Laughter, Love and Music, Bill Graham Memorial, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA, 11-3-1991, Part 2: Santana with Los Lobos

Here's the second out of four volumes of the 1991 Bill Graham memorial concert, called "Laughter, Love and Music." This one mainly features Santana. But they were joined by Los Lobos for two songs. Additionally, Bobby McFerrin sang a wordless solo on one song.

In my opinion, it was a must that Santana performed at this concert, because Bill Graham played a pivotal role in the band's career. In 1967, when Santana was starting out, they were based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Getting to play at the Fillmore, owned and managed by Graham, was essential for getting a larger following. At first, Graham banned them after they failed to show up for a concert on time. But, a few months after that, he saw they had improved and become much more professional, and he took the band under his wing. He became their manager from 1969 to 1971.

He pushed hard to make them famous. Most importantly, he was asked to help manage and promote the Woodstock festival in 1969. He only agreed to do it if Santana, then a totally unknown band, was allowed to perform. Santana did, and that concert was their big break. But Graham did much more, including getting them their first national T.V. appearance on the "Ed Sullivan Show." He was fired from managing them around the time the band's original line-up broke up in 1971. But he still stayed close to the band and continued to advise them. As just one example, in 1977, he advised the band to cover "She's Not There" by the Zombies. They did, and had a Top Forty hit with it in both the U.S. and Britain.

Here's a quote from Carlos Santana about Graham, said shortly after Graham's death: "He really served people really well by giving people more than entertainment, so we're all very grateful to Bill Graham for your contribution to the arts, and we'll see you there when we get there. Thank you, Bill." 

This album is 53 minutes long.

34 Angels All Around Us - Spirits Dancing in the Flesh (Santana)
35 Somewhere in Heaven (Santana)
36 talk (Santana)
37 Peace on Earth... Mother Earth (Santana)
38 Third Stone from the Sun [Instrumental] (Santana)
39 Oye Como Va (Santana with Los Lobos & Bobby McFerrin)
40 talk (Santana with Los Lobos)
41 Bertha (Los Lobos & Santana)
42 talk (Santana)
43 I Love You Much Too Much [Instrumental] (Santana)
44 Jingo (Santana)
45 talk by emcee (Santana)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QfBQFec2

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/A1ZZVbu1I4Ng2wj/file

The cover image is taken from this exact concert. It shows Carlos Santana of Santana on the left and Cesar Rojas of Los Lobos in sunglasses on the right.

Our Final Week - The Closing of the Fillmore West, Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 7-4-1971, Part 5: Van Morrison, Linda Tillery, Lydia Pense, and More

Here's the fifth set from the fifth day out of five days of concerts that closed the Fillmore West venue in San Francisco in 1971. So this is the very last album of the series. (See my write-up on the Boz Scaggs set for general information about the closing.) This set is a spontaneous jam session featuring pretty much any musician who wanted to be on stage.

Promoter Bill Graham wanted his final night of the week of concerts closing the Fillmore West to go out with a bang. So the radio station broadcast on KSAN continued until the early morning hours as the jamming continued. Surprisingly, Van Morrison didn't get a set of his own at any point that week. But maybe that was in order to save him as a surprise for this final jam session, I don't know. For the song list below, I'm only including the prominent lead vocalists for the songs that had vocals. You can see Van Morrison sang on most of the songs. But Linda Tillery of the band the Loading Zone sang quite a lot, as did Lydia Pense, of the band Cold Blood. 

But those weren't the only ones on stage. I found information that at least these other musicians were on stage during this jam session: Carlos Santana, Sam Andrew (Big Brother & the Holding Company), Michael Bloomfield, Jack Casady (Hot Tuna), John Cipollina (Quicksilver Messenger Service), Vince Guaraldi, George Hunter (an artist who did many record covers), George Marsh (the Loading Zone), Bernard Purdie (a jazz drummer), and members of Tower of Power. The biggest surprise there for me is Vince Guaraldi, a jazz musician best known for his soundtracks to Charlie Brown TV specials.

It's clear no songs were carefully practiced for this jam session in advance. So the musicians stuck to simple songs that most everyone on stage was likely to know, or at least could fake it, such as "Johnny B. Goode" and "Roll Over Beethoven." 

A Rolling Stone Magazine article written just after the concert had this to say about the final jam session: "[Bill] Graham and his staff pelted the audience with gifts – paper plates, beer, champagne, and ice cubes. Sometime between 4 and 5 A.M., everyone gave up and went home. About 40 fans stuck around to shake hands with Graham, then left him to wander alone among the amps and debris." 

We actually have a photo of Graham "wandering alone among the amps and debris," so, what the heck, I'll show that here. 

