Arlo Guthrie - Pine Street Theatre, Portland, OR, 11-2-1988

Arlo Guthrie has had an impressive musical career, but I fear that a lot of people are forgetting about him because he hasn't been well represented on record. He does have some fine albums, but I think the best way to appreciate him is to see him in concert. He's as much a storyteller with a great sense of humor as he is a singer or songwriter. He could easily have had another career as a stand-up comedian.

I recently came across a bootleg of a solo acoustic Guthrie concert with flawless sound and a good setlist, so I'm sharing it here with you. This sounds as good as any officially released live album of his. In fact, it's almost too good, in the sense that it's a soundboard with very little audience noise, and in this case that means you can't hear much of the audience reaction when he jokes and such.

This concert is almost as much about Guthrie as storyteller as it is about him as a musician. I made separate tracks of his between song dialogue, and about one-third of the two-hour total time is just him talking. Furthermore, he talks a lot during his songs too. But that's a good thing, since all that talking is a big part of his appeal.

As for the music, this contains all his best known songs, such as "Alice's Restaurant Massacre" (which he plays live only rarely), "The Motorcycle Song," "The City of New Orleans," and "Coming into Los Angeles." So if you want just one Arlo Guthrie concert to listen to, I think this is the one.

01 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
02 Key to the Highway (Arlo Guthrie)
03 Freight Train (Arlo Guthrie)
04 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
05 The Motorcycle Song (Arlo Guthrie)
06 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
07 Oh Mom (Arlo Guthrie)
08 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
09 Coming into Los Angeles (Arlo Guthrie)
10 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
11 My Front Pages (Arlo Guthrie)
12 Darkest Hour (Arlo Guthrie)
13 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
14 I'm Changing My Name to Chrysler (Arlo Guthrie)
15 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
16 I'm Changing My Name to Chrysler, Part 2 (Arlo Guthrie)
17 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
18 I'm Changing My Name to Chrysler, Part 3 (Arlo Guthrie)
19 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
20 Alice's Restaurant Massacre (Arlo Guthrie)
21 The City of New Orleans (Arlo Guthrie)
22 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
23 When a Soldier Makes It Home (Arlo Guthrie)
24 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
25 Gabriel's Mother's Hiway Ballad No.16 Blues (Arlo Guthrie)
26 This Land Is Your Land (Arlo Guthrie)
27 Amazing Grace (Arlo Guthrie)
28 talk (Arlo Guthrie)
29 Highway in the Wind (Arlo Guthrie)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xLR9ubA5

The cover art comes from a screenshot of a concert from that era.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.