US Festival '82, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 9-3-1982 - Day 1, Part 4: The B-52's

The fourth album from Day One of the 1982 US Festival is a set by the new wave band the B-52's.

A Rolling Stone Magazine article about the festival shortly after it happened had one paragraph about the B-52's set: "Onstage, the B-52's were learning the price of being popular. Their nonstop dance numbers turned the area in front of the stage into a man-made dust storm. By the time the band finished 'Hot Lava,' the white spotlight aimed at Fred Schneider looked for all the world like a car headlight cutting through heavy fog."

At the time of this festival, the band's most recent release was the E.P. "Mesopotamia." The band wanted to make that a full album, but the record company forced them to put it out as an E.P. before the album version could be finished. It was produced by none other than David Byrne, lead singer for the next act to perform on Day One of the festival, the Talking Heads. One song that was an outtake from the E.P., "Big Bird," was performed during the set. It would be included on the band's next album, "Whammy!" in 1983.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, unfortunately, many of the sets from the 1982 come from audience bootlegs. But I'm happy to say the B-52's set is an exception. That's because although no audio album of the set has ever been release, a DVD video release of the full set was in 2020, called "The B52's: Live at US Festival." So the audio here comes from that.

This album is 56 minutes long.

068 Planet Claire Intro [Instrumental] (B-52's)
069 Party Out of Bounds (B-52's)
070 Give Me Back My Man (B-52's)
071 Planet Claire (B-52's)
072 talk (B-52's)
073 Throw That Beat in the Garbage Can (B-52's)
074 talk (B-52's)
075 Lava (B-52's)
076 talk (B-52's)
077 Mesopotamia (B-52's)
078 6060-842 (B-52's)
079 talk (B-52's)
080 Big Bird (B-52's)
081 talk (B-52's)
082 52 Girls (B-52's)
083 talk (B-52's)
084 Dance This Mess Around (B-52's)
085 talk (B-52's)
086 Private Idaho (B-52's)
087 Rock Lobster (B-52's)
088 talk (B-52's)
089 Strobe Light (B-52's)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17467870/VA-1982USFstvlDay0104TB52s_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SxqZzCpR

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/UErSJH1aOKrQW6e/file

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

Jamaica World Music Festival, Montego Bay, Jamaica, 11-25-1982, Part 2: The B-52's

The second act of the first night of the Jamaica World Music Festival was the B-52's. 

I've already posted a B-52's concert from 1982, which took place at the first US Festival. This is very similar, since it took place only two months later and the band's set lists didn't change much. But I'm including it for completeness's sake.

The bootleg recording generally has excellent sound quality. However, only the second half of the first song, "Party Out of Bounds," was included.So it's very possible that they played one or more songs before that that didn't get recorded at all. If anyone knows, please let me know. I found a different version from 1982 with similar sound quality and used that to fill in the missing part. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in its title.

As I mentioned with the previous album in this series, I've remixed all the songs from all the sets in the festival (using the UVR5 audio editing program). That was the case here too. I'm probably not going to mention that with all the subsequent albums I'll be posting from the festival, 'cos I'll just be repeating myself. But keep in mind that the sound quality of these versions should be better than all previous bootleg versions, due to my remixing.

Also, you may note that the song numbering below begins with 10 instead of 1. That's because the song count continues from the previous album in the series, since it was all one concert. However, the concert took place over three days, so the renumbering restarts with each new day. Similarly, the titles change, for instance going from Part 5 of the November 25th concert back to Part 1 of the November 26th concert, and so on.

This album is 45 minutes long.

10 Party Out of Bounds [Edit] (B-52s)
11 Give Me Back My Man (B-52s)
12 talk (B-52s)
13 Planet Claire (B-52s)
14 talk (B-52s)
15 Throw that Beat in the Garbage Can (B-52s)
16 talk (B-52s)
17 Lava (B-52s)
18 talk (B-52s)
19 Mesopotamia (B-52s)
20 6060-842 (B-52s)
21 talk (B-52s)
22 52 Girls (B-52s)
23 Dance This Mess Around (B-52s)
24 talk (B-52s)
25 Rock Lobster (B-52s)
26 Private Idaho (B-52s)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16400540/VA-JmicaWrldMsicFstvlMntgoByJmica__11-25-1982Prt02TB52s_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UyN5Hajd

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. However, it appears to be from an interview that took place backstage rather than from their actual performance on stage.

Heatwave Festival, Mosport Park, Bowmanville, Canada, 8-23-1980, Part 4: The B-52's

Part 4 of the 1980 Heatwave Festival is a set by the B-52's.

The B-52's made a big splash with their 1979 debut album, "The B-52's." They followed that in 1980 with the album "Wild Planet." That was released at the end of August, a month after this concert. But in fact the band had been playing most of the songs from "Wild Planet" in concert even before the release of their debut album. So this is a mix of songs from both albums.

There is one official album that is from a similar time period, "Live! 8.24.1979." It wasn't released until 2015, but as you can guess, it's from 1979. That's a pretty short album though, less than 40 minutes long. This sounds just as good and has five more songs.

Although unreleased, this was professionally recorded and sounds great. There were no problems.

This album is 58 minutes long.