It sounds like the Fillmore West was a great venue, and certainly a lot of phenomenal music was performed there during its relatively brief run, from 1968 to 1971. At least it went out in proper style with these concerts. 

This album is 55 minutes long. 

01 talk (Jam Band)
02 Rock Me Baby (Van Morrison & Linda Tillery)
03 I Found a Love (Van Morrison, Linda Tillery & Lydia Pense)
04 Flute and Guitar Jam [Instrumental] (Jam Band)
05 talk (Jam Band)
06 Roll Over Beethoven (Van Morrison, Linda Tillery & Lydia Pense)
07 Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On (Van Morrison, Linda Tillery & Lydia Pense)
08 Johnny B. Goode (Van Morrison, Linda Tillery & Lydia Pense)
09 My Angel Baby - Sh-Boom - Blue Moon - My Angel Baby (Linda Tillery)
10 Final Jam [Instrumental] (Jam Band)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Wh56F1Mw

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/fBIQ5OtldjBWT6P/file

Once again, I got lucky with the cover art. The cover only shows Van Morrison, but apparently it comes from this exact concert. 

Our Final Week - The Closing of the Fillmore West, Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 7-4-1971, Part 4: Santana & Mike Bloomfield

Here's the fourth set from the fifth day out of five days of concerts that closed the Fillmore West venue in San Francisco in 1971. (See my write-up on the Boz Scaggs set for general information about the closing.) This set is kind of a continuation of the previous set by Santana. But it's separate from that because the band was joined by lead guitarist Mike Bloomfield all the way through. Plus, there were other guests. Most notably, Van Morrison showed up near the end to sing his song "I've Been Working."

This essentially was one long jam. I broke the music into two tracks, but the song "I've Been Working" sort of emerged from the jam without a clear break. I also don't know if the name of the jam, "Feel It Jam," means anything. I just copied that name from a bootleg.

I don't know who else performed on these jams, though it's a good bet there were others. If anyone knows, please let me know. If I recall correctly, at one point, someone on stage mentioned the name John Cipollina, so I figure he was involved. He had been one of the lead guitarists for Quicksilver Messenger Service, but he'd quit the band about six months prior to this concert. So probably this was a way for him to be involved in the final Fillmore West concerts without taking part in the Quicksilver Messenger Service performance the night before.

This music was followed by another jam session featuring some different performers. That'll be the final set from this series of concerts. 

This album is 45 minutes long. 

01 Feel It Jam [Instrumental] (Santana & Michael Bloomfield)
02 I've Been Working (Van Morrison, Santana & Michael Bloomfield)
03 talk (Santana) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BXEhUMpq

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/WJ53WQC8NTU2xEn/file

Boy, did I get lucky with the cover photo for this album. I didn't expect to find any photos of Mike Bloomfield and Carlos Santana together. But I found one from this exact concert! The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program. 

Our Final Week - The Closing of the Fillmore West, Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 7-4-1971, Part 3: Santana

Here's the third set from the fifth day out of five days of concerts that closed the Fillmore West venue in San Francisco in 1971. (See my write-up on the Boz Scaggs set for general information about the closing.) This set features the band Santana.

I've already posted a lot of music by Santana, so I don't feel the need to introduce the band here. However, I will note a bit about what the band was doing at the time of this concert. They had just finished recording their third album, "Santana III," but it wouldn't be released until September, a couple of months away. Still, that didn't stop them from performing five songs from that album: "Batuka," "Gumbo," "No One to Depend On," "Taboo," and "Toussaint L'Ouverture." Neal Schon had recently joined the band as a second lead guitarist, so you can hear his playing here.

Right after this set ended, Carlos Santana and much of the band played more music with lead guitarist Mike Bloomfield and others. But I'll be posting a different album for that.

I believe this is the only set from the closing of the Fillmore West that has been officially released in full. But I'm posting it here anyway so one can get all of the sets. You can find it on the deluxe edition of "Santana III." It's very fortunate that this has been officially released, because it also happens to be the only set from these five days of concerts that wasn't broadcast on the radio at the time, and thus wasn't bootlegged. I found this explanation at the santanaamigos.com music blog:

"It is rumored that the band (afraid of being bootlegged heavily with this show), did not permit KSAN to broadcast the official band segment. Reportedly, KSAN was set up completely but the plug literally got pulled out at the very last moment by some Santana roadies! It wasn't until the final part of 'Soul Sacrifice' that the broadcast lines were re-opened." 

For a long time, I only had two songs from this set, "Incident at Neshabur" and "In a Silent Way," because they had been officially released as part of the "Fillmore - The Last Days" album. Thank goodness somebody had recorded it after all.

This album is 58 minutes long. 

