Various Artists - MusiCares Tribute to James Taylor, Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA, 2-6-2006

Here's another MusiCares tribute concert. I only have a couple more of these after this one, and I want to post them in the next days. This one honors James Taylor.

This concert followed the usual format for these kinds of things: a bonus of famous musical acts sang covers of his songs, then he accepted an award and gave a speech, and finally he played a couple of his songs. If you look at the song lists, a lot of big names showed up to perform his songs, including Bruce Springsteen. 

Another big name also played one of his songs at the concert: Paul Simon sung "Sweet Baby James." But unfortunately, this is sourced from a DVD, but that song wasn't included, and I couldn't find any version of it anywhere. If anyone has it, please let me know so I can add it in.

I know Simon played that song in this concert, because it's mentioned in this article, which is a good summary of the concert in general:

MusiCares Honors Singer James Taylor - CBS News 

Also, while trying to find a good photo for the cover art, I went through a stash of hundreds of photos from the concert, and noticed that other big names like Neil Young and Brian Wilson attended. But I doubt they performed, or they probably would have been mentioned in that news article I just linked to. 

As mentioned above, this is sourced from an official DVD, so the sound quality is excellent. No version is any audio format has been released. As I sometimes do, I converted the video to audio, then broke it into mp3s.

This album is an hour and 18 minutes long. 

01 talk (Bill Clinton)
02 talk (emcee)
03 talk (Dixie Chicks)
04 Shower the People (Dixie Chicks)
05 talk (emcee)
06 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
07 Rainy Day Man (Bonnie Raitt)
08 talk (emcee)
09 talk (India.Arie)
10 Secret o' Life (India.Arie)
11 talk (emcee)
12 talk (Jackson Browne, David Crosby & Sheryl Crow)
13 Mexico (Jackson Browne, David Crosby & Sheryl Crow)
14 talk (emcee)
15 talk (Sting)
16 You Can Close Your Eyes (Sting)
17 talk (Dr. John & Taj Mahal)
18 Everybody Has the Blues (Dr. John & Taj Mahal)
19 talk (Alison Krauss & Jerry Douglas)
20 Carolina in My Mind (Alison Krauss & Jerry Douglas)
21 talk (emcee)
22 talk (Keith Urban)
23 Country Road (Keith Urban)
24 talk (emcee)
25 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
26 Millworker (Bruce Springsteen)
27 talk (Carole King)
28 You've Got a Friend (Carole King with James Taylor)
29 talk (Neil Portnow)
30 talk (James Taylor)
31 Shed a Little Light (James Taylor)
32 talk (James Taylor)
33 How Sweet It Is [To Be Loved by You] (James Taylor)
34 Fire and Rain (James Taylor)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/T6dgDM1s

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/5ezYaz8DOi7Zc9L/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It shows Taylor receiving the award from Neil Portnow, the head of MusiCares at the time. 

Various Artists - 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 10-30-2009

I just posted the first day of the two-day long 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert, in 2009. Here's the second day.

This second day concert followed the same format as the one on the first day. Read my write-up for more details about this two-day concert in general. Suffice to say that for this day, four major musical acts were chosen: Aretha Franklin, Jeff Beck, Metallica, and U2. Each of them hosted one fourth of the concert, and each had special guests join them during their sections. 

I was a bit surprised by the choice of Jeff Beck, since his record sales weren't nearly as big as the others. It turns out that section was supposed to be for Eric Clapton, but he got sick at the last minute and had to back out. So Beck was another "guitar hero" to fill a similar role.

I detailed in my write-up for the first day of this concert how I put a longer concert out of material from a DVD, plus the HBO broadcast, plus an audience bootleg. That's the same case here, except I didn't find an audience boot for all the otherwise missing songs. I did find such a boot for some of the Metallica songs, but that didn't even have the entire Metallica set. But it did get me "You Really Got Me," with Ray Davies of the Kinks as the guest. 

The Wikipedia page for this concert lists all the songs that were performed, in their correct order. Here's that page:

25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concerts - Wikipedia 

Based on that, it looks like I'm missing five songs. Here are the songs that I couldn't find:

Drown in My Own Tears - Jeff Beck (or possibly Aretha Franklin, I'm not sure)
Cause We've Ended as Lovers - Jeff Beck
Rough Boy - Jeff Beck & Billy Gibbons
One - Metallica
Stone Cold Crazy - Metallica 

That's too bad, but at least the vast majority is here. If anyone has any of the missing songs, please let me know. The first day concert that I posted is a little over four hours long, whereas this one is two and a half hours long. If you add in the missing songs, this probably totals about three hours, not four. So I think the first day one is a little longer, and better. I'll bet some of that was due to Bruce Springsteen, as his section on the first day was extra long.

One interesting note about this concert is that the collaboration of Metallica with Lou Reed - a very unexpected pairing - eventually led to the recordings of the album "Lulu," a joint Metallica and Lou Reed release, in 2011. 

A couple of performers who appeared in the first day concert also appeared in this one. Jeff Beck played a song on the first day, and had his own section here. Sting sang duets on both days. And Bruce Springsteen had his own section on the first day, and sang two songs with U2 here. Jerry Lee Lewis also opened both days with a song.

The sound quality is generally excellent. The quality is actually higher here than on the first day, because I only have one song sourced from an audience boot this time ("You Really Got Me," as mentioned above). I ran into many of the same problems with the first day, such as having to smooth over the transitions between songs by adding extra cheering noises. Read my write-up about the other concert for more details on all that. 

This album is two hours and 33 minutes long.

01 talk (Tom Hanks)
02 Great Balls of Fire (Jerry Lee Lewis)
03 Baby, I Love You (Aretha Franklin)
04 Don't Play That Song [You Lied] (Aretha Franklin)
05 Make Them Hear You (Aretha Franklin)
06 talk (Aretha Franklin)
07 Chain of Fools (Aretha Franklin & Annie Lennox)
08 Theme from New York, New York (Aretha Franklin)
09 Think (Aretha Franklin & Lenny Kravitz)
10 [I Never Loved a Man] The Way I Love You (Aretha Franklin)
11 Respect (Aretha Franklin)
12 People Get Ready (Sting & Jeff Beck)
13 Freeway Jam [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck)
14 talk (Jeff Beck)
15 Let Me Love You Baby (Buddy Guy & Jeff Beck)
16 Big Block [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck)
17 Rice Pudding [Instrumental] (Billy Gibbons & Jeff Beck)
18 Foxy Lady (Billy Gibbons & Jeff Beck)
19 A Day in the Life [Instrumental Version] (Jeff Beck)
20 For Whom the Bell Tolls (Metallica)
21 talk (Metallica)
22 Turn the Page (Metallica)
23 talk (Metallica)
24 Sweet Jane (Lou Reed & Metallica)
25 talk (Metallica)
26 White Light-White Heat (Lou Reed & Metallica)
27 talk (Metallica)
28 Iron Man (Ozzy Osbourne & Metallica)
29 Paranoid (Ozzy Osbourne & Metallica)
30 talk (Metallica)
31 You Really Got Me (Ray Davies & Metallica)
32 All Day and All of the Night (Ray Davies & Metallica)
33 Enter Sandman (Metallica)
34 Vertigo (U2)
35 Magnificent (U2)
36 talk (U2)
37 Because the Night (U2, Bruce Springsteen & Patti Smith)
38 I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (U2 & Bruce Springsteen)
39 Mysterious Ways (U2)
40 Where Is the Love - One (U2 & the Black Eyed Peas)
41 talk (U2)
42 Gimme Shelter (U2, Mick Jagger, Fergie & will.i.am)
43 talk (U2)
44 Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of (U2 & Mick Jagger)
45 Beautiful Day (U2)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UZjACSG5

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/mtktsXHvZPk8rgE/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From left to right: Bono, The Edge, Fergie, and Mick Jagger.

Various Artists - 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 10-29-2009

Here's a really great concert filled with lots of big stars performing classic songs. It was a two-day concert in New York City, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I'm posting both days of the concert, and this is the first one. I highly recommend this.

