Herbie Hancock & the Headhunters - WLIR Ultrasonic Concert Series, Ultrasonic Recording Studios, Hempstead, NY, 10-1-1973

I recently posted a couple of concert albums by Chick Corea and his band Return to Forever, and John McLaughlin and his band the Mahavishnu Orchestra (as I write this in August 2026). I'm not into that kind of jazz. But I do want to post all the worthy concerts from certain concert series, and I know other people do like this kind of music. So here's a Herbie Hancock concert from that same time period, the early 1970s, as part of the WLIR Ultrasonic Concert Series.

Hancock has to be one of the most famous jazz musicians of all time. A lot of that has to do with his 1973 album "Head Hunters." On this album, he switched styles, combining instrumental jazz with funk more than he had on any previous album. Here's what the Wikipedia entry about the album has to say about how it was received by the public: "The album was a commercial and artistic breakthrough for Hancock, crossing over to funk and rock audiences and bringing jazz-funk and jazz fusion to mainstream attention, peaking at number 13 on the Billboard 200. Today the album is regarded as a landmark of fusion and has influenced artists in numerous other genres." In fact, it went Platinum, and became the best selling jazz album of all time, up until that point.

That album was released on October 26, 1973. This concert took place on October 1st. So Hancock had his new band, the Head Hunters, and his new funk-jazz style, but I guess the audience wasn't familiar with his style until they heard it in this concert.  

The sound quality is excellent. However, there was a problem with the recording in that there was a lot of hiss. But that kind of thing is easily fixed these days. I ran all the songs through the MVSEP audio editing program, and got rid of most of the hiss. I'm assuming this sounds better than any previous versions of this bootleg. 

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 talk by emcee (Herbie Hancock & the Headhunters)
02 The Spook Who Sat by the Door [Instrumental] (Herbie Hancock & the Headhunters)
03 talk (Herbie Hancock & the Headhunters)
04 Butterfly [Instrumental] (Herbie Hancock & the Headhunters)
05 Sly [Instrumental] (Herbie Hancock & the Headhunters)
06 Chameleon [Instrumental] (Herbie Hancock & the Headhunters)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vaEwA778

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/80bsDdTfQjnBjjZ/file

The cover image of Hancock is from an unknown concert in 1973.

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.