Wednesday, September 24, 2025

Sam Phillips - Creators at Carnegie, NPR, Zankel Hall, New York City, 10-19-2004

Sam Phillips doesn't get nearly as much attention as she should. I really like her stuff. So when I found this FM sourced bootleg a few days ago, it went to the top of my pile of albums to post. It's a concert broadcast on NPR radio in 2004.

In the 1990s, she had a poppy, Beatlesque style that should have made her a big star. Then, in 2001, she came out with the album "Fan Dance," in a more intimate, acoustic style. It was still great stuff, getting lots of critical praise, but she basically turned her back on her earlier style at that point. In 2004, the album "A Boot and a Shoe" came out, again in her new style. She was on tour to promote that album when this concert happened. She only played one song from her 1990s era, "Animals on Wheels." So this mostly consists of songs from her 2001 and 2004 albums.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. There were some cases where the sound of cheering at the end of one song didn't match the sounds at the beginning of the next song. So I did a little bit of editing to make those transitions sound good. 

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 talk (Sam Phillips)
02 Foolin' Myself (Sam Phillips)
03 How to Quit (Sam Phillips)
04 I Wanted to Be Alone (Sam Phillips)
05 talk (Sam Phillips)
06 Fan Dance (Sam Phillips)
07 Animals on Wheels (Sam Phillips)
08 talk (Sam Phillips)
09 When You're Down (Sam Phillips)
10 Edge of the World (Sam Phillips)
11 I Dreamed I Stopped Dreaming (Sam Phillips)
12 Taking Pictures (Sam Phillips)
13 talk (Sam Phillips)
14 If I Could Write (Sam Phillips)
15 Infiltration (Sam Phillips)
16 talk (Sam Phillips)
17 Reflecting Light (Sam Phillips)
18 Say What You Mean (Sam Phillips)
19 One Day Late (Sam Phillips)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/V8qPXMAx

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/u3VhaeDYLHJg4eZ/file

The cover photo is from a concert in the Carolina Theatre, in Durham, North Carolina, on September 19, 2004. 

4 comments:

  1. You know she started out her career As Leslie Phillips, right? If not you need to go back and listen to her 4 albums from 1983 to 1987. Probably some of the best of her work

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    1. I am aware. But I only have "The Turning," which is guess is a transitional album. I've shied away from the others because I'm not religious and I don't like religious music, usually. But are there good songs on those earlier albums I could enjoy without heavy-handed religious themes?

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  2. There are. At the time she was considered a cutting edge performer much like her husband T-Bone Burnett or Larry Norman or Toni K. Many of the musicians you post sing about the the things they believe. I don't agree with a lot of view points but it's the music that we all enjoy. There should be no separation between secular and any other music forms, it shows intolerance on our part to understand people and their beliefs. Keep those ears open and keep up the good fight. J.C.

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    Replies
    1. I wouldn't say intolerance. It's just that some things are more interesting to people than other things, depending on their personal likes and so forth. If I came across an album that was a theme album entirely about fishing, I probably wouldn't be interested because I don't care about fishing. Ditto with someone singing about a religion I'm not a part of. A few songs, okay, but if it's a whole album, that can get old.

      On a different note, if you have specific recommendations of pre- The Turning songs from her, I'll listen to them. Perhaps there's enough to make a good compilation album.

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