This two-day long concert had an unusual and interesting format: eight major artists were chosen: Crosby, Stills and Nash, Paul Simon (with and without Art Garfunkel), Stevie Wonder, and Bruce Springsteen for the first day, and Aretha Franklin, Jeff Beck, Metallica, and U2 for the second day. Each of those major stars were hosts for one fourth of the days they were on. Then they invited other stars to join them, to play a song or two. For instance, the first major artist, Crosby, Stills and Nash, had Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, and James Taylor as their guests. The result was that, between the major stars and their guests, most of the major areas of rock and roll going back to the 1950s were represented. 

There were some key gaps though. For instance, although Mick Jagger was a guest on the second day to represent the Rolling Stones, there really wasn't any special representation of the Beatles, the most important musical act of all. (Although there were occasional covers of Beatles songs, at least.) Bob Dylan was also very missed. But then again, you can only do so much in two concerts containing about four hours each. 

I spent a long time putting this together. It was quite tricky. I was able to find all the songs from this, the first night, but only two and a half hours from the second night, even though that one probably lasted about four hours as well. The main source I used was an officially released DVD. But the longest version of that was only about three hours for both concerts combined. Plus, many of those were bonus tracks, which meant they were out of order and often had the starts and ends cut off.

Luckily for me, Wikipedia came through for me particularly well, with a list of all the songs performed in the correct order, including lots of details. You can see that, and more info about the concert, here:

25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concerts - Wikipedia 

From that, I was able to figure out the songs I was missing, and try to find them. It turns out four hours of highlights were shown on HBO the year the concert happened. That was longer than the DVD, so I found some extra songs there. Then I found an audience bootleg of the entire first day. That's why I was able to include all the songs. However, the sound quality of the songs from the audience bootleg was significantly poorer than the songs from the DVD and the HBO broadcast. But, luckily, I was able to clean things up quite a lot, by putting a lot of effort into audio editing. I ran all the audience boot sourced songs through two processes that I use in cases like this. For one thing, I used the MVSEP audio editing program to raise the volume of the lead vocals in contrast to the instruments. (That is such a common problem for concert bootlegs.) Then I also used MVSEP to wipe out the crowd noise during the songs, while keeping the cheers at the beginnings and ends of songs. In my opinion, that made the quality gap between the different sources a lot smaller, though still noticeable. ("Marrakesh Express" is an example of one of the audience boot sourced songs, and the songs just before and after it are not, if you want to make a comparison.)

However, I still had a lot of work to do. Another problem with the audience boot-sourced song is that the cheering at the ends of songs sounded quite different, with the sound of clapping of individual people near the taper more prominent. I mostly fixed this by copying and pasting cheering from the ends of DVD-sourced songs, and slathering it over the cheering of the audience boot-sourced songs. I also had a lot of transition issues. It was rare to have two songs in a row from the same source. I generally fixed that by patching in more generic cheering. Yet another problem was the banter between songs. The ones from the audience boot-sourced songs sounded really weak. So I did extra editing to pull the actual talking out from the background noise. 

I could go on and on. There were lots of little tweaks. But I'm hoping that the end result is this will sound like one coherent concert from one source, more or less, and you won't notice the "making of the sausage" with all the editing to get it to sound that way. It would be really great if this whole thing gets officially released one day, in top quality. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for that.

One thing that makes this concert special is all the collaborations. There are too many to count. Lots and lots of big names performing songs together, and usually the only time they ever did that for the songs. There were some interesting cover versions as well, as an attempt to have some inclusion of famous musician who died or otherwise didn't attend. Stevie Wonder singing the Michael Jackson song "The Way You Make Me Feel" and Paul Simon with Crosby and Nash singing "Here Comes the Sun" are just two examples of that.

This should particularly delight Bruce Springsteen fans. He dominated this first night, which his section of the concert lasting an hour and a half, easily the longest. And he assisted Jerry Lee Lewis on the first song of the night as well. (Plus, he showed up on the second night as well, as we shall see later.)

This album is four hours and eight minutes long.

01 talk (Tom Hanks)
02 talk (Jerry Lee Lewis)
03 Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On (Jerry Lee Lewis with Bruce Springsteen)
04 Woodstock (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 Marrakesh Express (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
06 talk (Graham Nash)
07 Almost Cut My Hair (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
08 talk (David Crosby)
09 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
10 Love Has No Pride (Bonnie Raitt & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
11 Midnight Rider (Bonnie Raitt & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
12 talk (Graham Nash)
13 talk (Jackson Browne)
14 The Pretender (Jackson Browne & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
15 talk (James Taylor)
16 Mexico (James Taylor & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
17 Love the One You're With (James Taylor & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
18 Rock and Roll Woman (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
19 talk (Graham Nash)
20 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills & Nash & Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne & James Taylor)
21 Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes (Paul Simon)
22 Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Paul Simon)
23 You Can Call Me Al (Paul Simon)
24 talk (Paul Simon)
25 Here Comes the Sun (Paul Simon with Crosby & Nash)
26 talk (Paul Simon)
27 The Wanderer (Dion & Paul Simon)
28 Late in the Evening (Paul Simon)
29 talk (Paul Simon)
30 Two People in the World (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
31 The Sound of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel)
32 Mrs. Robinson - Not Fade Away (Simon & Garfunkel)
33 The Boxer (Simon & Garfunkel)
34 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel)
35 Cecilia (Simon & Garfunkel)
36 Blowin' in the Wind (Stevie Wonder)
37 talk (Stevie Wonder)
38 Uptight [Everything's Alright] (Stevie Wonder)
39 I Was Made to Love Her (Stevie Wonder)
40 For Once in My Life (Stevie Wonder)
41 Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours (Stevie Wonder)
42 Boogie On Reggae Woman (Stevie Wonder)
43 talk (Stevie Wonder)
44 The Tracks of My Tears (Smokey Robinson & Stevie Wonder)
45 talk (Stevie Wonder)
46 Mercy Mercy Me [The Ecology] (Stevie Wonder & John Legend)
47 The Way You Make Me Feel (Stevie Wonder with John Legend)
48 talk (Stevie Wonder)
49 The Thrill Is Gone (B.B. King & Stevie Wonder)
50 Living for the City (Stevie Wonder)
51 Higher Ground - Roxanne - Higher Ground (Sting & Stevie Wonder)
52 Superstition (Stevie Wonder & Jeff Beck)
53 10th Avenue Freeze-Out (Bruce Springsteen)
54 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
55 Hold On, I'm Comin' (Bruce Springsteen & Sam Moore)
56 Soul Man (Bruce Springsteen & Sam Moore)
57 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
58 The Ghost of Tom Joad (Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello)
59 Fortunate Son (John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen)
60 Proud Mary (John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen)
61 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
62 Oh, Pretty Woman (John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen)
63 Jungleland (Bruce Springsteen)
64 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
65 A Fine, Fine Boy (Darlene Love & Bruce Springsteen)
66 Do Run Run Run (Darlene Love & Bruce Springsteen)
67 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
68 London Calling (Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello)
69 Badlands (Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello)
70 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
71 You May Be Right (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
72 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
73 Only the Good Die Young (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
74 New York State of Mind (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
75 Born to Run (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
76 [Your Love Keeps Lifting Me] Higher and Higher (Everybody)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QU2h1WV1

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/7oTCzzonspG0GVX/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From left to right: John Fogerty, Darlene Love, Bruce Springsteen, and Sam Moore.

Various Artists - Music for Montserrat, Royal Albert Hall, London, Britain, 9-15-1997

Here's a really interesting benefit concert from 1997. Just look at the list of big stars involved: Carl Perkins, Midge Ure, Phil Collins, Jimmy Buffett, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Sting, Elton John, and Paul McCartney. Most of them performed two or three songs together, and all the big names got together with McCartney to sing some of his songs for the finale. All that, and the sound quality is excellent.

Montserrat is a small island in the Caribbean Sea, and it's still a colony of Britain. In 1979, George Martin, best known as the producer for nearly all the Beatles records, financed the building of a recording studio there. From 1979 to 1989, about 70 albums were recorded there, because musicians enjoyed recording in a beautiful, exotic locale. Many of them were by very big stars, such as "Synchronicity" by the Police and "Brothers in Arms" by Dire Straits.   

