Various Artists - MusiCares Tribute to Barbra Streisand, Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA, 2-11-2011

I have to be honest: I've never been a fan of Barbra Streisand's music. It's too show tune theatrical for me. But I'm planning to post all the MusiCares tributes I could find, and this was the next one to randomly get chosen for posting. And hearing the likes of Seal, Stevie Wonder, and Beck perform her songs help make this more palatable for me.

As with virtually all the MusiCares tribute concerts I post, the only reason we have worthy sound quality recordings of them is because some of them were released on DVD (but not in any audio format). This is another one of those lucky ones. I converted it from video to audio, then broke it into mp3s.

Unfortunately, in this case, it seems to have been edited down, though I don't know how much is missing. One thing that was definitely missing here though was her acceptance speech. I figured there had to have been one, so I did some searching. I couldn't find it, but I did find a few snippets from it, with some of her songs loudly playing in the background (which obviously wasn't played like that in the concert). I used MVSEP to remove the music but keep the talking and the applause. Then I arranged what I had. Clearly, that's not all of it. But I figure some of it is better than nothing. Hopefully more of it will emerge, plus whatever else was left off the DVD.

By the way, it was interesting that Prince, of all people, was the one to introduce her before her acceptance speech. That same recording of her speech included him saying a few words, so I put that in here as well, after removing the background music. However, I don't know if his short comments are complete or not. So that's why the Streisand's speech and Prince's introduction both have "[Edit]" in their titles.

As is typical for these things, the recipient of the award performed a couple of songs at the end of the concert. That's exactly what Streisand did here.  

Oh, one more thing. An unusual track here is from comedian and talk show host Bill Maher, since it was just comments about her instead of music. He also had some political jokes, but they were only relevant in 2011 politics, and they didn't have anything to do with Streisand anyway, so I cut those out. That's why that track has "[Edit]" in its title. 

Here's a Rolling Stone Magazine link with very little text but lots of photos from the event:

2011 MusiCares Person of the Year Tribute to Barbra Streisand 

This album is an hour and three minutes long. 

01 talk (Diana Krall)
02 Down with Love (Diana Krall)
03 Guilty (Seal)
04 Somewhere (Leona Lewis)
05 My Man (Lea Michele)
06 On a Clear Day [You Can See Forever] - Lazy Afternoon (Herbie Hancock & Nikki Yanofsky)
07 talk [Edit] (Bill Maher)
08 Come Rain or Come Shine (LeAnn Rimes, Jeff Beck & BeBe Winans)
09 Send in the Clowns (Faith Hill)
10 One Less Bell to Answer - A House Is Not a Home (Kristin Chenoweth & Matthew Morrison)
11 Memory (Barry Manilow)
12 Smile (Tony Bennett)
13 People (Stevie Wonder & Arturo Sandoval)
14 talk [Edit] (Prince)
15 talk [Edit] (Barbra Streisand)
16 Windmills of Your Mind (Barbra Streisand)
17 The Promise [I'll Never Say Goodbye] (Barbra Streisand) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ndNRYeAj

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/Bxx0HNXUQhayQxK/file

The cover image is from this exact concert.

Various Artists - MusiCares Tribute to Bruce Springsteen, Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA, 2-8-2013

A few days ago, I got a request to post the MusiCares tribute concert to Bruce Springsteen. I'm happy to do so, because I've been meaning to post more of these MusiCares concerts soon anyway. So here you are.

MusiCares has been holding annual tribute concerts since 1991. They cleverly have these concerts in Los Angeles, where the Grammy Awards take place, and hold them only a couple of days apart from the Grammies. That way, many musical stars are in town and able to participate. I've only posted one such album so far, the tribute to Brian Wilson in 2005. But I have seven more to post after this. Thus, today I've created a MusiCares Tribute label to help you find them all.

