Various Artists - Monterey International Pop Festival, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA, 6-18-1967, Evening Show

This is the fifth and last album I'm posting from the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. As I've mentioned previously, the festival itself was divided into five parts, and one had to buy tickets for each part. This is the longest album from the festival, and probably the most important in musical history, especially due to the set by Jimi Hendrix.

With most of the previous parts from this festival, I've made reference to a Wikipedia page listing all the songs known to have been performed at the festival. Let me do that again, as I mention the missing portions:

Monterey Pop Festival set list - Wikipedia 

The Blues Project started the evening show. The two songs here are the only ones listed at the Wikipedia page, but it's known they performed more. Unfortunately, the band was in the process of breaking up when this concert happened. A key member, Al Kooper, left a couple of months prior to this. (He had his own solo set at the festival.) The band collapsed shortly thereafter, though there were later reunions.

The second set was by Big Brother and the Holding Company, starring their lead singer Janis Joplin. As I mentioned previously, they were the only act to perform twice at the festival. That's because they went over very well the first time, the day before, but the band's manager didn't allow them to be filmed at that time. (The cameras were running but pointed at the ground, which at least allowed the audio to be recorded.) By the next day, the band members were convinced that getting included in the documentary about the festival would give their career a big boost. So they played a short set of just 15 minutes, compared to 23 minutes the day before, in order to get enough film footage. It turned out to be a very smart career move indeed. When the "Monterey Pop" movie documentary came out in 1968, Joplin's performance in it helped make her a big star.

The next set is quite a mystery - even the band's name: "the Group with No Name." This band was led by Cyrus Faryar, a singer-songwriter who had previously been in the Modern Jazz Quartet. But no songs from this set have been made public, and none or the names of any of the songs performed are known, nor is the number of songs. It seems they were not well received. A Newsweek review of the festival said they "were terrible and may well not last long enough to get a name." That turned out to be accurate, because the band broke up before they released any music. 

After that came Buffalo Springfield. I'm especially excited about this, because up until 2024, only five of the songs they performed were publicly available. But that year, there was a "record store day" release of their entire set here. That release included three songs that were previously unreleased, and even unbootlegged: "Hung Upside Down," "Nobody's Fool," and "Pretty Girl Why."

Here's a review about the Buffalo Springfield set in Rolling Stone Magazine in 2024: 

First-Ever Buffalo Springfield Live Album Released on Record Store Day 

This performance is unusual in that key member Neil Young quit the band about a week before the festival, only to rejoin shortly afterwards. (He quit and rejoined multiple times.) Young was temporarily replaced by two people: lead guitarist Doug Hastings and rhythm guitarist and vocalist David Crosby. Crosby's involvement was controversial, because he was still a member of the Byrds at the time, and in fact he performed in their set at the festival as well. 

Here's a quote about the controversy by Roger McGuinn, the leader of the Byrds: "I didn't know David was going to sit in with Buffalo Springfield, and that wasn't really a big deal. What was happening was that we were not happy with each other, like a marriage breaking up. He was really upset because we didn’t do his song 'Triad.' That was the big bone. He wanted to be the lead singer of the Byrds, you know, the head Byrd. That wasn't happening. To his satisfaction, we were sharing vocals equally. At Monterey I was trying to be a trooper, like Bobby Darin taught me, and try and soldier on and do it."

I don't know how much Crosby's sitting in with Buffalo Springfield impacted his role with the Byrds, if at all. But he was kicked out of the band a few months later. And his involvement with Buffalo Springfield was key to his future music career, because he would later be a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young with two members of Buffalo Springfield: Stephen Stills and Neil Young.

The next act up was the Who. Jimi Hendrix moved to Britain in late 1966 and soon found fame there. One he was living there, he and the Who had seen each other perform. They were both impressed with and intimidated by each other. Neither wanted to be upstaged by the other at this festival, especially since both had made destroying their instruments part of their acts. They decided to toss a coin. The  Who won the right to play first.

Adding to the competition between the two acts, backstage before their sets, Hendrix played his guitar while staring at the Who's lead guitarist Pete Townshend, trying to impress him with his skills. Townshend said later, "It was just Jimi on a chair playing at me. Playing at me like 'Don't fuck with me, you little shit.'" 

Here's how the Wikipedia entry about the festival describes the finale to the Who's set: "At the end of their frenetic performance of 'My Generation,' the audience was stunned as guitarist Pete Townshend smashed his guitar and slammed the neck against the amps and speakers. Smoke bombs exploded behind the amps and frightened concert staff rushed onstage to retrieve expensive microphones. At the end of the mayhem, drummer Keith Moon kicked over his drum kit as the band exited the stage." 

The Who's set was relatively short, only 25 minutes, when they were allowed to play up to 40 minutes. So their set here is complete. But their performance was very impactful, especially due to the destruction of their instruments. They were a British band, and hadn't had any hits in the U.S. yet, except for "Happy Jack" in 1966, though there already was a lot of buzz about them. Their performance at the festival would raise their profile in the U.S., helping them to have two more U.S. hits later that year, "Pictures of Lily" and "I Can See for Miles."  

Eric Burdon of the Animals later commented about the Who's performance: "The American audience went: 'What the hell is this?!' The climax of the show was just like a terrorist attack, with the bombs and the smoke. It was just shocking!"

After the Who came the Grateful Dead. The band would go on to play concerts for decades, becoming one of the most popular touring bands in the U.S. But keep in mind this was very early in their career, with their debut album ("The Grateful Dead")coming out only three months prior to this festival. In a Newsweek review of the festival, music critic Michael Lydon commented: "The Grateful Dead were beautiful. They did at top volume what Shankar had done softly. They played pure music, some of the best music of the concert. I have never heard anything in music that could be said to be qualitatively better than the performance of the Dead, Sunday night.

The next act was the Jimi Hendrix Experience. This was possibly the most musically historic set of the entire festival. As an aside, Hendrix was not well known in the U.S. at the time of the festival. The main reason why he appeared at the festival, and especially at a pivotal spot near the end of the final night, was because Paul McCartney of the Beatles was a member of the board of governors for the festival, and he absolutely insisted that Hendrix had to perform there. The Wikipedia entry on the festival has a good summary of what happened during Hendrix's set, so I'll quote that here:

"Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones introduced [Hendrix]. His use of extremely high volumes, the feedback this produced, and the combination of the two along with his dive-bombing use of the vibrato bar on his guitar, produced sounds that, with the exception of the British in attendance, none of the audience had ever heard before. This, along with his look, his clothing, and his erotic antics onstage, had an enormous impact on the audience. To take things further, aware of the Who's planned explosive finale, he had asked around for a can of lighter fluid, which he'd placed behind one of his amplifier stacks before beginning his set. He ended his Monterey performance with an unpredictable version of 'Wild Thing,' which he capped by kneeling over his guitar, pouring lighter fluid over it, setting it on fire, and then smashing it onto the stage seven times before throwing its remains into the audience. This performance put Hendrix on the map and generated an enormous amount of attention in the music press and newspapers alike." 

Actor Dennis Hopper had this to say: "Hendrix was certainly a great guitar player. He became part of the guitar, it was an extension of his, ah, his feelings and his sex and everything. He was unmatched in that."

And music critic Robert Christgau wrote this in The Village Voice decades later: "Music was a given for a Hendrix stuck with topping the Who's guitar-smashing tour de force. It's great sport to watch this outrageous scene-stealer wiggle his tongue, pick with his teeth, and set his axe on fire, but the showboating does distract from the history made that night - the dawning of an instrumental technique so effortlessly fecund and febrile that rock has yet to equal it, though hundreds of metal bands have gotten rich trying."