Unfortunately, in 1989, the Category Four hurricane Hugo hit Montserrat. It destroyed 90 percent of all buildings on the island, including Martin's recording studio. The studio wasn't rebuilt. Then, in 1995, the main volcano on the island, Soufriere Hills volcano, erupted. The island was basically completely devastated again. Martin then led the effort to stage this benefit concert. All the musicians involved recorded albums on Montserrat. Ultimately, about a million and half British pounds were raised. Later, limited edition lithographs signed by McCartney and Martin raised another million and a half pounds. This money went to help people reconstruct their homes, as well as the building of a new cultural center for the island. 

Here's the Wikipedia entry about this concert, if you want to know more: 

Music for Montserrat - Wikipedia  

For this concert, Martin decided that less was more. He even mentioned in his banter during the concert that he turned down many musical acts who wanted to take part. The focus was just on the biggest stars. One exception was Arrow. He only had one minor hit in 1982, in Britain, "Hot Hot Hot." But he is Montserratian, so it made sense he would be involved. Also, "Hot Hot Hot" went on to be a bigger hit by Buster Poindexter in 1987. 

This concert has been released on DVD, but not in any audio format. So I started with the DVD, converting it to audio format then breaking it into mp3s. "Hot Hot Hot," plus "Volcano" by Jimmy Buffett and "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes" by Midge Ure, were not on the DVD. But luckily I found out they were performed by reading the Wikipedia entry about the concert. Then I found YouTube videos of them. Those had very good sound quality, because they were broadcast on TV. 

In addition to adding some missing songs, I cut some things. Mostly, I cut some interviews that were interspersed between the songs in the DVD. Martin plus some of the big stars like McCartney and Sting were interviewed. It's interesting stuff, but it wasn't part of the concert, so it got the axe. If you want to see that, check out the DVD.

Probably the highlight of the concert was McCartney's set at the end. As he said in the interview which I cut out, he had met the other stars in this concert many times over the years. However, he rarely actually played music with any of them. For instance, he said the last time he played with Clapton was when Clapton guested on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on the White Album by the Beatles in 1968. But McCartney practiced with Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, and Elton John, and really collaborated with tracks 42 to 46 at the end here.

One final note. This was the last major public appearance for Carl Perkins. He was in fine health at the time of this concert. But he died after a series of strokes in January 1998, at the age of 65. 

This album is two hours and 15 minutes long.

01 talk (George Martin)
02 talk (Carl Perkins)
03 Blue Suede Shoes (Carl Perkins)
04 talk (emcee)
05 talk (Midge Ure)
06 Dancing with Tears in My Eyes (Midge Ure)
07 Vienna (Midge Ure)
08 talk (George Martin)
09 talk (Phil Collins)
10 In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins)
11 Take Me Home (Phil Collins with Ray Cooper)
12 talk (Arrow)
13 Hot Hot Hot (Arrow)
14 talk (Jimmy Buffett)
15 Volcano (Jimmy Buffett)
16 talk (Phil Collins)
17 talk (Mark Knopfler)
18 Going Home [Theme from Local Hero] [Instrumental] (Mark Knopfler)
19 talk (Mark Knopfler)
20 Brothers in Arms (Mark Knopfler with Guy Fletcher)
21 talk (Mark Knopfler)
22 Money for Nothing (Mark Knopfler with Sting, Phil Collins, Eric Clapton & Ray Cooper)
23 talk (Phil Collins)
24 Message in a Bottle (Sting)
25 Fields of Gold (Sting)
26 Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic (Sting)
27 talk (George Martin)
28 talk (Elton John)
29 Your Song (Elton John)
30 talk (Elton John)
31 Live like Horses (Elton John)
32 Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me (Elton John)
33 talk (Carl Perkins)
34 Broken Hearted (Eric Clapton)
35 Layla (Eric Clapton with Mark Knopfler)
36 talk (Eric Clapton)
37 Same Old Blues (Eric Clapton with Mark Knopfler & Phil Collins)
38 talk (George Martin)
39 talk (Paul McCartney)
40 Yesterday (Paul McCartney)
41 talk (Paul McCartney)
42 Golden Slumbers (Paul McCartney with Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler & Eric Clapton)
43 Carry That Weight - The End (Paul McCartney with Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler & Eric Clapton)
44 talk (George Martin)
45 Hey Jude (Paul McCartney, Elton John & Everybody)
46 Kansas City - Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey (Paul McCartney & Everybody)
47 talk (Paul McCartney & George Martin) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/WN5He6az 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/rtae3vnAgivMIJf/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From left to right: Carl Perkins, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, and Paul McCartney. Sting is right behind Perkins, but all you can really see of him is his hand on the neck of a bass guitar. In the original photo, the neck of Sting's bass guitar went right over Knopfler's face. In my opinion, it kind of ruined the photo. But there were several photos no doubt taken minutes apart from each other from the same spot. I found one where Knopfler's face was fully visible and the bass guitar neck was lower, and I patched in just that part of the image, using Photoshop. I also used the Krea AI program to flesh out some of the detail.

Various Artists - MusiCares Tribute to Bruce Springsteen, Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA, 2-8-2013

A few days ago, I got a request to post the MusiCares tribute concert to Bruce Springsteen. I'm happy to do so, because I've been meaning to post more of these MusiCares concerts soon anyway. So here you are.

MusiCares has been holding annual tribute concerts since 1991. They cleverly have these concerts in Los Angeles, where the Grammy Awards take place, and hold them only a couple of days apart from the Grammies. That way, many musical stars are in town and able to participate. I've only posted one such album so far, the tribute to Brian Wilson in 2005. But I have seven more to post after this. Thus, today I've created a MusiCares Tribute label to help you find them all.

Bruce Springsteen is a very big name in music, and lots of other big names paid tribute to him here, including Elton John, Neil Young, and Sting. This was a particularly long concert as far as these MusiCares tributes go. It's easily the longest of all the ones I've found so far, which is fitting since Springsteen concerts are known for their length. Springsteen himself played five songs at the end, which again is more than usual. 

This comes from a DVD. It hasn't been released on any audio format. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is two hours and 16 minutes long. 

01 talk (Jon Stewart)
02 Adam Raised a Cain (Alabama Shakes)
03 Because the Night (Patti Smith)
04 Atlantic City (Natalie Maines, Ben Harper & Charlie Musselwhite)
05 American Land (Ken Casey)
06 talk (Jon Stewart)
07 My City of Ruins (Mavis Staples & Zac Brown)
08 talk (Jon Stewart)
09 I'm on Fire (Mumford & Sons)
10 American Skin [41 Shots] (Jackson Browne & Tom Morello)
11 My Hometown (Emmylou Harris)
12 One Step Up (Kenny Chesney)
13 talk (Jon Stewart)
14 Streets of Philadelphia (Elton John & Raphael Saadiq)
15 Hungry Heart (Juanes)
16 Tougher than the Rest (Tim McGraw & Faith Hill)
17 The Ghost of Tom Joad (Tom Morello & Jim James)
18 talk (Jon Stewart)
19 Dancing in the Dark (John Legend)
20 Lonesome Day (Sting)
21 Born in the U.S.A. (Neil Young)
22 talk (Jon Stewart & Bruce Springsteen)
23 We Take Care of Our Own (Bruce Springsteen)
24 Death to My Hometown (Bruce Springsteen)
25 Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen)
26 Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen)
27 Glory Days (Bruce Springsteen)
28 talk (Bruce Springsteen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/fXM5GV8j

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/B96M5E8MDQxu5O4/file

For the cover, I wanted a photo of Springsteen from this exact concert. But of the photos I saw, he was generally alone or with just one other person nearby, so I went with a group photo from this concert instead. From right to left: Zac Brown, Emmylou Harris, Ben Harper, Jackson Browne and Patti Scialfa. There were some distracting things in the background, so I used Photoshop to remove them.

Various Artists - Homeward Bound: A Grammy Salute to the Songs of Paul Simon, Hollywood Pantages Theater, Los Angeles, CA, 4-6-2022

I've recently discovered a bunch of tribute concerts. I find these really interesting, but they seem to often slip through the cracks in terms of being shared bootlegs. So I'm going to try to make posting these a higher priority. Here's a Grammy-related tribute to Paul Simon from 2022. It took place just three days after the annual Grammy Awards ceremony that year, and in the same city, so many of the stars who attended that could attend this one as well.

It goes without saying that Simon is one of the greatest songwriters of all time, so he deserves a tribute like this. In fact, I've found a MusiCares tribute concert from 2001 and a Gershwin Prize tribute concert from 2007 both celebrating his songs that I plan on posting too. Like those, this one features many big stars playing his most beloved songs.

