Dave Mason - Mississippi Riverbank Club, Minneapolis, MN, 7-25-1986

Recently, a commenter named nytvf pointed out a Dave Mason concert on YouTube, and suggested I post that on my blog. I checked out the link, and I was impressed by the concert. It's an acoustic concert with great sound quality, but somehow it seems to only exist as that one YouTube. Well, until now, that is. Here it is converted by me into mp3s. Thanks to nytvf for the suggestion. (I'm always open to suggestions.)

Mason had commercial and critical success, highlighted by two big hits, "Only You Know and I Know" in 1970, and "We Just Disagree" in 1977. But his commercial fortunes went way down in the 1980s. He didn't even release a new studio album between 1980 and 1987. This concert happened near the end of that time. Pretty much all the songs he performed were songs he wrote in the 1960s or 1970s, or covers of classic songs. But while he didn't seem to be very creative with new songs during this time period, his performing skills were still a good as ever.

Mason played guitar, and was backed up by only one other person, Jim Krueger, also on guitar (and backing vocals). That's worth noting because Kreuger also wrote a couple of the songs performed here, "The Word" and "We Just Disagree." Kreuger was a member of Mason's band since the mid-1970s.

The one thing that surprises me here is that it seems Mason didn't play "Only You Know and I Know," which I would guess is the second best known song he's written, behind "Feelin' Alright." (Perhaps there was more to this concert that what's on the recording, I don't know.) 

Anyway, this previously obscure recording is one of the best live recordings of his music, in my opinion. The music is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. I would guess it either has to be a soundboard or an FM radio broadcast.  

This album is an hour and 17 minutes long.

01 Feelin' Alright (Dave Mason)
02 World in Changes (Dave Mason)
03 talk (Dave Mason)
04 Every Woman (Dave Mason)
05 talk (Dave Mason)
06 Sad and Deep as You (Dave Mason)
07 That's Alright Mama [Instrumental Version] (Dave Mason)
08 talk (Dave Mason)
09 The Words (Dave Mason)
10 Not Fade Away (Dave Mason)
11 talk (Dave Mason)
12 Let It Go, Let It Flow (Dave Mason)
13 talk (Dave Mason)
14 Shouldn't Have Took More than You Gave - Dear Prudence (Dave Mason)
15 talk (Dave Mason)
16 Bird on the Wind (Dave Mason)
17 talk (Dave Mason)
18 We Just Disagree (Dave Mason)
19 talk (Dave Mason)
20 Maybe (Dave Mason)
21 talk (Dave Mason)
22 Dust My Blues (Dave Mason)
23 talk (Dave Mason)
24 All Shook Up (Dave Mason)
25 Bring It on Home to Me (Dave Mason)
26 Dear Mr. Fantasy (Dave Mason)
27 talk (Dave Mason)
28 All Along the Watchtower (Dave Mason)
29 talk (Dave Mason)
30 Take It to the Limit (Dave Mason)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vCDHvuqf

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/1SiXN82PhZRd9jK/file 

The cover photo is from 1981. You can see a second guitarist behind Mason's guitar. I assume that's Jim Krueger. But you can only see part of his head and some of his guitar.

Various Artists - Peace Sunday, Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA, 6-6-1982, Part 2: Timothy B. Schmidt & Don Felder, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Stephen Stills & Dave Mason, and Taj Mahal

Here's the second out of five albums that make up the "Peace Sunday" concert in 1982.

If you want a full explanation of what the concert was about, please read my write-up for Part 1. In that, I also explained about the sound quality issue. In short, the only known source for the whole concert is an audience bootleg. It didn't sound very good, so this concert recording hasn't been shared that much. But I could tell there was potential there, if I could get rid of most of the much. As I explained in detail in my write-up, I think I did get rid of most of it. It still doesn't have excellent sound, but it's pretty good, and worthy of being posted at my blog, where I have pretty high sound quality standards.

