The Tubes - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 11-21-1974

Here's a concert by the Tubes for the "Live at the Record Plant" radio show, in 1974.

I have to admit, I'm not familiar at all with the music of the Tubes, other than a couple of their best known songs like "White Punks on Dope," "Talk to Ya Later," and "She's a Beauty." I've heard intriguing things, though. Although I've also heard that Tubes concerts were visual spectacles that needed to be seen as much as heard. The cover image gives a hint at just how theatrical and visually arresting they could be. Be that as it may, I plan to post most all the "Live at the Record Plant" concerts I can find, and this one randomly came up next.

The Tubes were formed in San Francisco in 1972. Before long, they were as much as performance art as they were about music. Their unusual concerts and music attracted a lot of fans, but they had trouble getting a record contract because they were so unusual. Thus, this concert took place when they had gotten pretty well known in the Bay Area, at least, but they still hadn't released an album, or even a single. Their debut album, "The Tubes," would come out in June 1975. 

Here's their Wikipedia page: 

The Tubes - Wikipedia 

The music here is unreleased, and the sound quality is very good. There's just a little crowd noise, since they performed before a small audience in the Record Plant recording studio. 

This album is an hour and three minutes long. 

01 Up from the Deep (Tubes)
02 Space Baby (Tubes)
03 Malaguena Salerosa (Tubes)
04 Hermuta Bermuda (Tubes)
05 What Do You Want from Life (Tubes)
06 talk (Tubes)
07 Poland Whole (Tubes)
08 talk (Tubes)
09 Rock and Roll Hospital (Tubes)
10 Theme from 'Rawhide' (Tubes)
11 Mondo Bondage (Tubes)
12 Hip Dip (Tubes)
13 Boy Crazy (Tubes)
14 talk (Tubes)
15 White Punks on Dope (Tubes)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/mzaAmPxM

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/cc3FcQcm2DgxOEN/file

I don't know much about the cover photo, except it's from a Tubes concert in New York City, around 1975. 

Warren Zevon - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 7-27-1978

Here's another concert from the excellent "Live at the Record Plant" radio show. This one stars singer-songwriter Warren Zevon. It's from 1978, one of the last concerts available from the show. 

Zevon's music career began in the mid-1960s. He had some success as a songwriter. For instance, he co-wrote "Outside Chance," which was a hit for the Turtles in 1966. But his own music career didn't get very far. He released a solo album in 1970, but it was ignored at the time. So his solo career only really got rolling in 1976, with his major label debut, the cleverly-titled "Warren Zevon." He followed that in 1978 with the album "Excitable Boy." Most of his "classic" songs come from these two albums. And "Excitable Boy" contained his sole big hit, "Werewolves of London." So 1978 is a good time for a live album.

The sound quality is excellent. The one issue I had was with the talking between the songs. The vocals of his banter was quite low. That was easily fixed, by boosting the volume of those tracks. But there also was a lot of reverb and hiss on his voice, making it hard to hear what he was saying. So I ran those tracks through Adobe's on-line vocal enhancer program. That cleared things up quite nicely.

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 talk (Warren Zevon)
02 Johnny Strikes Up the Band (Warren Zevon)
03 Tenderness on the Block (Warren Zevon)
04 talk (Warren Zevon)
05 Mohammed's Radio (Warren Zevon)
06 talk (Warren Zevon)
07 Excitable Boy (Warren Zevon)
08 Werewolves of London (Warren Zevon)
09 Accidentally like a Martyr (Warren Zevon)
10 talk (Warren Zevon)
11 Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner (Warren Zevon)
12 Poor, Poor Pitiful Me (Warren Zevon)
13 talk (Warren Zevon)
14 Lawyers, Guns and Money (Warren Zevon)
15 I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (Warren Zevon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/RY38FKSa

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/7PzJzfGwob9xr8Y/file

The cover image is from a concert at the Riviera Theater, in Chicago, Illinois, on May 13, 1978. The original was in color, but the colors were bad, with everything way oversaturated with red. Rather than try to tweak it, I colorized it from scratch, using the Kolorize program.

Caravan - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 11-10-1974

Here's another concert from the "Live at the Record Plant" radio show. This one stars the British prog rock band Caravan, from 1974.

I have to admit I'm not very familiar with Caravan. I do have a good number of BBC things from them I've saved, and I'll get around to posting those someday, knock on wood. But meanwhile, here's a teaser of sorts.

Earlier in 1974, the band released the live album "Caravan and the New Symphonia." And it late 1973, it released their most recent studio album at this time, "For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night." So most of the songs come from those two albums. 

The sound quality of the bootleg I found for this was pretty good. However, the vocals were way down in the mix. So I fixed that using the MVSEP program. It sounds a lot better as a result. I'd say this has excellent sound now.

This album is an hour and one minute long. 

