The Guess Who - Winnipeg Arena, Winnipeg, Canada, 2-25-1966

Here's something that I think is really neat, and underappreciated. I recently went on a deep dive of early Guess Who material. I like a lot of their 1970s stuff, but I like their era with Randy Bachman (of Bachman Turner Overdrive fame) on lead guitar even more. He was with the band from its inception in 1962 through early 1970. I went looking to see if there were any good concert recordings from that time. It turns out there are surprisingly few, and the ones that exist generally have middling to poor sound quality.

There's one glorious exception, which is the concert here. This has to be a soundboard, because the sound quality is as good as any live recording from 1966 that you'll hear. But that's really odd, in my opinion, because the band was just getting started in early 1966, when the concert took place. 

Also, it happened at a pivotal time for the band. They'd had a big hit in 1965, "Shakin' All Over," with Chad Allan as lead vocalist. But at the end of 1965, Burton Cummings joined as a keyboardist. It turned out that he could sing really well too, so much so that he was arguably even better than Allan. For a short time, the band had two main lead vocalists. This may well be the first concert with Cummings in the band. If not the first, it was definitely one of the first. I'm just speculating, but I wonder if the reason this recording exists is because the band wanted to hear how they sounded with Cummings added.

If you're familiar with the band's history, then you probably already know that Chad Allan left shortly after this, and Cummings became the lead singer for the rest of the band's existence. His distinctive voice was a key part of the band's sound. On this bootleg, Allan still sings the majority of the songs, but Cummings has a decent share, and sometimes they sang together. I'd be curious if anyone could list who sang what.

Anyway, I made some bold cuts to this recording. For one thing, I cut out a few songs that I felt weren't as good as the others. Those were "Money (That's What I Want)," "Baby's Birthday," "Louie, Louie," and "I Fought the Law." In some cases, like "Money," I thought the vocals were bad. (I think that one was sung by someone other than Allan or Cummings.) In others, like "I Fought the Law," I felt the band stumbled with their performance. I felt less is more, and the concert is a more enjoyable listen by cutting out the fat.

I also made some big cuts with what happened between songs. For one thing, the audience was small and/or unresponsive. The small scattered amount of clapping is so meager that it's sad. At one point, one of the band members even made a sarcastic comment about it, saying something like "Don't everyone clap at once." So I cut out all the clapping. 

Furthermore, strangely, there was a professional MC who spoke sometimes between the songs, but not all the time. I don't like that guy, whoever he was. He reminded me of the BBC DJ Brian Matthew in that he seemed excessively smooth and enthusiastic, like the stereotype of a used car salesman. So I cut out all of his comments. But I kept in all the comments the band members made between songs (except for the sarcastic comment about the lack of clapping mentioned above), and there were plenty of those.

The end result of these edits is that it sounds like the band was playing live in the studio, even though they played at a concert. The sound quality is good enough to make it sound that way.

In terms of the music, the majority of the songs are covers of the big hits of the day. But they did play some of their own songs, namely: "Hey Ho (What You Do to Me)," "Believe Me," "Tuff E Nuff," and "Shakin' All Over." (Technically, "Hey Ho" and "Shakin' All Over" were covers too, but I include them here because they were hits in Canada for the band.) Also, "Blue Is the Night" was introduced as a song by the Deverons, which is true. But what wasn't mentioned was that Burton Cummings was the lead singer in that band, and he sang the version of it here.  

As an aside, there's another very similar bootleg of the band playing in Winnipeg in February 1966. That one is of them playing the River Heights Community Club. That one seems to be much more popular than this one, and the set list is longer. But in terms of sound quality, this one is far superior. Hopefully by posting this, I can help make this one better known.

This album is 43 minutes long. I suspect the performance was longer, since there is nothing near the end to indicate the concert was coming to an end, such as an encore or comments about playing one last number or the like. But even so, I'll take this one over the longer River Heights one I mentioned any day of the week.

01 Wait (Guess Who)
02 talk (Guess Who)
03 Blue Is the Night (Guess Who)
04 Little Latin Lupe Lu (Guess Who)
05 Shakin' All Over (Guess Who)
06 It's Too Late (Guess Who)
07 talk (Guess Who)
08 I'm Down (Guess Who)
09 It's My Life (Guess Who)
10 talk (Guess Who)
11 Hey Ho [What You Do to Me] (Guess Who)
12 talk (Guess Who)
13 My Generation (Guess Who)
14 Look through Any Window (Guess Who)
15 talk (Guess Who)
16 Turn, Turn, Turn [To Everything There Is a Season] (Guess Who)
17 Believe Me (Guess Who)
18 Batman Theme (Guess Who)
19 talk (Guess Who)
20 I'm a Man (Guess Who)
21 talk (Guess Who)
22 I'm Alive (Guess Who)
23 Tuff E Nuff (Guess Who)
24 California Dreamin' (Guess Who)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15293020/TGuessW_1966_WinnipgArnaWinnipgCnada__2-25-1966_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I'm tickled pink that I managed to find a photo of the band in concert in Winnipeg in 1966. It's not the exact concert here. It's from something called the "Bang-A-Rama" held at the Winnipeg Stadium in May 1966. But hey, close enough for horseshoes. ;)

The original was in black and white, but I colorized it. It's not the best colorization, due to the complexity of the photo, with the whole band showing. But hopefully it's good enough to be acceptable. Also, I used "The Guess Who?" (complete with question mark) as the band name in the cover, because that's what the band did at the time. I used the exact font style that they preferred back then as well.