Now, switching to the music here, most of this Part 2 section is dominated by Crosby, Stills and Nash (CSN). Graham Nash already sang a song on his own in Part 1. Weirdly though, only two songs were performed by CSN here. Then Stephen Stills stayed on stage and performed three more songs on his own (with a back-up band), and then two more with Dave Mason joining in. (However, Mason could mostly be heard helping with lead guitar, not singing lead vocals.) The two songs with Mason weren't ones that Stills usually did with CSN. But the other three he did solo definitely were CSN standards. I would guess that CSN was going through tough times in the early 1980s, mainly due to David Crosby's excessive drug use. So Stills probably was more interested in his solo career. 

On a different note, the Eagles broke up around 1980. But two members of the Eagles, Timothy B. Schmidt and Don Felder, sang an Eagles hit, "I Can't Tell You Why." Most Eagles songs were written and sung by other band members, but that was one that was mainly written and sung by Schmidt.

This album is 49 minutes long. 

By the way, note that the track list numbering picks up where Part 1 left off. That way, you can easily listen to all of the songs from the entire concert in a row if you want to. 

17 talk (Graham Nash)
18 I Can't Tell You Why (Timothy B. Schmidt with Don Felder)
19 talk (Graham Nash)
20 Long Time Coming (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
21 Chicago (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
22 talk (emcee)
23 Love the One You're With (Stephen Stills)
24 For What It's Worth (Stephen Stills)
25 Dark Star (Stephen Stills)
26 talk (Stephen Stills)
27 Hoochie Coochie Man (Stephen Stills & Dave Mason)
28 Rocky Mountain Way (Stephen Stills & Dave Mason)
29 talk (emcee)
30 talk (Taj Mahal)
31 Going Up to the Country, Paint My Mailbox Blue (Taj Mahal)
32 Stagger Lee (Taj Mahal)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2P8yiZNv

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/GHuHYJqbFPuA5TV/file

The cover photo of CSN is from this exact concert.

Dave Mason - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 2-7-1975

Here's another album from the "Midnight Special" TV show. This time, it's a concert by Dave Mason, formerly of the band Traffic.

Most of the album is from an episode of the show broadcast in early 1975. (Note for all of these episodes, the recording date probably was a bit earlier.) The other musical acts in the show were the Kiki Dee Band, the Average White Band, and the Crusaders. I didn't include any of those here, but perhaps one or more of them will show up on a future album where they fit better.

However, the last two songs are from a different source. That's another episode of the show, broadcast on December 30, 1977. In the meantime, he'd had a big hit with "We Just Disagree," so that's one of the two songs he played at that time.

This bootleg recording has excellent sound overall. As usual for this series, I started with the YouTube video, converted it to audio, and broke it into mp3s. There was a problem with the song "Feelin' Alright," however. I'm learning that this show often ended in the middle of a song, and that was the case here. Only the first two minutes of the song were actually from the show. So I found a performance on a different TV show from the same era, and used that to finish it off. (I'm not sure, but it's probably from the "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert" TV show in 1973.) That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in its title.  

This album is 44 minutes long. 

01 World in Changes (Dave Mason)
02 Bring It on Home to Me (Dave Mason)
03 All Along the Watchtower (Dave Mason)
04 Every Woman (Dave Mason)
05 You Can't Take It When You Go (Dave Mason)
06 Only You Know and I Know (Dave Mason)
07 Lucille (Dave Mason)
08 talk (Dave Mason)
09 Feelin' Alright [Edit] (Dave Mason)
10 Let It Go, Let It Flow (Dave Mason)
11 We Just Disagree (Dave Mason)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/crSBFjAC

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/9nEeTLqxLl5oNLS/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from this exact concert.

Dave Mason / Mason, Capaldi, Wood & Frog - World in Changes - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1970)

Have you ever heard of Mason, Capaldi, Wood & Frog (MCWF)? Probably not, I'd imagine. I'll explain about this band in detail below, but the short explanation is that it was a 1969 version of Traffic, except one that was led by Dave Mason, and without Steve Winwood. As far as I know, nobody has ever collected all of the few recordings of MCWF that exist, either officially or on bootleg, so I'm psyched to be presenting this for the first time. If you like the music of Traffic and/or Dave Mason, you should like this.