It also features Simon performing a couple of songs of his own at the end of the concert. This is especially significant because he was 80 years old at the time of this concert, and his voice was noticeably weakening with age. He announced a farewell tour in 2018, so this seemed like one of his last public performances. Since then, though, he decided to have one more tour in 2025, with about 20 concerts. Be that as it may, one can hear the change in his voice in this performance. Thankfully, he realized his limitations and had another singer tackle the vocally challenging song "American Tune" while he just played guitar on it.

The music here remains officially unreleased. However, it was broadcast on television, so there are video files of it. I took a high quality version, converted it to audio format, and broke it into mp3s. The sound quality is excellent. I kept most everything, except I cut out some talk from the unnamed female emcee every time there was a commercial break, which happened every few songs. Hopefully this now sounds seamless, without any hints of those commercial breaks.

Some of the banter between songs were little speeches by famous non-musicians, such as Woody Harrelson, Dustin Hoffman, and Oprah Winfrey. Famous rock star Elton John also only talked. In his case, his talk was a video broadcast, so he probably didn't sing as well because he wasn't there in person.

This album is an hour and 24 minutes long.

01 talk (emcee)
02 Kodachrome (Brad Paisley)
03 talk (Woody Harrelson)
04 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (Jonas Brothers)
05 talk (Garth Brooks)
06 The Boxer (Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood)
07 talk (Elton John)
08 talk (Susanna Hoffs)
09 A Hazy Shade of Winter (Susanna Hoffs)
10 talk (Herbie Hancock)
11 talk (Sting)
12 America (Sting)
13 talk (Billy Porter)
14 Loves Me like a Rock (Billy Porter)
15 talk (Dustin Hoffman)
16 talk (Stevie Wonder)
17 Mrs. Robinson (Stevie Wonder with Sheila E. & the Jonas Brothers)
18 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
19 Something So Right (Bonnie Raitt & Brad Paisley)
20 talk (Stevie Wonder)
21 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Stevie Wonder & Ledisi)
22 talk (Sofia Carson)
23 Mother and Child Reunion (Jimmy Cliff & Shaggy)
24 Take Me to the Mardi Gras (Trombone Shorty & Irma Thomas)
25 talk (Eric Church)
26 Homeward Bound (Eric Church)
27 Slip Slidin' Away (Little Big Town)
28 talk (Folake Olowofoyeku)
29 Homeless (Take 6)
30 Under African Skies (Angelique Kidjo with Dave Matthews)
31 You Can Call Me Al (Dave Matthews with Angelique Kidjo)
32 talk (Oprah Winfrey)
33 Graceland (Paul Simon)
34 talk (Paul Simon)
35 American Tune (Rhiannon Giddens with Paul Simon)
36 The Sound of Silence (Paul Simon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5j4GUcC1

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Vz5ALstXCYeahHB/file 

The cover shows Paul Simon about to receive a hug from Oprah Winfrey. It's from this exact concert.

Various Artists - FireAid, Intuit Dome, Inglewood, CA, and Kia Forum, Inglewood, CA, 1-30-2025

Here's something surprisingly timely from me. I mostly post music from decades ago, but as I write this in early 2025, this concert took place only three days ago! It's a big concert - five hours long - with lots of big name artists.

I like posting big rock festivals and benefit concerts, because I've noticed they tend to get overlooked. But I tend not to post many from the 2000s because I don't like many of the musical acts on the bills. However, I looked at the list of performers here and I liked most of them, and could at least tolerate the rest. If you frequently come to this blog, your musical tastes are probably pretty similar to mine. You might want to give this a listen even if you don't like some of the acts. I think it's better than the vast majority of these kinds of concerts.

The concert was a surprisingly fast response to a series of fires that burned parts of the Los Angeles region earlier that same month. Millions were raised that would go to a charity to help the victims of the fires. There are lots of natural disasters that don't result in big benefit concerts. But this disaster hit very close to home for many famous musicians and or the people they know. For instance, Billy Crystal, one of the presenters here, lost his house to one of the fires, and Stevie Nicks came very close to losing hers. So it's not surprising that so many artists wanted to take part in a benefit concert.

Before I say anything else, note that the crisis caused by the fires is very much still ongoing, and donations are still being accepted. If you want to donate, here's the link:

Homepage - FireAid

I'm posting this because the entire concert has been put out there for free all over the place, including on literally at least ten TV streaming services, Tik Tok, YouTube, and more. So I'm just helping to spread it. If you want to watch it instead of just listen, YouTube is an easy way to find it. (That said, I wouldn't at all be surprised if this gets taken down due to some copyright issue or another, so grab it fast!)

The Wall Street Journal put out an interesting article before the concert took place that explained how it came to be. It's a worthwhile read:

Archive Buttons | Free Paywall Remover

I'll spare the details, since you can read about everything there. But I want to note that famous musical acts were falling over each other to take part, so many were turned down. The ones that were included generally were ones who lived in Los Angeles or otherwise had close ties to the area. 

Also note that the concert was rather strange in that it actually two place in two different venues on the same night. This is similar to what happened with Live Aid in 1985, except that consisted of concerts in North America and Europe, whereas this was two concerts both in the two of Inglewood. The thinking was that one of the concerts was mainly for pop music and the other for rock music. While there was down time between acts in one concert, they would show a set from the other concert, keeping both audiences entertained almost all the time. I thought about splitting this into two album, one for each venue. But I ultimately decided on making one big one, with all the songs in the order they occurred.

Now, let's get to the music. I found high quality videos of each set at a bootleg sharing site, then I converted them to audio and broke them into mp3s. The videos were already almost entirely free of the frequent begging for money typical of these types of concerts. I kept nearly everything. However, there were some sequences highlighting the fires and the resulting homelessness that I cut out, mostly because those were videos meant to be seen, not just heard. But I did keep speeches by Billy Crystal and Jimmy Kimmel talking about the fires.

As I mentioned above, I liked most of the musical acts. The vast majority of them have been featured in albums I've posted at this blog already. The ones who haven't are: Anderson Paak, Dawes, Gracie Abrams, Tate McRae, Jelly Roll, Nirvana, Katy Perry, Olivia Rodrigo, Peso Pluma, Billie Eilish, and Lady Gaga. Some of those were merely okay, but a lot of them only played a song or two, and often did a cover of a famous song, so it didn't matter much. There was only one musical act I couldn't stand, and that was Lil Baby. Gawwwd, the Autotune on that is sooo awful! So that was the only act I didn't include.

I mentioned Nirvana above. It's hard to imagine Nirvana without Kurt Cobain, who died long ago. The set here featured the three surviving members, Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Pat Smear. To fill Cobain's shoes as lead vocalist, different female singers sang each of the four songs performed: St. Vincent, Kim Gordon, Joan Jett, and Violet Grohl (the last being the daughter of Dave Grohl). 

Generally speaking, the sound quality was excellent. But I noticed the lead vocals seems quite low during the Nirvana set, as well as the subsequent Red Hot Chili Peppers set. An analysis of those songs in an audio editing program confirmed that. So I boosted the vocals relative to the instruments for just those two sets, using the UVR5 audio editing program.

One other problem was that there often were abrupt sonic transitions between each set. So I would carefully look at the last song of one set and the first song of the next one. If it didn't sound smooth, I made some edits until it did. Typically, I'd merge audience applause together so it just sounds like lots of cheering until the next act got started.

This album is five hours long exactly. The actual concert was more like six hours long, but there was some dead air between sets, plus the video presentations about the fires that I cut out, as well as the Lil Baby set I couldn't stand.