01 Memory Lain, Hugh (Caravan)
02 Headloss (Caravan)
03 For Richard (Caravan)
04 Virgin on the Ridiculous (Caravan)
05 Be All Right (Caravan)
06 Chance of a Lifetime (Caravan)
07 The Love in Your Eye (Caravan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8eJGWGKD

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/AvUnDz1jz2qN7iP/file

I couldn't find a good picture of the entire band. However, I found one of the violin player, Geoffrey Richardson. It's from a concert probably just a few days away at most from this one, since it's also from the San Francisco Bay Area, in the same month of November 1974. Except this concert took place in Berkeley.

Jimmy Buffett - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 2-19-1974

Here's singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett performing for the "Live at the Record Plant" radio show. He did this in early 1974. He actually came back for a second and final appearance in late 1974. I plan on posting that eventually as well.

After decades in the music business, Jimmy Buffett became a kind of institution, almost a genre by himself, and earned hundreds of millions of dollars. But I'll bet at the time of this concert he had no clue he would ever reach that level of success, because he was still trying to make it.

In February 1974, the same month as this concert, he released his fourth album, "Living and Dying in 3/4 Time." But his first three albums were released to very little notice at the time. That fourth one was the first to crack the Top 200 in the U.S. album charts - not Top 100, but Top 200 - and just barely. The album did contain his first single, "Come Monday," which made the Top 40 in the U.S. singles chart. However, that success was still to come, since the single wouldn't even be released until April. I'm sure most listeners to this radio program at the time had never heard of him yet.

Given all that, his performance was extremely casual. He was in solo acoustic mode, apparently because he couldn't afford to tour with a band yet. His banter between songs make up 25 minutes of this recording, with the actual songs making up the other 35 minutes. I've posted over 3,000 albums at this blog, and believe me, that's a very unusually high amount of banter. It sounded almost like he was hanging out with a few friends, telling stories and shooting the shit, and occasionally remembering to sing another song.

The music here in unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is one hour long. 

01 talk by emcee (Jimmy Buffett)
02 talk (Jimmy Buffett)
03 Ringling, Ringling (Jimmy Buffett)
04 talk (Jimmy Buffett)
05 Come Monday (Jimmy Buffett)
06 talk (Jimmy Buffett)
07 Pencil Thin Mustache (Jimmy Buffett)
08 talk (Jimmy Buffett)
09 Peddler Not a Pusher (Jimmy Buffett)
10 talk (Jimmy Buffett)
11 Railroad Lady (Jimmy Buffett)
12 talk (Jimmy Buffett)
13 They Don't Dance like Carmen No More (Jimmy Buffett)
14 talk (Jimmy Buffett)
15 Migration (Jimmy Buffett)
16 talk (Jimmy Buffett)
17 God's Own Drunk (Jimmy Buffett)
18 talk (Jimmy Buffett)
19 Brahma Fear (Jimmy Buffett)
20 talk (Jimmy Buffett)
21 A Pirate Looks at Forty (Jimmy Buffett)
22 talk by emcee (Jimmy Buffett)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/CsK9jieB

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/60fuiKtRvZ2L4tU/file 

I don't know anything about the cover image except that it's from 1974. It had a big watermark right over his face and neck, but I got rid of it using Photoshop, since there are almost no good color photos of him from this early in his career. 

Sparks - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Los Angeles, CA, 9-1-1974

Here's another episode from the great "Live at the Record Plant" radio show. This one stars the band Sparks. 

I'm rather surprised this is the first Sparks albums I've posted. I have several BBC concerts from them that I'll hopefully post eventually.

Sparks is an American band that was formed in 1971. Their second album, "Kimono My House," was a big hit, but only in Britain, not in the U.S. One song from that album, "This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us," made it all the way to Number Two in the British singles chart. Another song, "Amateur Hour," made the Top Ten there. But neither song even charted in the U.S. So they must have been pretty unknown to the radio audience at the time of this concert. 

They would eventually find some success in the U.S., but gradually, and not nearly to the extent of their success in Britain and the rest of Europe.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. However, I did have to fix some things. There was some hiss during the banter bits, so I got rid of that using the MVSEP program. I also used that program to boost the lead vocals relative to the instruments. 

This album is 39 minutes long. 

01 talk (Sparks)
02 Hasta Manana, Monsieur (Sparks)
03 talk (Sparks)
04 Something for the Girl with Everything (Sparks)
05 talk (Sparks)
06 Talent Is an Asset (Sparks)
07 talk (Sparks)
08 Thank God It's Not Christmas (Sparks)
09 BC (Sparks)
10 talk (Sparks)
11 Here in Heaven (Sparks)
12 This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us (Sparks)
13 talk (Sparks)
14 Amateur Hour (Sparks)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/tUGHpbDf

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/UeBiFbfcyJ5H4di/file

The cover photo is from an appearance on a German TV show called "Disco," in 1974. I removed a couple of Disco logos in the picture, using Photoshop.

Cold Blood - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 7-2-1974

Here's an episode of the "Live at the Record Plant" radio show. This one features the band Cold Blood.