Dave Mason was in Traffic from the band's beginning in mid-1967 until when it broke up for the first time in late 1968. But it seems that he and Steve Winwood didn't get along that well. He left the group for a few months in early 1968, but returned in time to play a key role with the band's second album, simply called "Traffic." However, Winwood felt that Mason's style of music, more poppy and less jazzy, didn't fit in with where he wanted Traffic to go. Winwood led the effort to kick Mason out of Traffic, and apparently the two other band members (Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood) agreed.

But then something very strange happened. Not long after kicking Mason out of the group, Winwood left the band at the start of 1969 and joined the "supergroup" Blind Faith with Eric Clapton instead. Traffic then ceased to exist. But almost immediately, Mason hooked back up with the other two band members, Capaldi and Wood, and created a new band. They added a keyboard player, Wynder K. Frog, to help fill the void of not having Winwood's keyboard playing (though nobody could replace Winwood's incredible vocals).

The new band began playing concerts, with an emphasis on Mason's songs from Traffic as well as new songs he'd written. The band was well received, as they were widely seen as Traffic reborn, only with a new name. However, the band members didn't get along well with each other and didn't feel a musical chemistry. (I imagine the fact that the band was led by Mason, despite the fact that he had just been fired by the others a month or two earlier, didn't make for great chemistry!) Plus, apparently, they were all doing a lot of drugs and didn't feel that motivated. So after just three months together, the band broke up.

Mason went on to have a long solo career, starting with his acclaimed and popular 1970 album "Alone Together." Capaldi and Wood got back together with Winwood after Blind Faith broke up, and returned with the acclaimed and popular Traffic album "John Barleycorn" in 1970. Traffic stayed together for a few more years, though without Mason, though Mason did rejoin the band in mid-1971, just long enough to take part in recording the live Traffic album "Welcome to the Canteen." Frog, despite being a talented keyboard player, returned to musical obscurity.

MCWF would have left no recorded musical legacy whatsoever except for the fact that they played live on the BBC a couple of times in February 1969, and two of these songs were officially released on an obscure box set focused on the music of Traffic member Chris Wood called "Evening Blue." Plus, two MCWF instrumental studio recordings highlighting Wood's saxophone and flute soloing made it onto that box set too.

Additionally, three more songs MCWF performed at the BBC were recorded on bootleg. (A few more songs they played at the BBC appear to have been lost.) When I found a bootleg of those three songs, I discovered that the volume wobbled, regularly alternating between loud and quiet. So I did some editing in a music program to try to level out the volume. I think it sounds a lot better now. These bootleg recordings don't sound as good as the officially released songs, but they're good enough.

As for the MCWF songs here, two of them are Traffic songs written and sung by Mason ("Cryin' to Be Heard" and "Feelin' Alright"), and two others are Mason songs that would wind up on his 1970 album "Alone Together" ("Waitin' for You" and "World in Changes"). The band also do a cover of a blues song ("Leaving Blues") and two instrumentals.

If you add that all up, it's only 33 minutes long, which is on the short side for an album. I had a few Mason solo songs that he didn't do with Traffic but predated his first solo album, so I've included those as well. All the songs are ordered chronologically.

Two of these extra songs are live versions of "Only You Know and I Know" and "World in Changes" done at the Big Sur Folk Festival in late 1969. Mason apparently didn't have a band at the time, and he wasn't scheduled to perform at the concert. But Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young did play, and they let Mason play two songs during the middle of their set to help him get his solo career started. Just Stephen Stills stayed on stage with Mason, playing guitar and singing backing vocals a little bit.

Normally, I don't like putting more than one version of a song on an album. But this album has two versions of "World in Changes." I'm allowing that because this album is the logical spot for both versions to fit in my music collection. Plus, luckily, the versions are pretty different, since the live version Mason does with Stills is acoustic and the other version with MCWF is with a full band. I've titled this album "World in Changes," since I have two versions of the song.

