Various Artists - Elvis: The Tribute, Pyramid Arena, Memphis, TN, 10-8-1994

Here's another interesting tribute concert, with loads of big stars. All of the songs performed were made famous by Elvis Presley. 

This concert seems to have mostly disappeared down the memory hole. An album of highlights from the concert was released, called "It's Now Or Never: The Tribute To Elvis." However, it's only 45 minutes long, containing just 15 songs. But the full two plus hour long concert was broadcast on TV at the time, so excellent sounding video footage of it exists.

This concert took place in 1994 despite the lack of any big anniversary or other important timely reason for it. Instead, the Elvis Presley estate decided that Presley's music was being forgotten by younger generations, so the concert was meant to help bring his music back into the spotlight.

As you can see from the album cover or the song list, a great many music stars performed in this concert. A few more - Jon Bon Jovi, Jeff Beck, and Cher, at least - backed out at the last minute. I found that mentioned in a newspaper article, though it didn't give a reason why. 

I used two versions of the video files of this concert, converted them to audio format, and broke them into mp3s. During that process, I cut out some material. There were several sections of a few minutes each that consisted of short films highlight different aspects of Presley's life. I removed all of those, plus their intros, since they were meant mainly to be seen, not heard. I also edited out some more talk by the announcers. However, I kept all the intros relevant to the songs. Plus, of course, I kept all the music.

The concert was mostly hosted by Karen Duffy, an MTV DJ, and singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson. But actor John Stamos introduced a few acts, and TV host Phil Donohue introduced one, and sometimes one act introduced the next one.

Occasionally, I had a little trouble with the edits at the starts and ends of songs. For instance, there were quick cuts to or away from TV commercials, as well as the short films I mentioned above. I tried my best to smooth things out, but occasionally the transitions between tracks is abrupt.

Scotty Moore, D.J. Fontana, James Burton, and the Jordanaires didn't have any performances on their own. However, all of them were key backing musicians or singers for Presley. From time to time, they backed up some of the other music acts. 

All of the performances were live from the concert, with two exceptions. I think "Too Much" by NRBQ actually took place before the TV broadcast began. But I slotted it into a logical spot in the concert. And U2 didn't show up for the concert, but sent video footage of their performance to be broadcast instead.

By the way, if you want to know more about the concert, I found a New York Times article of it from the time. Here's the link (I think you have to click on Option 2 to see it):

RemovePaywall | Free online paywall remover 

This album is two hours and three minutes long.

01 talk (Karen Duffy)
02 Good Rockin' Tonight (Sammy Hagar)
03 Too Much (NRBQ)
04 Baby, Let's Play House (Michael Hutchence & NRBQ)
05 talk (Kris Kristofferson & Karen Duffy)
06 talk (Chet Atkins)
07 How's the World Treating You (Chet Atkins)
08 talk (Karen Duffy)
09 Mystery Train (Dwight Yoakam)
10 talk (Kris Kristofferson)
11 Don't Be Cruel (Marty Stuart with the Jordanaires)
12 talk (Marty Stuart)
13 All Shook Up (Cheap Trick)
14 talk (John Stamos)
15 That's Alright Mama (Kris Kristofferson)
16 talk (Kris Kristofferson)
17 One Night (Billy Ray Cyrus with the Jordanaires)
18 talk (Karen Duffy)
19 Lawdy Miss Claudy (Travis Tritt)
20 talk (Karen Duffy)
21 Blue Moon [Edit] (Chris Isaak with Scotty Moore & D.J. Fontana)
22 Love Me (Mavericks)
23 talk (John Stamos)
24 talk (Carl Perkins)
25 Blue Suede Shoes (Carl Perkins with Scotty Moore & D.J. Fontana)
26 talk (Carl Perkins)
27 Rip It Up (Iggy Pop)
28 Memories (Mac Davis)
29 talk (Mac Davis)
30 talk (Bryan Adams)
31 Hound Dog (Bryan Adams with Scotty Moore & D.J. Fontana)
32 talk (Kris Kristofferson)
33 Always on My Mind (Sam Moore)
34 talk (Karen Duffy)
35 Heartbreak Hotel (John Cale)
36 talk (Karen Duffy)
37 I Want You, I Need You, I Love You (Ann Wilson)
38 talk (Karen Duffy)
39 Teddy Bear (Tanya Tucker)
40 talk (Kris Kristofferson)
41 Trouble (Paul Rodgers)
42 talk (Phil Donahue)
43 [Marie's the Name] His Latest Flame (Scorpions)
44 Can't Help Falling in Love (U2)
45 talk (Kris Kristofferson & Karen Duffy)
46 It's Now or Never (Wet Wet Wet)
47 talk (Mac Davis)
48 Love Me Tender (Tony Bennett)
49 talk (Mac Davis)
50 Young and Beautiful (Aaron Neville)
51 talk (Mac Davis)
52 Jailhouse Rock (Michael Bolton with Scotty Moore, D.J. Fontana & Carl Perkins)
53 talk (Karen Duffy)
54 Tryin' to Get to You (Faith Hill)
55 talk (John Stamos)
56 See See Rider (Jerry Lee Lewis with James Burton & NRBQ)
57 Kentucky Rain - Suspicious Minds (Eddie Rabbitt & Mavis Staples)
58 talk (Karen Duffy)
59 Burning Love (Melissa Etheridge)
60 talk (John Stamos)
61 Amazing Grace (Billy Ray Cyrus & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/GWnJSkKo