Perhaps you haven't heard of Cold Blood, because they never had widespread success. I wasn't that familiar with them myself. But I heard this, since I want to post all the "Record Plant" episodes I can find, and I was very pleasantly surprised. They were a "jazz rock" band with a horn section, similar to early Chicago, or Tower of Power, or Blood, Sweat and Tears. But they had a female lead vocalist, Lydia Pense, who was reminiscent of the vocal talent of Janis Joplin. In fact, when Cold Blood started out in 1968 and was looking for a lead vocalist, it was Joplin who found out about Pense and recommended her to the band.

So that horn section plus soulful female lead vocals was a powerful combination. The problem was, they never had a hit single to bring them to wider public attention. The closest they got was in 1970, when their cover of a Sam and Dave song, "You Got Me Hummin'," made it to Number 52 in the U.S. singles chart, missing the all-important Top Forty. One key problem was that the band did very little songwriting of their own. But they had a knack for finding good cover songs that weren't overplayed. Pense had the looks, voice, and stage presence to be a big star. I think she would have been, had her band been signed to a record company that gave the band top material and promoted them well.

The band's first four albums, released from 1969 to 1973, are considered their best. Then musical trends started to change in the 1970s, and the band broke up in 1976. Pense suspended her musical career to raise a daughter. But she reformed the band in 1988, and they are still going as I write this in 2025. Here's their Wikipedia entry if you want to know more:

Cold Blood (band) - Wikipedia

The music is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 Valdez in the Country (Cold Blood)
02 Too Many People (Cold Blood)
03 Under Pressure (Cold Blood)
04 Feel So Bad (Cold Blood)
05 talk (Cold Blood)
06 When It's Over (Cold Blood)
07 talk (Cold Blood)
08 Simple Love Life - Consideration (Cold Blood)
09 Funky on My Back (Cold Blood)
10 talk (Cold Blood)
11 Down to the Bone (Cold Blood)
12 Simple Love Life [Reprise] (Cold Blood)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5nF8NJSj

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/vV8c4a9aS6VgEuC/file

The cover photo is a screenshot I took of Lydia Pense singing with the band on the "Underground" TV show in 1972. It was rather low-res, so I used Krea AI to sharpen it up some.

Golden Earring - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 4-26-1975

Here's another episode of the "Live at the Record Plant" radio show. This one features the Dutch band Golden Earring. 

Recently, when I made a poll about possible future albums sourced from the "Midnight Special" TV show, I was surprised by some passionate responses asking for Golden Earring. I'm not ready to post anything they did from that show just yet. But here's something else to tide fans over for a while. Actually, this is probably better because the band had a lot more time to jam - and there's a lot of jamming here.

Golden Earring was one of a small number of bands for a non-English speaking country to "make it" in the U.S. and other English speaking countries. This was due to their 1973 hit "Radar Love" and the album it was included on, "Moontan." This concert took place while the band touring the U.S. to promote their 1975 follow-up album, "Switch." Most of the songs are from that album.

Tracks 1 through 11 are from the "Record Plant" show in the title. But I was taken aback that they didn't include "Radar Love." So I decided to include a version of that too. Luckily, I got about as close I could get to finding a version from this show without it actually being from the show. The version here was performed the night before, at the Winterland in San Francisco. It was from a concert broadcast on the WLIR radio station, which also was the station that broadcast the Record Plant show. There were a number of other songs performed at that concert. I didn't want to include a bunch, since I only wanted to supplement the Record Plant show a bit. But I couldn't resist adding "She Flies on Strange Wings" as well. That was a hit for the band back in the Netherlands in 1971.

The sound quality is generally excellent. There was no audience applause at all, so that helped keep the sound pristine. However, the banter between songs was rather quiet, plus there was a lot of echo on their voices. (Probably, their microphones were set up for lots of reverb, and they didn't turn that off between songs.) So I ran all the talking tracks through Adobe's voice enhancer program. That helped a lot. 

For the two extra songs at the end, there wasn't much crowd noise, but there was some. So I used MVSEP to get rid of that.

This album is an hour and ten minutes long. Without the two extra songs from the Winterland at the end, it's 44 minutes long. 

01 talk (Golden Earring)
02 The Switch (Golden Earring)
03 talk (Golden Earring)
04 Lucky Number (Golden Earring)
05 Kill Me [Ce Soir] (Golden Earring)
06 talk (Golden Earring)
07 Big Tree, Blue Sea (Golden Earring)
08 talk (Golden Earring)
09 Daddy's Gonna Save My Soul (Golden Earring)
10 Love Is a Rodeo (Golden Earring)
11 Intro- Plus Minus Absurdio [Instrumental] (Golden Earring)
12 talk (Golden Earring)
13 She Flies on Strange Wings (Golden Earring)
14 Radar Love (Golden Earring)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qcULhT8Q

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/8OyNlnUtCn4TAhm/file

The cover shows the band on a 1974 TV show in Hilversum, Netherlands. From left to right: Rinus Gerritsen, Barry Hay, George Kooymans, and Cesar Zuiderwijk

Al Kooper - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 10-23-1974

Here's a solo acoustic piano concert by Al Kooper in front of a small audience for the "Live at the Record Plant" radio series. 

