Fred Neil & John Sebastian - Rolling Coconut Revue, Harumi Dome, Tokyo, Japan. 4-8-1977

Here's an amazing find, in my opinion. Fred Neil was a legendary folk singer and songwriter. His musical discography is scanty, because his music career only went from the early 1960s to 1971, despite the fact that he lived until 2001. In 1970, he co-founded the Dolphin Research Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to stopping the killing and exploitation of dolphins around the world. He spent most of the rest of his life focused on that. He only played a few concerts in the 1970s, all of them benefits for dolphin-related causes. The last concert he played was a benefit show in Tokyo, Japan, in 1977.

Luckily, it turns out that concert was professionally recorded, and released around the year 2020. Unfortunately though, it's only been released in Japan as part of a 12 disc box set. His concert was part of a festival that lasted three days, and featured many big names in Western folk rock music, such as Jackson Browne, John Sebastian, J. D. Souther, Country Joe McDonald, Richie Haven, Odetta, Warren Zevon, and Eric Andersen, plus more Japanese artists singing in Japanese. The rest of the box set includes some of the other performances, but apparently only those they got the rights to, because some big names like Browne and Zevon are missing.

Anyway, in March 2021, a commenter here named Mystic pointed out to me that a recording of this Fred Neil concert exists. I started looking for it, but I couldn't find it anywhere. Even mentions of it are very few and far between. I put it on my wanted list through the SoulseekQT program. Yesterday, over a year and a half later, I finally got a positive hit and downloaded it! I'm sharing it here because it's so exceedingly rare.

It turns out this concert exceeded my expectations, especially in terms of sound quality, which is fantastic. The recording actually features two acts, John Sebastian, lead singer and main songwriter of the Lovin' Spoonful, and Neil. The Sebastian set is longer, at 38 minutes, while Neil's set is 29 minutes long. The two sets are linked because Sebastian and Neil were long-time musical associates and Sebastian is an excellent harmonica player. So after Sebastian's set ended, he stayed on stage, introduced Neil, and then played harmonica all through Neil's set.

Fred Neil led a troubled life. Apparently, he was hooked on heroin and other drugs from at least the mid-1960s onwards. Besides that, he was a stubborn and difficult guy to deal with, playing concerts rarely, often not showing up for them, or leaving in the middle of them. By 1977, he hadn't recorded any music in six years, and had only played a couple of short sets on stage since then. So one might have thought he was washed up, especially given the stories about his heavy drug use. But he's in very fine form here; he sounds just as good as ever. It's hard to believe this would be his last concert performance. (Although he got up on stage in a club once in the early 1980s and played a couple of songs.)

As for John Sebastian, he did very well with his set too. I find it ironic that in 1976, he had a Number One hit in the U.S. with "Welcome Back," the theme song to the "Welcome Back, Kotter" TV show, and yet his record company thought that was a fluke and dropped him. Then he couldn't get a new record contract (with disco being all the rage at the time), so he didn't put out another record until the 1990s. This is despite the fact that he had many previous hits, including three Number One or Number Two hits with the Lovin' Spoonful, so he was far from a one-hit wonder. But that's the music business for you. Sigh! Anyway, in this concert, he played "Welcome Back," but the rest consists mostly of Lovin' Spoonful songs.

This album is an hour and seven minutes long.

01 talk (John Sebastian)
02 Lovin' You (John Sebastian)
03 Link in the Chain (John Sebastian)
04 Someone Standin' in Your Door (John Sebastian)
05 talk (John Sebastian)
06 Welcome Back (John Sebastian)
07 Gas Man Blues (John Sebastian)
08 Fishin' Blues (John Sebastian)
09 Nashville Cats (John Sebastian)
10 talk (John Sebastian)
11 She's Funny (John Sebastian)
12 She's a Lady (John Sebastian)
13 Daydream (John Sebastian)
14 Darlin' Be Home Soon (John Sebastian)
15 Blues for Dad and JB's Happy Harmonica [Instrumental] (John Sebastian)
16 talk (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
17 Everybody's Talkin' (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
18 Roll on Rosie (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
19 Blues on the Ceiling (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
20 talk (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
21 I Gotta Have My Baby Back (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
22 The Other Side of This Life (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
23 The Dolphins (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
24 Goodnight, Irene (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16375929/FREDNL1977RllngCcontRvueHarumiDme__4-8-1977_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is not from this exact concert. But in August 1976, Neil and Sebastian played another dolphin benefit concert in Florida, and there's a clip of one song from that on YouTube. So I took a screenshot of that. Neil is the one on guitar and Sebastian is the one on harmonica.