Tracy Chapman - Gothic Theatre, Englewood, CO, 2-19-1991

With all the protests about police brutality and racial injustice in the US lately, I've found myself listening to some of my old Tracy Chapman albums. She's got a lot of songs that deal directly with those issues, such as "Across the Lines" and "Talkin' 'bout a Revolution."

I've long felt that, after her first two albums, which were well done and sold many millions, Chapman's musical career was mishandled by her and/or her record company. One puzzler is that she's never released a live album. This could have been that album.

Part of the mishandling of Chapman's career, in my opinion, is that if anyone excels in the solo acoustic format, it's her. But after her first two albums, her other albums gave virtually all her songs a full-band production that made them sound generic and all too similar to each other. This concert, by contrast, is solo acoustic. That allows her lyrics and emotions to stand out.

Four of the songs are from her album "Matters of the Heart," which would come out one year after this concert. That album suffered from the production issues mentioned above, but those songs sound much better in this format. Two more songs, "Still I Cry" and "Missile Blues," have never been released. That another mishandling - she has lots of good songs that were inexplicably never released. I've included those two exact performances on my stray tracks collection "Where the Soul Never Dies" as well. The rest of the songs come from her first two albums.

This is a soundboard bootleg, and the sound quality is fantastic. She rarely spoke between songs, but when she did, I made those separate tracks and boosted the volume. The concert is an hour and two minutes long.

As an aside, I'm surprised by the lack of Tracy Chapman bootlegs on the Internet. I've only been able to find a few, and they all come from her commercial peak of 1988 to 1991. If you have any others, please let me know. Due to the production issues I mentioned above, I'd love to hear a good solo acoustic concert from later in her career. I'm also especially looking for the song "If I...", which is an original song from her first few years that she sometimes played live.

01 talk (Tracy Chapman)
02 Across the Lines (Tracy Chapman)
03 For My Lover (Tracy Chapman)
04 Still I Cry (Tracy Chapman)
05 Baby Can I Hold You (Tracy Chapman)
06 Open Arms (Tracy Chapman)
07 You Were in Love (Tracy Chapman)
08 Crossroads (Tracy Chapman)
09 If These Are the Things (Tracy Chapman)
10 talk (Tracy Chapman)
11 Dreaming on a World (Tracy Chapman)
12 Fast Car (Tracy Chapman)
13 Short Supply (Tracy Chapman)
14 talk (Tracy Chapman)
15 Missile Blues (Tracy Chapman)
16 Mountains O' Things (Tracy Chapman)
17 All that You Have Is Your Soul (Tracy Chapman)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15288247/TracyC_1991_GthicTheatreEnglwoodCO__2-19-1991_atse.zip.html

I searched but didn't find any good photos of Chapman on stage in 1991. However, I found a nice one of her at a Nelson Mandela tribute concert in 1990, so I used that.