001 Last Night on Earth (Green Day & Billie Eilish)
002 talk (Green Day)
003 Still Breathing (Green Day)
004 When I Come Around (Green Day)
005 talk (Billy Crystal)
006 Hand in My Pocket (Alanis Morissette)
007 talk (Alanis Morissette)
008 Thank U (Alanis Morissette)
009 talk (Anderson Paak)
010 Put Me Thru (Anderson Paak with Sheila E.)
011 talk (Anderson Paak)
012 Come Down (Anderson Paak with Sheila E.)
013 Still D.R.E. (Dr. Dre & Anderson Paak with Sheila E.)
014 talk (Anderson Paak)
015 California Love (Dr. Dre & Anderson Paak with Sheila E.)
016 talk by Alanis Morissette (Joni Mitchell)
017 Both Sides Now (Joni Mitchell)
018 talk (Dawes)
019 Time Spent in Los Angeles (Dawes)
020 talk (Stephen Stills with Dawes)
021 For What It's Worth (Stephen Stills with Mike Campbell & Dawes)
022 talk (Graham Nash with Stephen Stills & Dawes)
023 Teach Your Children (Graham Nash with Stephen Stills & Dawes)
024 talk (Pink)
025 What about Us (Pink)
026 talk (Pink)
027 Me and Bobby McGee (Pink)
028 talk (Pink)
029 Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You (Pink)
030 talk by Samuel L. Jackson (Rod Stewart)
031 Forever Young (Rod Stewart)
032 talk (Rod Stewart)
033 Maggie May (Rod Stewart)
034 talk (Rod Stewart)
035 People Get Ready (Rod Stewart)
036 talk by Pink (John Mayer)
037 Neon (John Mayer)
038 Gravity (John Mayer)
039 Free Fallin' (John Mayer)
040 That's the Way of the World (Earth, Wind & Fire)
041 Shining Star (Earth, Wind & Fire)
042 September (Earth, Wind & Fire)
043 talk by Graham Nash (Black Crowes)
044 Remedy (Black Crowes)
045 talk (Black Crowes)
046 Have You Ever Seen the Rain (John Fogerty with the Black Crowes)
047 talk (Black Crowes)
048 Going to California (Black Crowes with Slash)
049 talk by Philip Bailey (Gracie Abrams)
050 I Love You, I'm Sorry (Gracie Abrams)
051 talk (Gracie Abrams)
052 A Long December (Gracie Abrams)
053 talk by John Meyer (No Doubt)
054 Just a Girl (No Doubt)
055 Don't Speak (No Doubt)
056 Spiderwebs (No Doubt)
057 talk (Tate McRae)
058 You Broke Me First (Tate McRae)
059 talk (Tate McRae)
060 Don't Dream It's Over (Tate McRae)
061 I Am Not Okay (Jelly Roll)
062 talk (Jelly Roll)
063 Hollywood Nights (Jelly Roll with Travis Barker)
064 talk by Gwen Stefani (Stevie Nicks)
065 Stand Back (Stevie Nicks)
066 talk (Stevie Nicks)
067 Landslide (Stevie Nicks)
068 talk (Stevie Nicks)
069 Edge of Seventeen (Stevie Nicks)
070 talk (Stevie Nicks)
071 talk by Jelly Roll (Katy Perry)
072 Rise (Katy Perry)
073 Roar (Katy Perry)
074 talk (Katy Perry)
075 California Gurls (Katy Perry)
076 Breed (Nirvana & St. Vincent)
077 School (Nirvana & Kim Gordon)
078 talk (Nirvana)
079 Territorial Pissings (Nirvana & Joan Jett)
080 talk (Nirvana)
081 All Apologies (Nirvana & Violet Grohl)
082 talk by Stevie Nicks (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
083 Dani California (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
084 Californication (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
085 talk (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
086 Black Summer (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
087 Under the Bridge (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
088 talk (Olivia Rodrigo)
089 Drivers License (Olivia Rodrigo)
090 talk (Olivia Rodrigo)
091 Deja Vu (Olivia Rodrigo)
092 talk by Olivia Rodrigo (Sting)
093 Message in a Bottle (Sting)
094 Driven to Tears (Sting)
095 Fragile (Sting)
096 talk by Lil Baby (Peso Pluma)
097 La Bebe (Peso Pluma)
098 talk by Sting (Billie Eilish with Finneas)
099 talk (Billie Eilish with Finneas)
100 Wildflower (Billie Eilish with Finneas)
101 The Greatest (Billie Eilish with Finneas)
102 talk (Billie Eilish with Finneas)
103 Birds of a Feather (Billie Eilish with Finneas)
104 talk (Billie Eilish with Finneas)
105 talk (Stevie Wonder)
106 Love's in Need of Love Today (Stevie Wonder)
107 Superstition (Stevie Wonder with Sting)
108 Higher Ground (Stevie Wonder & Sting)
109 talk (Jimmy Kimmel)
110 Shallow (Lady Gaga)
111 talk (Lady Gaga)
112 Always Remember Us This Way (Lady Gaga)
113 talk (Lady Gaga)
114 Time Is a Healer (Lady Gaga)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZQXR1WV7

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/1MTEuDFXIW31ySS/file

I had hundreds of photos to choose from for the cover art. Unfortunately, there was no big encore with lots of famous people on stage together. So I decided to go with a photo of the stage and a bit of the audience, with John Mayer playing guitar and looking quite small on the huge stage. Then I added a huge version of the FireAid logo to the top half of the image.

US Festival '82, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 9-3-1982 - Day 1, Part 6: The Police

The sixth and final album from Day One of the 1982 US Festival is a set by the band the Police. But there are two days of the festival after this.

This concert was one of the last of a year-long tour the Police did to support their album "Ghost in the Machine," released in late 1981. They only performed two concerts in the tour after this one.

I read somewhere, although I couldn't find the exact quote, that drummer Stewart Copeland thought the band's performance was very good, but also that it was the beginning of the end for the band. The band members wouldn't get along well during their recording of their next and last studio album, "Synchronicity," with a fist fight even breaking out at one point.

The festival was so well organized that halfway through this final set of the evening, staffers went out into the audience and began picking up trash. That kind of approach set a new standard, since festivals had generally been ramshackle affairs prior to that.

This recording is just an audience bootleg, like the vast majority of the recordings of the sets from this festival. However, it's a particularly good one, enough so that it has often been mislabeled as a soundboard recording. I did my best to improve the sound quality in the same way I did for all the other audience sourced sets in this festival.

By the way, it seems Sting really liked the English Beat. He wore an English Beat T-shirt the day of this concert. And during the song "One World (Not Three)," Ranking Roger, one of the two lead singers for the English Beat, joined in on backing vocals.

This album is an hour and 31 minutes long.

106 Voices Inside My Head (Police)
107 Message in a Bottle (Police)
108 Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic (Police)
109 Walking on the Moon (Police)
110 talk (Police)
111 Spirits in a Material World (Police)
112 talk (Police)
113 Hungry for You [J'aurais Toujours Faim de Toi] (Police)
114 When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around (Police)
115 The Bed's Too Big without You (Police)
116 De Do Do Do De Da Da Da (Police)
117 talk (Police)
118 Demolition Man (Police)
119 Shadows in the Rain (Police)
120 Bring on the Night (Police)
121 Driven to Tears (Police)
122 One World [Not Three] (Police)
123 Invisible Sun (Police)
124 Roxanne (Police)
125 talk (Police)
126 Don't Stand So Close to Me (Police)
127 Can't Stand Losing You (Police)
128 talk (Police)
129 So Lonely (Police)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/gZyxoi8p

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/pvkytDAoiMcz1QK/file

The cover photo of Sting comes from this exact concert.

Sting - VH-1 Storytellers, Stephen Talkhouse, Amagansett, NY, 7-15-1996

Next for the "VH-1 Storytellers" series is an episode by Sting, former lead singer of the band the Police.

In early 1996, Sting released his fifth solo studio album, "Mercury Falling." It did reasonably well by his standards, selling over a million copies in the U.S., but it didn't have any big hits in the U.S., a first for one of his albums. Only three of the songs performed here come from that album, "Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot," "I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying," and "Lithium Sunset."

This episode is rather unusual for the series, because Sting often stopped in the middle of performing a song to talk about the song structure. Then he would finish it off. That happened for five songs. It's an interesting technique, though I wish he would have saved the talking for before or after those songs.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 talk (Sting)
02 Message in a Bottle (Sting)
03 talk (Sting)
04 Message in a Bottle [Reprise] (Sting)
05 Every Breath You Take (Sting)
06 talk (Sting)
07 Every Breath You Take [Reprise] (Sting)
08 Fields of Gold (Sting)
09 talk (Sting)
10 Fields of Gold [Reprise] (Sting)
11 talk (Sting)
12 King of Pain (Sting)
13 talk (Sting)
14 King of Pain [Reprise] (Sting)
15 talk (Sting)
16 Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot (Sting)
17 talk (Sting)
18 Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic (Sting)
19 talk (Sting)
20 I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying (Sting)
21 talk (Sting)
22 I'm So Happy I Can't Stop Crying [Reprise] (Sting)
23 talk (Sting)
24 Roxanne (Sting)
25 talk (Sting)
26 Lithium Sunset (Sting)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17161582/STNG1996StrytllrsStphnTlkhuseAmgnsttNY__7-15-1996_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/X4fu4R6x

I couldn't find any really good images from this exact concert. So instead I used a photo taken somewhere in France some time in 1996.

