Tina Turner - Park West, Chicago, IL, 8-17-1984

I'm not that big of a Tina Turner fan, but she is a great vocalist, and her career has had many highlights. Her career had a strange arc. She was quite famous in the 1960s and early 1970s as the focal point in the Ike and Tina Turner duo. But after that duo broke up in the mid-1970s (due to her husband Ike Turner being an abusive asshole), she languished in obscurity until 1984. That year, she put out the album "Private Dancer." It was a huge hit and led to one of the biggest and most unexpected comebacks in musical history. Just a few years earlier, she had literally been living on food stamps, but by the late 1980s she found herself selling out entire stadiums!

The problem I have with Tina Turner's career is that most of her songs in her comeback era are generic, slick, and/or overproduced. The songs on her "Private Dancer" are of a higher quality, generally speaking, but they also suffer from all the usual 1980s production issues that sound badly dated today. So this concert hits the sweet spot for me. It took place about two months after "Private Dancer" was released. Her new surge of fame was building, but she was still playing relatively small venues. She did mosr of the songs from the "Private Dancer" album, but because they were done live and with a relatively small band, that gets past most of the 1980s studio production problems.

This is a bootleg from a live radio broadcast. The sound quality is fantastic, as good as an official live album from the era. There is no official album of hers from this time period. The closest is "Tina Live in Europe," recorded in various shows from 1985 to 1987 and released in 1988. But that already was very different, concerts done in grandiose style for massive audiences, complete with multiple special guest stars. That album was also overcooked, with a whole team of musicians performing overdubs, making it a stretch to call it a truly live album at all. I like this album much better - it's much more of the "real" Tina Turner.

The set list consists of most of the "Private Dancer" album - seven of its nine songs - plus three earlier hits ("River Deep, Mountain High," "Nutbush City Limits," and "Proud Mary"). Additionally a slowed down cover of "Help!" by the Beatles was on some editions of the "Private Dancer" album but not others, and later was included as a bonus track. 

The last song is a real treat. Turner is renowned for her attractive, muscular legs. So that's probably why she closed with an extended cover of "Legs," a hit for ZZ Top just the year before. She never did a studio version of that song, but a live version was released as a B-side in 1988.

This album is an hour and 13 minutes long.

01 talk (Tina Turner)
02 Let's Pretend We're Married (Tina Turner)
03 Show Some Respect (Tina Turner)
04 talk (Tina Turner)
05 I Might Have Been Queen [Soul Survivor] (Tina Turner)
06 River Deep, Mountain High (Tina Turner)
07 Nutbush City Limits (Tina Turner)
08 talk (Tina Turner)
09 What's Love Got to Do with It (Tina Turner)
10 I Can't Stand the Rain (Tina Turner)
11 Better Be Good to Me (Tina Turner)
12 Private Dancer (Tina Turner)
13 Let's Stay Together (Tina Turner)
14 talk (Tina Turner)
15 Help (Tina Turner)
16 Proud Mary (Tina Turner)
17 talk (Tina Turner)
18 Legs (Tina Turner)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16067897/TinaTrnr_1984_PrkWestChicagoIL__8-17-1984_atse.zip.html

The cover photo was taken at this same venue in this same month of the same year. But it's from August 2nd, instead of August 17th. But hey, that's pretty close.