Various Artists - Dave Edmunds' All Star Rock 'n' Roll Revue, Warfield Theater, San Francisco, CA, 4-7-1990

The world lost another musical great last week (as I write this in early December 2025). Lead guitarist Steve Cropper died on December 3, 2025. He was 84 years old. I wanted to post something to celebrate his music. But that was a bit tricky, since he was mostly a session musician and songwriter. While he did put out some album under his own name, that was just a small part of his musical legacy. And when he toured, he almost always was part of bands supporting other stars.

I looked around, and found this concert, which I'd never known of before. Cropper was part of the backing band, along with Terry Williams (ex-Rockpile), Phil Chen (ex-Rod Stewart), the Memphis Horns, and others, so he played on every song.

This tour probably happened thanks to Ringo Starr of the Beatles. In 1989, Starr put on the first of many "His All-Starr Band" concert tours. These consisted of Starr plus a rotating group of other musical stars who weren't big enough of their own to play big concert venues. But when they were packaged together, along with an ex-Beatle, they were. Dave Edmunds looked at that formula and immediately decided to try the same thing. He brought together Kim Wilson, former lead vocalist of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Graham Parker, and Dion. Each of them played about a half an hour set, with Edmunds playing both at the start of the concert and at the end.

The shows were successful, it seems. But Edmunds only attempted this for this one tour. In fact, he joined the "His All-Starr Band" tours in 1992 and 2000. Perhaps that's because Edmunds went into semi-retirement after 1990. He only put out one more album of new material, in 1994. And he only did one more significant tour, in 2007, before retiring from music for good in 2017.

This concert was the last show of the tour. I read that a double album of this exact concert was released, but only in Japan. However, if that's true, it would only be a minority of this recording, since this is a very long concert, at nearly three hours! This concert was also broadcast for the King Biscuit Flower Hour radio show, which is why we have it with excellent sound quality.

One last thought. A while back, I made two "Covered" album for Steve Cropper. So if you want to remember all the great songs he helped write, that's probably an even better way to do it. Here are the links to those:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/05/various-artists-covered-steve-cropper.html

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/05/various-artists-covered-steve-cropper_30.html

This album is two hours and 47 minutes long. 

01 talk (Dave Edmunds)
02 Last Night [Instrumental] (Dave Edmunds)
03 Fallin' through a Hole (Dave Edmunds)
04 Feel So Right (Dave Edmunds)
05 Closer to the Flame (Dave Edmunds)
06 Don't Talk to Me (Dave Edmunds)
07 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Dave Edmunds)
08 talk (Dave Edmunds)
09 Wrap It Up (Kim Wilson)
10 It Comes to Me Naturally (Kim Wilson)
11 Wasted Tears (Kim Wilson)
12 I Believe I'm in Love with You (Kim Wilson)
13 There Is Something on Your Mind (Kim Wilson)
14 Tuff Enuff (Kim Wilson)
15 talk (Kim Wilson)
16 Nervous Fella (Kim Wilson)
17 talk (Dave Edmunds)
18 Get Started, Start a Fire (Graham Parker)
19 Under the Mask of Happiness (Graham Parker)
20 talk (Graham Parker)
21 Local Girls (Graham Parker)
22 talk (Graham Parker)
23 My Girl (Graham Parker)
24 Slash and Burn (Graham Parker)
25 talk (Graham Parker)
26 Lady Doctor (Graham Parker)
27 talk (Graham Parker)
28 My Love's Strong (Graham Parker)
29 Soultime (Graham Parker)
30 Heat Treatment (Graham Parker)
31 talk (Dave Edmunds)
32 King of the New York Streets (Dion)
33 talk (Dion)
34 The Night Stood Still (Dion)
35 talk (Dion)
36 Ruby Baby (Dion)
37 talk (Dion)
38 Written on the Subway Wall (Dion)
39 Runaround Sue (Dion)
40 The Wanderer (Dion)
41 talk (Dion)
42 Abraham, Martin and John (Dion)
43 From Small Things [Big Things One Day Come] (Dave Edmunds)
44 I Hear You Knocking (Dave Edmunds)
45 talk (Dave Edmunds)
46 Ju Ju Man (Dave Edmunds)
47 King of Love (Dave Edmunds)
48 talk (Dave Edmunds)
49 Crawling from the Wreckage (Dave Edmunds)
50 Paralyzed (Dave Edmunds)
51 talk (Everyone)
52 [Sitting On] the Dock of the Bay (Everyone)
53 I'm Ready (Everyone)
54 Keep A-Knockin' (Everyone) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/w4EEsJQM