01 Batuka [Instrumental] (Santana)
02 No One to Depend On (Santana)
03 Toussaint L'Overture [Instrumental] (Santana)
04 Taboo (Santana)
05 Jungle Strut [Instrumental] (Santana)
06 Black Magic Woman - Gypsy Queen (Santana)
07 Incident at Neshabur [Instrumental] (Santana)
08 In a Silent Way [Instrumental] (Santana)
09 Savor [Instrumental] (Santana)
10 Para los Rumberos [Instrumental] (Santana)
11 talk (Santana)
12 Gumbo [Instrumental] (Santana)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qUkpk1Qp

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/hNNtLE3IuMcPEb2/file

The cover photo of Carlos Santana is from this exact concert.

All Our Colors Benefit, Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, CA, 10-10-1992 - Part 6: Santana

Here's the sixth and final album from the "All Our Colors" benefit concert in 1992. For an overview of the concert as a whole, check out my write-up for Part 1. This is a set by Santana. 

It's a bit unusual in that about half of the set prominently features guest stars Ry Cooder and Steve Miller. No doubt, lead guitarist Carlos Santana took advantage of the fact that these two other talented guitarists were at the venue, since they had performed in earlier sets. Mostly, Cooder and Miller jammed on guitars with Santana, but Miller also did the lead vocals on the blues classic "All Your Love (I Miss Loving)."

I'm guessing that John Lee Hooker, who played a set earlier in the evening, went to sleep already, since he was well over 70 years old by this time. Had he been awake, he probably would have wanted to join in on "The Healer," because it's a song from Hooker's 1989 album of the same name. Santana co-wrote it and performed on it. 

This album is an hour and 15 minutes long. 

01 talk (Santana)
02 Peace on Earth... Mother Earth... Third Stone from the Sun (Santana)
03 Somewhere in Heaven (Santana)
04 Viva La Vida [Life Is for Living] (Santana)
05 Savor [Instrumental] (Santana)
06 talk (Santana)
07 The Healer [Instrumental] (Santana with Ry Cooder)
08 talk (Santana with Ry Cooder)
09 All Your Love [I Miss Loving] (Santana with Ry Cooder & Steve Miller)
10 Sacred Fire [Instrumental] (Santana with Ry Cooder & Steve Miller)
11 Why Can't We Live Together (Santana with Ry Cooder & Steve Miller)
12 Exodus (Santana with Ry Cooder & Steve Miller)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/W1VeBVud

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/tvlzB8CYRYgsZ6o/file

The cover photo of Carlos Santana is from this exact concert.

Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 8-31-1969, Part 3: Santana

The third album from the second day of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival is a set by Santana.

A key thing to keep in mind here is that at the time of this concert, almost nobody in the audience would have known the music of Santana. Their first album, "Santana," was released on August 22, 1969, only about ten days prior to this performance. The first single from it, "Jingo," didn't make much of an impact on the charts. They also performed at the Woodstock festival earlier in August, and that was their big break that put them on the road to stardom. But most of the impact of that would come later, for instance after the Woodstock album and concert came out. Later in 1969, the single "Evil Ways" would be released from their first album and go on to be a big hit, resulting in them getting on prominent TV shows, like "The Ed Sullivan Show." But all that was still in the future. Maybe some people at this festival had also been at the Woodstock festival and spread some word-of-mouth news about them, but that was probably it.

The set list was very similar to their Woodstock set list, except even shorter. Their Woodstock set was 48 minutes long, and this one is only 33. I don't know if that's because this one is incomplete, or if it was just a rather short set. Since they weren't well known yet, it's possible this is the whole thing.

This album is 33 minutes long. 

01 Evil Ways (Santana)
02 talk (Santana)
03 You Just Don't Care (Santana)
04 talk (Santana)
05 Shades of Time [Instrumental] (Santana)
06 Jingo (Santana)
07 talk (Santana)
08 Treat (Santana)
09 talk (Santana)
10 Soul Sacrifice [Instrumental] (Santana)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1FQz8Dbp

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/qDf1JWX5REJCBDj/file

The cover photo of Carlos Santana is from this exact concert. It was the only photo of the band I could find from this concert, and I had to do a lot of work on it to make it look good. It was in black and white, so I converted it to color using Kolorize, plus I did some work in Photoshop, like making the colors of the flags in the background match other pictures from the festival. Santana's face was blurry, so I had to do some extra work to make that look better, using Krea AI and Photoshop.

Santana - PBS Soundstage, Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, IL, 2-19-1977

Here's another one of these great "PBS Soundstage" concerts I recently discovered. This one mostly features Santana in 1977. However, in the middle of the show, Carlos Santana and his band left the stage and was replaced by the Tower of Power for three songs. Santana and the Tower of Power finally joined together for the last song. On top of that, saxophonist Gato Barbieri also joined in for the last two songs.