01 Little Woman (Dave Mason)
02 On a Theme Of… [Instrumental] (Mason, Capaldi, Wood & Frog)
03 Feelin’ Alright (Mason, Capaldi, Wood & Frog)
04 World in Changes (Mason, Capaldi, Wood & Frog)
05 Waitin' on You (Mason, Capaldi, Wood & Frog)
06 Cryin' to Be Heard (Mason, Capaldi, Wood & Frog)
07 Leaving Blues (Mason, Capaldi, Wood & Frog)
08 Jarn 1 [Instrumental] (Mason, Capaldi, Wood & Frog)
09 Only You Know and I Know [Edit] (Dave Mason with Stephen Stills)
10 World in Changes (Dave Mason with Stephen Stills)
11 Satin Red and Black Velvet Woman (Dave Mason)
12 To Be Free (Dave Mason & Cass Elliot)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/RokuVW8j

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/sRmEosCAGsjn6hA/file

Since MCWF were only in existence a short time, and weren't that famous, there are almost no photos of the band. However, I did find one, from a newspaper article, so I'm using that as the cover art. It's a low resolution and grainy photo, but it's better than nothing. In case you're curious, the band members from left to right are: Capaldi, Mason, Wood, and Frog.

Over a year after first posting this, I decided to colorize the photo. It's still the worst quality photo I've used for any album cover, but at least now it's in color. ;) 

In 2025, six years after first posting this, I used the program Krea AI to improve the image quality. I had some problems with the hands of Frog on the far right. (AI programs are usually pretty terrible with fingers.) So I extended his jacket enough to cover as much as his hands as necessary until they looked fairly normal.

Traffic - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1968

Here's the second album of Traffic's BBC performances. Read my write-up for the 1967 album to understand what this is all about. In short, if you like Traffic at all, you need to get this. Even if you have it already, the sound quality is better than ever before.

As luck would have it, there are enough songs to make one album of all the 1967 performances and another of all the 1968 ones, with both albums being in the 30- to 40-minute-long range. Normally, I dislike repeating the same song twice on one album. Traffic did play one song twice at the BBC. But I'm lucky again because for the song "Heaven Is in Your Mind," one of the performances was in 1967 and the other was in 1968.

For the 1967 album, it seems I had the problem of BBC DJs talking over the starts of nearly every song. I'm really getting to hate DJ Brian Matthew, who annoys the heck out of me by talking deep into songs, often until the very second the vocals begin (as well as sounding as smarmy as humanly possible!). But, using the audio editing program X-Minus, I managed to wipe the DJ vocals while keeping the underlying music. Those are the ones with "[Edit]" in their names.

In November 2021, I redid all the songs here, using versions posted by blogger Prof Stoned, which sometimes had superior sound quality, and then making the above-mentioned edits from those. I also communicated with Prof Stoned, who set me straight on a few things. I thought I had some BBC songs that he'd missed, but he convinced me they were single versions and the like mislabeled on some bootlegs as BBC versions. So I've removed versions of "Feelin' Alright," "Dear Mr. Fantasy," and one or two more, that I'd had on an earlier version. This all authentic BBC stuff.

This album is 37 minutes long.

01 No Face, No Name, No Number [Edit] (Traffic)
02 [Roamin' thro' the Gloamin' With] 40,000 Headmen [Edit] (Traffic)
03 Dear Mr. Fantasy [Edit] (Traffic)
04 Blind Man (Traffic)
05 You Can All Join In [Edit] (Traffic)
06 Feelin' Alright [Edit] (Traffic)
07 Who Knows What Tomorrow May Bring (Traffic)
08 Pearly Queen [Edit] (Traffic)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MLqJ5PrS

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/WFrSfyzxBvUsOS9/file

Just as with the 1967 album, I couldn't find good color photos of the band in concert, so I've gone with another band publicity photo for the cover art. This one is from 1968.

