Albums That Should Exist: Boz Scaggs - The Roxy, Los Angeles, CA, 4-7-1976

Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Boz Scaggs - The Roxy, Los Angeles, CA, 4-7-1976

Boz Scaggs has been a musician since the 1960s until today (as I write this in 2021). He's had critical success, but only a medium amount of commercial success for most of his career. But there's one big exception to that: his 1976 album "Silk Degrees" was a huge hit. It was a number one or two hit album in many countries around the world. It sold over five million copies and spawned four hit singles. This basically is a live version of that album, plus the best of his songs from his previous albums.

The main reason I'm posting this bootleg is because of the sound quality. If there wasn't an excellent soundboard from that 1976 tour, then I would pass on having live music from that time. Luckily, there actually are two soundboards. The best one is the main one I'm using here, from the Roxy in Los Angeles. But he had a fairly consistent set list on that tour, and that recording misses four songs. There's a run of three missing songs in the middle of the concert ("Angel Lady," "Running Blue," and "Georgia"), plus the encore, "'Cause You're Mine." The encore is especially interesting because the rest of the songs are all predictable choices of originals from Scaggs' albums, but the encore is a cover of a Vibrations song that Scaggs has never officially released in any form.

Anyway, for these four missing songs, I used versions from the other soundboard bootleg from the tour, which comes from a concert in Central Park in New York City. I highly doubt you'll notice the difference between the two sources because they sound nearly the same.

By the way, in my opinion, the main reason Boz Scaggs had such success with "Silk Degrees" was because, for that one album only, he had a songwriting partnership with David Paich, the keyboardist in his band at the time. Together they wrote the hits from that album, including "Lowdown," "What Can I Say," and "Lido Shuffle." Paich seems to be the secret sauce for hit making success. After the album, he and most of the rest of Scaggs' backing band left to form their own group, Toto. Paich went on to write or co-write other big hits for Toto like "Hold the Line," "Rosanna," and "Africa."

This album is an hour and 12 minutes long.

01 Lowdown (Boz Scaggs)
02 You Make It So Hard [To Say No] (Boz Scaggs)
03 talk (Boz Scaggs)
04 What Can I Say (Boz Scaggs)
05 Might Have to Cry (Boz Scaggs)
06 talk (Boz Scaggs)
07 Jump Street (Boz Scaggs)
08 Angel Lady (Boz Scaggs)
09 talk (Boz Scaggs)
10 Running Blue (Boz Scaggs)
11 talk (Boz Scaggs)
12 Georgia (Boz Scaggs)
13 Slow Dancer (Boz Scaggs)
14 It's Over (Boz Scaggs)
15 talk (Boz Scaggs)
16 Lido Shuffle (Boz Scaggs)
17 Dinah Flo (Boz Scaggs)
18 talk (Boz Scaggs)
19 I Got Your Number (Boz Scaggs)
20 'Cause You're Mine (Boz Scaggs)