Bruce Springsteen is a very big name in music, and lots of other big names paid tribute to him here, including Elton John, Neil Young, and Sting. This was a particularly long concert as far as these MusiCares tributes go. It's easily the longest of all the ones I've found so far, which is fitting since Springsteen concerts are known for their length. Springsteen himself played five songs at the end, which again is more than usual. 

This comes from a DVD. It hasn't been released on any audio format. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is two hours and 16 minutes long. 

01 talk (Jon Stewart)
02 Adam Raised a Cain (Alabama Shakes)
03 Because the Night (Patti Smith)
04 Atlantic City (Natalie Maines, Ben Harper & Charlie Musselwhite)
05 American Land (Ken Casey)
06 talk (Jon Stewart)
07 My City of Ruins (Mavis Staples & Zac Brown)
08 talk (Jon Stewart)
09 I'm on Fire (Mumford & Sons)
10 American Skin [41 Shots] (Jackson Browne & Tom Morello)
11 My Hometown (Emmylou Harris)
12 One Step Up (Kenny Chesney)
13 talk (Jon Stewart)
14 Streets of Philadelphia (Elton John & Raphael Saadiq)
15 Hungry Heart (Juanes)
16 Tougher than the Rest (Tim McGraw & Faith Hill)
17 The Ghost of Tom Joad (Tom Morello & Jim James)
18 talk (Jon Stewart)
19 Dancing in the Dark (John Legend)
20 Lonesome Day (Sting)
21 Born in the U.S.A. (Neil Young)
22 talk (Jon Stewart & Bruce Springsteen)
23 We Take Care of Our Own (Bruce Springsteen)
24 Death to My Hometown (Bruce Springsteen)
25 Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen)
26 Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen)
27 Glory Days (Bruce Springsteen)
28 talk (Bruce Springsteen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/fXM5GV8j

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/B96M5E8MDQxu5O4/file

For the cover, I wanted a photo of Springsteen from this exact concert. But of the photos I saw, he was generally alone or with just one other person nearby, so I went with a group photo from this concert instead. From right to left: Zac Brown, Emmylou Harris, Ben Harper, Jackson Browne and Patti Scialfa. There were some distracting things in the background, so I used Photoshop to remove them.

Various Artists - Gershwin Prize for Popular Song Honoring Paul McCartney, White House, Washington, DC, 6-2-2010

I've recently discovered the annual "Gershwin Prize for Popular Song" tribute concerts. Here's probably the best known one, because it honors arguably the most successful songwriter of all time, Paul McCartney.

This concert happened to take place during the presidency of Barack Obama. That was lucky, because he took more of a hands-on approach to concerts like this. He hosted this at the White House and gave McCartney's induction speech. I've seen from other Gershwin Prize concerts that I've found that Obama was the only president to get directly involved in them.

The concert started with a song by McCartney. Then a bunch of musical stars played his songs, with a brief stand-up routine by Jerry Seinfeld included in there. Then McCartney took the stage again. He performed "Ebony and Ivory" with Stevie Wonder, just as they did on the original version in 1981. Apparently, that was the first time McCartney had played that song since 1991. After an induction speech by Obama, McCartney finished the concert with a short set of songs.

This album remains unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. I only had one problem. This concert was broadcast on TV. Near the end of "Hey Jude," there was a voiceover near the end of song, briefly mentioning the next TV show. In order to get rid of it, I had to edit out one round of "na na's," which is why that song has "[Edit]" in its title.

By the way, I stumbled across a Time Magazine article about this concern from way back then. It concluded with the line, "The White House has never hosted a cooler evening." Here's the link if you want to read the whole thing: 

Sir Paul McCartney Performs for Barack Obama | TIME.com 

This album is an hour and 19 minutes long. 