Traffic - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1967

I'm proud of this release. Even if you have some from on Traffic at the BBC already, you need this version. Bootlegs of these performances have existed for many years, but I'm confident that the music has never sounded as good as it does here.

On previous bootlegs, some of the songs had good sound quality while others were poor. But apparently, at some point in the late 2010s, the performances were replayed on the BBC again, resulting in a new bootleg version of the songs at a much higher sound quality. Furthermore, a few songs were included that hadn't been bootlegged before.

Then, in November 2021, I updated all the songs again. This time, I built on the versions cleaned up by a blogger named Prof Stoned. He does excellent work, but he doesn't mind when the BBC DIs talked over some of the music, and kept those parts. So I used the audio editing program X-Minus to wipe out the DJ talking while keeping the underlying music. Those are the ones marked with "[Edit]" in their names.

Thanks to all these edits, for the first time anywhere, one can hear all the BBC performances with sound quality exactly as good as the original broadcasts, and without any of the annoying DJ talkovers. This really should be an officially released album, but I've heard some record company disputes make the release of previously unreleased music from the Dave Mason years very difficult. Even if they do eventually release this, they might not remove the DJ talkovers.

The last song here, "Utterly Simple," is a bonus track of sorts, in that it isn't actually a BBC performance. It's actually exactly the same as the studio version, but it's remixed to make the spoken "phone call" in the middle of the song louder. Previously, I'd never paid much attention to that spoken part because it was largely drowned out by the music, but with this version, one can hear it as clear as day.

Traffic only performed in the studio for the BBC in 1967 and 1968. (Later, some of their live performances were played by the BBC.) I've split their performances into two albums. The 1968 album will follow.

This album is 34 minutes long.

01 Paper Sun [Edit] (Traffic)
02 House for Everyone [Edit] (Traffic)
03 Hole in My Shoe (Traffic)
04 Smiling Phases [Edit] (Traffic)
05 Coloured Rain [Edit] (Traffic)
06 No Face, No Name, No Number [Edit] (Traffic)
07 Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush [Edit] (Traffic)
08 Hope They Never Find Me There (Traffic)
09 Heaven Is in Your Mind (Traffic)
10 Dealer (Traffic)
11 Utterly Simple [Alternate Mix] (Traffic)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/h65NQ3pS

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/yHesc9hKBvEgk7u/file

As I've mentioned elsewhere, color photos of Traffic in concert in 1967 or 1968 are very hard to find. So I've gone with band publicity photos instead. This one is from 1967. But everyone in the band was looking slightly to the side, so I made some slight edits to their eyes to make them look into the camera.

Traffic - Live 1968 - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 3-14-1968

In my last post, I used up all the studio tracks of Traffic's "Last Exit" compilation, and I said I'd have a better place to put the two live tracks, so you'd have no use for "Last Exit" anymore. Here's where the two live tracks go.

Traffic was together as a foursome - including Dave Mason - just two years, 1967 and 1968. The band got back together for a longer run of 1970 to 1974 without Mason. I like both versions of Traffic a lot, but I slightly prefer the first version, because I think Mason added another valuable dimension. Unfortunately, live recordings (all bootlegs) of early Traffic are very rare, and most have unacceptably bad sound. Virtually the only exception to this is a short concert I've posted already, of Traffic playing in Sweden in 1967, which has excellent sound. You can get that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/05/traffic-konserthuset-stockholm-sweden-9.html

The good news is I've found another Traffic concert with excellent sound, this time from the Fillmore on March 14, 1968, and I'm posting it here now. But there are issues with it, most of which I've fixed. The biggest problem is that it's short, only about 32 minutes long. Eighteen minutes of those are the two live tracks from "Last Exit," namely "Blind Man" and "Feelin' Good." The song "No Face, No Name, No Number" from that show also sounds excellent.