Various Artists - Prince's Trust Rock Gala, Wembley Arena, London, Britain, 6-20-1986

Hmmm. I could have sworn I'd posted this months ago. I'd posted the 1982 Prince's Trust concert a while back. I was getting to post the next one in the series, from 1987, when I did a search and noticed this one wasn't here. So now you'll get two in a row, as I'll be posting the 1987 one today as well. 

Prince Charles, the crown prince of Britain at the time, ran a charity to help troubled youths. It's still going as I write this in 2024, and Charles has finally become king. 

These concerts didn't happen every year. In fact, I don't think there was any after the 1982 one I mentioned until this one, although there was a Dire Straits concert in 1985 that benefited the charity. This one, though, was truly a star-studded event. Perhaps inspired by Live Aid in 1985, the big names showed up in droves.

In fact, I find this concert frustrating, because so much big name talent was underused. The concerts started with sets by Big Country, Suzanne Vega, and Level 42. I definitely like Big Country and Suzanne Vega (whereas Level 42, not so much), and I've posted albums by them here. But it seems very odd to me that they got to play four or five songs each, while much bigger names like Sting, Mark Knopfler, George Michael, David Bowie, and Mick Jagger got less than one full song, since they only appeared as part of duets. Very strange.

That said, what there is here is quite good. It's just that I wish there had been a lot more of it. But as far as I can tell, this was the complete concert. I guess the organizers had to keep things relatively short because the concert was broadcast live on TV and radio in Britain. I gather the reason Big Country, Suzanne Vega, and Level 42 had such surprisingly long sets was because one purpose of the show was to showcase new talent. This is a trend with the other Prince's Trust concerts I'm aware of. At least in this year the new acts would end up being pretty good. (Some other years weren't so lucky.)

One special aspect of this concert is how much the big stars in the second half of the show performed together. You don't really see it in the artist credits on each song. For instance, typically, Phil Collins played drums, Elton John played piano, Midge Ure of Ultravox played rhythm guitar, and Eric Clapton or Mark Knoplfer played lead guitar. At one point, you can hear Rod Stewart joke about how happy he is to finally get Elton John in his backing band. But that's not all. You really the watch the video this (the whole thing can be found on YouTube as I type this) to see all the stars backing each other.

The highlights are many, too many for me to describe. But I'll point out that the biggest start of the evening had to be Paul McCartney, who closed the show. Keep in mind that, from the perspective of 1986, McCartney hadn't barely played in any concerts since the 1970s. Starting in 1989 he would go on a world tour, and he would tour often after that. But he'd only made three other concert appearances in the 1980s prior to this, and each one was just for a couple of songs at most. (For instance, he played one song for Live Aid in 1985.)

By the way, note that there's a flaw with the duet of "Dancing in the Street" by David Bowie and Mick Jagger. For some reason, Bowie's vocals are way down in the mix. I currently don't have the means to fix that, since it's tricky with them singing together most of the time. But with audio editing technology advancing recently, it probably will be fixable eventually.

Note that various versions of this concert have been officially released, both on audio and video. But as far as I can tell, none of them are complete. The audio version, for instance, is only the length of a single album. So there's a lot more music here.

This album is two hours and 17 minutes long.

01 Introduction (Emcee)
02 talk (Big Country)
03 Wonderland (Big Country)
04 Fields of Fire (Big Country)
05 talk (Big Country)
06 Look Away (Big Country)
07 Chance (Big Country)
08 talk (Big Country)
09 In a Big Country (Big Country)
10 talk (Big Country)
11 talk (Suzanne Vega)
12 Tom’s Diner (Suzanne Vega)
13 talk (Suzanne Vega)
14 Cracking (Suzanne Vega)
15 Small Blue Thing (Suzanne Vega)
16 talk (Suzanne Vega)
17 Marlene on the Wall (Suzanne Vega)
18 talk (Emcee)
19 Lesson in Love (Level 42)
20 Leaving Me Now (Level 42)
21 Something about You (Level 42)
22 talk (Level 42)
23 Your Song (Elton John)
24 talk (Phil Collins)
25 In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins)
26 talk (Emcee)
27 Better Be Good to Me (Tina Turner)
28 talk (Tina Turner)
29 Tearing Us Apart (Eric Clapton & Tina Turner)
30 talk (Eric Clapton)
31 Call of the Wild (Midge Ure)
32 talk (Midge Ure)
33 Money for Nothing (Mark Knopfler & Sting)
34 talk (Mark Knopfler)
35 Every Time You Go Away (Paul Young)
36 talk (Paul Young)
37 Reach Out (Joan Armatrading)
38 No One Is to Blame (Howard Jones)
39 talk (Rod Stewart)
40 Sailing (Rod Stewart)
41 I’m Still Standing (Elton John)
42 talk (Elton John)
43 Every Time You Go Away (Paul Young & George Michael)
44 talk (George Michael)
45 I Saw Her Standing There (Paul McCartney)
46 Long Tall Sally (Paul McCartney)
47 talk (Paul McCartney)
48 Dancing in the Street (David Bowie & Mick Jagger)
49 Get Back (Paul McCartney & Everyone)
50 talk (Paul McCartney)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/kFX6wzSe

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/FFh3i4FUiXCUiKw/file

Each time one of these concerts happened, there typically was a group photo. If anyone wants to identify all the people in the photo, that would be great.

The Police - The Scope, Norfolk, VA, 8-15-1983

The band the Police definitely are part of my big BBC project, although I haven't posted any BBC material from that band at the time I write this (in January 2024). Unfortunately though, it seems they only performed for the BBC in the years 1978 to 1980. In 1983, with the hit studio album "Synchronicity," the Police were one of the biggest musical acts in the world. Then they broke up. So, since there's no BBC material from 1983, I thought it would be a good idea to post a full 1983 concert.

There's only one official live album from the main time the Police were together, 1977 to 1983. (There were reunions in 1986 and 2007.) That album, simply called "Live," is a double album, and the second part contains selections from two 1983 concerts. But I prefer full concerts rather than shorter albums put together from different shows. 

I checked out some 1983 concert bootlegs, and they mostly were a disappointing lot. Some are incomplete or have other flaws. Others just sound okay. This is a soundboard bootleg, and it has the best sound quality of any 1983 boot that I heard. 

There were a few problems with this boot, but I believe I fixed them all. It was complete, except the last minute of the last song, "Can't Stand Losing You," was missing. So I found another version from another 1983 soundboard boot, and used that to fill in the missing bit. A second problem was that the soundboard recorded what was happening on the stage so well that the was much less crowd noise than one would normally expect. So I tried to boost the crowd response whenever I could. But also, I think the applause after some songs were completely missing. I can't be sure because maybe they just went directly from the end of one song to the start of the next one most of the time. But I added in some more applause in a few spots where I thought that makes sense (including at the start of the first song).

This album is an hour and 34 minutes long.

01 Synchronicity I (Police)
02 Synchronicity II (Police)
03 Walking in Your Footsteps (Police)
04 Message in a Bottle (Police)
05 talk (Police)
06 Walking on the Moon (Police)
07 talk (Police)
08 Oh My God (Police)
09 De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da (Police)
10 talk (Police)
11 Wrapped Around Your Finger (Police)
12 Tea in the Sahara (Police)
13 Spirits in the Material World (Police)
14 Hole in My Life - Hit the Road Jack (Police)
15 Invisible Sun (Police)
16 One World [Not Three] (Police)
17 talk (Police)
18 King of Pain (Police)
19 Every Breath You Take (Police)
20 Murder by Numbers (Police)
21 Don't Stand So Close to Me (Police)
22 Roxanne (Police)
23 Can't Stand Losing You [Edit] (Police)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ERF9Aagx

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/20BF7TkAyAzAb85/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/dV9Ln

The cover art is made up of two pieces. I found a photo of a concert ticket at a Police fan site, so I used a portion of that for the top part. I compressed it some to give more room. For the bottom part, I used a photo of Sting and Andy Summers at a concert in London in December 1983.