The final act of the evening, and thus the entire festival, was the Mamas and the Papas. They had had many big hits of their own by this time. But the band's main songwriter John Phillips had recently wrote a single meant to promote the festival, "San Francisco [Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair]." Rather than had his own band play it, he gave the song to Scott McKenzie, who was having a huge hit with it right when the festival was happening (as I detailed in the write-up in the first part of this festival). McKenzie wasn't just a random singer though. He and Phillips were friends since childhood, and played in different bands together. When Phillips created the Mamas and the Papas, he invited McKenzie to join, but McKenzie turned down the offer, wanting to try a solo career instead. In any case, towards the end of this set, McKenzie joined the band and sang his hit song with the Mamas and the Papas backing him.

Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar had this to say: "The group who really made me feel good, I can't tell you how nice, was the Mamas and the Papas. There was melody, there were lyrical moments, and beautiful - and they looked so good together." (As an aside, he enjoyed many of the other acts in the festival, but hated the destruction of instruments by the Who and Hendrix.)

Now, this is going to be an extra long write-up, because before I finish with this festival, I want to write a little bit about how it came to be in the first place. I'm putting that explanation here because it turns out the main instigators of the festival were actually the members of the Mamas and the Papas, so I think it's fitting to put this explanation after talking about their set. The festival came together rather quickly, in just a few months, but during that time the band members worked tirelessly on it, basically putting the band on hold for a while to do so.

The band put on a pretty good performance despite being too busy organizing the festival to rehearse much beforehand. But in retrospect, the fact the band spent so much time organizing the festival was probably a sign that they had grown tired of being in a band together. Phillips remembered as the apex of the band's career, saying, "There would never be anything quite like it again." The band put out a new album in October 1967. But after that, they decided to take long vacations to "get the muse going again," according to Phillips. But instead, the band fought during their vacation time, resulting in an announcement that they had broken up. They did manage to reunite for another album in 1968, only to break up again.

The festival was originally conceived as a money-making event. But the people involved didn't have the money to pay for star acts. So the organizers changed the idea to a benefit concert (although first class transportation was paid for all the acts). The profits from sales of albums drawn from the festival still help fund charities decades later, especially due to steady profits from the hit "Monterey Pop" movie documentary. Ravi Shankar was the only act to be paid, because he signed a contract early on, before it was changed to a benefit concert.

The festival had a very unusual board of governors to help organize it: John Phillips, Donovan, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Roger McGuinn, Johnny Rivers, Smokey Robinson, Paul Simon, Brian Wilson, Lou Adler, Terry Melcher, Andrew Loog Oldham, and Alan Pariser. All the next except the last four were famous musicians at the time. The last four were successful music producers or managers. Some, like Phillips and Simon, were very involved, while others like Smokey Robinson basically just gave their name to the effort.

By the way, one of the last things I want to mention about this festival is all the bands that didn't play. Here are some names, plus the reasons why they didn't participate in paranetheses: the Beach Boys (internal squabbles), Donovan (couldn't get a U.S. work visa due to a drug charge), the Kinks (couldn't get a U.S. work visa due to being banned due to a union dispute), the Lovin' Spoonful (fighting a drug charge, plus internal squabbles), and Dionne Warwick (cancelled right before the festival because she had a schedule conflict). Kaleidoscope (the U.S. band, not the British one) did play at the festival, but only outside, for the crowd who didn't have tickets to get inside.

There were still more acts that were asked but declined. Producer Lou Adler later said, "There weren't a lot of tours [at the time]. We're still talking 1967. Not a lot of acts [were] working all the time. The San Francisco acts [were] playing around San Francisco. The big acts couldn't get visas to get in. The Motown acts were working, the blues acts were working, but the acts that we went after, they had time even though we had a short window [to get them]. ... Everyone jumped on very quickly. We tried for the Impressions. We got some no's, from some of the Motown acts, and Chuck Berry passed."

In my recent write-up about the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival Festival, I mentioned that legendary 1950s star Chuck Berry was notoriously cheap. This is another good example of that. John Phillips tried to invite Berry. "I told him on the phone, 'Chuck, it's for charity,' and he said to me, 'Chuck Berry has only one charity and that's Chuck Berry. $2,000.' We couldn't make an exception." 

Anyway, that's the festival. I hope you enjoy. Personally, if I could get in a time machine and see just one rock festival, I think it would be this one, even over Woodstock in 1969. Actually, the people who created the Woodstock festival came up with the idea immediately after watching the "Monterey Pop" documentary movie in 1968. Like many others, they wanted to repeat the success of Monterey, but make a lot of money from it instead of doing it as a benefit concert.

Here's an interesting quote from Chris Hillman of the Byrds, contrasting the two festivals. "I didn't do Woodstock, and I remember Gram Parsons and I were sharing a house in the San Fernando Valley, and Woodstock was on the news. The situation there. We were laughing, and I said, 'That's no Monterey.' And it wasn't! There was a sense of commaraderie at Monterey." 

This album is three hours and 35 minutes long. 

01 talk (Tommy Smothers)
02 talk (Paul Simon)
03 The Flute Thing [Instrumental] (Blues Project)
04 talk (Blues Project)
05 Wake Me, Shake Me (Blues Project)
06 talk (Tommy Smothers)
07 Combination of the Two (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
08 Harry (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
09 Ball and Chain (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
10 talk (Peter Tork)
11 For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
12 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Buffalo Springfield)
13 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
14 Hung Upside Down (Buffalo Springfield)
15 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
16 A Child's Claim to Fame (Buffalo Springfield)
17 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
18 Nobody's Fool (Buffalo Springfield)
19 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
20 Pretty Girl Why (Buffalo Springfield)
21 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
22 Rock and Roll Woman (Buffalo Springfield)
23 Bluebird (Buffalo Springfield)
24 talk (Eric Burdon)
25 Substitute (Who)
26 talk (Who)
27 Summertime Blues (Who)
28 talk (Who)
29 Pictures of Lily (Who)
30 talk (Who)
31 A Quick One while He's Away (Who)
32 talk (Who)
33 Happy Jack (Who)
34 talk (Who)
35 My Generation (Who)
36 talk (Bill Graham)
37 talk (Bill Graham)
38 Viola Lee Blues (Grateful Dead)
39 talk by emcee (Grateful Dead)
40 talk (Grateful Dead)
41 Cold Rain and Snow (Grateful Dead)
42 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
43 Alligator (Grateful Dead)
44 Caution [Do Not Stop on Tracks] (Grateful Dead)
45 talk (Bill Graham)
46 talk (emcee)
47 talk (Brian Jones)
48 Killing Floor (Jimi Hendrix)
49 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
50 Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
51 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
52 Like a Rolling Stone (Jimi Hendrix)
53 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
54 Rock Me Baby (Jimi Hendrix)
55 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
56 Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix)
57 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
58 Can You See Me (Jimi Hendrix)
59 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
60 The Wind Cries Mary (Jimi Hendrix)
61 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
62 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
63 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
64 Wild Thing (Jimi Hendrix)
65 talk (Paul Simon)
66 Straight Shooter (Mamas & the Papas)
67 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
68 Got a Feelin' (Mamas & the Papas)
69 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
70 California Dreamin' (Mamas & the Papas)
71 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
72 Spanish Harlem (Mamas & the Papas)
73 Somebody Groovy (Mamas & the Papas)
74 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
75 I Call Your Name (Mamas & the Papas)
76 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
77 Monday, Monday (Mamas & the Papas)
78 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
79 San Francisco [Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair] (Mamas & the Papas & Scott McKenzie)
80 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
81 Dancing in the Street (Mamas & the Papas)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8vU9t776

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3WanaF2nlZaXyl8/file

Like most of the cover art I've made for this festival, I had too many good options to choose from, so I broke the image into four smaller ones. From top left clockwise: David Crosby (with hat), Richie Furray (with glasses) and Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend (smashing his guitar) of the Who, the Mamas and the Papas, and Jimi Hendrix.

Various Artists - KHJ Second Annual Appreciation Concert, Hollywood Bowl, Hollywood, CA, 4-29-1967

Here's a really special concert, in my opinion. It's a totally unreleased, and even rarely shared as a bootleg, concert from the magic year of 1967. Check out the acts: Buffalo Springfield, the Fifth Dimension, Brenda Holloway, the Seeds, Johnny Rivers, and the Supremes! Those are all acts who have little to no unreleased live recordings, and in some cases virtually no live recordings at all.