This is an excellent sounding concert now, but boy oh boy did it need a lot of fixing. I downloaded a very large video file of the concert which sounded great. But I soon discovered a problem: there were little gaps of silence throughout the recording. Little batches of them would show up about every minute, all the way through. I don't know what caused that, but I discovered that if I carefully cut out of the gaps in the Audacity audio editing program, there was no loss of music. So, being a glutton for punishment, I tried to fix the microgaps. I may have missed a few. If you notice any annoying ones, let me know and I'll further fix it. But I got the vast majority of them at any rate.

There was an additional problem that I wasn't so successful in fixing. At the start of "Black Magic Woman," there was a voiceover for about the first thirty seconds. I used the UVR5 program to remove the talking while keeping the underlying music. However, the volume of the music had been turned down so much that there was a lot of distortion that just isn't fixable. So the first thirty seconds or so of that song is pretty rough. That's why it has "[Edit]" in its title.

This concert took place one month after the release of the Santana studio album "Festival." Four tracks are from that (1, 3, 10, and 11). It was the second and last album with Leon Patillo on lead vocals. 

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 Carnaval - Let the Children Play - Jugando (Santana)
02 Dance, Sister, Dance (Santana)
03 Revelations [Instrumental] (Santana)
04 Oakland Stroke (Tower of Power)
05 You Oughta Be Havin' Fun (Tower of Power)
06 What Is Hip (Tower of Power)
07 Black Magic Woman - Gypsy Queen [Edit] (Santana)
08 talk (Santana)
09 Europa [Earth's Cry, Heaven's Smile] [Instrumental] (Santana with Gato Barbieri)
10 Give Me Love (Santana with Gato Barbieri)
11 Maria Caracoles (Santana with Tower of Power)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/p58utecV

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/B74BVIbvGxulPD8/file

The cover photo shows Carlos Santana singing backing vocals into a microphone while lead singer Leon Patillo looks on.

US Festival '82, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 9-4-1982 - Day 2, Part 2: Santana

The second act presented here from Day Two of the 1982 US Festival is a set by Santana.

The act I posted right before this one, Dave Edmunds, has one of the worst sounding audience bootleg recordings from this festival. But luckily, the Santana set is one of the best sounding. That's because of a very rare official release from the festival: "Santana: Live at US Festival." Note this was just a video release, not an audio one, so I had to concert the video file into mp3s.

Also, although the audio quality from that source was great, there were problems. The main one was that the concert performance was occasionally interrupted with other things not from the concert, such as interview segments between some songs. I got rid of all of that extraneous stuff. But I had to put "[Edit]" in the titles of three songs. Those are cases were bits of songs were missing due to those other bits included in the video instead, so I had to patch those up.

In the early 1980s, Santana was in more of a hit making mode, with hits like "Open Invitation," "Hold On," and "She's Not There." So some of the set is like that. But at the same time, the band continued to be jammy and jazzy. That also shows up here, especially with the version of "Incident at Neshabur" that prominently featured legendary jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock as a guest star.

By the way, note that while I said above that the album from the festival I posted before this one was Dave Edmunds, there actually was another act between that one and this one: Eddie Money. Unfortunately, I couldn't find ANY recording of Money's set, not even a crappy audience bootleg. If anyone can find a recording of it, please let me know. The only sets I regret not having from this festival are the Gang of Four and Eddie Money. I believe I got all the other major acts.

This album is an hour and five minutes long.

016 talk (Santana)
017 Primera Invasion [Instrumental] [Edit] (Santana)
018 Searchin' (Santana)
019 Black Magic Woman - Gypsy Queen (Santana)
020 Oye Como Va [Edit] (Santana)
021 Dealer - Spanish Rose (Santana)
022 Nowhere to Run (Santana)
023 talk (Santana)
024 Incident at Neshabur [Instrumental] (Santana with Herbie Hancock)
025 Jingo [Instrumental] [Edit] (Santana)
026 Hold On (Santana)
027 She's Not There (Santana)
028 Open Invitation (Santana)
029 Shango (Santana)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17497720/VA-1982USFstvlDay0202Sntna_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Rk1dHbHs

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/jTBjMsFjX4mGLtE/file 

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

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

The eighth act from Day Three of the Woodstock ‘94 Festival is a set by the band Santana.

Lead guitarist, Carlos Santana did his usual Latin rock thing for decades to about the same level of critical and commercial success, until he had a big surge in record sales in the late 1990s. The band’s most recent album prior to this festival was “Milagro,” released in 1992. That album just missed reaching the top 100 in the US album charts. But that didn’t matter much because the band mostly relied on songs from their deep music catalog, including songs from recent albums.