Concert for Walden Woods, Foxboro Stadium, Foxborough, MA, 9-6-1993, Part 3: Sting

Here's the third part of the 1993 Concert for Walden Woods. This time, it's a set by Sting. If you want to know more about the concert as a whole, please read my write-up to the first part.

Unfortunately, this is a very short album. There are only four songs by Sting here. According to the database at setlist.fm, Sting actually played a much longer set. This album only contains the first four songs. Here are all the songs he played after that, in order:

Synchronicity II
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Roxanne
King of Pain
Bring on the Night
When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around
Nothing 'bout Me
Every Breath You Take

It was a surprisingly Police heavy set for that stage in Sting's solo career. Note that all but one of them ("Nothing 'bout Me") are Police songs.

I don't know why so much of his set is missing from the bootleg that I found. (According to setlist.fm, the sets from all the other performers are complete.) My guess is the whole thing was broadcast live on local radio, and someone didn't want his entire set broadcast. Let's hope that someday the rest of the recording is made public. 

Anyway, what's here is fine music. It's particularly interesting that included a cover of the Beatles classic "A Day in the Life." Sting never released this on any of his studio albums, but he did include a live version on an obscure 1994 EP called "Demolition Man."

This album is 21 minutes long.

01 If I Ever Lose My Faith in You (Sting)
02 Love Is Stronger than Justice [The Munificent Seven] (Sting)
03 talk (Sting)
04 A Day in the Life (Sting)
05 Fields of Gold (Sting)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16216751/VA1993_CncrtfrWldnWdsFxbroStdmFxbrghMA__9-6-1993_03Stng.zip.html

The cover is just like the cover for Part 1 of this concert, with only some of the text changed. Read my Part 1 write-up for more of an explanation.

Various Artists - Tower of Song - A Memorial Tribute to Leonard Cohen, Centre Bell, Montreal, Canada, 11-6-2017

Leonard Cohen died in 2016 at the age of 82. Exactly one year later, his son Adam Cohen put on a memorial concert. Leonard had specifically asked that such a concert be held in Montreal, Canada, so that's where it happened. It was broadcast on Canadian television and radio through the CBC, and later sold as a DVD, but it has never been released as an album. But it was professionally recorded thanks to the broadcasts, so it sounds great here.

This album is based on the CBC radio broadcast, which had great sound quality. (The DVD misses a bunch of songs.) However, there was a big problem with that broadcast, in that someone did a voiceover to talk over all the applause between songs, usually to introduce the next performer. This was very annoying since it was clearly added later and not part of the actual concert. Worse, the voice sometimes went over to the start of the next song. So thank God for audio editing programs like UVR5. I was able to use that to wipe out the voiceover which keeping the underlying applause and/or music. This means there are no verbal introductions of the performers. I don't know if that was the case in the actual concert or not. But you can just look at the song list here.

I also had a few problems with some missing music. Two songs weren't included in the radio broadcast, for whatever reason: "Tower of Song" and "Everybody Knows." That's when the DVD came in handy, because those ones happened to be included. But there was a problem with another song that I couldn't solve, "Closing Time." This was the last song of the concert, and it appears the radio show ran out of time, because it cut the song off before it ended. To make matters worse, the DVD didn't include that song. So there was nothing I could do. I added a chorus to the end of the song so the ending wouldn't seem so weird (which is why it has "[Edit]" in the title. But I didn't have a way to give the music a proper ending after that, so I still had it fade out.

Now, let's get to the performers. I really like the list of performers, including some big names, like Sting and Elvis Costello. But one has to put a kind of asterisk next to the performance of "Tower of Song," with no less than Willie Nelson, Celine Dion, Peter Gabriel, Chris Martin & Leonard Cohen all singing lead vocals on it! That was prerecorded elsewhere, probably due to those artists not being able to attend the concert in person. And note the involvement of Cohen on that song. I'm guessing a recording from a concert before his death was used and cleverly edited in to go with the other voices. A similar recorded performance happened to Cohen's voice on "A Thousand Kisses Deep."

Note that I wanted to keep the focus on the music, so I cut out some non-musical bits. For instance, there was a long speech by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and his wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau. I removed all of that. However, I did keep the recitation of a poem by actor Seth Rogen, since that was an interesting poem by Cohen.

If you're a fan of Cohen's songs at all, you really should give this a listen. Pretty much all the performances were solid, though I think k. d. lang was the highlight with her version of "Hallelujah."

This album is an hour and 57 minutes long.

01 Dance Me to the End of Love (Sting)
02 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye (Feist)
03 Who by Fire (Patrick Watson)
04 I'm Your Man (Sharon Robinson)
05 Democracy (Lumineers)
06 A Thousand Kisses Deep (Leonard Cohen [Recording])
07 Suzanne (Ron Sexsmith)
08 The Future (Elvis Costello)
09 Famous Blue Raincoat (Damien Rice)
10 So Long, Marianne (Adam Cohen with the Webb Sisters)
11 Hallelujah (k. d. lang)
12 Tower of Song [Recording] (Willie Nelson, Celine Dion, Peter Gabriel, Chris Martin & Leonard Cohen)
13 Sisters of Mercy (Sting)
14 Chelsea Hotel No. 2 (Lana Del Rey & Adam Cohen)
15 In My Secret Life (Bettye LaVette)
16 Everybody Knows (Courtney Love)
17 Field Commander Cohen [Poem] (Seth Rogen)
18 If It Be Your Will (Borns with the Webb Sisters)
19 The Partisan (Coeur de Pirate, Adam Cohen & Damien Rice)
20 Bird on a Wire (Elvis Costello)
21 Anthem (Sting)
22 Coming Back to You (Adam Cohen & Basia Bulat)
23 Closing Time [Edit] (Basia Bulat)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HzFNUjt2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/uEEd4BXXEU8yal8/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/aJCqE

The cover is the poster for this concert. However, I had to make some changes to get a rectangular poster to fit into a square space. I repositioned some things using Photoshop. I also updated some of the artist names at the bottom to better reflect who actually performed at the concert. For instance, it had mentioned Phillip Glass, who didn't show, and failed to mention some, like Ron Sexsmith, Courtney Love, and Bettye LaVette, who did show.

Live Aid - Wembley Stadium, London, Britain, 7-13-1985, Part 2: Spandau Ballet, Elvis Costello, Nik Kershaw, Sade, Sting, and Phil Collins

This is the second part of the London portion of Live Aid. The British concert was shorter than the American one, only about five and half hours of actual music compared to about eight hours in the U.S. So I've made only five albums for the British portion compared to seven albums for the American one.

Spandau Ballet was the first act for this part of the concert. They were always much bigger in Britain than the U.S. For instance, at this point in their career, they'd had fourteen Top Forty hits in Britain compared to only two Top Twenty hits in the U.S.

Next up was Elvis Costello. I must say I'm disappointed that he was only allowed to play one song. Consider for instance that he had eleven Top Forty hits in Britain at this point in his career, compared to the fourteen Spandau Ballet had. But Spandau Ballet got to play four songs and he only got one. It seems a lot of this was just how much organizer Bob Geldof and his friends liked you. Anyway, Costello surprised by not playing any of his hits. Instead, he did a cover of "All You Need Is Love" by the Beatles, which he introduced as an "old Northern English folk song."

Nik Kershaw was next. He isn't that well known today, but he was hot in 1985. At the time, he'd put out two albums and had seven Top Forty hits in Britain. But after Live Aid, he would only get only one more Top Forty hit, later in 1985. (Again, it seems odd he was able to play four songs, and Costello with more British hits, only played one.)

The band Sade was up next. Lead singer Sade Adu was born in Nigeria, making her the only Live Aid star actually from Africa. However, the rest of her band was British, and she'd lived in Britain since she was a toddler. Sade was especially big in Britain at the time. They had only released two albums at the time, but both of them went multi-platinum in Britain. Surprisingly, she didn't perform her biggest hit and signature song, "Smooth Operator."