The reason this is unreleased and even rarely shared as a bootleg, has to do with sound quality. The concert was professionally recorded, probably by the radio station that promoted the show, KHJ. But there was one problem that was essentially a fatal flaw, making this nearly unlistenable. The concert took place at the famous Hollywood Bowl in Hollywood, California. In early 1967, this venue was updating their sound system. They introduced a new piece of equipment, the radio mic. Unfortunately, there were technical problems with this. A high-pitched squeal could be heard through the entire recording that apparently was heard by the audience there at the time.

Due to this problem, I had been aware of this recording for years, and intrigued by the list of acts, but I never added it to my music collection due to that fatal flaw. However, recently I remembered it, and realized that the technological advancements in audio editing could possibly get rid of that annoying squeal. So I gave it a try. The good news is, I got rid of the vast majority of the problem. The bad news is, I couldn't get rid of it entirely. But I believe this is now very listenable. Even when the squeal can be heard, it's much lower in the mix.

Actually, the squeal wasn't as bad as it sounds at first because it really was only a problem during times of relative quiet, usually between songs. When there was a full band playing, the squeal usually disappeared entirely. So my challenge was to get rid of the squeal whenever it showed up. Using the UVR5 program, I split the songs into different tracks (vocals, drums, bass, and other). I often found the squeal would only be on one track, which I could then reduce or eliminate entirely. For instance, during the banter between songs, much of the squeal would be on the "other" track, and all I needed was the "vocals" track. 

When that wasn't enough, I also used noise reduction with the Audacity program. People rightly object to the use of this technique because it degrades the music. But I've found it usually doesn't cause a problem when it's only used for talking between songs, so that's all I used it for here. Sometimes, even that wasn't enough, so I would manually drastically lower the volume of the squeal whenever it appeared during significant pauses in the banter.

I'd say I was about 90 percent successful overall. The squeal is still there in some places where I couldn't get to it without harming the music. One example is the song "Yesterday" by the Supremes. That one was quiet enough for the squeal to show up. But because it was a song and not just banter, I couldn't use noise reduction and other techniques. Luckily, there are only a couple other songs like that.

Otherwise, the recording is surprisingly good for a 1967 bootleg. At times, the vocals microphone would max out, especially when backing vocals were added. So some parts sound a bit rough. But overall, this is a good soundboard quality bootleg. Considering the acts involved, the recording is pretty amazing, in my opinion.

The only other significant problem I had was with the song "Do What You Gotta Do" by Johnny Rivers. The first half and then some was completely missing. As an experiment, I found his studio version from a 1967 album, and I tried filling in the missing section with that. I think it worked out okay, though not perfectly. The fact that it even comes close to matching is an indication of the overall quality of this boot. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in the title.

Now, let me discuss the musical content here. This concert was put on by the Los Angeles radio station KHJ, and they used it as a way to promote themselves and especially their DJ's. I must admit I cut out a lot of what I consider unnecessary DJ chatter between the acts, while keeping all the music. Some of the DJs went on and on way too long. For instance, the DJ who introduced the Seeds took six minutes for the introduction, repeating the fact that he was holding flowers to give the band over and over. I suspect the band wasn't ready, so he was stalling for time. Still, it's painful to hear. I cut those six minutes down to one. I did a lot of editing with the others, cutting things down to just the basic introductions of each act, and getting rid of a lot of the radio station promotion and hype. 

There also was a section in the middle of the Supremes set where Berry Gordy, the head of Motown Records, gave a speech and presented an award. I thought that was somewhat interesting, since Gordy is a famous figure, so I kept most of his speech. But I cut out a lot of that section too, including the entire speech by the person who received the award.

Let's consider the acts involved here. The sheer musical diversity is pretty amazing. Every single act in the concert is interesting to me. Note that the more popular acts came later, with each succeeding act getting more stage time. The first two acts only got 16 minutes each, but the final act, the Supremes, got 48 minutes.

These days, I think people would be most interested to hear Buffalo Springfield's set. Unfortunately, it was only four songs long. But on the plus side, it's historic, because it included the very first public performance of "Mr. Soul," which was on the verge of being released as a single at the time. Even though the Buffalo Springfield set is only 16 minutes long, it's still a gem due to the rarity of live recordings by them with this quality.

The Fifth Dimension were just starting to get popular when this concert happened, which is why they only had a short set at the start of the concert. Their debut album, "Up, Up and Away," wouldn't be released until a couple of months after this concert. They had released a few singles already, but their first really big hit, also "Up, Up and Away," hadn't been released yet either. But they did play it here. I'm not aware of ANY Fifth Dimension bootlegs, and their one live album, simple called "Live," is from 1971, with a very different set list.

Brenda Holloway was a Motown act. She was often ignored by Motown. Consider how she released tons of singles in the 1960s, but was only allowed to release one album, in 1964. At the time of this concert, she hadn't had a hit in two years. But she was promoting her latest single, "Just Look What You've Done," which would prove to be a minor hit (in the Top Twenty of the Soul chart), and should have been a bigger hit. She never released a live album in the 1960s and I'm not aware of any bootlegs by her either.

The Seeds were a garage rock band was a very simple and primitive sound. Their most famous song, "Pushin' Too Hard," only uses two chords, and most of their other songs are just like that, and sound similar to each other. Yet somehow there's charm in their simplicity. The Seeds only had two national hits, "Pushin' Too Hard" and "Can't Seem to Make You Mine," both of them scraping around the bottom of the Top Forty. But they were based in Los Angeles and much more popular there, which explains why they got a more prominent billing and longer set time than some other acts here. The Seeds never released a live album in the 1960s (although there is one studio album with fake crowd noise added, bizarrely). I could only find one bootleg from the 1960s, an Anaheim concert in 1968, but the sound quality of that is a lot poorer than this.

Johnny Rivers was a big star in 1967. He'd had a bunch of big hits, including the self-composed "Poor Side of Town," which was Number One in 1966. His version of the Motown classic "Baby I Need Your Lovin'" was a Number Three hit around the time of this concert, an even bigger hit than the original by the Four Tops. But he was possibly even better known for his series of live albums, which were all good sellers. Between 1964 and 1967, he released no fewer than five live albums! That said, this is probably a better set list than any of those albums, because it contains all of his biggest hits by that point in his career. 

One interesting side note is that Rivers played with an orchestra, and it was conducted in person by none other than Jimmy Webb. Webb would go on to become a famous songwriter, with many classic hits written by him but performed by others. But at the time of this concert he was just starting to find success with his songs. He wrote seven songs on Rivers most recent album at the time, but none of them were hits. However, "Up, Up and Away," played by the Fifth Dimension earlier in the concert, would be the first big hit for him a couple of months later, reaching the Top Ten.

That takes us to the closing act, the Supremes. They were the jewel in the crown for Motown, having hit after hit after hit all through the 1960s. At the time of this concert, the Supremes were promoting their latest single, "The Happening." It would hit Number One a few weeks after this concert. The Supremes did release a few live albums, including one in 1965 and another in 1968. But I'm not aware of any bootlegs by them, so this is an interesting addition.

I believe that at the time of this concert, band member Florence Ballard was having trouble due to alcoholism and depression. As a result, she was missing many concerts. This led to her being replaced by Cindy Birdsong, a member of the Patti LaBelle and the Blue Belles. I believe that Birdsong was on stage here, not Ballard. Ballard returned to the Supremes in May, but performed badly. She was permanently replaced by Birdsong in July.

I'd be curious what people think of this concert, and especially if any of the lingering squeal sound is still bothersome.

By the way, I found a poster for the first KHJ appreciation concert, also at the Hollywood Bowl, on April 2, 1966. Here's the list of acts: Sonny and Cher (who were the main headliners), Donovan, Jan & Dean, Bob Lind, the Knickerbockers, the Mamas & the Papas, the Modern Folk Quartet, Otis Redding, and the Turtles. (Though I hear Jan & Dean didn't play.) That's quite a line-up! I hope a recording of that emerges someday.

