 Sweet Music Man (Kenny Rogers)
08 In and Out of Your Heart (Kenny Rogers)
09 Every Time Two Fools Collide (Kenny Rogers)
10 Heart to Heart (Kenny Rogers)
11 Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town (Kenny Rogers)
12 talk (Kenny Rogers)
13 There's an Old Man in Our Town (Kenny Rogers)
14 talk (Kenny Rogers)
15 Just Dropped In [To See What Condition My Condition Was In] (Kenny Rogers)
16 The Gambler (Kenny Rogers)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/ap7SmMNA
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/en/pv4I2Lu9BhcF97I/file
The cover image is a screenshot I took from a video of this exact concert.
Dave and Sugar were actually a country trio. "Sugar" was two women, kind of like Dawn with Tony Orlando. Dave had sung with Elvis before forming his own group.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info. I changed the text a bit.
DeleteHi, thank you for your good music. I have an unrelated request.
ReplyDeleteI downloaded Jimi Hendrix at Miami 1968, recently and read in the liner notes that that festival also included Frank Zappa, Steppenwolf, Arthur Brown, John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry and Blue Cheer. That would be a series of albums that should exist.
As far as I can tell, none of that is publicly available, except for the Hendrix. That's typical. There are dozens of festivals that sound awesome, but the music can't be found. In this case, since the Hendrix set exists, maybe the rest is in some vault somewhere.
DeleteThanks for this one. I actually saw Kenny once in 1990. He was surprisingly good.
ReplyDeleteKenny Rogers, especially during his first decade and change, is woefully underrated. "The Gambler" and "Coward Of The County" were great story songs, as was "Ruby". Also, "Ruby" with its clear hints at an injury-induced impotence of the protagonist and "Coward" with its description of a gang rape were quite risqué for a supposedly MOR artist.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I recently heard Coward of the County while putting this together and was shocked to notice the gang rape lyrics.
DeleteThanks for the work you do for us, but I ask all the blog downloaders if they have problems downloading with pixeldrain and bestlife
ReplyDeleteAre you having trouble with those? Because I recently ditched upload.ee for new posts. I don't want to bother with three different options each time, and people have long complained about spam associated with that one.
Deleteyes. i just can't download. too bad
DeleteWhat's the problem? Nobody else has mentioned any problems like that. Have you tried using the Brave browser to download? That should fix any problems, I hope.
DeleteHi. I'll try Brave and let you know
ReplyDeleteThank you
Nothing. I can't even use Brave browser. Both with Bestfile and pixeldrain it tells me ''site unreachable''. As a result, my connection drops. Too bad
ReplyDeleteWhy can't you use the Brave browser? You can't in general, or just with this site?
DeleteSorry, it's a mistake. No ''can't use the Brave browser'', but ''I can't even download with Brave browser''.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Kenny Rogers. I've always enjoyed his music. The pixeldrain file downloaded quickly for me with no problems. (I'm in the US, by the way.)
ReplyDelete