Heart - Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ, 1-26-1979

When it comes to posting full concerts here, I try to post the really excellent ones that fill a gap in a musical artist's discography. The band Heart went in a slick "adult contemporary" direction in the 1980s and were hugely successful with it. But I much prefer before then, in the 1970s, when they were in a classic rock mode. Yet even though the band has released a handful of official live albums, none of them adequately cover this time period. The closest is a "Greatest Hits/Live" album released in 1980. But there are only seven live tracks on that, and those generally don't include versions of their best known 1970s songs.

So I worked back from the idea that I wanted to hear a kick ass 1970s concert from them. The ideal year, in my opinion, would be 1979. That would allow one to include all their best songs through that year, but not include the 1980 songs that ended up on that "Greatest Hits/Live" album. I listened to the most popular bootlegs from around that year, and was pleased to find there is an excellent bootleg from 1979. Naturally, this is it.

As far as I can tell, the band's concert set lists didn't differ much in 1979. The several bootlegs I heard all had good performances, so what made this stand out was the sound quality. This was professionally recorded, because it was broadcast live on a radio station at the time. They actually did some others like that, including one the very next night, but the sound of this one was the best. 

There was only one snag with the bootleg recording: it lacked the final encore song, "Without You" (a cover of the famous Badfinger song). Luckily, as I mentioned right above, there was another show broadcast on the radio from one night later, so I took that song from there. The sound quality is similar, so I don't think you'll notice it comes from another concert.

By the way, speaking of covers, all the other songs are Heart originals, except the second to last song, which is a cover of the Led Zeppelin classic "Rock and Roll."

01 Cook with Fire (Heart)
02 High Times (Heart)
03 Heartless (Heart)
04 Devil Delight (Heart)
05 Straight On (Heart)
06 Magic Man (Heart)
07 talk (Heart)
08 Love Alive (Heart)
09 talk (Heart)
10 Magazine (Heart)
11 Mistral Wind (Heart)
12 talk (Heart)
13 Dog and Butterfly (Heart)
14 talk (Heart)
15 Silver Wheels (Heart)
16 Crazy on You (Heart)
17 Kick It Out (Heart)
18 Barracuda (Heart)
19 White Lightning and Wine (Heart)
20 Rock and Roll (Heart)
21 Without You (Heart)

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The cover art features Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart in a 1978 concert. Ann is the brunette and Nancy is the blonde with the guitar.