This album is two hours and 24 minutes long.

01 talk by Gary Mack (Buffalo Springfield)
02 Pay the Price (Buffalo Springfield)
03 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
04 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Buffalo Springfield)
05 For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
06 Mr. Soul (Buffalo Springfield)
07 talk by Gary Mack (Buffalo Springfield)
08 talk by Johnny Williams (Fifth Dimension)
09 It's Not Unusual (Fifth Dimension)
10 Go Where You Wanna Go (Fifth Dimension)
11 On Broadway (Fifth Dimension)
12 talk (Fifth Dimension)
13 Up, Up and Away (Fifth Dimension)
14 The Beat Goes On (Fifth Dimension)
15 talk by Bobby Tripp (Brenda Holloway)
16 Happy Together - Sunny (Brenda Holloway)
17 talk (Brenda Holloway)
18 Just Look What You've Done (Brenda Holloway)
19 Every Little Bit Hurts (Brenda Holloway)
20 talk by Humble Harve (Seeds)
21 talk (Seeds)
22 Tripmaker (Seeds)
23 talk (Seeds)
24 Pushin' Too Hard (Seeds)
25 talk (Seeds)
26 Mr. Farmer (Seeds)
27 talk (Seeds)
28 Up in Her Room (Seeds)
29 talk (Seeds)
30 Can't Seem to Make You Mine (Seeds)
31 talk by Humble Harve (Seeds)
32 talk by Johnny Mitchell (Johnny Rivers)
33 Seventh Son (Johnny Rivers)
34 California Dreamin' (Johnny Rivers)
35 Mountain of Love (Johnny Rivers)
36 Do What You Gotta Do (Johnny Rivers)
37 The Tracks of My Tears (Johnny Rivers)
38 talk (Johnny Rivers)
39 Baby, I Need Your Lovin' (Johnny Rivers)
40 Memphis, Tennessee (Johnny Rivers)
41 talk (Johnny Rivers)
42 Poor Side of Town (Johnny Rivers)
43 talk (Johnny Rivers)
44 Secret Agent Man (Johnny Rivers)
45 tallk by Don Steele (Supremes)
46 You Keep Me Hangin' On (Supremes)
47 Stop in the Name of Love - Come See about Me - My World Is Empty without You - Baby Love (Supremes)
48 Michelle (Supremes)
49 More [Theme from Mondo Cane] (Supremes)
50 talk (Supremes)
51 Back in My Arms Again (Supremes)
52 talk (Supremes)
53 Love Is Here and Now You're Gone (Supremes)
54 Yesterday (Supremes)
55 You Can't Hurry Love (Supremes)
56 talk (Supremes)
57 talk by Berry Gordy (Supremes)
58 talk (Supremes)
59 The Happening (Supremes)
60 Somewhere (Supremes)
61 I Hear a Symphony (Supremes)
62 talk (Supremes)
63 You Send Me - For Sentimental Reasons - Cupid - Chain Gang - Bring It on Home to Me - Shake (Supremes)
64 talk by Gary Mack (Supremes)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/haPnF512

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/SYOuJD5qrEslLqN/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/bgXf3

I couldn't find any photos of the acts on stage at this concert. However, I did find a promotional poster for the concert, so I decided to use that as the basis of the cover. I made some edits to get everything to fit in the necessary square space and to look nice. I greatly enlarged the title in purple at the top, and I cut out some other text. But all the rest of the text is original and unchanged.

The Wild Honey Orchestra - Tribute to Buffalo Springfield, Alex Theatre, Glendale, CA, 2-17-2018

Here's something a little different, but if you're a fan of the band Buffalo Springfield, I'm sure you'll like it.

The Wild Honey Orchestra is a loose grouping of musicians, mostly based in Los Angeles, who have been putting on a yearly concert to benefit an autism charity since about 2015. Each year, they pick a different musical theme, and they have retro tastes very similar to mine. For instance, they did cover versions of the entire Beatles albums "Revolver" and "Abbey Road" in 2014, then the Beatles' "White Album" in 2015, then Beach Boys music in 2016, Band music in 2017, this one is 2018, Kinks music in 2019, Lovin' Spoonful music in 2020, and Big Star music in 2022. The songs are done by those who generally have had successful careers in music but aren't big stars. The singers are backed by many musicians, often dozens on stage. So calling them an "orchestra" is fitting, even though it's sometimes more like a really big band than an orchestra in the classical music sense.

The big draw in this particular show was the presence of Richie Furay, one of the three key singer-songwriters in Buffalo Springfield. He generally was only on stage for the songs he sang, but he sang about eight of them. Other notables include Mickey Dolenz of the Monkees, Iain Matthews of Fairport Convention, Terry Reid, Syd Straw, Martha Davis of the Motels, Elliot Easton of the Cars, Susan Cowsill of the Cowsills, Carla Olson, Brent Rademaker of Beachwood Sparks, Darian Sahanaja of the Wondermints, the bands Dream Syndicate and the Three O'Clock, and many, many more.

These concerts aren't just thrown together. Each song was carefully rehearsed, with all the different parts well thought out. As a result, even the most complicated songs can sound well done. Give the short and turbulent history of Buffalo Springfield, that means their songs were often done is a style much closer to the studio versions than the guys of Buffalo Springfield ever managed. "Broken Arrow" is a case in point. Even the many sound effects of the studio version were faithfully duplicated here. But the performances are much better than just slavish reproductions. The lead vocalists in particular tended to put their individual styles on each song.

So, if you're a Buffalo Springfield fan, this is kind of a dream concert, with even deep cuts done well. 

I had been aware of these Wild Honey Orchestra concerts for a few years, but I hadn't paid them much attention, because I only came across audience bootlegs that merely sounded decent. I'm posting this because I finally found excellent, professionally recorded versions of each song. The snag is that there's only the music. Other than one story told by Richie Furay before one of the songs, there's virtually no banter here, and even the applause tended to fade out quickly. That's all I've got (in worthy sound quality), so it's all I can post. But in a way perhaps it's for the best, because there's just one solid song after another with little pause.

I've come across recordings of some of the other Wild Honey Orchestra concerts in similar quality, but not all, so I plan on posting those soon as well. If anyone has good versions of the Revolver/Abbey Road show, or the Big Star show, please let me know.

This concert is two hours and three minutes long.

01 Out of My Mind (Bebopalula with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
02 Hung Upside Down (David Goodstein with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
03 Down to the Wire (Syd Straw with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
04 Burned (Stephen McCarthy & Carla Olson with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
05 We'll See (All Day Sucker with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
06 Pay the Price (Brent Rademaker with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
07 Sit Down, I Think I Love You (Darian Sahanaja & Susan Cowsill with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
08 Merry-Go-Round (Chris Price with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
09 Pretty Girl Why (Luther Russell with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
10 Everydays (Cindy Lee Berryhill with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
11 Four Days Gone (Terry Reid with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
12 I Am a Child (Nick Guzman with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
13 Carefree Country Day (Steve Stanley with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
14 talk (Richie Furay with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
15 A Child's Claim to Fame (Richie Furay with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
16 Go and Say Goodbye (Richie Furay with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
17 Kind Woman (Richie Furay with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
18 Expecting to Fly (Claudia Lennear & Rob Laufer with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
19 In the Hour of Not Quite Rain (Our Truth with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
20 Broken Arrow (Iain Matthews & Chris Price with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
21 It's So Hard to Wait (Micky Dolenz with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
22 Sad Memory (Richie Furay with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
23 On the Way Home (Richie Furay with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
24 Rock and Roll Woman (Three O'Clock with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
25 Everybody's Wrong (Martha Davis with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
26 Mr. Soul (Dream Syndicate with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
27 Bluebird (Willie Aron with Elliot Easton & the Wild Honey Orchestra)
28 Uno Mundo (Carla Olson with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
29 Special Care (Claudia Lennear with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
30 Questions (Gary Myrick with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
31 Flying on the Ground Is Wrong (Richie Furay with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
32 Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It (Richie Furay with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
33 Nowadays Even Clancy Can't Sing (Richie Furay with the Wild Honey Orchestra)
34 For What It's Worth (Richie Furay with the Wild Honey Orchestra) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/mk5YQivE

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/2Xsp08VGDMjDHYU/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/fU5tz

For the cover art, I found a photo of the sign out in front of the theater. I put that at the top. I also found some promotional art listing all the musicians who performed, and I put that at the bottom.