To be honest, I didn't expect much from this. I knew of Kooper from his roles as a session musician, producer, and songwriter, but I'd never heard much of him as a performer. But I was quite impressed, actually. He played a lot of good songs, a mix of covers and originals, and had some interesting banter between songs. 

Here's his Wikipedia entry:

Al Kooper - Wikipedia

This recording sounded pretty good, but it did have some trouble with hiss. I did some audio editing to get rid of most of the hiss on the talking tracks, with the help of the MVSEP program. But I didn't touch the hiss on the actual songs, for fear that would hurt the music. But it isn't nearly as noticeable there anyway. It only stood out when the background was mostly silent.  

This unreleased album is 56 minutes long. 

01 talk by Tom Donahue (Al Kooper)
02 Brand New Day (Al Kooper)
03 talk (Al Kooper)
04 Without Her (Al Kooper)
05 talk (Al Kooper)
06 Autobiography in 725 Bars (Al Kooper)
07 talk (Al Kooper)
08 Sam Stone (Al Kooper)
09 talk (Al Kooper)
10 Just One Smile (Al Kooper)
11 talk (Al Kooper)
12 New Fashioned Love Song (Al Kooper)
13 talk (Al Kooper)
14 Drown in My Own Tears (Al Kooper)
15 talk (Al Kooper)
16 Don't Hang Up (Al Kooper)
17 talk (Al Kooper)
18 I Can't Quit Her (Al Kooper)
19 talk (Al Kooper)
20 [Be Yourself] Be Real (Al Kooper)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/soLq1wmj

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/KXyFmbi6xNJWwfy/file

The cover photo was taken at a concert at the Great Southeast Music Hall in Atlanta, Georgia, on July 12, 1973.

Boz Scaggs - Live at the Record Plant, Paramount Theater, Oakland, CA, 3-10-1974

Here's another episode of the "Live at the Record Plant" radio show, starring Boz Scaggs in 1974 (with a guest appearance on lead guitar by Steve Miller on the last song). But note this is an actual concert from a concert venue, not the usual show recorded in a recording studio before little to no audience.

I've done some digging about this radio show, and I found that, sometimes, it had a mobile recording unit that recorded concerts in Bay Area concert venues. Apparently, this became more common after 1975, when the host of the show, Tom Donahue, died of a heart attack. However, it's been very hard for me to figure out which concerts were broadcast as part of this show, versus other ones broadcast by the same radio station in that era, KSAN, that weren't part of the show. This is just about the only concert I've found so far where I found a mention that confirmed it was part of the "Record Plant" radio series. If anyone has any further information about this, please let me know. Then I could post more such concerts, and properly label them.

At the time of this concert, Scaggs was only moderately popular. His most recent studio album, "Slow Dancer" in 1974, was his first one to go Gold in the U.S. (meaning sales topping 500,000). But the next album he'd released in 1976, "Silk Degrees," would go to Number One in the U.S. and sell over 5 million copies, turning him into a big star. So this is a good long look at his concerts before "Silk Degrees."

The sound quality here is fantastic for a bootleg from this era, easily good enough for an official live album. One can tell this isn't just a soundboard, but a professionally recorded one. The lead vocals were low on a few songs, but I fixed that with the UVR5 audio editing program.

This album is an hour and 41 minutes long. 

01 talk by emcee (Boz Scaggs)
02 Near You (Boz Scaggs)
03 Just Don't Want to Be Lonely (Boz Scaggs)
04 Runnin' Blue (Boz Scaggs)
05 Painted Bells (Boz Scaggs)
06 Moments (Boz Scaggs)
07 Monkey Time (Boz Scaggs)
08 Downright Women (Boz Scaggs)
09 Might Have to Cry (Boz Scaggs)
10 Dinah Flo (Boz Scaggs)
11 talk (Boz Scaggs)
12 You Make It So Hard [To Say No] (Boz Scaggs)
13 Sail On White Moon (Boz Scaggs)
14 Angel Lady [Come Just in Time] (Boz Scaggs)
15 There Is Someone Else (Boz Scaggs)
16 Pain of Love (Boz Scaggs)
17 Take It for Granted (Boz Scaggs)
18 Let It Happen (Boz Scaggs)
19 Hercules (Boz Scaggs)
20 Slow Dancer (Boz Scaggs)
21 talk (Boz Scaggs)
22 I'll Be Long Gone (Boz Scaggs)
23 talk (Boz Scaggs with Steve Miller)
24 I'm Easy (Boz Scaggs with Steve Miller)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1hgmqUCR

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/j4mxDpr57PxGGAz/file

The cover photo is from an appearance on the "Midnight Special" TV show in 1974. 

Tom P*tty & the Heartbreakers - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 4-23-1977

As I've discussed before on this blog, I've had more copyright troubles with this particular band than any other. The good news is, it's been months and months since I've had even one copyright violation notice! That's the longest time by far since I started this blog. I think the way I name the zip files now makes all the difference. But just to be safe, I'm still putting an asterisk in the name of the main band member here, and not posting the song list.

