Sunday, March 21, 2021

Paul McCartney - Soundcheck Songs, Volume 1: April to May 1993

It's very rare to get good versions of songs played at soundchecks before concerts. Artists use that time to warm up and/or mess around, so it's rare for them to want to officially release any of that. And it's very rare for bootleggers to record soundchecks well, due to the fact that very few to no people are in the audience for them. But we're blessed with a large number of excellent recordings of Paul McCartney's soundchecks for his 1993 tour. 

That's because in 1995 he did a bunch of radio shows called "Oobu Joobu" where he played interesting rarities. It seems he recorded all of his soundchecks for his 1993 tour, and he played many songs from them for the radio show. I found so many interesting soundcheck songs that I've created four albums out of them, organized chronologically. Here's the first one. Everything here is officially unreleased, though most or all of them were played on that radio show.

According to setlist.fm, McCartney headlined over 100 concerts in 1993, more than in any other year. He tended to play the same hits at most of the shows, but he liked to sprinkle in unusual songs too, usually covers of songs he loved when he was growing up. These soundcheck versions are ideal, because they're not marred by audience noise or poor recordings. A few songs here were played most every night in the live shows, such as "Let Me Roll It," but others were played rarely, like "Mother Nature's Son," which was only done once that tour, or not at all, like "When the Wind She Blows Cool."

This album is 48 minutes long. The other albums in this series are around that same length.

01 Looking for Changes (Paul McCartney)
02 Mother Nature's Son (Paul McCartney)
03 Off the Ground (Paul McCartney)
04 Peace in the Neighbourhood (Paul McCartney)
05 Get Out of My Way (Paul McCartney)
06 Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying (Paul McCartney)
07 Every Night (Paul McCartney)
08 Let Me Roll It (Paul McCartney)
09 Mean Woman Blues (Paul McCartney)
10 When the Wind She Blows Cool (Paul McCartney)
11 Bring It to Jerome (Paul McCartney)
12 Be-Bop-A-Lula (Paul McCartney)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376627/PAULMCCRTNY1993cSoundchckSngsVlume1__1993_atse.zip.html

One of the places McCartney played on this tour was Minneapolis. I picked a photo of him in concert in that city because on of the soundcheck songs here, "Bring It On Home to Me," was recorded there.

2 comments:

  1. Track 11 is the Bo Diddley song Bring It To Jerome not Bring It On Home To Me...FWIW.

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    1. Nice catch. I just fixed it. I do have Bring It On Home in a later soundcheck in this series.

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