Buffalo Springfield - Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, Great Stage Park, Manchester, TN, 6-11-2011

Buffalo Springfield seems like "ancient" musical history to me, something that happened before I was born. So, in my opinion, it's pretty amazing that the band reunited for some concerts in 2010 and 2011. Nothing has ever been officially released from this reunion. There aren't even any great sounding soundboard bootlegs. But there is this one audience bootleg that sounds almost as good as a soundboard.

However, the sound still was a bit lacking to me. So I used the audio program X-Minus to improve it by boosting the lead vocals relative to the instruments for all the songs. I think it sounds noticeably better now. It's hard to tell this isn't a soundboard. I even went through each song and got rid of most of the "woo-hoo" shouts and clapping that took place during the songs.

Note that not all the original members were part of the reunion. Bassist Bruce Palmer died in 2004, and drummer Dewey Martin died in 2009. But the three key members were the singer-songwriters Stephen Stills, Neil Young, and Richie Furay, and they all took part in the reunion, so it was a legit one in my book. It's great they were able to recreate the magic of this band, if only for a short time.

By the way, all the songs are edited, as I explained above, but the song "Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It" has "[Edit]" in the title because I did some extra work on that one. There was a chunk of the song missing, from the middle of the first verse until the middle of the first chorus. Luckily, the first verse was repeated later in the song, so I was able to patch in a fix.

This album is an hour and 29 minutes long.

01 On the Way Home (Buffalo Springfield)
02 Rock and Roll Woman (Buffalo Springfield)
03 Burned (Buffalo Springfield)
04 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
05 A Child's Claim to Fame (Buffalo Springfield)
06 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
07 Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
08 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
09 Go and Say Goodbye (Buffalo Springfield)
10 I Am a Child (Buffalo Springfield)
11 Hot Dusty Road (Buffalo Springfield)
12 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
13 Kind Woman (Buffalo Springfield)
14 Mr. Soul (Buffalo Springfield)
15 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Buffalo Springfield)
16 Bluebird (Buffalo Springfield)
17 Sad Memory (Buffalo Springfield)
18 Broken Arrow (Buffalo Springfield)
19 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
20 For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
21 Rockin' in the Free World (Buffalo Springfield) 

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687669/BUFFLOSPRNGFLD2011_BnnroMsicnArtsFstivl__6-11-2011_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from the exact concert in question. The fancy band name font comes from a concert poster from the same year.

Stephen Stills - Buffalo Springfield Era Acoustic Versions (1966-1968)

Previously, I posted an album of acoustic versions of Neil Young's songs from when he was a member of Buffalo Springfield (1966-1968). That was pretty easy to make, because acoustic versions of the vast majority of those songs exist, mostly thanks to his solo acoustic concerts. Then, yesterday, I posted an album of David Crosby's acoustic demos from 1968.

While I was putting these album together in recent days, I got to thinking: since those guys are two members of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, what about Stephen Stills and Graham Nash? With Nash, I might give it a try someday, but I doubt I have enough solo acoustic material from him from this time, and converting Hollies songs into acoustic versions would be tough. However, I decided I could do something with Stills. The Buffalo Springfield box set has eight acoustic demos he did that could get me part of the way there.

But that was only part way. For the rest, including his most famous Buffalo Springfield songs, I tried the sound editing program Spleeter to remove the bass and drums. This at least gave me something to work with most of the rest of his songs. But there were a couple, "Leave" and "Uno Mundo" where nothing I did sounded good enough for inclusion. So those are left out, but I think I managed to include all the other Stills songs he did with Buffalo Springfield where he sang lead vocals.

These Spleeter edits are far from ideal. Although they removed most of the bass and drums, they often left in other elements, such as backing vocals, piano, keyboards, electric guitar, and the like. That means they may be stripped down some, but they're not solo acoustic versions. Still, I figure they're interesting enough to be worth a listen. 

I tried using the sound editing program X-Minus to strip out the backing vocals, but that rarely worked because the other vocals were so close to the lead vocals. In fact, on a number of songs, Stills essentially did a co-lead vocal with band member Richie Furay. But I did manage to at least lessen the backing vocals on a few songs, such as "Pay the Price" and "Rock and Roll Woman." Mike Solof helped me with X-Minus file conversion in some cases.

"For What It's Worth" is a little different, because that's the only song where I had access to the multitrack recording. That's because it's such a famous song that it got included in the computer game Rock Band, which breaks songs down to each instrument. So that one sounds especially good. But even with that one, I couldn't get rid of the backing vocals entirely.

To get the best possible sound, I enlisted the help of musical friend MZ. He improved the equalization of all the songs. The one song he and I had the most trouble with was "Pretty Girl Why." There is what MZ called a "strange, low breathing sound" going through the whole song. I found two original versions of this song, and both of them had it. I think it's just some weird musical effect that's meant to be there, and it sounds good in the full version, but if you strip away many of the other instruments, it sounds weird. I used some editing tricks to lessen it, but it's still there in spots. 

This album has some sonic issues here and there. But consider that Stills, unlike Neil Young, has abandoned most of these songs after he left Buffalo Springfield, so acoustic versions simply don't exist in any form for most of them. This, at least, is an approximation, and hopefully gives you a different way to appreciate his many quality songs he did during this time period.

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 For What It's Worth [Stripped Mix] (Buffalo Springfield)
02 Go and Say Goodbye [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
03 Hot Dusty Roads [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
04 Sit Down, I Think I Love You [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
05 Pay the Price [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
06 Come On [Demo] [Edit] (Stephen Stills)
07 Baby Don't Scold Me [Demo] (Stephen Stills & Richie Furay)
08 Hello, I've Returned [Demo] [Edit] (Stephen Stills)
09 Neighbor Don't You Worry [Demo] (Stephen Stills & Richie Furay)
10 We'll See [Demo] (Stephen Stills & Richie Furay)
11 Bluebird [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
12 Rock and Roll Woman [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
13 Everydays [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
14 So You've Got a Lover [Demo] (Stephen Stills)
15 Hung Upside Down [Demo] (Stephen Stills)
16 My Angel [Demo] (Stephen Stills)
17 49 Reasons [49 Bye-Byes] [Demo] (Stephen Stills)
18 Four Days Gone [Demo] (Stephen Stills)
19 Pretty Girl Why [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
20 Special Care [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
21 Questions [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/K9SES8ve

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/BcsxrPdCDJZ9OU1/file

For the album cover, I found a good photo of Stills that dates to 1967, in the middle of his time as part of Buffalo Springfield. In March 2025, I updated the image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Neil Young - Folksinger II (Acoustic Buffalo Springfield Demos) (1966-1968)

Some time back, I posted a Neil Young album called "Folksinger" that mostly consists of acoustic demos he recorded in 1965. I recently decided it would make sense to make another album consisting of acoustic versions of the songs he did while a member of Buffalo Springfield. I've already posted two albums of Buffalo Springfield demos, and many of the exact same performances are on those albums. But some here are not, and anyway, I think it makes for an interesting listen to hear all these versions together.

When I put this together, I removed five songs from the "Folksinger" album that fit better here. So if you have that, I suggest you get the latest version to avoid duplication of those songs. That said, three songs from that album ARE duplicated here - "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing," "Flying on the Ground Is Wrong," and "There Goes My Babe" - because these are different performances. I figure the first two especially are too important as Buffalo Springfield songs not to be included.

