John Sebastian & David Bromberg - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 12-9-1974

I recently posted a "PBS Soundstage" episode starring Donovan. I noted that another episode recorded that same day at the same location jointly starred John Sebastian and David Bromberg, which allowed Donovan to have them as guests on one of his songs. A commenter noticed that and asked me to post the Sebastian and Bromberg show sooner rather than later. So here it is.

Sebastian and Bromberg are singer-songwriters. (Both are still alive as I write this in 2025.) Sebastian had a lot more success than Bromberg, first with his band the Lovin' Spoonful in the 1960s, and then with his Number One smash "Welcome Back" in 1976. Bromberg did a lot more work as a session musician in the 1970s, while also releasing a series of solo albums.

At first glance, there doesn't appear to have been much connection between these two. For instance, they never put out an album together, or were in a band together. According to their banter between songs in this concert, they were working on a studio album, said to be called "Fish and Fire." I don't know if that was supposed to be a Sebastian album or Bromberg album or what, but no such album ever came to be. However, I did notice that in later years, meaning 1980s and after, they did tour together sometimes.

In any case, they were very collaborative in the concert. The first half was dominated by Bromberg and the second half by Sebastian, but both of them generally played on all the songs.

Generally speaking, the sound quality is pretty good, though not great. The only major problem I had was the last song, "Summer in the City," which was a Number One hit by the Lovin' Spoonful in the 1960s. Unfortunately, it got cut off before the song ended. I couldn't find another version from around this time. But I patched in a part from earlier to at least give it a better sounding ending.

This album is 48 minutes long. 

01 Hard Working John [Instrumental] (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
02 talk (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
03 Don't Put That Thing on Me (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
04 talk (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
05 Si Bheag, Si Mhor [Instrumental] (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
06 Nobody's (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
07 talk (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
08 I'm a Hog for Ya Baby (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
09 Stealin' (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
10 Guitar and Harmonica Duet [Instrumental] (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
11 talk (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
12 Friends Again (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
13 Harmonica Song [Instrumental] (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
14 Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
15 You Didn't Have to Be So Nice (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
16 Do You Believe in Magic (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
17 talk (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
18 Summer in the City [Edit] (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xv13TJvj

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/hrzGeMuWIm5iie4/file

I couldn't find any photos or video footage from this exact concert. But I as I mentioned above, Sebastian and Bromberg guested on a song in a Donovan concert recorded that same day. I managed to find a moment in it showing just Sebastian (playing harmonica) and Bromberg (playing guitar). So I took a screenshot of that. It was pretty low-res and blurry video footage though, so I ran the image through the Krea AI program. 

Donovan - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 12-30-1974

Here's yet another album that's an episode from the "PBS Soundstage" TV show. This one features singer-songwriter Donovan, in 1974.

In the early 1970s, Donovan's sales dropped. I think his songwriting remained strong, but also more inconsistent. This concert took place shortly after the release of his 1974 album "7-Tease." That was one of his weaker albums from the time, but it still had some good songs, like the first one here, "Rock and Roll Souljer." Three more songs, "Salvation Stomp," "How Silly," and "The Ordinary Family," also come from that album. 

One highlight here is a cover song, "Travelling Light." On the same day Donovan was taping this TV episode, John Sebastian and David Bromberg were taping a joint episode for the show as well, as Donovan's finished. So Donovan had them join him on that song.

Note that Donovan's episode was shared by Dave Mason, who separately performed a short set. That's why this is well short of an hour long. I would have included the Mason part, except I haven't been able to find it in worthy sound quality. If anyone does have it, please let me know so I can add it in.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is pretty good. One banter track has "[Edit]" in its title. That's because there were some loud bursts of static while Donovan was talking for a few seconds. However, I was able to use the MVSEP program to get rid of nearly all the static. 

This album is 34 minutes long. 