Anyway, P*tty and his band released their self-titled debut album in November 1976. So this took place just five months after that. Just four of the songs played here came from that album. Two more would be released on the next album, as well as two other non-album originals. Furthermore, there were two covers: "Jaguar and Thunderbird" by Chuck Berry and the often covered "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66," written by Bobby Troup.

This is from the "Live at the Record Plant" radio show. That show started in 1973 and ran strong until 1975, when the main DJ behind it, Tom Donahue, died of a heart attack at just the age of 46. But there were occasional episodes after that until about the end of 1978, when the main radio station behind the show, KSAN, changed formats. This is one of those later shows.

This album is 46 minutes long. 

As mentioned above, I'm not posting the song list here, also due to the reasons mentioned above. But you can find it in the download file. 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vMtxPRxo

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/s7fjCMdVn1sRbHs/file

The cover photo of the band was taken backstage in Los Angeles, California, in August 1977.

The Sons of Champlin - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 6-17-1973

One reason I've started posting albums from the "Live at the Record Plant" and "Ultrasonic" radio shows is that those generally consist of quality musical acts, but I'm not that familiar with many of them. So it's a good opportunity for me to expand my musical interests. This album is a case in point. I had vaguely heard of the Sons of Champlin as a Bay Area act in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but I'd never really heard their music. So if you aren't familiar with their either, I hope you'll give this a try.

The Sons of Champlin formed in 1965. They were led by Bill Champlin, who was the main singer and songwriter. Here's what their Wikipedia entry has to say: "They brought to the late '60s music scene in the Bay Area a soulful sound built around a horn section, Hammond B3 organ, sophisticated arrangements, philosophical themes, Bill Champlin's songwriting and blue-eyed soul singing, and Terry Haggerty's unique jazz-based guitar soloing." Unfortunately, they never made it big. They broke up in 1977. Then Champlin joined the very popular band Chicago a few years later, and stayed with that band until 2009. However, he reformed the Sons of Champlin in 1997, and they continue to perform until today (writing this in 2025).

Here's their Wikipedia entry, if you want to know more:

Sons of Champlin - Wikipedia 

While getting ready to post this album, I discovered that one reason some people believe the band didn't become more popular is that their concerts were very good, but they didn't fully capture how good they were on their records. So this is a good opportunity to fix that, especially since there are no official albums from them (except for way later reunions), and almost no live bootlegs. This concert took place around the time they released the album "Welcome to the Dance." 

This album is 54 minutes long. 

01 talk (Sons of Champlin)
02 Day Tripper (Sons of Champlin)
03 No Mo (Sons of Champlin)
04 talk (Sons of Champlin)
05 For Joy (Sons of Champlin)
06 Without Love (Sons of Champlin)
07 Fat City (Sons of Champlin)
08 talk (Sons of Champlin)
09 Welcome to the Dance (Sons of Champlin)
10 All and Everything (Sons of Champlin)
11 talk (Sons of Champlin)
12 Learn How to Swim (Sons of Champlin)
13 talk (Sons of Champlin)
14 Right On (Sons of Champlin)
15 talk (Sons of Champlin)
16 Linda Lou (Sons of Champlin)
17 talk (Sons of Champlin)
18 Lightning (Sons of Champlin)
19 talk (Sons of Champlin) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/9kF9T4Xk

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/Z8yvI7et4tSMFmY/file

I had a heck of a time finding a good image for the cover art. It's a sign of how they have mostly been overlooked to not be able to find a single good color photo from their prime years, other than album covers. I did find a good black and white one though. I don't know the year it's from, but I'd guess the early 1970s. I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program, plus some Photoshop work.

Peter Frampton - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 3-24-1975

I recently started posting albums from the "Live at the Record Plant" KSAN radio show. Here's another one of those. This one is from 1975 and stars Peter Frampton.

For a couple of years in the late 1970s, Frampton was a musical superstar. That was due entirely to the 1976 live album "Frampton Comes Alive!" It hit Number One on the U.S. album charts, and sold eight million copies in the U.S. That was unprecedented for a double live album.

But that was still nearly a year away when this concert happened. This was in early 1975, the same month that the studio album "Frampton" was released. "Frampton Comes Alive!" wouldn't be released until January 1976. So Frampton was still relatively unknown. At the time of this concert, Frampton hadn't had any hits as a solo artist. (However, he'd had more success as a member of Humble Pie before that.) None of his albums sold well either. A big reason "Frampton Comes Alive!" was such a huge success was that his career had essentially been ignored up until then. So the live album served as a kind of greatest hits, with lots of good songs that most people were unfamiliar with. For instance, the 1975 album "Frampton" contained studio versions of "Show Me the Way" and "Baby I Love Your Way." But they tanked when they were released as singles. Only when they were released in live versions in 1976 were they big hits.