The songs are arranged in rough chronological order from when they were first done by Young (with or without Buffalo Springfield) at the time. All the versions are from the 1960s, but some are from a bit later. For instance, the song "Down to the Wire" was played in public by Young only one time in his long career, in a solo acoustic version in 1969. So I've included that, but with other 1966 songs, since that's when Buffalo Springfield recorded their version. Also, the best acoustic version of "Flying on the Ground Is Wrong" I could find is from another 1969 concert, so I've used that, but also put it in with other 1966 songs. I also used a lot of live versions from 1968. (But for all the live versions, I removed the audience noise to make them sound like acoustic demos.)

This year, 2021, I've gained new sound editing capabilities thanks to the new program Spleeter. I've used that here to create mostly acoustic versions of the songs "Sell Out" and "Burned." The sound quality isn't great, since Spleeter can only do so much in removing the drums and bass, but I figure it's good enough for inclusion. Note that these the only actual Buffalo Springfield recordings here. There aren't more because Young's unusual voice was considered non-commercial at the time, so he didn't get to sing lead vocals in the band on many songs.

Thus, a few songs he did during this time period aren't represented here, because there's nothing close to an acoustic version existing, and often no version with him singing lead at all. Those songs are: "Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It," "Whatever Happened to Saturday Night," and "It's So Hard to Wait." (That last one was co-written by Young and Richie Furay.)

As I said above, I'm not totally happy with the versions of "Sell Out" and "Burned" I created with Spleeter. But I figure especially with "Burned," it's hard to have a collection of Young's songs with the band without that one. Also, we're unlikely to ever hear an acoustic version, since Young never played the song in concert until 2009, and that was with a full band, with his voice significantly changed. This version has a lot of backing vocals and other instruments, but it does sound interesting, in my opinion, without the bass and drums. Although note there are two short breaks with just bass guitar. I kept the bass for those bits, because it sounded weird having silence instead.

Also, this version of "Sell Out" is almost a minute longer than the only officially released version on the "Buffalo Springfield" box set. That's because Young didn't like some sections where he just sang "la la's" instead of words, and edited them out. But a bootleg version with the "la's" is available, so I edited those bits back into the released version, before using Spleeter on it.

Note that "Down, Down, Down" later became one section of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song "Country Girl."

When Young released his "Archives, Volume 1" box set in 2009, he posted some extra performances that didn't make the cut on his website. I've used four of those here: "Runaround Babe," "High School Graduation," "Expecting to Fly," and "Broken Arrow." I've included them here to help bring these rarities more to light. I probably would have used a different version of "Expecting to Fly" since this one has double vocals, and I'd prefer single vocals for an acoustic album, but this version is fine, and like I said, rare.

There are two bonus tracks. There's nothing wrong with them in terms of sound quality. The reason they're bonus tracks is because they appeared on his 1969 solo albums. I plan on making all-acoustic versions of those albums, so you might not want them here and also on those albums.

This album is 45 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks.

01 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Neil Young)
02 Flying on the Ground Is Wrong (Neil Young)
03 Out of My Mind (Neil Young)
04 Down to the Wire (Neil Young)
05 Burned [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
06 Down, Down, Down (Neil Young)
07 There Goes My Babe (Neil Young)
08 One More Sign (Neil Young)
09 Runaround Babe (Neil Young)
10 Sell Out [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
11 High School Graduation (Neil Young)
12 Mr. Soul (Neil Young)
13 Expecting to Fly (Neil Young)
14 Broken Arrow (Neil Young)
15 On the Way Home (Neil Young)
16 I Am a Child (Neil Young)

Round and Round (Neil Young)
The Old Laughing Lady (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696653/NELYNG1966-1968_FolksingrIIAcoustcBuffloSprngfieldDmos_atse.zip.html

The photo of Neil Young dates to 1967. I don't know the details beyond that.

Buffalo Springfield - Market Hall, Dallas, TX, 4-20-1968

Last week or thereabouts, I posted a Buffalo Springfield concert from 1967. (it's popularly known as the "Teen and Twenty Club" show, but as I explain in that post, I believe it actually took place at the "Salty Cellar.") In that post, I lamented the lack of much recorded live Buffalo Springfield in quality sound. But in addition to that concert, there's this one. That one was an audience bootleg recorded right on stage with a reel-to-reel, and this is an actual soundboard bootleg. These are two the concerts of theirs I feel have the sound quality that makes them worthy of repeated listens.

This concert, recorded at Market Hall in Dallas, Texas, in April 1968, is as good as most soundboard recordings from that era. The one snag though is that it's a rather short show, at only 29 minutes. That's a refection of the fact that Buffalo Springfield simply weren't that popular back in those years, despite having a few hit singles, so they almost always had to perform short opening sets for bigger acts. This is almost certainly their full set from that day.

Because it's so short, I've added in two extra songs at the front. These two were recorded about a month later, in Long Beach, California, on May 5, 1968. It turns out that Long Beach concert was the very last one the band ever did (unless you could reunions decades later). The Long Beach bootleg has fairly decent sound, but it gets worse in many places, plus, the set list is almost exactly the same as the Dallas show. I've included the two songs that were only played at Long Beach, "Good Time Boy" and "Mr. Soul." "Good Time Boy" has pretty good sound, about the same as the Dallas show, but "Mr. Soul" has some significant sound issues that plague most of the rest of the Long Beach recording.

For both the Long Beach and Dallas recordings, I put the between-song banter on their own tracks, and also cut out most of the aimless guitar tuning and noodling. I also boosted the talking, since that was really low in the mix. I especially like Neil Young's sardonic comment right before "Rock and Roll Woman": "One more hit record, and we won't have to nail our equipment together before we start."

Most of the songs are the same as the ones they played at the Salty Cellar in 1967. But they do play two different ones: "A Child's Claim to Fame" and "Uno Mundo." But there are lots of differences in the performances, especially on the solos. That's particularly true on "Bluebird," which stretches to 12 minutes this time.

Oh, and one very nice aspect to this recording is that Neil Young appears on all of it, whereas he's missing for all but three of the songs on the Salty Cellar recording. (See the blog post there for an explanation.)

By the way, there's another quality live recording of this band at the Hollywood Bowl in 1967. You can find it on YouTube. The problem with that one is that the microphone they were using emitted a high-pitched whine for the entire duration of the show. That makes it unlistenable for me. It seems to me that's a problem that could be fixed with audio software these days, but it's beyond my limited abilities. If anyone has the skills to tackle that, please let me know.

01 Good Time Boy (Buffalo Springfield)
02 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
03 Mr. Soul (Buffalo Springfield)
04 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
05 Rock and Roll Woman (Buffalo Springfield)
06 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
07 A Child's Claim to Fame (Buffalo Springfield)
08 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
09 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Buffalo Springfield)
10 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
11 Uno Mundo (Buffalo Springfield)
12 For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
13 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
14 Bluebird (Buffalo Springfield)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15276001/BuffaloS_1968_MarketHllDallasTX__4-20-1968_atse.zip.html

The photo for the cover art comes from a concert in Salt Lake City in March 1968. The band name text and colors comes from a November 1967 concert poster. I added the black behind the lettering to raise it up.

Buffalo Springfield - The Teen and Twenty Club, Huntington Beach, CA, 8-11-1967

It's a real shame that no live Buffalo Springfield album has ever been released. I think they're a great band, and it's said they put on a killer live show. Even the bootlegs that exist are very few, and generally suffer from poor sound quality. Almost none of them are worth listening to more than once, in my opinion.

But this bootleg is a very big exception. True, it's an audience recording. There are no good soundboards of the band, except for their 1967 Monterey Pop Festival performance (officially released as part of a box set for that concert), but that's less than 20 minutes long, and Neil Young wasn't there. This is the best bootleg of them by a mile. It turns out that some fan asked the band if they could set up a reel-to-reel recorder right on the stage, and they were granted permission. So, while it's not a soundboard, it's far better than the usual audience bootlegs of that era.

