America - Musikladen, Bremen, Germany, 11-13-1974

America had a series of soft rock hits, mainly from 1971 to 1975. There has never been an official live album from their prime early 1970s one, so I'm posting the best bootleg I could find. (There is a live album, simply called "Live," recorded and released in 1977. But it has some problems, including the fact that it was recorded just after the band turned from a trio to a duo.) Because this took place near the end of their most successful era, it contains pretty much all of their big hits with the exception of 1975's "Sister Golden Hair."

This is kind of a strange recording because it's not exactly a concert. The band had a chance to appear on the German TV show "Musikladen." They played a bunch of songs without any audience. There was very little talking between the songs because I think they had the impression that just the songs would be broadcast. 

In the end, from what I could figure out, I think just one song was actually broadcast on the show, "Mad Dog." This is ironic because it's not included here. One can see from video footage that it was recorded at the same time and place, but I haven't included it because fake audience noise was added, and even worse, some announcer talked over much of the song in German. I found it too annoying to even include as a bonus track.

What we do have here is about 40 minutes of music with excellent sound quality. The lack of any audience really helps allow one to hear every note of their songs. The band consists of just the main trio of the band, plus a bassist and drummer.

01 Ventura Highway (America)
02 talk (America)
03 I Need You (America)
04 talk (America)
05 Don't Cross the River (America)
06 A Horse with No Name (America)
07 Moon Song (America)
08 talk (America)
09 Lonely People (America)
10 Wind Wave (America)
11 Rainbow Song (America)
12 talk (America)
13 Tin Man (America)
14 California Revisited (America)
15 Green Monkey (America)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15288722/Amerca_1974_MuskldenBremnGermany__11-13-1974_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I took a screenshot from the video of this show, which can be found on YouTube. To that, I added the band name, using the exact font used on many of their albums. I also threw in the Musikladen logo, since I found that too.