Spirit - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 3-6-1969, Late Show

In previous posts, I've lamented the lack of live recordings of Spirit during their peak years, 1967 to 1970, with worthy sound quality. But that's starting to change as I find a bit more. This one has some sound issues, but overall it's still one of their best live recordings from the 1960s.

This is the late show. I wonder if it's incomplete, because it didn't include any of their three best known songs up to that point in their career, "Fresh Garbage," "Mechanical World," and "I Got a Line on You." Perhaps some or all of those were played in the early show, and they didn't want to repeat themselves. Or this might be incomplete. It seems pretty short, but I believe they were the opening act for Ten Years After, and it does have what sounds like the beginning and the end.

The band started with an instrumental that I thought was just terrible, virtually unlistenable, which I just called "Intro." For two minutes, they simply hit the same chord over and over again, with nothing else happening. I cut it down to a mere seventeen seconds (which is why that has "[Edit]" in its title). At that length, it's fine. But at two minutes, it's an ordeal to hear. Strange. 

Anyway, another curious inclusion here is a song which I have titled "Boogie," but I don't know if that's the real name. I also don't know if it's a cover or an original. They explained that they had been touring with the likes of Canned Heat, and they'd heard a lot of boogie songs, so they felt compelled to try one out. If anyone has a better name for this song and/or knows anything more about it, please let me know.

As I mentioned above, the sound quality is pretty good, but not great. The three other Spirit concerts I've posted so far (from the Texas International Pop Festival in 1969, Boston in 1969, and the Fillmore West in 1970) sound better. But this is still worthy of listening to, in my book, especially since there's so little live recordings from this era. And they were interesting in concert, thanks in part to the jazz backgrounds of some band members.

This album is 33 minutes long.

01 talk (Spirit)
02 Intro [Instrumental] [Edit] (Spirit)
03 New Dope in Town (Spirit)
04 It Shall Be (Spirit)
05 Poor Richard (Spirit)
06 talk (Spirit)
07 Darlin' If (Spirit)
08 Aren't You Glad (Spirit)
09 Boogie (Spirit)
10 talk (Spirit)
11 Uncle Jack (Spirit)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ECjkTHtg

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/evOK830TvZYD03a/file

The cover photo was taken at a concert at the Palladium, in Birmingham, Michigan, in March, 1970. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program. Also, there were a couple of large heads of audience members at the bottom, but they were blurry and washed out, and didn't look good. So I replaced them with other heads in the same spots, and added a couple more, so I could extend the image further down the bottom. 

From right to left: Randy California, Ed Cassidy, and Jay Ferguson. 

Texas International Pop Festival, Dallas International Motor Speedway, Lewisville, TX, 9-1-1969, Part 7: Spirit

Here's another album from the third day of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival. This is a set by the band Spirit.

It so happens that there are very few live recordings of Spirit in their late 1960s prime, considering how popular they were at the time. This is one of three with excellent sound quality. I've already posted the other two on this blog (Boston Tea Party in 1969 and Fillmore West in 1970). Actually, I had posted this one already as well. But I deleted it months ago, knowing that I would repost it with different artwork and such as part of this festival. So here it finally is again.

Happily, this bootleg comes from a soundboard source. I made some edits to improve the sound. The biggest was boosting the lead vocals relative to the instruments. I think this now sounds better than the version I posted before.

In late 1968, the band released "I've Got a Line on You" as a single. It was their biggest hit, reaching Number 25 on the U.S. singles chart. So it's not surprising that was performed here, near the end of their set. In August 1969, the band released their third studio album, "Clear." Five of the songs here come from that album.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Trancas Fog-Out [Instrumental] (Spirit)
02 I'm Truckin' (Spirit)
03 Fresh Garbage (Spirit)
04 Poor Richard (Spirit)
05 Caught [Instrumental] (Spirit)
06 Ground Hog (Spirit)
07 Policeman's Ball (Spirit)
08 Drum Solo - Mechanical World (Spirit)
09 I've Got a Line on You (Spirit)
10 Aren't You Glad (Spirit)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1BAgCe8K

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ARVP7R4JKBw3StY/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It shows Jay Ferguson, one of the band's two lead vocalists. I could only find two photos of the band from this concert. The other one showed band members Mark Andes on bass and John Locke on keyboards. Both photos were in black and white. I chose this one mainly because it was a lot easier to colorize (which I did using the Kolorize program).