01 Rock and Roll Souljer (Donovan)
02 Catch the Wind (Donovan)
03 talk (Donovan)
04 Salvation Stomp (Donovan)
05 Lalena (Donovan)
06 talk (Donovan)
07 How Silly (Donovan)
08 There Is a Mountain (Donovan)
09 talk (Donovan)
10 The Ordinary Family (Donovan)
11 talk (Donovan)
12 Travelling Light (Donovan with John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
13 talk [Edit] (Donovan)
14 Happiness Runs (Donovan)
15 Colours (Donovan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/7tuLXjn1

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/Khwj7OiyMBiHbr1/file

The cover image is a screenshot taken from this exact concert.

Woodstock '94, Winston Farm, Saugerties, NY, 8-12-1994 to 8-14-1994 - Day 3, Part 1: John Sebastian

The first act of Day Three of the Woodstock ‘94 Festival was John Sebastian. He was one of the stars of the 1969 Woodstock Festival. My guess is that he was invited to this festival to help provide a link to the original festival. In terms of his musical career, he didn’t have much success after having a number one song in 1976 with “Welcome Back,” the theme from the “Welcome Back Kotter” TV show. He often went many years between albums, which came out on minor record labels. He had many hits in the 1960s as the leader of the band the Lovin’ Spoonful. However, he chose to only play one well-known song by that band, “Daydream.”

This album is 15 minutes long.

01 Harmonica Solo [Instrumental] (John Sebastian)
02 Mornin' Blues (John Sebastian)
03 Mobile Line [Gonna Carry Me Away from the Bull Frog Blues] (John Sebastian)
04 I Want My Roots (John Sebastian)
05 Daydream (John Sebastian)
06 talk (John Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16761002/VA-WODSTCK94_8-14-1994_01JhnSbastin_atse.zip.html

Alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/foufziA6

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-29-1970: Part 1: John Sebastian

I'm very delighted to be posting this. Back in August 2023, I posted most of the music from the big name acts who played the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. However, there were a few that I'd missed. What was frustrating was that I found four more sets, of John Sebastian, Donovan, Joan Baez, and Richie Havens, but they were from audience bootlegs and the sound quality was so poor that I decided they weren't worthy of posting.

Recently though (November 2023), my musical associate Lil Panda was telling me about the great features of the audio editing program he's using, called Izotope. (I don't have that one, since it's fairly pricey.) One feature it has is to "de-wind" - to get rid of the sound distortions caused by wind blowing on microphones. That was the exact problem with the audience bootlegs of those four Isle of Wight sets that I didn't post - lots and lots of wind noises. So I asked if he could try out the de-wind function of them, and he agreed. Boy, what a difference! It's like day and night. The wind rustling noises are pretty much totally gone. Thanks to that change, I feel I can finally post those four sets, starting with this one.

Keep in mind though that this is still based on an audience bootleg. So while it's definitely listenable, in my opinion, it's not as good as a soundboard recording, which is what most of the other Isle of Wight sets are. Luckily, this is a solo acoustic set, which means the sound flaws are less noticeable than if it had been a full band set. But things are variable. For instance, the first song "Mobile Line" sounds rough, but a few songs later, "She's a Lady" sounds pretty much like a soundboard. So if you're very picky when it comes to sound quality, listen to the whole thing. At least a good chunk should be acceptable to even those with high standards.

When I first posted all the Isle of Wight albums in August 2023, I was only able to find three songs from John Sebastian's set with worthy sound quality. "Red Eye Express" was included in the documentary movie "Message to Love." "Daydream" also sounded particularly good, although I don't know why. Those three had been included as part of the Joni Mitchell set, which I'd called Part 1 for the August 29, 1970 sets. But now I've removed those from her set, and given it a new title (Part 2), new cover art to fix the title, and new song numbering (since the numbering continues from after Sebastian's set). Then all the other sets from August 29, 1970 are changed, with Part 2 becoming Part 3, and Part 3 becoming Part 4, and so on. Thus, I recommend you re-download all of those. Furthermore, I've added two songs to the Ten Years After set, so you'll especially want to get that one.