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/cqa2ziePj3VTmo8/file 

The cover image is a pretty weird one for this concert, but bear with me for the explanation. It depicts Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley (the daughter of Elvis Presley). They had recently gotten married at the time of this concert. (Their marriage only lasted from 1994 to 1996). The weird thing is that neither of them performed at this concert. However, they did attend it. At one point near the end, you can hear the announcer mention their names, along with those of Janet Jackson (Michael Jackson's sister) and Priscilla Presley (Lisa Marie Presley's mother). All four of them briefly stood up and waved to the crowd. 

The main reason I chose them for the cover is because this was the only decent photo from the concert that I could find. The mere fact they were at the concert made news, especially due to the fact that they had just been recently married. I think the image shows the two of them backstage before or after the concert. Even this picture was rather low-res and rough, but I used the Krea AI program to improve the image quality. 

US Festival '83, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 5-29-1983 - Day 2, Part 6: The Scorpions

The sixth act on Day Two (Heavy Metal Day) of the 1983 US Festival is the German band the Scorpions.

Before I say more about the band, I want to discuss the sound quality here, because out of all the acts in the festival, I had the most difficulty with this one. There were some acts where I couldn't find any much from them at all, mostly from Day Four of the festival, which was Country Day. I'll discuss that day later. Of the acts on the other three days, I found at least something, all with worthy sound quality. The one exception of Los Lobos, who were the opening act of Day Three. But apparently they didn't play on the main stage but some smaller side stage, so I don't know if they really count. 

Anyway, the one exception was the Scorpions, because I found some of their music with very high quality, and the rest from an audience bootleg with much lower sound quality. The three high quality songs were "Nobody like You," "The Zoo," and "Can't Get Enough." This is because the Westwood One radio network later broadcast highlights of the festival on the radio, and that included those three songs. The audience bootleg was of the entire set, but a lot of it sounded too rough to merit inclusion, in my opinion. For some reason, some of the songs sounded better than others. For instance, "Always Somewhere" is more of a ballad, and was less fast and busy, so perhaps that helped. Anyway, I rescued the other three songs here from that audience boot. Then I processed them in various ways to try to get them to sound better. For instance, I ran them through the MVSEP audio editing program to get rid of most of the crowd noise (except at the ends of songs). I also ran all the songs in this set through the UVR5 audio editing program to improve the balance between the lead vocals and the instruments. Now, all the songs here at least sound decent, but I should warn you the parts from the audience boot probably sound the worst out of anything else I'm posting from this festival.

Anyway, with that out of the way, here's a bit about the Scorpions. They undoubtedly are the most famous and best selling hard rock/heavy metal act to come from Germany. The band was formed way back in 1965, but they didn't put out their first album until 1972. It wasn't until 1979 when they had an album make the charts anywhere, even in Germany. But they sang their songs in English, and from 1979 they started finding a lot of success internationally, including in the U.S. Their 1982 album "Blackout" took them to another level, selling over a million copies in the U.S., helped by the inclusion of "Nobody like You," their biggest hit at that point.

Their next album, "Love at First Sting" in 1984, would be even bigger, selling three million in the U.S. They would have lots of success for many years after that, eventually selling over 100 million albums worldwide. Their 1990 song "Winds of Change" would be one of the biggest singles of all time, selling 14 million worldwide. But in 1983, they were still relatively unknown but rising in popularity.

Oh, and technically, their name is "Scorpions," not "The Scorpions," but this is one of those band name cases like "The Eagles" where most people add the "the."

If you want to know more about the band, here's their Wikipedia page:

Scorpions (band) - Wikipedia

The band's lead singer Klause Meine later recalled a fond memory he had about the band's festival performance. "Going out there, I never forget this because it was an opening, which is really hard to top. Our people had arranged five fighter jets to fly over the stage and over San Bernardino Valley the minute we hit the stage with the first song. That moment, it was like all hell broke loose. There was huge fireworks, and [the announcer] couldn’t finish his introduction because the fire went off, and on top there were five fighter jets flying over the stage. Then we went out and hit the first song. It gives you chills when you think about it. It was so special, and the timing was amazing. One of the best intros of rock history, I would say."

This album is 36 minutes long.

086 talk (Scorpions)
087 Always Somewhere (Scorpions)
088 talk (Scorpions)
089 Nobody like You (Scorpions)
090 Can't Live without You (Scorpions)
091 Dynamite (Scorpions)
092 The Zoo (Scorpions)
093 Can't Get Enough (Scorpions)
094 talk (Scorpions)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17028231/VA-1983USFstvlDay0206Scrpons_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Gcs78YYR

 The cover photo looks almost staged to me, but it really is of the Scorpions in performance from this exact concert.