Unfortunately, the rest of this surprisingly short bootleg of this concert comes from another source that also sounds very good, except the vocals can hardly be heard. That's not a problem for the instrumental jam that starts the recording. But it is a problem for "Coloured Rain." So I've attempted a rather drastic edit. I took the vocal sections of a different performance of the song, from the Sweden show mentioned above, and matched the tempo and pitch with the Fillmore performance. Then I patched those in, keeping the longer instrumental sections from the Fillmore version. I think this works pretty well. But in case you don't agree, I'm including the unedited Fillmore version with very quiet vocals as a bonus track.

Note also that there's an occasional crackling sound on some of the recording, especially the instrumental jam. This actually was a problem of the sound system at the show itself. We know this because at one point, Traffic member Jim Capaldi made reference to it, complaining about the "eggs and bacon" sound he was hearing. Luckily, it's not very loud and it's mostly a problem just on that first song.

Since the concert is so short, I've managed to find a few more live performances with high sound quality. Two of them ("You Can All Join In" and "Feelin' Alright") prominently feature Dave Mason from later in 1968. (Note that Mason isn't on the above-mentioned Fillmore tracks, since they were recorded during the first time he left the band, in early 1968.)

The last song comes from a concert at the Fillmore East also later in 1968 (when Mason was still back in the band) where the instruments were all recorded very well, but the vocals were recorded horribly. As a result, the only song I've taken from this concert is an interesting and rare all-instrumental version of "Pearly Queen," so the problem of the vocals isn't an issue.

If you add up all the songs here, you get 44 minutes of music. That still isn't very long, but Traffic concerts in 1967 and 1968 were typically less than an hour long anyway, especially since they often weren't the headlining act. (The 1967 Sweden show is complete and that's only 40 minutes long.)

Aside from the songs here and the 1967 Sweden concert, the only other quality sounding live recordings from early Traffic that I've found are their BBC performances. I'll be posting those here soon.

01 Jam [Instrumental] (Traffic)
02 Coloured Rain [Edit] (Traffic)
03 talk (Traffic)
04 No Face, No Name, No Number (Traffic)
05 Blind Man (Traffic)
06 Feelin' Good (Traffic)
07 You Can All Join In (Traffic)
08 Feelin' Alright (Traffic)
09 Pearly Queen [Instrumental Version] (Traffic)

Coloured Rain [Almost Instrumental Version] (Traffic)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15259246/Trffc_1968b_Live1968FillmreWestSnFranciscoCA__3-14-1968_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I wanted to use a color photo of Traffic playing in concert in 1968. But those are extremely rare, and I didn't find a single good one. So instead I decided to use a concert poster. This is part of a larger poster by Frank Bettlencourt of a concert in the Earl Warren Showground, Santa Barbara, CA, with Electric Flag, Traffic, and Steppenwolf. I removed Electric Flag and Steppenwolf from the poster and replaced that with some other text.

Traffic - Hole in My Shoe - Non-Album Tracks (1967-1968)

I commend Traffic for putting out the "Last Exit" album in 1969. It was one of the first examples of a rock band album that gathered up stray tracks. But in retrospect, it didn't do nearly as good a job as it should have. I suggest you forget that one and replace it with this.

This album has all of the studio songs from "Last Exit," plus more. (There are two long live songs on "Last Exit." I'm not including them here, because I have a better spot for them on another album that I'll be posting here soon.) The songs on "Last Exit" were either unreleased or obscure at the time the album came out. That meant it missed the three big hit singles Traffic put out, as well as their B-sides. This has those, plus a couple of additional songs that were otherwise missed.

Note that I didn't include any songs on the British versions of Traffic's first two albums, "Mr. Fantasy" and "Traffic." However, two songs from those are included here ("Giving to You" and "Utterly Simple"), but in very different versions. For instance, this version of "Giving to You" has an intro sung by Steve Winwood, while the album version has some talking and noise as an intro.

I've included an instrumental jam between Jimi Hendrix and Traffic as kind of a bonus track, although I put it on a Hendrix album I've posted here too.