It'll probably be a couple of weeks before I can add the Donovan, Joan Baez, and Richie Havens sets, because Lil Panda is traveling and won't be able to get to them until then. All three of those sets are from the last day of the festival, August 30, 1970, so there will be lots of renumbering of all the sets from that day.

One nice surprise about this album is that, midway through Sebastian's set, he had an impromptu reunion with Zal Yanovsky, who co-founded the Lovin' Spoonful with Sebastian. They played four Lovin' Spoonful songs together that Sebastian usually didn't play as a solo artist. Here's what Sebastian later had to say about it: "I hadn’t played with Zal since the group broke up, except in hotel rooms and living rooms. He’s been touring with Kris Kristofferson, you know, and a message was passed up to me on stage twice before I understood it, asking me why I didn’t ask Zal to come up. It was really weird doing those old Spoonful numbers."

There's a fair amount of talking between songs. In addition to what Lil Panda did with getting rid of the wind sounds, I ran all the talking tracks through another editing filter. This one is called "Enhance Speech," by Adobe. Unfortunately, it's only good for talking, not singing. For these tracks, it did add some clarity to his somewhat muffled voice.

This album is an hour and nine minutes long.

001 Mobile Line (John Sebastian)
002 Lovin' You (John Sebastian)
003 You're a Big Boy Now (John Sebastian)
004 talk (John Sebastian)
005 She's a Lady (John Sebastian)
006 How Have You Been (John Sebastian)
007 talk (John Sebastian)
008 Jug Band Music (John Sebastian)
009 talk (John Sebastian)
010 I Had a Dream (John Sebastian)
011 In the Still of the Night (John Sebastian)
012 talk (John Sebastian)
013 4 Eyes (John Sebastian)
014 talk (John Sebastian)
015 Rainbows All Over Your Blues (John Sebastian)
016 talk (John Sebastian)
017 Blues in the Bottle (John Sebastian with Zal Yanovsky)
018 Do You Believe in Magic (John Sebastian with Zal Yanovsky)
019 talk (John Sebastian with Zal Yanovsky)
020 Boredom (John Sebastian with Zal Yanovsky)
021 talk (John Sebastian with Zal Yanovsky)
022 Bald Headed Lena (John Sebastian with Zal Yanovsky)
023 talk (John Sebastian)
024 Darlin' Be Home Soon (John Sebastian)
025 Harmonica Solo [Instrumental] (John Sebastian)
026 Younger Generation (John Sebastian)
027 talk (John Sebastian)
028 Daydream (John Sebastian)
029 Red Eye Express (John Sebastian)
030 talk (John Sebastian)
031 Younger Girl (John Sebastian)
032 talk (John Sebastian) 

https://www.upload.ee/files/15912364/IsleofWghtFestivlAftnDwnIsleofWghtBrtain__8-29-1970_Pt1_JhnSebstian.zip.html

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

The Lovin' Spoonful - Night Owl Cafe, New York City, 2-1965

I must say, I'm tickled pink to post this, because I was sure no worthy live recordings of the Lovin' Spoonful in their prime existed. But, low and behold, there is this one.

Some musical acts from way back when got lucky with having good live recordings that survived and others did not. For instance, the Byrds with their five original members from 1964 to 1967 were extremely popular, with two Number One hits, yet there doesn't seem to be any surviving live recordings of them other than some TV appearances here and there. I thought that was the case with the Lovin' Spoonful too. I'd looked high and low, and didn't find anything, except for some TV appearances just like the Byrds.

However, the other day, I came across this. It's a soundboard recording from the band's early days, right around the time they signed a record contract. They played lots of concerts at the Night Owl Cafe in Greenwich Village in New York City, and for some reason just this one set was recorded and has survived. Only the first ten tracks here are from that show. That includes a couple of their well known songs, "Good Time Music" and "Didn't Want to Have to Do It," but no hits per se. Most of these songs are cover versions that they never put on record.

