Al Stewart - WKDX, Chicago, IL, 10-27-1978

When I posted a couple of Al Stewart BBC sessions albums recently, I noted that those sessions petered out in the mid-1970s, just as he hit a new level of popularity. Most of his best known songs were not included on those sessions. So I mentioned I might post a late 1970s concert to make up for that. I got some requests recently for me to follow through with that, so here it is.

This concert was recorded at a Chicago radio station in front of a small audience, and played live on the radio. As a result, the sound quality is unusually good as concert recordings go. The timing is also excellent, because this came just after the releases of his two most popular albums by far, "Year of the Cat" in 1976 and "Time Passages" in 1978. As a result, it has his best known songs: "On the Border," "Year of the Cat," "Time Passages," and "Song on the Radio."

This music is officially released, but it currently is rather hard to get. An album containing selected songs from it (totaling only 50 minutes) was released in 1978, called "The Live Radio Concert Album." But only 2,500 copies were made, and it quickly went out of print. Then, in 2021, a super deluxe edition of "Time Passages" was released which contained the whole concert.

I'm posting this here mainly because that super deluxe edition version sounds fantastic overall, but contained one significant and annoying flaw: the songs were much, much louder than the talking between songs. Happily, this is easily fixed. I lowered the volume of the songs (they were almost brickwalled), and boosted the volume of the talking. Now you can hear what he was talking about without having the songs blow your ears out.

Speaking of official releases, I recently found out that a mega-massive Al Stewart box set is due to be released later in 2022. Called "The Admiralty Lights," it will contain no less than 50 CD of music! That should include all the BBC stuff I posted in much better sound, plus a bunch of full length concerts. 

This album is an hour and 34 minutes long.

01 talk (Al Stewart)
02 On the Border (Al Stewart)
03 talk (Al Stewart)
04 Soho [Needless to Say] (Al Stewart)
05 talk (Al Stewart)
06 Midas Shadow (Al Stewart)
07 talk (Al Stewart)
08 Broadway Hotel (Al Stewart)
09 talk (Al Stewart)
10 If It Doesn't Come Naturally, Leave It (Al Stewart)
11 talk (Al Stewart)
12 Time Passages (Al Stewart)
13 One Stage Before (Al Stewart)
14 talk (Al Stewart)
15 Life in Dark Water (Al Stewart)
16 Roads to Moscow (Al Stewart)
17 talk (Al Stewart)
18 Sirens of Titan (Al Stewart)
19 talk (Al Stewart)
20 The Palace of Versailles (Al Stewart)
21 talk (Al Stewart)
22 Valentina Way (Al Stewart)
23 talk (Al Stewart)
24 Year of the Cat (Al Stewart)
25 talk (Al Stewart)
26 The Pink Panther Theme [Instrumental] (Al Stewart)
27 Song on the Radio (Al Stewart)
28 talk (Al Stewart)
29 Carol (Al Stewart)

https://www.imagenetz.de/aaPTb

I couldn't find any really good color photos of Al Stewart in concert in 1978. But I found one of him in 1979, at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, California, so I used that.