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4B7YTBcfLApwM51/file

The cover photo is from a concert at the Marlboro Blues Festival, in Chicago, Illinois, on March 24, 1990. From right to left: Steve Cropper, Dave Edmunds, Graham Parker, and Dion.

Various Artists - New York Children’s Health Project Benefit, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 12-13-1987

The first thing I want to make clear is that, while this is a star-studded benefit concert, it is also in large part a Paul Simon concert. Out of the 32 songs here, Simon sang lead on 11 of them, and backing vocals on another three. That's because Simon was the host and the prime mover behind the cause for this benefit.

I did a little research on how this concert came to be, and I think it makes for an interesting story. Apparently, when Simon was working on his studio album "Graceland" in 1985 or 1986, he was taking going to his recording studio in the heart of New York City most every day. Each morning, he would make eye contact with a homeless girl begging on a street corner. But eventually, after months, she didn't show up for a while. He asked around, and found out that she had died. Being homeless, she had no access to health care. Simon decided he wanted to do something to help.

Around this time, homelessness had greatly risen in New York City. Plus, many thousands of families were packed into squalid welfare hotels. Simon connected with Dr. Irwin Ledlener. a pediatrician, who was already working on the problem. 

Ledlener later recalled, "We went on a tour of some of the not-so-hot spots in the city. We went to the welfare hotels, to boarder-baby facilities where they had these infants whose mothers were crack
cocaine addicts, and we went to some of the infant H.I.V. programs. It was a hell of a day, just one thing after another." Simon and Ledlener decided that it was obvious many homeless children weren't getting any health care, so they decided to make that their focus. 

Ledlener told him it would cost about $90,000 for a mobile van to bring health care to where the homeless where. Simon paid for that out of his own pocket, and the van began operating in the fall of 1987. But it soon became clear that just one van wasn't enough. Plus, there were upkeep costs, and the need for a charity group (called the "Children's Health Fund") to keep medical records on the homeless kids no matter how often they moved. So Simon put this concert together. It raised about half a million dollars, which was doubled by a contribution from his record company. 

More vans were bought. The results were impressive, so the program kept expanding. By 2005, the charity had expanded far beyond New York City. They had 20 vans in 14 states. Simon followed up with two more benefit concerts (in 1993 and 2012) to help keep the charity funded. All in all, it seems like one of the best results of a benefit concert that I've heard of, although it's a shame the government wasn't performing this help already.

Anyway, getting to the details of this concert, keep in mind that Simon's most recent project was his wildly successful "Graceland" album, released in 1986. That sold 16 million copies worldwide. So perhaps it's not too surprising that Simon played eight songs from that album, while he still had support from the vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo and other South African musicians that had gone on tour with him to support the album. I checked, and this was essentially the very last concert of Simon's Graceland tour.

Other than that, there were short sets by Lou Reed, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Dion, Laurie Anderson, Bruce Springsteen, Ruben Blades, James Taylor, Nile Rodgers and Chaka Khan. Apparently, Billy Joel wasn't scheduled to take part, but since he dropped in at the last minute, he did an impromptu song. I believe Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five played a song, but it got cut from the bootleg I found. I think you can hear him for about ten seconds at the end of the Nile Rodgers medley, introducing Chaka Khan. Paul Shaffer & the World's Most Dangerous Band backed most of the musical stars who didn't bring their own bands, like Bruce Springsteen. Debbie Harry and Grace Jones were there, but they only introduced Lou Reed and then helped sing backing vocals to "Walk on the Wild Side."