Since that recording is rather short, only 25 minutes in total, I decided to fill out the album with some other live recordings. I decided to include all the songs they played for the Ed Sullivan Show. They often just lip-synced to their TV appearances, but for the Ed Sullivan Show they actually played live. Plus, the Ed Sullivan Show has a YouTube page where they've uploaded excellent sound quality versions of all of these. I edited these so the applause from one track leads into the next, making all three appearances sound like one continuous performance.

It so happens that the Lovin' Spoonful made three appearances on the Ed Sullivan, all in 1967. That's a nice complement to the Night Owl Cafe performance, because it mostly contains hits from a bit later in their career. I considered including more performances from other TV shows, but there isn't much that sounds really good. For instance, the only versions of the band's 1966 Number One hit "Summer in the City" I could find were lip-synced.

I did a little research on the Night Owl Cafe. It turns out that this was almost officially released in 1999. But all the band members approved the release except for their main singer and songwriter John Sebastian. So the release was nixed, but it was leaked out as a bootleg. Apparently, this is the only good live recording from the 1960s that the band members know of.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 talk (Lovin' Spoonful)
02 [Get Your Kicks On] Route 66 (Lovin' Spoonful)
03 Good Time Music (Lovin' Spoonful)
04 My Gal (Lovin' Spoonful)
05 Didn't Want to Have to Do It (Lovin' Spoonful)
06 Almost Grown (Lovin' Spoonful)
07 Bring It with You When You Come (Lovin' Spoonful)
08 talk (Lovin' Spoonful)
09 Alley Oop (Lovin' Spoonful)
10 My Baby's Gone (Lovin' Spoonful)
11 Nashville Cats (Lovin' Spoonful)
12 Darlin' Be Home Soon (Lovin' Spoonful)
13 Bald Headed Lena (Lovin' Spoonful)
14 Daydream (Lovin' Spoonful)
15 Do You Believe in Magic (Lovin' Spoonful)
16 Only Pretty, What a Pity (Lovin' Spoonful)
17 She Is Still a Mystery (Lovin' Spoonful)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15229202/TLovnSpnful_1965_NghtOwlCfeNYC__2-1965_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from an appearance on the British TV show "Ready Steady Go" in 1966. I removed a big sign behind the band with the TV show name on it. 

R.E.M. - Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ, 6-9-1984

Here's a very nice R.E.M. concert I just came across, so it goes to the top of my pile of albums to post.

I was looking for R.E.M. BBC material as part of my larger BBC project. I didn't find anything really good from the band's very early years, but this is of similar excellent sound quality, despite being officially unreleased. That's because it's the audio to an MTV show called "Rock Influences: Folk Rock." One nice thing about it is that it has a couple of guest stars at the end: Roger McGuinn of the Byrds and John Sebastian of the Lovin' Spoonful. I suppose that ties in with the name of the TV show, since those are folk rock stars who influenced R.E.M.

Nearly all the songs come from a pristine soundboard bootleg. However, the three songs at the end with guests McGuinn and Sebastian do not. But that's okay, because I found a YouTube video of the show that includes them as well, and the sound quality of those tracks are also excellent. The one snag is that there's no intro to those (and I imagine there was some kind of reaction when the guests came on stage), and the applause was quickly cut off after each song. For those three songs, I patched in more applause from other songs earlier in the show, so hopefully that sounds normal. But if anyone has a different bootleg with the intros to those last songs, please let me know.

By the way, one more thing regarding those songs with the guests. The Byrds song "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" was basically sung by McGuinn, with R.E.M. chiming in on backing vocals. That's the same case with Sebastian singing "Do You Believe in Magic." But for the final song, "Gloria," R.E.M. lead singer Michael Stipe sang it. McGuinn was on stage, as can be seen in the YouTube video, but he just helped with backing vocals and strummed along with his guitar.

The songs "Hyena," "Old Man Kensey," and "Driver 8" were played in public for the first time in this concert.