01 talk (Paul McCartney)
02 Got to Get You into My Life (Paul McCartney)
03 We Can Work It Out (Stevie Wonder)
04 Drive My Car (Jonas Brothers)
05 talk (Jerry Seinfeld)
06 Mother Nature's Son - That Would Be Something (Jack White)
07 The Long and Winding Road (Faith Hill)
08 Blackbird (Herbie Hancock & Corrine Bailey Rae)
09 talk (Elvis Costello)
10 Penny Lane (Elvis Costello)
11 For No One (Emmylou Harris)
12 Celebrations [Instrumental] (Lang Lang)
13 talk (Dave Grohl)
14 Band on the Run (Dave Grohl)
15 talk (Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder)
16 Ebony and Ivory (Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder)
17 talk (Barack Obama)
18 talk (Paul McCartney)
19 Michelle (Paul McCartney)
20 talk (Paul McCartney)
21 Eleanor Rigby (Paul McCartney)
22 talk (Paul McCartney)
23 Let It Be (Paul McCartney)
24 talk (Paul McCartney)
25 Hey Jude [Edit] (Paul McCartney & Everyone)
26 talk (Paul McCartney)
27 Yesterday (Paul McCartney)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/awLAgw3Z

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/hwjtq0xoqe98Z4K/file

The cover photo of McCartney and Obama is from this exact concert.

Chrissie Hynde - Later Tonight - Non-Album Tracks (2009-2014)

My long series of Pretenders stray tracks albums continues here. However, this is so dominated in the credits by Chrissie Hynde, the lead singer and songwriter of the Pretenders, that I'm billing it as a Chrissie Hynde album. Only two songs have the Pretenders in the credits, and even those are duets.

The Pretenders put out an album in 2008, "Breaking Up the Concrete." They didn't put out another one until 2016, "Alone," nearly a decade later. The Pretenders had basically been Hynde plus a changing cast of backing musicians for a long time prior to this era. But I guess she figured putting the band name on an album meant that a certain style was expected.

In this time period, she increasingly moved away from that style. In 2010, she created a band with her boyfriend at the time, called "JP, Chrissie & The Fairground Boys," and put out an album called "Fidelity." Then, in 2014, she released her first true solo album, "Stockholm."

But on top of that she was doing other musical projects that often further expanded her musical range. For instance, she'd gotten into Brazilian bossa nova music in a big way back in 2004, even living in Brazil for a while. That interest continues on a couple of songs here. She also sang some in French!

Six of the 12 songs here are officially released. They generally come from various artists compilations. For instance, her version of "Let It Be" appeared on a tribute album to Paul McCartney. The unreleased songs are tracks 2, 3, 4, 9, 11, and 12. "This Kiss" and "Cry" come from an episode of the TV show "CMT Crossroads" in which she collaborated with country star Faith Hill. The others are cover songs done in concert. "Murder in My Heart for the Judge" was by Moby Grape, "Under My Thumb" by the Rolling Stones, and "Vocal" and "Later Tonight" by the Pet Shop Boys.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Postcard from London (Ray Davies & Chrissie Hynde)
02 Murder in My Heart for the Judge (JP, Chrissie & the Fairground Boys)
03 This Kiss (Pretenders & Faith Hill)
04 Cry (Pretenders & Faith Hill)
05 Un Garcon Qui Pleure (Benjamin Schoos, Marie France & Chrissie Hynde)
06 The Empty Boat (Chrissie Hynde, Moreno, Kassin & Domenico)
07 Laisse-moi t'Aimer - We'll Be Together (Michel Berube & Chrissie Hynde)
08 Rodeo (Paul Allen & the Underthinkers with Chrissie Hynde)
09 Under My Thumb (Ingrid & Chrissie Hynde)
10 Let It Be (Chrissie Hynde)
11 Vocal (Chrissie Hynde)
12 Later Tonight (Chrissie Hynde)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700859/TPRETNDRS2009-2014_LatrTonght_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from a private dinner event in 2014. Hynde was sitting next to supermodel Cindy Crawford, but unfortunately I felt obliged to crop her out.