This album is an hour and 50 minutes long. I believe this was the longest set of the entire festival.

01 talk (Santana)
02 Soul Sacrifice - A Love Supreme (Santana)
03 Peace on Earth ... Mother Earth ... Third Stone from the Sun (Santana)
04 Luz, Amor Y Vida [Instrumental] (Santana)
05 Angels All Around Us [Instrumental] (Santana)
06 talk (Santana)
07 Spirits Dancing in the Flesh (Santana)
08 talk (Santana)
09 Somewhere in Heaven - Savor (Santana)
10 talk (Santana)
11 Raul Rico Percussion Solo [Instrumental] (Santana)
12 Percussion Solo [Instrumental] (Santana)
13 Instrumental with Janie Hendrix Talk (Santana)
14 talk (Santana)
15 Make Somebody Happy - Get It in Your Soul (Santana)
16 talk (Santana)
17 Wings of Grace [Instrumental] (Santana)
18 Black Magic Woman - Gypsy Queen (Santana)
19 Oye Como Va (Santana)
20 talk (Santana)
21 Toussaint L'Overture [Instrumental] (Santana)
22 talk (Santana)
23 Bacalao Con Pan (Santana)
24 Europa [Earth's Cry, Heaven's Smile] [Instrumental] (Santana)
25 Jingo (Santana)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/pLL2akK3

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/wqhjRn502ZDMfjU/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

SNACK Benefit, Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA, 3-23-1975, Part 4: Santana

The fourth major musical act at the 1975 SNACK benefit in San Francisco was Santana.

There's not much to say about this set. Santana did their usual Latin soul music thing with lots of tasty lead guitar from Carlos Santana. Most of the songs were better known songs from earlier albums, with the exception of one new one, "Let the Children Play."

During their set, a large group of people tried to scale a 70-foot high wall in the stadium in order to get in free, but they were foiled by the stadium security forces.

After the set, there were speeches by baseball hero Willie Mays and football hero Gene Washington.

This album is 36 minutes long.

25 talk by Bill Graham (Santana)
26 Incident at Neshabur [Instrumental] (Santana)
27 Let the Children Play (Santana)
28 Oye Como Va (Santana)
29 talk (Santana)
30 Toussaint L'Overture [Instrumental] (Santana)
31 talk (Santana)
32 Soul Sacrifice [Instrumental] (Santana)
33 Black Magic Woman - Gypsy Queen (Santana)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17209132/VA-SNCKBnefitKzarStdumSnFrncscoCA197504Sntna_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/B33UPXBn

Once again, I could only find one photo of Santana from this exact concert, so I used it. Once again, it was in black and white. So I colorized it with the help of the Palette program. I did find a mention that lead guitarist Carlos Santana wore "a knee-length white sweater trimmed in blue, with a photo of guru Sri Chinmoy pinned at his throat," so I made sure the colors reflected that.

UPDATE: On October 7, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Live Aid - JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, PA, 7-13-1985, Part 3: George Thorogood & the Destroyers, Simple Minds, the Pretenders, & Santana with Pat Metheny

This is Part 3 of the Philadelphia portion of the 1985 Live Aid benefit concert. As I've explained elsewhere, I'm posting the London portion separately after I finish with Philadelphia.

In retrospect, I'm disappointed about all the musical acts that didn't get to play Live Aid, given how many were very eager to do so. But at least some more got represented by guesting for some of the acts. For instance, George Thorogood had Bo Diddley guest for one song in his set, and Albert Collins guested for another song. I'm sure neither of those acts would have been considered popular enough to appear otherwise.

There was a big problem with the Simple Minds set. Everything was fine until the last song, "Promised You a Miracle." Halfway through the song, the video cut out completely. Apparently, it couldn't be recovered, since none of the concert was professionally recorded (because some acts worried they would be pushed into taking part in an official album eventually). So when the video feed was cut (along with an audio feed for radio stations), all the music was lost, apparently permanently. However, I did my best to fix this problem. I found a live version of the song from 1986 with similar sound quality, and used that to finish it off. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in the title.

Actually, I could have put "[Edit]" in the titles of many other songs, for this part and the others. In addition to fixing the mixes for all the songs using UVR5, I patched in missing chunks of applause for many of the songs. But I only saved mentioning "[Edit]" in more drastic cases.

Anyway, there's not much to say about the Pretenders set. Although I am surprised that there was no collaboration between Jim Kerr, lead singer of Simple Minds, and Chrissie Hynde, lead singer of the Pretenders, considering the sets of their bands played back to back and the two lead singers got married in 1984. (They would divorce in 1990.)