This concert is an hour and ten minutes long.

01 talk (R.E.M.)
02 Pale Blue Eyes (R.E.M.)
03 Second Guessing (R.E.M.)
04 Hyena (R.E.M.)
05 Letter Never Sent (R.E.M.)
06 Harborcoat (R.E.M.)
07 talk (R.E.M.)
08 Seven Chinese Brothers (R.E.M.)
09 talk (R.E.M.)
10 Pretty Persuasion (R.E.M.)
11 So. Central Rain (R.E.M.)
12 Gardening at Night (R.E.M.)
13 9-9 (R.E.M.)
14 Windout (R.E.M.)
15 Old Man Kensey (R.E.M.)
16 Sitting Still (R.E.M.)
17 talk (R.E.M.)
18 Driver 8 (R.E.M.)
19 Carnival of Sorts [Boxcars] (R.E.M.)
20 talk (R.E.M.)
21 Radio Free Europe (R.E.M.)
22 Little America (R.E.M.)
23 So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star (R.E.M. & Roger McGuinn)
24 Do You Believe in Magic (R.E.M. & John Sebastian)
25 Gloria (R.E.M. with Roger McGuinn)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697045/REEEM1984_CapitlTheatrePssaicNJ__6-9-1984_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a bit low res. That's because it's a screenshot I took from the YouTube video of this exact concert.

Fred Neil & John Sebastian - Rolling Coconut Revue, Harumi Dome, Tokyo, Japan. 4-8-1977

Here's an amazing find, in my opinion. Fred Neil was a legendary folk singer and songwriter. His musical discography is scanty, because his music career only went from the early 1960s to 1971, despite the fact that he lived until 2001. In 1970, he co-founded the Dolphin Research Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to stopping the killing and exploitation of dolphins around the world. He spent most of the rest of his life focused on that. He only played a few concerts in the 1970s, all of them benefits for dolphin-related causes. The last concert he played was a benefit show in Tokyo, Japan, in 1977.

Luckily, it turns out that concert was professionally recorded, and released around the year 2020. Unfortunately though, it's only been released in Japan as part of a 12 disc box set. His concert was part of a festival that lasted three days, and featured many big names in Western folk rock music, such as Jackson Browne, John Sebastian, J. D. Souther, Country Joe McDonald, Richie Haven, Odetta, Warren Zevon, and Eric Andersen, plus more Japanese artists singing in Japanese. The rest of the box set includes some of the other performances, but apparently only those they got the rights to, because some big names like Browne and Zevon are missing.

Anyway, in March 2021, a commenter here named Mystic pointed out to me that a recording of this Fred Neil concert exists. I started looking for it, but I couldn't find it anywhere. Even mentions of it are very few and far between. I put it on my wanted list through the SoulseekQT program. Yesterday, over a year and a half later, I finally got a positive hit and downloaded it! I'm sharing it here because it's so exceedingly rare.

It turns out this concert exceeded my expectations, especially in terms of sound quality, which is fantastic. The recording actually features two acts, John Sebastian, lead singer and main songwriter of the Lovin' Spoonful, and Neil. The Sebastian set is longer, at 38 minutes, while Neil's set is 29 minutes long. The two sets are linked because Sebastian and Neil were long-time musical associates and Sebastian is an excellent harmonica player. So after Sebastian's set ended, he stayed on stage, introduced Neil, and then played harmonica all through Neil's set.

Fred Neil led a troubled life. Apparently, he was hooked on heroin and other drugs from at least the mid-1960s onwards. Besides that, he was a stubborn and difficult guy to deal with, playing concerts rarely, often not showing up for them, or leaving in the middle of them. By 1977, he hadn't recorded any music in six years, and had only played a couple of short sets on stage since then. So one might have thought he was washed up, especially given the stories about his heavy drug use. But he's in very fine form here; he sounds just as good as ever. It's hard to believe this would be his last concert performance. (Although he got up on stage in a club once in the early 1980s and played a couple of songs.)