This concert contains "Baby, I Love Your Way," as well as the talk-box extravaganza "Do You Feel like I Do." But it curiously doesn't contain "Show Me the Way," even though it was the lead single for the studio album he was promoting at the time. This is pretty different from "Frampton Comes Alive!" because, even though it was performed live, it was done in a radio station studio with no audience applause whatsoever.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 talk (Peter Frampton)
02 Wind of Change (Peter Frampton)
03 talk (Peter Frampton)
04 Baby, I Love Your Way (Peter Frampton)
05 Baby [Somethin's Happening] (Peter Frampton)
06 talk (Peter Frampton)
07 Day's Dawning (Peter Frampton)
08 Lines on My Face (Peter Frampton)
09 talk (Peter Frampton)
10 Doobie Wah (Peter Frampton)
11 It's a Plain Shame (Peter Frampton)
12 I Wanna Go to the Sun (Peter Frampton)
13 [I'll Give You] Money (Peter Frampton)
14 Do You Feel like We Do (Peter Frampton)
15 talk (Peter Frampton)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cFvXQXbi

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/m2JN1PrA4p7Oygp/file

All I know about the cover photo is it's from some time in the mid-1970s, probably 1975.

The Steve Miller Band - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 7-1-1973

Here's a concert by the Steve Miller Band in 1973, for the "Live at the Record Plant" radio show. 

One of my projects lately has been trying to post more concerts from this radio show. If you listen to this, hopefully you'll understand why. The sound quality is truly excellent, easily good enough for an official release. And there is no audience noise, which makes it even easier to hear everything being played. The performance is top notch too.

At the time of this concert, Steve Miller and his band had only been moderately successful. He had released seven studio albums. But there had been no hits, and none of the albums had reached Gold status (meaning sales of over half a million in the U.S.). 

That all would change just a couple of months later. In October 1973, he would release the album "The Joker." The title song from that album would go all the way to Number One in the U.S., turning Miller into a big star. Not only that, but it would eventually sell over six million copies, making it the biggest hit of his career. Its success would cause the album it came from to go Platinum, meaning sales of over a million copies.

In this concert, he did play "The Joker." But it's quite different from the hit version. It's a simple little acoustic version, lasting just two minutes, and many of the lyrics are different. He also played "Fly like an Eagle." That wouldn't be released until 1976, on the album of the same name. But when it was released it would be another massive hit, reaching Number Two in the U.S. singles chart.

By the way, I'm not sure about the title of track number six. On the bootleg I took this from, it was called "The Sky Is Crying." But while this is a slow blues in a similar style, the lyrics are totally different. My guess is "The Sun Is Going to Shine in Your Back Door Someday." There's other songs with very similar titles (usually "my back door" instead of "your"), but those seem to be quite different as well, so I'm a bit stumped. If anyone knows the correct title, please let us know. 

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 Fly like an Eagle - My Dark Hour (Steve Miller Band)
02 Just like a Woman (Steve Miller Band)
03 talk (Steve Miller Band)
04 Mary Lou (Steve Miller Band)
05 talk (Steve Miller Band)
06 The Sun Is Going to Shine in Your Back Door Someday (Steve Miller Band)
07 Living in the U.S.A. (Steve Miller Band)
08 Shu Ba Da Du Ma Ma Ma (Steve Miller Band)
09 Look Over Yonders Wall (Steve Miller Band)
10 talk (Steve Miller Band)
11 Gangster of Love (Steve Miller Band)
12 Space Cowboy (Steve Miller Band)
13 Kow Kow Calqulator (Steve Miller Band)
14 The Joker (Steve Miller Band)
15 Seasons (Steve Miller Band)
16 Going to the Country (Steve Miller Band)
17 talk (Steve Miller Band)
18 Jackson-Kent Blues (Steve Miller Band)
19 talk (Steve Miller Band)
20 Rock Me Baby (Steve Miller Band) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/e5gvXw8e

alternate:

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

The cover photo is from a concert at the Winterland in San Francisco, in 1974. 

Tower of Power - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 6-3-1973

I have a ton of "Live at the Record Plant" radio show episodes to share, so here's another one. This one features the Tower of Power in 1973.

Tower of Power was formed in 1968, at a time when many bands with horn sections started happening. Their first album was released in 1971. Released in early 1973, their third album, the cleverly titled "Tower of Power," was their commercial peak, containing their biggest hit, "So Very Hard to Go," along with the minor hits "This Time It's Real" and "What Is Hip." They played two of those here, but not "This Time It's Real."

I've read that these "Live at the Record Plant" had audiences up to 60 people. That's as many as could fit in the small confines of that recording studio. But there's virtually no audience noise on this one. Perhaps this was one of the first shows in the radio show series, and they hadn't began inviting audiences yet.

I cut out some banter by DJ Tom Donahue near the end, when he was hyping the products of the sponsor of the show. Basically, it was a commercial inserted into his banter.

The music is unreleased. The sound quality is very good. 

This album is 56 minutes long. 