The last act on this album was Santana. I find it rather odd that they generally played recent album cuts instead of classic hits, but oh well. Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny guested on the last two songs.

This album is an hour and ten minutes long.

054 Who Do You Love (George Thorogood & the Destroyers with Bo Diddley)
055 talk (George Thorogood & the Destroyers)
056 The Sky Is Crying (George Thorogood & the Destroyers)
057 Madison Blues (George Thorogood & the Destroyers with Albert Collins)
058 talk (Joe Piscopo)
059 Ghost Dancing (Simple Minds)
060 talk (Simple Minds)
061 Don't You [Forget about Me] (Simple Minds)
062 Promised You a Miracle [Edit] (Simple Minds)
063 Time, the Avenger (Pretenders)
064 Message of Love (Pretenders)
065 Stop Your Sobbing (Pretenders)
066 Back on the Chain Gang (Pretenders)
067 Middle of the Road (Pretenders)
068 talk (Bill Graham)
069 Brotherhood (Santana)
070 Primera Invasion [Instrumental] (Santana)
071 Open Invitation (Santana)
072 talk (Santana)
073 By the Pool [Instrumental] (Santana with Pat Metheny)
074 Right Now (Santana with Pat Metheny)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15699706/LveAidJFKStdiumPhladlphiaPA__7-13-1985_Part3.zip.html

As with Part 2, I've divided the cover art so I could post four photos, all from Live Aid. That's George Thorogood on the top left, Jim Kerr of Simple Minds on the top right, Chrisse Hynde of the Pretenders on the bottom left, and Carlos Santana of Santana on the bottom right.

A Conspiracy of Hope, Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ, 6-15-1986, Part 3 - Ruben Blades, Yoko Ono, Howard Jones, Miles Davis, Neville Brothers & Joan Baez

This is the third of out five albums of the final concert from the 1986 "A Conspiracy of Hope" tour. If you want to know more about the concert in general, check out the write-up for the first part.

This part has an even more eclectic group of artists than the other parts, in my opinion. There also was an emphasis on world music. That's especially true because of two famous musicians who took part, but didn't have sets of their own. Fela Kuti, from Nigeria, played two songs with the Neville Brothers. Carlos Santana, the main force behind the band Santana, played guitar on songs by Ruben Blades, Miles Davis, and the Neville Brothers.

Ruben Blades, from Panama, is one of the most famous musicians from Latin America. He hasn't had a lot of commercial success in the U.S., probably because he's generally stuck to singing in Spanish, as he did for his set here. But he's had dozens of hits in Spanish speaking countries. He's also won eleven Grammy Awards in the U.S., and has acted in many movies. Plus, he's been a politician in Panama.

Yoko Ono is best known for being the wife of John Lennon of the Beatles. She's been criticized for her avant garde singing style. However, she had a conventional hit in the U.S. and Britain in 1981 with the song "Walking on Thin Ice," which she played here.

British singer Howard Jones had a bunch of new wave hits in the 1980s, but he was only allowed to sing one for this concert, "No One Is to Blame."

Miles Davis is one of the most famous jazz musicians of all time. Unfortunately, his peak years were in the 1950s, 60s, and early 70s. He retired from music in the late 1970s, letting sex and drugs take over his life. He resumed his music career in the early 1980s and found his greatest commerical success with a more poppy style, but many jazz fans aren't fond of this phase of his career.

Today, the Neville Brothers are one of the most famous bands out of New Orleans, if not the most famous. But in 1986, they weren't that well known, having only released one album under that name, back in 1978. But some of the brothers in the band had had more success, especially Aaron Neville, who had a big hit way back in 1966 with "Tell It like It Is." Folk singer Joan Baez also had lots of success back in the 1960s. For this concert, she sang the Bob Dylan song "The Times They Are A-Changin'" in acappella style. But for the other songs, she was backed by the Neville Brothers. I think it was a successful, though unexpected, collaboration.

This album is an hour and 44 minutes long.