As for John Sebastian, he did very well with his set too. I find it ironic that in 1976, he had a Number One hit in the U.S. with "Welcome Back," the theme song to the "Welcome Back, Kotter" TV show, and yet his record company thought that was a fluke and dropped him. Then he couldn't get a new record contract (with disco being all the rage at the time), so he didn't put out another record until the 1990s. This is despite the fact that he had many previous hits, including three Number One or Number Two hits with the Lovin' Spoonful, so he was far from a one-hit wonder. But that's the music business for you. Sigh! Anyway, in this concert, he played "Welcome Back," but the rest consists mostly of Lovin' Spoonful songs.

This album is an hour and seven minutes long.

01 talk (John Sebastian)
02 Lovin' You (John Sebastian)
03 Link in the Chain (John Sebastian)
04 Someone Standin' in Your Door (John Sebastian)
05 talk (John Sebastian)
06 Welcome Back (John Sebastian)
07 Gas Man Blues (John Sebastian)
08 Fishin' Blues (John Sebastian)
09 Nashville Cats (John Sebastian)
10 talk (John Sebastian)
11 She's Funny (John Sebastian)
12 She's a Lady (John Sebastian)
13 Daydream (John Sebastian)
14 Darlin' Be Home Soon (John Sebastian)
15 Blues for Dad and JB's Happy Harmonica [Instrumental] (John Sebastian)
16 talk (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
17 Everybody's Talkin' (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
18 Roll on Rosie (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
19 Blues on the Ceiling (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
20 talk (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
21 I Gotta Have My Baby Back (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
22 The Other Side of This Life (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
23 The Dolphins (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
24 Goodnight, Irene (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Lm9taBo4

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/Rmrti490Bll28PO/file

The cover photo is not from this exact concert. But in August 1976, Neil and Sebastian played another dolphin benefit concert in Florida, and there's a clip of one song from that on YouTube. So I took a screenshot of that. Neil is the one on guitar and Sebastian is the one on harmonica.

John Sebastian - Rockefeller's, Houston, TX, 7-24-1983

Here's something new to me, so it goes straight to the top of the pile of music I post here. I think John Sebastian is a very talented musician, especially due to the many hit songs he wrote for his band the Lovin' Spoonful in the 1960s. However, I wasn't looking for any bootleg concert by him until I stumbled across this one the other day.

The first thing to note is that it's an acoustic show. I'm always a big fan of acoustic music, and it's great to hear his songs in a stripped back format. (He used a drum machine to create a basic beat on one song, "Tar Beach," but it's tastefully done.) 

The second thing to note is that the sound quality is fantastic. It seems a stash of soundboard recordings from this venue, Rockefeller's, in Houston, Texas, has come to light recently. I'm writing this in December 2021, and this particular concert was first posted on-line in June 2021. Some other concerts by other artists at this venue have been posted also with similar sound quality, and I hope many more will follow.

This concert is actually a compilation of an early show and a late show that he did on the same night. Apparently, the audience was rather small, even for the venue, with about 100 people there. But it seems the vast majority stayed for both shows, so the vast majority of the songs he did were different. The only songs I haven't included from the late show because they also were played in the early show are: "Welcome Back," "Red-Eye Express," "Darlin' Be Home Soon," and "Daydream."

I made a few audio adjustments. Sometimes, soundboard recordings capture what's happening on stage to the exclusion of almost all crowd noise, and that's the case here. It's strange to have the songs generally end with silence, so I greatly boosted what little audience applause there was. The audience is still on the quiet side, but at least there's a decent amount now. I also boosted the volume of the comments he made between songs, which were much quieter than his singing during songs.

There were problems with two songs. The beginning of "Younger Girl" was missing. The version here because with the last ten seconds of the first verse. I cut that, to give it a less jarring beginning, starting with the song's chorus. A similar thing happened to "Stories We Could Tell." I gather the first verse was missing, since it's short and already begins with the chorus. I didn't make any changes there, but I'm noting that missing section. Happily, everything else is fine and nothing else seems to be missing, unless there was some banter before either or both of those two songs.