01 Paper Sun (Traffic)
02 Giving to You [Single Version] (Traffic)
03 Hole in My Shoe (Traffic)
04 Smiling Phases (Traffic)
05 Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush (Traffic)
06 Am I What I Was or Am I What I Am (Traffic)
07 Utterly Simple [Soundtrack Version] (Traffic)
08 Just for You (Traffic)
09 Medicated Goo (Traffic)
10 Something's Got a Hold of My Toe [Instrumental] (Traffic)
11 Shanghai Noodle Factory (Traffic)
12 Withering Tree (Traffic)
13 Jam Thing [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix & Traffic)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700887/TRAFFC1967b-1968_HleinMySho_atse.zip.html

I've titled this album "Hole in My Shoe" mainly because I found a really nice cover to the "Hole in My Shoe" which I'm able to use as this album cover, with only a few minor tweaks.

Traffic - Konserthuset, Stockholm, Sweden, 9-12-1967

I've already posted one Traffic album, a concert from 1970. But I plan on posting some more, including stray tracks collections and BBC performances. But first, here's a concert from 1967.

Traffic was together (with Dave Mason) from 1967 to 1968, then broke up for a year, before having a longer run, from 1970 to 1974 (without Dave Mason, except for a few concerts). There are lots of concert recordings from their second iteration, both official and bootleg, but almost none from their first iteration. Generally, the few bootlegs that exist from that time have poor sound. This concert from Stockholm, Sweden, is almost the only exception.

I'm not sure why, but I have a bunch of recordings in my music collection from the late 1960s recorded at the Konserthuset with unusually good sound quality for its time. Maybe there were a series of shows recorded for a Swedish TV or radio show? The only downside is that the concert is rather short, at about 41 minutes. But that probably was all they played that night, and the other Traffic setlists from 1967 are similarly short.

There's a popular bootleg of this show called "Traffic Jam." But I see no reason for that name, other than a play on words, so I'm skipping that.

01 Giving to You (Traffic)
02 Smiling Phases (Traffic)
03 Coloured Rain (Traffic)
04 Hole in My Shoe (Traffic)
05 Feelin' Good (Traffic)
06 Paper Sun (Traffic)
07 Dear Mr. Fantasy (Traffic)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15259250/Trffc_1967d_KonserthsetStockhlmSweden__9-12-1967_atse.zip.html

It's very tough to find any good photos of Traffic in concert in 1967. I had to resort to using a photo from the cover of the official Traffic archival release "The Definitive Collection."

Dave Mason – Live at the Troubadour (1971)

In early 1971, Dave Mason recorded some shows at the Troubadour in LA for a live album.

Unfortunately, he was signed to a crappy record company at the time, and got into a contract dispute with them. He stopped working on his second solo album, Headkeeper, so the company put out one side of the album with the songs they did have, and put five songs from the Troubadour shows on the second side. Then, in 1973, having lost Mason as an artist, the company put out another album of material they owned called Dave Mason Is Alive. It was seven songs from the Troubadour shows, but strangely, they used two of the exact same performances as on the Headkeeper album!

What I’ve done is take the unique songs from both albums and put them together. It makes a nice 46-minute long live album. I have no idea about the song order, but I made an educated guess based on a set list from another 1971 Mason show. Due to the record company troubles, Dave Mason Is Alive is long out of print.

01 Pearly Queen (Dave Mason)
02 World in Changes (Dave Mason)
03 Can't Stop Worrying, Can't Stop Loving (Dave Mason)
04 Walk to the Point (Dave Mason)
05 Shouldn't Have Took More than You Gave (Dave Mason)
06 Only You Know and I Know (Dave Mason)
07 Sad and Deep as You (Dave Mason)
08 Just a Song (Dave Mason)
09 Look at You, Look at Me (Dave Mason)
10 Feelin' Alright (Dave Mason)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687954/DAVMSN1971_LivatthTrubdur_atse.zip.html

The album cover photo features Mason in July 1971, while briefly reunited with Traffic.