061 talk (B-52's)
062 Planet Claire (B-52's)
063 6060-842 (B-52's)
064 Devil in My Car (B-52's)
065 52 Girls (B-52's)
066 talk (B-52's)
067 Quiche Lorraine (B-52's)
068 Dirty Back Road (B-52's)
069 Lava (B-52's)
070 Give Me Back My Man (B-52's)
071 Strobe Light (B-52's)
072 Private Idaho (B-52's)
073 Runnin' Around (B-52's)
074 Rock Lobster (B-52's)
075 Dance This Mess Around (B-52's)
076 Party Out of Bounds (B-52's)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17315598/VA-HtwveFstivlMsprtPrkBwmnvlleCnda__8-23-1980_04B52s.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/TVEMn4kG

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

The B-52's - Berklee Performance Center, Boston MA, 8-24-1979

I hadn't planned on creating and posting this album at all. But I was making an album for the headlining act for this concert, which I will post shortly, and I discovered the B-52's were the opening act. I further discovered that an excellent sounding bootleg of this set exists, just like the headliner act. That's because both the opening and headlining acts were broadcast on a local radio station at the time. So I figured, "What the heck, why not post this set too?"

This concert took place only a few months after the release of the B-52's debut album, simply called "The B-52's." However, four of the songs - "Private Idaho," "Devil in My Car," "Runnin' Around," and "Strobe Light" - were unreleased at the time and would appear on the band's second album "Wild Planet" in 1980. I read on Wikipedia that the band actually wrote most of the songs for their second album before their first album was released, but they held back some good songs, like "Private Idaho," to make sure the second album would be a strong one.

Although the sound quality is excellent overall, I felt the vocals were a bit low in the mix. So I used the audio editing program UVR5 to boost them some.

This album is 39 minutes long. It's rather short since the band was only the opening act.

01 talk (B-52's)
02 52 Girls (B-52's)
03 6060-842 (B-52's)
04 talk (B-52's)
05 Lava (B-52's)
06 talk (B-52's)
07 Private Idaho (B-52's)
08 talk (B-52's)
09 Devil in My Car (B-52's)
10 talk (B-52's)
11 Dance This Mess Around (B-52's)
12 talk (B-52's)
13 Runnin' Around (B-52's)
14 talk (B-52's)
15 Rock Lobster (B-52's)
16 talk (B-52's)
17 Strobe Light (B-52's)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15456913/TB5Twos_1979b_BrkleePerformnceCentrBostnMA__8-24-1979_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is said to be from the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles in 1979. The band played there in August and then again in September, so it could be from either of those two shows.

The B-52's - Great Woods Center for the Performing Arts, Mansfield, MA, 6-20-1998

I already posted one B-52's concert bootleg, but that was from early in their music career. I had looked for one that at least included songs from their best selling album, 1989's "Cosmic Thing." But I didn't see any that stood out. However, just a few days ago (as I write this in April 2023), I came across this at a bootleg sharing site. It's a pristine soundboard, and the set list is ideal. 

The B-52's kind of petered out in the 1990s. The only released one album for the entire decade, "Good Thing," in 1992. Even then, Cindy Wilson, one of their three lead vocalists, left the band from 1990 to 1994, due to burn out and wanting to raise a child. So one nice thing about this album is that it was from the first tour the band did after Wilson returned. 

Also, in 1998, the band released a greatest hits album called "Time Capsule: Songs for a Future Generation." It contained two new songs, "Debbie" and "Hallucinating Pluto," which are really solid songs, in my book. But they would also be kind of a last hurrah, as the band wouldn't release any more new music for another ten years, "Funplex" in 2008, and that last album would be a disappointment. So this concert is the ideal time to hear them do all their later songs from albums like "Cosmic Thing" and "Good Stuff" with all of their lead vocalists.

The only downside to the concert is that it didn't include one of their signature songs, "Rock Lobster." I found a review of this concert in Rolling Stone magazine, and it mentioned that song was played. It was the band's final encore at this time. So I found a version from a different 1998 concert and added it to the end. It's from a VH-1 TV special. The sound quality is a little bit below the rest, but still pretty good.

Speaking of sound quality, this generally sounds excellent, but I fixed two flaws. For the first song, the volume fluctuated wildly in the first minute or so, probably as adjustments were being made in real time. I leveled that out. And on the song "Communicate," there was a jarring, weird noise midway through the song. Luckily, it was during a vocal line that immediately got repeated in the same way. So I was able to patch that up. But that's why two of the songs have "[Edit]" in their titles.

This album is an hour and 19 minutes long.

01 Planet Claire [Edit] (B-52's)
02 talk (B-52's)
03 Private Idaho (B-52's)
04 Dance This Mess Around (B-52's)
05 talk (B-52's)
06 Good Stuff (B-52's)
07 talk (B-52's)
08 Hallucinating Pluto (B-52's)
09 talk (B-52's)
10 Roam (B-52's)
11 talk (B-52's)
12 Summer of Love (B-52's)
13 talk (B-52's)
14 Is That You, Mo-Dean (B-52's)
15 talk (B-52's)
16 Strobe Light (B-52's)
17 talk (B-52's)
18 Debbie (B-52's)
19 talk (B-52's)
20 Communicate [Edit] (B-52's)
21 talk (B-52's)
22 Channel Z (B-52's)
23 talk (B-52's)
24 Cosmic Thing (B-52's)
25 talk (B-52's)
26 Love Shack (B-52's)
27 Rock Lobster (B-52's)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15184549/TB52s_1998_GreatWdsCenterforPerfrmingArtsMnsfieldMA__6-20-1998_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is taken from an appearance on the TV show "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" in August 1998.

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.