One special moment was that Dion was backed by some major star power on his song "A Teenager in Love." His backing vocalists were Ruben Blades, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed! You can see how that looked from the album cover. That's a sign of how much of a musical influence he was on all of them, since he came from an earlier generation.

There were some celebrity appearances as well. Springsteen was introduced by New York baseball stars Ron Darling and Don Mattingly. Whoopi Goldberg introduced Nile Rodgers. She spoke for longer, but I cut out some of it because she was just stalling for time while the band got ready, as she admitted, and it showed. Comedian Bill Cosby gave a speech prior to introducing Ruben Blades. But I cut out all of it except for a few words introducing Blades, since I can't stand to hear him due to his later revealed history of rape. Lorne Michaels, Kevin Nealon and Chevy Chase introduced James Taylor.

As far as I know, everything here remains unreleased. But the bootleg I found has soundboard quality.

This album is three hours and 13 minutes long.

01 The Boy in the Bubble (Paul Simon)
02 Gumboots (Paul Simon)
03 Whispering Bells (Paul Simon)
04 talk (Paul Simon)
05 Crazy Love, Vol. II (Paul Simon)
06 I Know What I Know (Paul Simon)
07 talk (Paul Shaffer & the World's Most Dangerous Band)
08 Treat Her Right (Paul Shaffer & the World's Most Dangerous Band)
09 talk (Paul Shaffer, Debbie Harry & Grace Jones)
10 Tell It to Your Heart (Lou Reed)
11 talk (Lou Reed)
12 New Sensations (Lou Reed)
13 Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed with Debbie Harry & Grace Jones)
14 talk (Lou Reed)
15 The Wanderer (Dion)
16 Runaround Sue (Dion)
17 talk (Dion)
18 A Teenager in Love (Dion with Simon, Springsteen, Joel, Reed, Taylor & Blades)
19 talk (Paul Simon)
20 Yinhle Lentombi (Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
21 Homeless (Paul Simon & Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
22 Graceland (Paul Simon)
23 talk (Paul Simon)
24 You Can Call Me Al (Paul Simon)
25 talk (Paul Simon)
26 talk (Paul Simon)
27 Babydoll (Laurie Anderson)
28 Let x = x (Laurie Anderson)
29 talk (Paul Simon, Ron Darling & Don Mattingly)
30 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
31 Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen)
32 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
33 Glory Days (Bruce Springsteen with Paul Simon & Billy Joel)
34 Cuentas del Alma (Ruben Blades)
35 talk (Ruben Blades)
36 Muevete (Ruben Blades)
37 talk (Paul Simon, Lorne Michaels, Kevin Nealon & Chevy Chase)
38 Looking for Love on Broadway (James Taylor)
39 Carolina in My Mind (James Taylor)
40 That Lonesome Road (James Taylor)
41 talk (Whoopi Goldberg)
42 talk (Nile Rodgers)
43 We Are Family - Le Freak - Good Times (Nile Rodgers)
44 I Feel for You (Chaka Khan with Nile Rodgers)
45 talk (Paul Simon)
46 New York State of Mind (Billy Joel)
47 Still Crazy After All These Years (Paul Simon)
48 Late in the Evening (Paul Simon)
49 Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes - Drums (Paul Simon with Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
50 talk (Everybody)
51 Rock and Roll Music (Bruce Springsteen & Everybody)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jKCnMBjU

alternate

https://bestfile.io/en/uLq5HEnWr1SO0XO/file

The cover photo was taken at this exact concert. It shows the moment Dion was backed by an impressive bunch of stars on the song "A Teenager in Love." From left to right, that's Ruben Blades, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, and Dion. Dion had been further over to the left by about ten feet. In fact, I took him from a different photo taken in the same sequence. Then I used Photoshop to move him close to Springsteen.