Sebastian had a strange roller coaster of a music career. He wrote and sang some big hits with the Lovin' Spoonful in the 1960s, including "Summer in the City," which was a number one hit in the US in 1966. Then his solo career started well in the late 1960s and early 1970s, most noted by his appearance at the 1969 Woodstock Festival, where he made an impression in both the movie and album versions. But then he didn't release albums all that often, or tour much, and his career declined. So it was a big surprise when he had another number one hit in 1976 with "Welcome Back," the theme song to the "Welcome Back, Kotter" TV show. However, incredibly, the year after that huge hit, his record contract ended, and he was unable to get another one!

As a result of that, by the time this concert happened in 1983, he hadn't put out a new studio album or single for seven years. Furthermore, he wouldn't put out another album for another ten years. That said, although he did a lot of songs from his Lovin' Spoonful days, as well as his early solo career, he played a number of new songs. For instance, the songs "Tar Beach" and "Smokey Don't Go" would appear on his 1993 album, and the song "Where Ever You Are" would appear on his 2001 album. He also did a bunch of covers, including songs by Little Feat and Lightnin' Hopkins.

Unfortunately, two songs you won't find here are "Summer in the City" and "Do You Believe in Magic." They're the most famous Lovin' Spoonful songs, but he commented at one point during the concert that he didn't think they sounded good done in the solo acoustic format.

This concert is an hour and 43 minutes long.

01 talk (John Sebastian)
02 Mobile Line [Gonna Carry Me Away from the Bull Frog Blues] (John Sebastian)
03 talk (John Sebastian)
04 talk (John Sebastian)
05 Welcome Back [Theme from 'Welcome Back, Kotter'] (John Sebastian)
06 talk (John Sebastian)
07 Nashville Cats (John Sebastian)
08 talk (John Sebastian)
09 Smokey Don't Go (John Sebastian)
10 talk (John Sebastian)
11 She's a Lady (John Sebastian)
12 talk (John Sebastian)
13 Where Ever You Are (John Sebastian)
14 talk (John Sebastian)
15 The Junk Monster Song (John Sebastian)
16 talk (John Sebastian)
17 The Easter Bunny Song (John Sebastian)
18 talk (John Sebastian)
19 Tar Beach (John Sebastian)
20 talk (John Sebastian)
21 You're a Big Boy Now (John Sebastian)
22 Jug Band Music (John Sebastian)
23 Dixie Chicken (John Sebastian)
24 Younger Girl (John Sebastian)
25 Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind (John Sebastian)
26 talk (John Sebastian)
27 Milk Cow Blues (John Sebastian)
28 talk (John Sebastian)
29 Red-Eye Express (John Sebastian)
30 Daydream (John Sebastian)
31 talk (John Sebastian)
32 Woodstock Toot [Instrumental] (John Sebastian)
33 Darlin' Be Home Soon (John Sebastian)
34 My Gal (John Sebastian)
35 Lovin' You (John Sebastian)
36 talk (John Sebastian)
37 Rainbows All Over Your Blues (John Sebastian)
38 talk (John Sebastian)
39 My Baby's Walkin' with Someone New (John Sebastian)
40 talk (John Sebastian)
41 Younger Generation (John Sebastian)
42 talk (John Sebastian)
43 Looking for Something Better (John Sebastian)
44 talk (John Sebastian)
45 How Have You Been (John Sebastian)
46 talk (John Sebastian)
47 4 Eyes (John Sebastian)
48 talk (John Sebastian)
49 Wild about My Lovin' (John Sebastian)
50 Stories We Could Tell (John Sebastian)
51 I Had a Dream (John Sebastian)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ADKe5xki

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/r2K5RWM3oYYkqO8/file 

I couldn't find any good photos of Sebastian in concert in 1983. However, I did find one of him from 1984, so that's what I've used here.