01 Squib Cakes [Instrumental] (Tower of Power)
02 talk (Tower of Power)
03 What Is Hip (Tower of Power)
04 talk (Tower of Power)
05 Both Sorry Over Nothin' (Tower of Power)
06 Down to the Nightclub (Tower of Power)
07 talk (Tower of Power)
08 You're Still a Young Man (Tower of Power)
09 talk (Tower of Power)
10 Soul Vaccination (Tower of Power)
11 talk (Tower of Power)
12 Clean Slate (Tower of Power)
13 So Very Hard to Go (Tower of Power)
14 talk by Tom Donahue (Tower of Power)
15 talk (Tower of Power)
16 Knock Yourself Out (Tower of Power)
17 talk by Tom Donahue (Tower of Power) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rfZizjzn

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/B8qsM1kA4DkV8kk/file

The cover photo was taken in 1973. That's all I know about it. 

Linda Ronstadt - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 11-18-1973

Recently, I decided to add "Live at the Record Plant" radio shows to my list of priority postings. So here's one from 1973 starring Linda Ronstadt.

Based on the banter between songs, it seems there was a lot of confusion during this recording. The radio show just started broadcasting everything that was happening without any commercial breaks. You can hear that Ronstadt didn't really get that until well into the show. I cut out some diddling around and dead air between songs, but you can still hear some of that. 

One interesting thing about this performance is that it includes a version of "You're No Good." She started performing it in concerts in early 1973, but treated it as just another song. But she didn't release it until late 1974, and even then it was a last-minute addition to fill out her next album. But it was released as a single and went all the way to Number One in the U.S., turning her into a big star. 

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is very good. 

This album is 55 minutes long. 

01 talk (Linda Ronstadt)
02 Nightingale (Linda Ronstadt)
03 talk (Linda Ronstadt)
04 I Fall to Pieces (Linda Ronstadt)
05 talk (Linda Ronstadt)
06 Silver Threads and Golden Needles (Linda Ronstadt)
07 Love Has No Pride (Linda Ronstadt)
08 Rock Me on the Water (Linda Ronstadt)
09 talk (Linda Ronstadt)
10 I Can't Help It [If I'm Still in Love with You] (Linda Ronstadt)
11 talk (Linda Ronstadt)
12 It Doesn't Matter Anymore (Linda Ronstadt)
13 talk (Linda Ronstadt)
14 The Dark End of the Street (Linda Ronstadt)
15 talk (Linda Ronstadt)
16 I Believe in You (Linda Ronstadt)
17 talk (Linda Ronstadt)
18 Crazy Arms (Linda Ronstadt)
19 talk (Linda Ronstadt)
20 Long, Long Time (Linda Ronstadt)
21 talk (Linda Ronstadt)
22 You're No Good (Linda Ronstadt)
23 talk (Linda Ronstadt)
24 Steel Guitar Rag [Instrumental] (Linda Ronstadt)
25 talk (Linda Ronstadt)
26 Break My Mind [Instrumental] (Linda Ronstadt)
27 talk (Linda Ronstadt) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/gujj9HgQ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/NhLSXhHS2lFHl83/file

The cover image is from an appearance on ABC TV in October 1973.

Melissa Manchester - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 2-26-1975

Here's a concert by singer-songwriter Melissa Manchester. She had quite a few hits in the 1970s and 80s. But this concert was recorded in 1975, after she had released just two studio albums and hadn't had any hits yet. I'm not a big fan of her music, but I've noticed there are almost no concert recordings from her, so this will hopefully fix that a little bit.

I just posted that I'm making a new concerted effort to post more albums from the WLIR Ultrasonic concert series. As if I don't have enough on my plate in terms of good music to post at this blog already, I've decided to make another concerted effort to post more albums from this radio show as well, called "Live at the Record Plant." It was a frequent concert series done by the San Francisco Bay Area radio station KSAN, and went from 1973 to 1978. It turns out I've posted two albums from it already, one by Bonnie Raitt in 1973 and one by Fleetwood Mac in 1974. I've made a new label called "Record Plant" to help you find others in this series. So far, this is only the third album from the series, but I've discovered about 60 more! So it'll be a long time before I manage to post all of those.

Getting back to Manchester, this concert caught her right at the brink of stardom. She had co-written most of her songs on her early albums with Carole Bayer Sager, who was a talented hit-making songwriter. One song they wrote together, "Midnight Blue," was performed in this concert. When it would be released as a single a couple of months later, it would reach Number Six on the U.S. singles chart. 

Note that one song here, "Newton's Ego," is an instrumental mainly performed by James Newton Howard, a member of Manchester's band at the time. He was just a lowly session musician then, but he would go on to compose scores for over a 100 movies, earning a Grammy Award and Emmy Award along the way.

This bootleg recording is very rare. I streamed it through my computer and then broke it up into mp3 files. 

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 Bright Eyes (Melissa Manchester)
02 Midnight Blue (Melissa Manchester)
03 Party Music (Melissa Manchester)
04 talk (Melissa Manchester)
05 This Lady's Not Home Today (Melissa Manchester)
06 talk (Melissa Manchester)
07 Stevie's Wonder (Melissa Manchester)
08 talk (Melissa Manchester)
09 Newton's Ego [Instrumental] (James Newton Howard with Melissa Manchester)
10 We've Got Time (Melissa Manchester)
11 Easy (Melissa Manchester)
12 Just Too Many People (Melissa Manchester)
13 talk (Melissa Manchester)
14 Love Havin' You Around (Melissa Manchester)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8B2ZYUda

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/9e1ZBYzG4Q8o6JF/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It was blurry and low-res. I used the Krea AI program to improve it, but it's still rather blurry.