The one disappointment about this recording though is that Neil Young isn't on much of it. He had a habit of quitting the band and rejoining. (His above-mentioned Monterey Pop Festival absence is another example of that.) The August 11, 1967 concert happens to have taken place during one of the many times he'd quit. Young was replaced by guitarist Doug Hastings for this show.

Still, hearing the band without Young has some silver linings. It means more chances for everyone else in the band to shine, especially singer-songwriters Stephen Stills and Richie Furay.  One even gets to hear Stills sing Young's "Mr. Soul," which he never did on record.

I've looked over the set lists of the band, and the vast majority of the time, they played a short set as an opening act. So we're lucky to get an unusually long performance by them. (The recording is an hour and 16 minutes long.) They played two sets, with "Bluebird" the end of the first set.

There's a lot of fun talking between songs. It's clear the band members were having a good time. There also are some interesting song selections. "Nobody's Fool" is a Richie Furay song that was never recorded by the band. It would later appear on Poco's first album. And other than this concert, there are no recordings of the band playing Wilson Pickett's classic soul hit "In the Midnight Hour," with a rare lead vocal by drummer Dewey Martin.

I've edited down some of the dead air between songs. Especially in the second set, there was very little talking between songs, but a fair amount of boring guitar tuning. I got rid of most of that. I didn't remove any instances of them actually talking.

Neil Young rejoined the band very next day, August 12th, and they played another concert at the same venue with him. For some reason, there is a recording of only three songs that appear to come from that second evening, with the same sound quality: "Go and Say Goodbye," Mr. Soul," and "Bluebird." Thus I've added them to the very end. Even though they're all duplicates of songs earlier on this album, I feel it's worth it having both versions, due to the rarity of good live recordings by this band, as well as the presence of Young. We know for sure Young is there on those three songs, because he can be heard talking between songs, and he also sings (especially on "Mr. Soul") and plays lead guitar in his distinctive style.

There were some problems with these three songs as well, in terms of volume. The overall volume tended to rise and fall for no apparent reason, and the volume of the two stereo tracks also changed in relation to each other. I did what I could to fix these problems. It so happens the recording has fairly wide stereo separation, with most of the vocals on just one channel. I also used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost the lead vocals relative to the instruments. As a result, the vocals in particular sound clearer than they ever were before.

In conclusion, don't be afraid of the sound quality issue. Yes, the sound is a bit rough. But it's pretty much this or no live Buffalo Springfield recordings at all. Personally, I think it sounds just fine. It's actually better than many soundboards from that era.

01 Pay the Price (Buffalo Springfield)
02 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
03 Nobody's Fool (Buffalo Springfield)
04 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Buffalo Springfield)
05 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
06 Rock and Roll Woman (Buffalo Springfield)
07 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
08 My Kind of Love (Buffalo Springfield)
09 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
10 For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
11 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
12 Bluebird (Buffalo Springfield)
13 Mr. Soul (Buffalo Springfield)
14 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
15 Go and Say Goodbye (Buffalo Springfield)
16 Hung Upside Down (Buffalo Springfield)
17 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
18 In the Midnight Hour (Buffalo Springfield)
19 Do I Have to Come Right Out and Say It (Buffalo Springfield)
20 Leave (Buffalo Springfield)
21 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
22 Go and Say Goodbye (Buffalo Springfield)
23 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
24 Mr. Soul (Buffalo Springfield)
25 Bluebird (Buffalo Springfield)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PWsSANgx

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/HQiN0Iq3gI3vJ1B/file

I found some really cool Buffalo Springfield artwork that looks like a concert poster from that time period, but I'm guessing was actually done much later. Regardless, I liked that so much that I used it for the band name and the framing around a central photo. I had to do some tweaking and cropping to get it to fit the square shape.

For that center photo, I found a photo of the band playing at a small club called the Cellar in Arlington Heights, Illinois, in 1967. It's a low res photo, but I think it does a good job of showing what they probably looked like during this concert. I can only imagine the "Salty Cellar" was a similarly small venue.

Buffalo Springfield - Demos (1966-1968)

To finish off what I was talking about with Buffalo Springfield, here are the rest of the band's acoustic demos. My last post was an album of all the unique demos the band did, meaning songs that didn't appear in any other form elsewhere. These are all the demos that were done elsewhere.

These songs appear to be slightly more realized in the sense that I didn't have to edit any of the songs to extend them, as I did with three songs in the unique demos album. However, like that album, I edited out any talking before or after the songs. As I said with the last album, none of that studio chatter was interesting, usually just the announcing of what take it was, or that recording was starting.

Everything here comes from the 2001 Buffalo Springfield box set this time around. There are some other alternates of full band versions, and live versions, and so on, but this is the last of the demos. It makes for a 40-minute long album.

01 There Goes My Babe [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
02 Baby Don't Scold Me [Stephen Stills & Richie Furay Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
03 Out of My Mind [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
04 Neighbor Don't You Worry [Stephen Stills & Richie Furay Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
05 Flying on the Ground Is Wrong [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
06 We'll See [Stephen Stills & Richie Furay Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
07 Down, Down, Down [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
08 Sad Memory [Richie Furay Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
09 Runaround Babe [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
10 Hung Upside Down [Stephen Stills Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
11 Broken Arrow [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
12 Nobody's Fool [Richie Furay Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
13 Expecting to Fly [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
14 Four Days Gone [Stephen Stills Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15904593/BuffaloS_1966-1968_Dmos_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used a concert poster from 1967. However, the poster was stretched vertically, so I had to make some compromises to fit it in a square space. Mainly, there was a picture of some kind of giant industrial machine in the middle, and I could only show a part of it.

Buffalo Springfield - Unique Demos (1966-1968)

I'm attempting to sort out all of Buffalo Springfield's stray tracks. It turns out they cut many acoustic demos that wound up on the 2001 box set (just titled "Buffalo Springfield"). About half of those demos are of songs done by the full band elsewhere, and about half are songs that apparently only were recorded in that demo form. This is the album of all of those unique demos.

Nearly everything here comes from the box set. I could have included a bunch of Neil Young demos from his "Archives" box set that were done in 1965, not long before Buffalo Springfield was formed. But I have other plans for an album of just those demos.

Similarly, I could have included some Stephen Stills songs from his "Just Roll Tape" album, which were recorded in early 1968. But that's arguably after Buffalo Springfield broke up. (It's hard to say when that happened, since the band was pretty much breaking up over and over ever since it was formed, and it had a long decline of fading away. The band's last concert was in May 1968, a month after "Just Roll Tape" was recorded, but Young was barely involved with the band by then.) However, I didn't include those either, because I think the "Just Roll Tape" is a strong album on its own, so there's no need to repeat material from that here.

The only song I added that's not on the box set is Stills doing a demo of "49 Reasons," an early version of the song "49 Bye-Byes" that would appear on the first Crosby, Stills and Nash album in 1969. This demo was made in early 1968 too, around the same time as "Just Roll Tape," but I'm including it here since it doesn't have a good home in my music collection elsewhere. (A few months later, Stills would do another demo of the same song, but with David Crosby taking part as well.)

If you've been following this blog closely, you may have noticed that I'm not shy about editing songs if I feel it will improve the song. I've made significant edits to four songs here, and all for the same reason. The four songs, "Come On," "Can't Keep Me Down," "I'm Your Kind of Guy," and "Words I Must Say," were all unusually short, about one minute long each. Some songs are meant to be that short, but in these cases I feel that's not true.

In fact, at the end of "Words I Must Say" one can hear the songwriter, Richie Furay, mutter, "There's a whole bunch of instruments. Then it repeats. That's all there is to the song." So I did just what he intended, and repeated the song, making a one-minute long song into a two-minute long song. But I don't mean I simply have the song play twice. I had to carefully edit the music so the guitar strumming never stops, and the first half seamlessly goes into the second half.