As with the Philadelphia concert, the fame of the musical acts grew bigger as the concert went on. But there may have been an exception in this part, due to Phil Collins flying on a plane across the Atlantic Ocean to perform in Philadelphia later in the day. He was so famous at the time he probably would have been one of the last acts. 

This part of the concert ended with Sting and Phil Collins. Both of them were big stars at the time, and they were introduced together. But in fact Sting performed two songs by himself, then Collins performed two songs by himself. Only then did they perform two songs together. Apparently, this collaboration was spurred by the fact that Sting sang on the song "Long Long Way to Go" on Collins' most recent studio album. It was particularly fitting to the purpose of the concert, so they performed it together.

024 talk (Andy Peebles)
025 Only When You Leave (Spandau Ballet)
026 talk (Spandau Ballet)
027 Virgin (Spandau Ballet)
028 talk (Spandau Ballet)
029 True (Spandau Ballet)
030 talk (Andy Peebles)
031 All You Need Is Love (Elvis Costello)
032 talk (Tommy Vance)
033 Wide Boy (Nik Kershaw)
034 Don Quixote (Nik Kershaw)
035 The Riddle (Nik Kershaw)
036 Wouldn't It Be Good (Nik Kershaw)
037 Why Can't We Live Together (Sade)
038 Your Love Is King (Sade)
039 Is It a Crime (Sade)
040 talk (Noel Edmonds)
041 talk (Sting)
042 Roxanne (Sting)
043 Driven to Tears (Sting)
044 talk (Phil Collins)
045 Against All Odds (Phil Collins)
046 Message in a Bottle (Sting)
047 In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins)
048 talk (Phil Collins)
049 Long Long Way to Go (Phil Collins & Sting)
050 Every Breath You Take (Phil Collins & Sting)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15748941/LveAidJFKStdiumLondnPA__7-13-1985_Part2.zip.html

Like the other albums in this series, I split the cover into four so I could have pictures from the concert of more of the musical acts. That's members of Spandau Ballet on the top left, Nik Kershaw on the top right, Sade Adu, lead singer of Sade, on the bottom left, and Phil Collins and Sting together on the bottom right. There were five albums in this part, so I had to leave one out. I excluded Elvis Costello, since he only performed one song.

Concert for Human Rights Now, Estadio River Plate, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 10-15-1988, Part 4 - Sting

This album continues right where the previous one left off. That's because these are different sets from a benefit concert that was five and a half hours long. The first sets featured Youssou N'Dour, Tracy Chapman and Peter Gabriel. This set is by Sting. The remaining set features Bruce Springsteen.

I explained the basics about this concert in Part 1, the Youssou N'Dour set. Read that if you want to know more, including a Wikipedia link about the tour. But the gist is that these artists got together for a short world tour to promote the work of the non-profit Amnesty International and its campaigns against human rights abuses.

Sting was a good fit for this concert, due to a couple of songs on his most recent album at the time, "...Nothing like the Sun." One was "They Dance Alone," which was about the disappearance of thousands of political activists in Chile in the 1970s and 80s. Another, "Fragile," is about Ben Linder, a U.S. engineer who was working on a microhydro dam in Nicaragua in 1987 when he was killed by the Contras, a rebel group secretly funded by the U.S. government. 

Additionally, early in 1988, Sting released an EP called "Nada Como el Sol," which contained Spanish versions of four songs from his "...Nothing like the Sun." That included the two political songs mentioned above. So perhaps it's not surprising that he performed the Spanish versions of those two songs instead of the English versions, since this concert took place in Argentina, where the dominant language is Spanish. I don't know if he speaks Spanish or had to be coached, but he also ably made some comments in Spanish between songs.

One interesting thing about this concert is that there doesn't seem to have been an emcee. Instead, each artist was introduced by the previous one. So the first track here is the introduction by Peter Gabriel. Gabriel also helped sing the song "Ellas Danzan Solas" (the Spanish version of "They Dance Alone"). Also, Bruce Springsteen helped sing the final song, the huge Police hit "Every Breath You Take."

As I mentioned in my Part 1 write-up, there has been an official album of this concert, but it's only a double album, so it merely contains highlights from the full show, which is over five and a half hours long. Luckily, a soundboard bootleg of the entire thing exists, and the sound quality here is excellent.

This album is an hour and 19 minutes long. Since I consider it a part of the entire concert, I've had the track number start with 34, so you can put all the parts together in one folder and have them be in the proper order.

Note that on the mp3, I had to shorten the title for the medley "Bring on the Night - When the World Is Running Down You Make the Best of What's Still Around" because it's so damn long.

34 talk by Peter Gabriel (Sting)
35 The Lazarus Heart - Too Much Information (Sting)
36 We'll Be Together (Sting)
37 If You Love Somebody Set Them Free (Sting)
38 One World [Not Three] (Sting)
39 talk (Sting)
40 Fragilidad [Spanish Version of Fragile] (Sting)
41 Driven to Tears (Sting)
42 Bring on the Night - When the World Is Running Down You Make the Best of What's Still Around (Sting)
43 Don't Stand So Close to Me (Sting)
44 Ellas Danzan Solas [Spanish Version of They Dance Alone] (Sting with Peter Gabriel)
45 Every Breath You Take (Sting with Bruce Springsteen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15451357/ConcrtfrHumnRightsNw__10-15-1988__Part4-_Stng.zip.html

The cover is from this exact concert. It's a screenshot I took from a YouTube video. The graphic in the upper left corner was the logo for this tour. I also used the same font that was featured on the promotional material for the tour.

Sting - Before the Police - Non-Album Tracks (1975-1977)

When the Police hit the music scene in 1977, it seemed they came out of nowhere. They looked like a young punky band just getting started, especially due to their short, spiky haircuts. But in fact, all three members had been playing music for years already. Drummer Stuart Copeland had been in the prog rock band Curved Air. Lead guitarist Andy Summers was even briefly a member of the Animals in the 1960s.

As for lead singer and songwriter Sting, real name Gordon Sumner, he was in a jazz fusion band called "Last Exit" from 1974 to 1977. Then, around the time the Police formed in early 1977, Sting also joined a band called "Strontium 90" as kind of a side project. At that point, the Police consisted of Sting, Copeland, and a guitarist named Henry Padovani. Through Stontium 90, Sting and Copeland met Summers. Summers soon replaced Padovani, and the Police went on to great fame and fortune.

This album contains what I consider the best of Sting's music before the Police got big. I selected the songs I liked the most from both Last Exit and Strontium 90. Both bands had two lead vocalists. My job was made easier by only selecting the lead vocals by Sting. He wrote nearly all of the songs as well (with a cover of Neil Young's "Don't Let It Bring You Down" an exception). As a result, this sounds much like a lost Police album, though with more of a jazzy sound than a reggae/ new wave one.

I think the music here is quite good. I was very selective, making a rather short album of only the best songs. A couple of them were reworked in Police songs, and there are bits and pieces of others that got recycled as well. Also, "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" was a big hit for the Police in 1981, even reaching Number One in Britain. This includes a version of that all the way back in 1976. It's billed as a Strontium 90 song, since it appeared on an album billed to them, but it really was just a Sting solo demo.

Everything here is officially released, though extremely rare. The Last Exit songs are from albums called "First from Last Exit" and "Savage Beast," and the Strontium 90 songs are from the album "Police Academy." These are all studio versions, with the exception of "3 O'Clock Shot," which is from the sole concert Strontium 90 ever did. The albums generally are compilations put together after the Police got famous.

If you like the Police, I'll bet you'll like this.

This album is 37 minutes long.

01 Carrion Prince [Ye of Little Hope] [Early Version of Bring on the Night] (Sting [Last Exit])
02 I Got It Made (Sting [Last Exit])
03 Oh My God (Sting [Last Exit])
04 Don't Let It Bring You Down (Sting [Last Exit])
05 I Burn For You (Sting [Last Exit])
06 Fool in Love [Early Version of So Lonely] (Sting [Last Exit])
07 I'm on This Train (Sting [Last Exit])
08 Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic (Sting [Strontium 90])
09 3 O'Clock Shot (Sting [Strontium 90])
10 Visions of the Night (Sting [Strontium 90])

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700507/STNG1975-1977_BforethePlice_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any good photos of Sting before the Police. I ended up using one from the first few months of the Police's career. This is a rare photo of him before he dyed his hair blond. The photo was black and white, but I colorized it.