Stephen Stills - Bread and Roses Festival, Greek Theatre, Berkeley, CA, 9-4-1978

I just posted a concert from Joni Mitchell which took place at the Bread and Roses Festival on September 3, 1968. I only discovered that a few days ago. When I did, I thought about the name of the festival and the year, and I realized I had a Stephen Stills concert that also took place at the same festival in the same year. So as long as I was posting that one, I'm posting this one too.

In my opinion, this is the best acoustic concert recording from Stills' long career, at least that I know of. It's an excellent performance, excellent sound, and he plays lots of interesting songs instead of just the usual suspects. So if you're a Stephen Stills fan at all, you should give this a listen.

It was a three day festival. This is from the last day, and took place one day after the Joni Mitchell concert I just posted. Apparently, Stills wasn't scheduled to play, but one or more of the big names on the last day couldn't make it, so Stills was a last minute addition.

I believe the reason a recording of this has been bootlegged is because it was played live on the radio at the time. So that's why the sound is so good, though there's a bit of background hiss. 

For nearly all the songs, it's just Stills on guitar. But he's briefly joined by a harmonica player, then by a fiddle player. As I mentioned above, some of the songs were only rarely done by him, especially a few cover songs. Of special note is "Spanish Suite." In my opinion, it's a great original song by him, but for some inexplicable reason he never really did anything with it. A very different studio version wasn't released until 2005, though that recording was done in the late 1970s.

I made a few minor fixes to the recording. For the talking between songs, I generally boosted the volume of Stills' voice some. Also, for three songs near the end, the audience reaction faded out quickly. I patched in some more cheering from the ends to other songs to make those sound complete.

Finally, the last song, "Come On in My Kitchen," is a bonus song of sorts, because it comes from a different concert altogether, in 1979. But the sound and performance is so similar that it fits exactly in, in my opinion. It even works great as an extra encore. The previous song had backing vocals by the Persuasions (who were playing at the festival too). I'm not sure, but they might be backing him up on the bonus song too.

01 talk (Stephen Stills)
02 Love the One You're With (Stephen Stills)
03 Not Fade Away (Stephen Stills)
04 talk (Stephen Stills)
05 Spanish Suite [One Moment at a Time] (Stephen Stills)
06 Everybody's Talkin' (Stephen Stills)
07 4 + 20 (Stephen Stills)
08 talk (Stephen Stills)
09 Colorado (Stephen Stills)
10 talk (Stephen Stills)
11 Take Me Back to the Ohio Valley (Stephen Stills)
12 talk (Stephen Stills)
13 Jesus Gave Love Away for Free (Stephen Stills)
14 talk (Stephen Stills)
15 Fallen Eagle (Stephen Stills)
16 talk (Stephen Stills)
17 Ole Man Trouble (Stephen Stills)
18 Thoroughfare Gap (Stephen Stills)
19 Crossroads - You Can't Catch Me (Stephen Stills)
20 49 Bye Byes - For What It's Worth (Stephen Stills with the Persuasions)
21 Come On in My Kitchen (Stephen Stills)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15288180/StephenS_1978_BreadRsesFestivalGreekTheatreBrkeleyCA__9-4-1978_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is from 1978, but it's from another concert. It's from a Crosby, Stills and Nash concert in San Francisco. I cropped it so only Stills was in the frame. For the logo at the bottom, I found that from a concert poster of the 1978 festival. I cropped out just the part I wanted, and added some text at the bottom.