Spirit - Boston Tea Party, Boston, MA, 10-11-969

Does the album cover here look familiar to you? If you answered "yes," you have a good memory, because I used this exact cover when I posted a Spirit concert back in 2020. All I've changed is the text at the bottom. But today I've deleted that concert from this blog, because it's part of the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival. I plan on posting the entire festival soon, so the Spirit set will be reposted as a part of that. I have a different cover for that version, taken from that festival, so I'm recycling this cover here.

I had previously mentioned there are almost no good live recordings of the original version of Spirit, which existed from 1966 to 1970. The only ones with excellent sound quality are the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival one mentioned above, and a 1970 Fillmore show that I've posted here. But now this concert too can be added to that very short list. It's an excellent sounding soundboard bootleg. I had come across this concert years ago, but I had decided not to post it because it had one major sonic flaw: the vocals were too loud. That's unusual, because I've come across dozens and dozens of concert recordings with the vocals too low, but almost not where they were too loud. And it wasn't just a little bit too loud. No, the vocals went way into to the red.

Back then, that was a killer for me. But since then, audio editing technology has improved. Using the UVR5 program, I split all the songs into two, then lowered just the vocal track to a reasonable level. Luckily, the vocals weren't so loud as to have gotten badly distorted, so this sounds perfectly fine now, about as good as a typical soundboard bootleg from the era.  

There has been some confusion about the date and location of this concert. The bootleg has been passed around with a date of May 1970 from Boston, as well as May 1970 from Seattle. But I looked into this, and found solid evidence that it actually comes from a three date stand at the "Boston Tea Party" venue in Boston on either October 11th, 12th, or 13th.

At first, I didn't know which of the three dates this concert was from exactly. But then I remembered that one song from this show was included on the 2022 deluxe edition of the band's "Twelve Dreams of Doctor Sardonicus" album. The liner notes showed that was from October 11th. I checked that version to the bootleg version, and they were identical, so the whole thing must be from the 11th. And no, I don't know why only that one song was officially released. Perhaps they also had trouble with the vocals, and that song was an exception since it was mostly instrumental. (That version includes a long drum solo, while I have included it as a separate track.) Maybe now the technology exists to fix the vocals, we can hope to see the full concert officially released someday.

The one snag about this recording is that it was missing the last song, "I Got a Line on You." One can tell it's the last song because the very last few seconds of the bootleg are the start of that song, and right before it gets cut off, you can hear the vocalist say "We're going home." I think it's a good assumption that means the concert is coming to an end. So since that song definitely got played at this concert, I found a different live version of it to fit there, from a French TV show appearance in early 1970. That didn't have any applause at the end, but I added in some from earlier in the concert to help it fit in. I carefully edited it to fit with the tiny portion that exists at the start from the bootleg, including the "We're going home" comment. That's why it has "[Edit]" in the title.

Finally, I've added in "1984" from an appearance on the German TV show "Beat Club" in January 1970 at the very end. I wasn't going to do that, but I did add it at the end of the Spirit set from the 1969 Texas International Pop Festival that I had previously posted, and if I didn't include it here, I wouldn't have anywhere else to put it. I also added some crowd noise at the end to help that one fit it as well.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 It's All the Same (Spirit)
02 Fresh Garbage (Spirit)
03 talk (Spirit)
04 Jealous (Spirit)
05 It Shall Be (Spirit)
06 Poor Richard (Spirit)
07 talk (Spirit)
08 Groundhog (Spirit)
09 I'm Truckin' (Spirit)
10 New Dope in Town (Spirit)
11 Drum Solo [Instrumental] (Spirit)
12 Mechanical World (Spirit)
13 I Got a Line on You [Edit] (Spirit)
14 1984 (Spirit)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MTM6CP1M

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Bys4jczs3m6pxEj/file

I was unpleasantly surprised to find very, very few good photos of Spirit in concert from their peak years. I found one good one that from around 1969, but it was only in black and white. I wanted it to have a psychedelic look, so I took a psychedelic background and melded it into the photo. I like how the combo worked out.