Fleetwood Mac - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Los Angeles, CA, 9-19-1974

There are two well known live recordings of Fleetwood Mac in 1974. One took place on October 4, 1974, in Hempstead, New York. It's a bootleg that I've posted here. Another one took place on December 15, 1974, in Sausalito, California. I haven't posted that one because it was officially released in 2020 as part of the box set "1969-1974." But there's also this bootleg concert. It seems to have been almost entirely overlooked, judging by how little it's mentioned on the Internet. But, like the other two, it comes from a live radio station broadcast, so the sound quality is excellent. It also contains two songs not on either of the other ones: "Coming Home" and "I Loved Another Woman."

In 1974, Fleetwood Mac was led by the singer-songwriters Bob Welch and Christine McVie. Welch would leave at the end of 1974 and would be replaced by Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, leading the band to much greater fame and fortune. For this concert, the band was promoting the album "Heroes Are Hard to Find," which had been released just a few days earlier. However, only three songs are from that album: "Coming Home," "Angel," and "Bermuda Triangle." 

I keep finding concerts where the vocals are too low in the mix. This was another one, although it wasn't a severe case. As usual, I used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost the vocals relative to the instruments. Also as usual, I boosted the volume of the banter between songs quite a lot.

This was part of a radio series called "Live at the Record Plant," done by the radio station KMET. So that's why I have that in the title. The band's December 1974 concert mentioned above was also recorded at a studio called "The Record Plant," but that was a totally different place, in Sausalito instead of Los Angeles.

This concert is an hour and eight minutes long.

01 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
02 Coming Home (Fleetwood Mac)
03 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
04 Sentimental Lady (Fleetwood Mac)
05 Future Games (Fleetwood Mac)
06 Bermuda Triangle (Fleetwood Mac)
07 The Green Manalishi [With the Two Prong Crown] (Fleetwood Mac)
08 Why (Fleetwood Mac)
09 Homeward Bound (Fleetwood Mac)
10 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
11 Angel (Fleetwood Mac)
12 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
13 I Loved Another Woman (Fleetwood Mac)
14 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
15 Spare Me a Little of Your Love (Fleetwood Mac)
16 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
17 Oh Well, Part 1 (Fleetwood Mac)
18 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
19 Rattlesnake Shake (Fleetwood Mac)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/eHGyWBJd

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/RKvOtS2gE2dtt4h/file

The cover photo shows all four members of Fleetwood Mac at the time. From right to left: Christine McVie, John McVie, Mick Fleetwood, and Bob Welch. I don't know where or when the photo was taken, only that it's from around 1973 or 1974.

Bonnie Raitt - Live at the Record Plant, Record Plant, Sausalito, CA, 12-9-1973

It's a shame there still are no official live albums from the early part of Bonnie Raitt's career. In my opinion, her first three albums all among with her best, and she was a talented live performer with entertaining between song banter from the very start. I've posted a couple of her bootleg concerts from 1971 or 1972 already, but those were solo acoustic. This is from 1973, so it encompasses her third album as well, and it's with a semi-acoustic band. 

But what really makes this a special recording, in my opinion, is the sound quality. This was recorded at a recording studio for a live radio broadcast in front of a VERY small audience. At one point, Raitt commented that she guessed 25 people were there. It also was a very polite audience that never made any noise during the songs. So while there's some clapping after every song, this is about as good and clear as concert recordings get.

As I often do with concert recordings, I broke the banter between songs into their own tracks, then boosted the volume of that banter. I also cut out some guitar tuning between songs, but there wasn't much of that to cut.

The only bummer about this recording is that it's only 53 minutes long, which is relatively short compared to a typical full concert. All the songs she played came from her excellent first three albums, with the exception of the last song, which is a cover of the Aretha Franklin hit "Baby, I Love You."

01 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
02 Love Me like a Man (Bonnie Raitt)
03 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
04 You Got to Know How (Bonnie Raitt)
05 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
06 I Thought I Was a Child (Bonnie Raitt)
07 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
08 Under the Falling Sky (Bonnie Raitt)
09 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
10 Everybody's Crying Mercy (Bonnie Raitt)
11 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
12 Give It Up or Let Me Go (Bonnie Raitt)
13 Too Long at the Fair (Bonnie Raitt)
14 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
15 I Feel the Same (Bonnie Raitt)
16 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
17 Guilty (Bonnie Raitt)
18 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
19 Women Be Wise (Bonnie Raitt)
20 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
21 Love Has No Pride (Bonnie Raitt)
22 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
23 Baby, I Love You (Bonnie Raitt)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xvCXaJfd

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/lXLmiilJ5HVDwcB/file 

The cover art photo was taken at a concert in Lenox, Massachusetts, in August 1973. A backing musician was behind her, but I considered that distracting so I used Photoshop to edit him out.