044 Cuentas del Alma (Ruben Blades)
045 talk (Ruben Blades)
046 Tierra Dura (Ruben Blades)
047 talk (Ruben Blades)
048 Todos Vuelven (Ruben Blades)
049 Muevete (Ruben Blades with Carlos Santana)
050 talk (Ruben Blades)
051 Walking on Thin Ice (Yoko Ono)
052 talk (Yoko Ono)
053 Imagine (Yoko Ono)
054 No One Is to Blame (Howard Jones)
055 One Phone Call - Street Scenes - Speak - That's What Happened [Instrumental] (Miles Davis)
056 Tutu [Instrumental] (Miles Davis)
057 Splatch [Instrumental] (Miles Davis)
058 Burn [Instrumental] (Miles Davis with Carlos Santana)
059 Big Chief (Neville Brothers)
060 Goodbye Forever (Neville Brothers)
061 Everybody Better Wake Up (Neville Brothers with Fela Kuti)
062 Midnight Key (Neville Brothers with Carlos Santana & Fela Kuti)
063 The Times They Are A-Changin' (Joan Baez)
064 Shout (Joan Baez & the Neville Brothers)
065 No Woman, No Cry (Joan Baez & the Neville Brothers)
066 Let It Be (Joan Baez & the Neville Brothers)
067 Amazing Grace (Joan Baez & Aaron Neville) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/c753n41S

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/G4UcLFfuso6gUuv/file

The cover photo is of Joan Baez and the Neville Brothers, and it comes from this exact concert.

Santana with Jose Feliciano - L.A. Forum, Los Angeles, CA, 3-22-1971

I've posted well over 2,000 albums on this blog by now, yet it staggers me to think of how much more I want to post that I haven't gotten to yet. For instance, I'm embarrassed by the fact that I've hardly posted any music by the Beatles (and none by solo John Lennon) yet, despite the fact they're my favorite group. And I have a mountain of BBC material I haven't even had a chance to listen to yet. Another artist that's been sorely lacking here is Santana. So here's something from them.

Santana the band has been in existence for over 50 years as a write this. But my favorite time period for the band was their first incarnation, which released three albums from 1969 to 1971. So I figured I should start with something from that time. I think they peaked in 1971 with the addition of Neal Schon as a second lead guitarist, so I looked for something from that year. I settled on this concert bootleg. It stands above other 1971 bootlegs for two reasons. For one, it's an excellent sounding soundboard recording. And for the other, Puerto Rican singer and guitarist Jose Feliciano was one of the opening acts for this show, and joined Santana for three songs at the end of their set. That makes it something a bit different from other Santana concerts from that year.

Regarding the sound quality, there was one flaw that perhaps has stopped this from being better known. Generally speaking, it sounds great, as good as official live albums of the time, but the vocals were rather low in the mix. That isn't that big of a deal since most of the songs are instrumentals, but still, it was less than ideal. So I used the audio editing program UVR5 to boost the vocals. This went without a hitch on all the songs with vocals until the last one, "Guajira." For that one, the vocals were buried so much that I had to do a lot of extra work on it to get them in shape. Even then, there are a few passages where the vocals were too low to be able to do anything.

Note that two of the last three songs are repeats from earlier in the show: "Black Magic Woman - Gypsy Queen" and "Oye Como Va." Clearly, they repeated them because Feliciano was the lead singer the second time on those, as well as the main singer for the last song, "Guajira." "Oye Como Va" and "Guajira" already were in Spanish. But it's interesting that he sang Spanish lyrics to "Black Magic Woman" as well.

This album is an hour and 24 minutes long.

01 Waiting [Instrumental] (Santana)
02 Ballin’ [Instrumental] (Santana)
03 Black Magic Woman - Gypsy Queen (Santana)
04 Oye Como Va (Santana)
05 Savor [Instrumental] (Santana)
06 Samba Pa Ti [Instrumental] (Santana)
07 talk (Santana)
08 Toussaint L'Ouverture [Instrumental] (Santana)
09 Evil Ways (Santana)
10 talk (Santana)
11 Incident at Neshebur [Instrumental] (Santana)
12 Jungle Strut [Instrumental] (Santana)
13 Everybody’s Everything (Santana)
14 Gumbo [Instrumental] (Santana)
15 talk (Santana)
16 Black Magic Woman - Gypsy Queen [Spanish Version] (Santana & Jose Feliciano)
17 Oye Como Va (Santana & Jose Feliciano)
18 Guajira (Santana & Jose Feliciano)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15168124/Santna_1971_LAFrumLosAngelsCA__3-22-1971_atse.zip.html

All I know about the cover photo is that it's from around 1970.

Also, I came across a poster for the show. I didn't use it for the cover because I find it kind of bland, but I'm including it here for anyone who is interested.

Bob Dylan with Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison & Chrissie Hynde - Wembley Stadium, London, Britain, 7-7-1984

I've been working my way through Bob Dylan's music career chronologically. So far, as I write this in November 2022, I've made it to about 1976. But I recently came across this excellent concert from 1984, so it goes to the top of the pile of things to post.

In 1984, returned to commercial and critical success after a few controversial years with very religious albums. This concert must have been a symbolic triumph for him, playing before over 70,000 people in Wembley Stadium in London on a bill that included opening acts Nick Lowe, UB40, and Santana.