I did very similar things with "Come On," "I'm Your Kind of Guy," and "Can't Keep Me Down." Generally speaking, I repeated a verse and chorus at the end. In all cases, that turned a one-minute long song into a two-minute long one. I feel that turned song fragments into what sounds like full songs, making for a more satisfying listening experience. (Even after my edit, "I'm Your Kind of Guy" still ended up only one minute and forty second long.) If you don't like this sort of editing, you can still go back to the original versions found on the box set.

Oh, I also did a little more editing in that I cut out any talking before or after the demos. The makers of the box set generally kept all the studio talking in, but I didn't find any of it that interesting. Generally, it would be the engineer saying "Take one" or the like. If these had actually been released on album in the 1960s, I'm sure all of those little talking bits would have been removed.

Finally, I added two bonus tracks. The reason they're bonus tracks is because they're way out of time from the rest of the album. But I'm including them because I don't have any better place to put them in my music collection, and I'll bet that's the same for you. They are "Travelin'" a Stills demo dating all the way from 1962, and "High Flying Bird," just about the only song sung by Stills when he was briefly a part of the Au Go Go Singers folk group in 1964. Both songs come from Stills' box set "Carry On."

Neil Young has lots of recorded music from before his Buffalo Springfield days, most of which ended up on his "Archives" box set, but with Stills, as far as I know, only these two songs have been released. Musically, they fit in well with the rest of the demos on this album, although his voice sounds different, especially on the 1962 demo.

01 Come On [Stephen Stills Demo] [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
02 I'm Your Kind of Guy [Neil Young Demo] [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
03 Can't Keep Me Down [Richie Furay Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
04 Hello, I've Returned [Stephen Stills Demo] [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
05 High School Graduation [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
06 One More Sign [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
07 So You've Got a Lover [Stephen Stills Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
08 Round and Round and Round [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
09 Words I Must Say [Richie Furay Demo] [Edit] (Buffalo Springfield)
10 The Rent Is Always Due [Early Version of 'I Am a Child'] [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
11 My Angel [Stephen Stills Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
12 The Old Laughing Lady [Neil Young Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)
13 49 Reasons [49 Bye-Byes] [Stephen Stills Demo] (Buffalo Springfield)

High Flying Bird (Stephen Stills & the Au Go Go Singers)
Travelin' [Demo] (Stephen Stills)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17362444/BUFFLOSPRNGFLD1966-1968UniqueDmos_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Pc33hoh2

I made the cover art based on a 1968 poster by David Schiller. The poster is rectangular, so I had to make some big changes to fit it into a square space. That included shrinking and widening the tractor in the middle so it would fit within the rest. I also changed the background color from tan to light purple and added in the album title.

Buffalo Springfield - Stampede - Non-Album Tracks (1965-1968)

"Stampede" by Buffalo Springfield is one of those great lost albums that everyone likes to speculate about. Various people have put together their own versions of what "Stampede" would have sounded like. Soniclovenoize at his Albums that Never Were blog has put together a particularly good one, which you can find here:

https://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/2016/07/buffalo-springfield-stampede.html

However, I wanted to go in a different direction. Had "Stampede" really been released in mid-1967, as planned, it would have consisted of lots of songs that ended up on "Buffalo Springfield Again," plus "For What's It's Worth." I'm not that interested in an album that consists mostly of songs i have elsewhere, just in a different configuration. Instead, my goal here was to gather up all the full band Buffalo Springfield songs that didn't make it onto any of their three albums released in the 1960s. Luckily, there's exactly one album's worth of such material.

Nearly all the songs here come from the great 2001 Buffalo Springfield box set, just called "Buffalo Springfield." But that box set had some surprising omissions, so I had to take a few songs from elsewhere. The version of "Down to the Wire" with Neil Young on vocals surprisingly only appears on Young's "Decade" compilation. (The box set has a version with Stephen Stills doing the lead vocals, but I think Young should sing it since he wrote it.) "Sell Out" and "Slowly Burning" came out on Young's "Archives" box set.

I originally put the instrumental "Slowly Burning" on an album of Young's stray tracks from the late 1960s and early 1970s. But upon further reflection, I'm considering it a Buffalo Springfield song and moving it here instead. It's a tricky case, since it's performed by Young and a bunch of studio musicians, with no other members of Buffalo Springfield on it. But virtually the same group of musicians played on "Expecting to Fly" and "Broken Arrow," and those are considered Buffalo Springfield songs. The truth is, Young started a solo album at that time, but gave up and handed those songs over to Buffalo Springfield instead. So "Slowly Burning" should be treated the same, especially as it was done in 1967, the same as those other two songs.

Finally, "Nobody's Fool" is a Buffalo Springfield song that I'll bet most people overlook. A demo of the song was released on the box set. However, a live version was done by the band in a 1967 concert (at the Teen and Twenty Club in Huntington Beach, California - the best live bootleg of the band, by far). I took that recording and removed the audience clapping to make it a de facto studio track.

If you add up all the songs here, it makes for a 38 minute long album, which is longer than any of the three studio albums released by the band. It's all great, must-have stuff.

On top of that, I've added a three bonus tracks. One is the nine-minute long version of "Bluebird." That was released on a 1973 greatest hits compilation. But one or more of the band members don't like it, so it wasn't included on the box set. It's great though, so I'm including it here to help rescue it from obscurity. It's only a bonus track since it's not a totally unique song, like all the others on this album.

The second bonus track is "In the Midnight Hour." It comes from the same 1967 concert as "Nobody's Fool." However, I'm only adding it as a bonus track for two reasons. One is that it's sung by drummer Dewey Martin, so it doesn't sound much like a song by the band. The other is that it's a generic cover of the big soul hit by Wilson Pickett. Frankly, it's a pretty forgettable version that I don't think adds much to the band's legacy. So you can keep it or not.

The third and last bonus track is "Baby, Don't Scold Me." It was on the original version of the band's self-titled first album released in late 1966, but it was replaced on that album by the big hit "For What It's Worth" on versions of the album starting in early 1967. In my musical collection, I have both of those songs on that album. But just in case you didn't do that, I've included it here so you can add it to that album or to this one.

This includes a very rare unreleased song called "Raga III." It's an instrumental that's really just a long guitar jam, but it's a good one. Apparently it was recorded at a club, but I hear no hint of any audience whatsoever, so I'm guessing it was recorded during a soundcheck or rehearsal.

By the way, you may have noticed that I didn't include any of the many acoustic demos on the box set, even though many of those are also unique songs not done elsewhere. That's because I have two future albums to post here covering those. Between the three albums I plan on posting, I think it makes for a much more logical ordering of the band's songs than the way they were presented on the box set.

01 Down to the Wire (Buffalo Springfield)
02 Neighbor Don't You Worry (Buffalo Springfield)
03 Kahuna Sunset [Instrumental] (Buffalo Springfield)
04 Down, Down, Down (Buffalo Springfield)
05 Buffalo Stomp [Raga] [Instrumental] (Buffalo Springfield)
06 Nobody's Fool (Buffalo Springfield)
07 Sell Out (Buffalo Springfield)
08 We'll See (Buffalo Springfield)
09 Slowly Burning [Instrumental] (Buffalo Springfield)
10 My Kind of Love (Buffalo Springfield)
11 No Sun Today (Buffalo Springfield)
12 Whatever Happened to Saturday Night (Buffalo Springfield)
13 Falcon Lake [Ash on the Floor] [Instrumental] (Buffalo Springfield)
14 What a Day (Buffalo Springfield)
15 Raga III [Instrumental] (Buffalo Springfield)

Baby, Don't Scold Me (Buffalo Springfield)
Bluebird [Extended Version] (Buffalo Springfield)
In the Midnight Hour (Buffalo Springfield)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17362442/BUFFLOSPRNGFLD1966-1968Stmpede_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/f1akThJB

Although there never was an officially finalized track list for the "Stampede" album, the band did get together to take a photo for the cover. That cover is shown here. (One band member, Bruce Palmer, wasn't there for the photo since he'd been deported to Canada at the time, so a double stands in for him with a big hat over his head at the bottom of the photo.)

I used the Krea AI program to sharpen it up a bit.