Spirit - Rougher Road - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1970)

I recently posted an album of stray tracks by the band Spirit. Here's a second one. This concludes their peak years from 1967 to 1970. I have one more sort of stray tracks album from 1971 that I plan on posting later. But my interest in the band drops a lot after that time period, and I'm not aware of lots of stray tracks from later in any case.

This album deals with the time period of three studio albums: "The Family that Plays Together" (1968), "Clear" (1969), and "Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus" (1970). The vast majority of the songs here are bonus tracks released on later versions of those three albums. The song "1984" was released as an A-side in 1969 and later included as a bonus track for the "Clear" album. It's one of the band's best songs. Its B-side was "Sweet Stella Baby." 

There's only one song here  that has not been released as a bonus track, or in fact officially released at all, and that's "Jealous." I don't know why that one's been overlooked, since it's a good original. This version comes from a 1969 concert bootleg. It has good enough sound quality to fit in with the others.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 Fog [Instrumental] (Spirit)
02 So Little to Say (Spirit)
03 Mellow Fellow [Instrumental] (Spirit)
04 Now or Anywhere (Spirit)
05 Space Chile [Instrumental] (Spirit)
06 1984 (Spirit)
07 Sweet Stella Baby (Spirit)
08 Jealous (Spirit)
09 Fuller Brush Man (Spirit)
10 Coral [Instrumental] (Spirit)
11 Walking on My Feet (Spirit)
12 Rougher Road (Spirit)
13 Red Light Roll On (Spirit)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15328525/Spirt_1968-1970_RoughrRd_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from a promotional photo session, but I don't know the details.

Spirit - Our Topanga Home - Non-Album Tracks (1967-1968)

I've posted a couple of live albums of the band Spirit, but this is the first stray tracks album from them. There's more coming.

Spirit was formed in 1967, and they did some recordings that year. But their debut album, simply called "Spirit," wasn't released until 1968. All but the last two songs here are from 1967, so it turns out they had enough stray tracks from 1967 for a pretty decent album of originals. (I think the only cover here is the often covered "Hey Joe.") One might call the band "psychedelic," but maybe it's more accurate to say they were good at combining rock with jazzy elements. That's definitely the case here, with many of the songs being jazzy instrumentals.

All the songs here are officially released, so the sound quality is generally excellent. They come from a variety of sources. Some are bonus tracks, others are from later archival compilations. One, "Eventide," comes from an obscure movie soundtrack released in 1968.

There are two live songs here, "Soundtrack for a Moth" and "Our Topanga Home." The band had an extended residency at a Los Angeles club called the Ash Grove. Both of these songs, plus all three of the bonus tracks, were recorded there. There's a lot more live recordings from there as well that I didn't include. Unfortunately, nearly all of these recordings suffer from problems with the vocals. It sounds like the singer sang too close and overwhelmed the microphone. "Soundtrack for a Moth" avoided that problem because it's an instrumental. "Our Topanga Home" has a slight problem with the vocals, but I guess mostly that was a lucky exception.

You can definitely hear the problem with the three bonus tracks. They're all nice original songs that I would really like to include as more than bonus tracks. But the vocals are all messed up. If anyone thinks they can fix or at least improve this problem, please let me know. That could fix even more music than just these few songs. For instance, I have a bootleg concert of the band at Ash Grove in 1967 that would sound great but for that exact same vocals problem, so I'm currently not posting it because of that.

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 Veruska [Instrumental] (Spirit)
02 If I Had a Woman (Spirit)
03 Free Spirit [Instrumental] (Spirit)
04 Darlin' (Spirit)
05 Hey Joe (Spirit)
06 I Can't Stand It (Spirit)
08 Soundtrack for a Moth [Instrumental] (Spirit)
01 Our Topanga Home (Spirit)
10 Elijah [Alternate Version] [Instrumental] (Spirit)
11 Green Gorilla (Spirit)
12 Eventide [Instrumental] (Spirit)

Say Your Name (Spirit)
She Gave Me a Present (Spirit)
Tell Everyone (Spirit)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15323013/Spirt_1967-1968_OurTpangaHome_atse.zip.html

This promo photo was taken in 1967 or 1968. The colors were washed out, but I did some fixes using Photoshop. I think a version of it appeared on one of their archival albums.