Dylan put on a long show, 2 hours and 31 minutes, with lots of special guests (who I will explain in a minute). He was in a very rocking mood, playing even some sedate songs like "Every Grain of Sand" and "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" in a lively style. His band included lead guitarist Mick Taylor, formerly of the Rolling Stones, who ripped many excellent solos throughout the show.

Here's a review from the time in Rolling Stone Magazine. The article title says it all: "Bob Dylan Back in Peak Form." The article calls it one of the concert highlights of Dylan's career, and I would agree.

Bob Dylan performs epic concert at Wembley Stadium – Rolling Stone

Dylan must have liked this show because he released a live album late in 1984, "Real Live," with six of the ten songs coming from this exact concert. Personally, I must prefer hearing a full concert like this one to a live album with songs chosen from different concerts. Besides, this is two and half hours long and "Real Live" is only 50 minutes long.

The sound quality of this bootleg is excellent. I found different versions of this concert on the Internet, and most of them are merely okay sounding audience bootlegs. But this version comes from a soundboard. It sounds just as good as the versions of the songs on the "Real Live" album, in my opinion.

There was only one sonic flaw. On four of the songs, there were some very small silent gaps, each of them only a second or less. But it was enough to be noticeable and annoying. I carefully edited those songs to remove the gaps, and when I did I found there wasn't any music missing. Those four have "[Edit]" in their names. 

Now, let me discuss the many special guests on this show. Dylan played two hours, mostly with a full band, but some songs done solo acoustic. Then he came back for what turned out to be a very unusual encore that lasted 35 minutes. For the whole encore, he was joined by Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton & Chrissie Hynde. Santana and Clapton often played guitar solos. Right before the song "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat," Dylan joked, "There's too many guitar players up here. I may just sing the first verse and leave." It would be good if someone could watch the video of this concert on YouTube and figure out who played which solo in the encores (with Mick Taylor presumably playing some too).

Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders mostly sang backing vocals, though apparently she also played a harmonica solo on one song. This was not her finest hour - it's very challenging to sing harmony with Dylan, since he changes how he sings the lyrics in unpredictable ways. 

On top of that, Van Morrison made a brief but important appearance in the encore too. He only showed up for the song "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." That was a Dylan song he sang on a Them album back in 1966, and he's revisited in concert from time to time ever since. He sang the lead vocals for it here. I think Hynde also sang a verse, but unfortunately wasn't turned on because one can barely hear just a few traces of her voice in the middle of the song.

This concert shows Dylan swinging for the fences, trying to please a huge crowd, and hitting a home run. Look at the set list below. Almost every song is a well known classic, and he performed most of them in a rocking style. So if I were to present just one Dylan concert to someone not that familiar with his music, I probably would choose this one.

01 Highway 61 Revisited (Bob Dylan)
02 Jokerman (Bob Dylan)
03 All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan)
04 Just like a Woman (Bob Dylan)
05 Maggie's Farm (Bob Dylan)
06 I and I (Bob Dylan)
07 License to Kill (Bob Dylan)
08 talk (Bob Dylan)
09 I've Got to Use My Imagination (Bob Dylan & Greg Sutton)
10 A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (Bob Dylan)
11 Tangled Up in Blue (Bob Dylan)
12 It's Alright, Ma [I'm Only Bleeding] (Bob Dylan)
13 Simple Twist of Fate (Bob Dylan)
14 Masters of War (Bob Dylan)
15 Ballad of a Thin Man (Bob Dylan)
16 Enough Is Enough [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
17 Every Grain of Sand [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
18 Like a Rolling Stone [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
19 Mr. Tambourine Man (Bob Dylan)
20 Girl from the North Country [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
21 It Ain't Me, Babe (Bob Dylan)
22 talk (Bob Dylan)
23 Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (Bob Dylan with Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton & Chrissie Hynde)
24 talk (Bob Dylan)
25 It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bob Dylan & Van Morrison with Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton & Chrissie Hynde)
26 Tombstone Blues (Bob Dylan with Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton & Chrissie Hynde)
27 Senor [Tales of Yankee Power] (Bob Dylan with Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton & Chrissie Hynde)
28 The Times They Are A-Changin' (Bob Dylan with Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton & Chrissie Hynde)
29 Blowin' in the Wind (Bob Dylan with Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton & Chrissie Hynde)
30 Knockin' on Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan with Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton & Chrissie Hynde)
31 talk (Bob Dylan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KhBmeEi6

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/KjYCMNSw8z0s3rz/file

The cover photo is from the exact concert featured here. I'm pretty sure that's Chrissie Hynde in the white shirt with her back to the camera, and Eric Clapton standing next to her.