Spirit - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 5-16-1970

Here's something I'm particularly psyched to post. Back in 2020, I posted a live bootleg of the American band Spirit, at the Texas International Pop Festival in 1969. That's an excellent sounding concert, though a rather short one. But as I noted at the time, it seemed to be the only excellent live recording of the band in their prime, when they released four albums from 1967 to 1970.

Until now, that is. This concert sounds as good or better, and is longer. A merely okay sounding audience bootleg of this Fillmore West 1970 concert has been traded for ages, but that's not exactly what this is. I just recently realized that in 2022, much, though not all, of this concert was officially released as part of a new edition of the band's classic 1970 album "Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus." I gave that a listen, and was very pleasantly surprised to find that they'd used a much better soundboard version of the exact same concert that has been popularly traded in audience bootleg form. 

But there were some odd things about it. For one, a good chunk of the concert was missing. One song ("Mechanical World") sounded great, but was from a different concert, in 1969. Two of the songs that were included, "Dark Eyed Woman" and "Uncle Jack," sounded much worse than the others. It seems they were taken from the audience bootleg instead. (I'm guessing the soundboard recording only survived for part of the show.) There also was virtually no banter between songs, or any applause at the ends of songs. Additionally, the song order was sometimes messed up in comparison with the audience boot, which seemed to be one continuous recording.

So I set out to fix these things, to create the best version of this concert possible. First off, I discarded "Mechanical World" since it didn't fit, and "Dark Eyed Woman" and "Uncle Jack,"since the sound quality was so much worse than the rest. Second, I aligned the song order with that of the audience bootleg as best I could. Third, I kept the excellent soundboard recordings for the actual songs, but patched in the cheering at the ends of songs from the audience bootleg. I also included what little banter there was, while editing out dead air and tuning between songs. So now it sounds much more like a natural concert recording.

The one bummer about this concert is that a bunch of songs are on the audience bootleg that aren't included here because the sound quality is significantly worse than the rest. Those include: "Mechanical World," "I Got a Line on You," "Morning Will Come," "Groundhog," "Me and My Lady," "Shotgun," and "Hambone," plus the two mentioned above, "Dark Eyed Woman" and "Uncle Jack." But I think, in this case, less is more, due to such a dramatic difference in the sound quality. I believe the end result is better than the official 2022 release.

Happily, even with all those missing songs, this still is a healthy hour and six minutes long. Also, as an aside, as lead guitarist Randy California mentioned in a comment in this recording, he wrote the classic song "Nature's Way" earlier the same day of this concert.

I believe this features the band's original line-up of Randy California, Ed Cassidy, John Locke, Mark Andes, and Jay Ferguson. According to the band's Wikipedia page, that line-up stayed together until January 1971. But I've seen some conflicting things about that. Perhaps someone with good ears can tell if Ferguson is singing on some of these songs or not, and then let me know, since he was one of the band's two lead singers.

01 talk (Spirit)
02 Sweet Stella Baby (Spirit)
03 1984 (Spirit)
04 Country Echo [Instrumental] (Spirit)
05 Jealous (Spirit)
06 talk (Spirit)
07 All the Same (Spirit)
08 Fresh Garbage (Spirit)
09 It Shall Be (Spirit)
10 talk (Spirit)
11 Nothing to Hide (Spirit)
12 Ice [Instrumental] (Spirit)
13 Mr. Skin (Spirit)
14 talk (Spirit)
15 Animal Zoo (Spirit)
16 talk (Spirit)
17 Nature's Way (Spirit)
18 I'm Truckin' (Spirit)
19 So Little Time to Fly (Spirit)
20 Fog [Instrumental] (Spirit)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15172665/Spirt_1970_FillmorWestSnFrancscoCA__5-16-1970_atse.zip.html

In 1969, Spirit appeared on the German TV show "Beat Club" and played the song 1984. The recording isn't that good, because the guitar of lead guitarist Randy California went out of tune halfway through his solo. But I took a screenshot from the YouTube video of that performance for the cover. (One band member was off to the side and didn't get included.)

For the band name text, I used some special lettering taken from a concert poster. I then added psychedelic colors. And I imitated that style for the bottom text.