John Mellencamp - Agora Ballroom, Cleveland, OH, 7-25-1984

I'm not a huge John Mellencamp fan, but he's had a career he should be proud of. This bootleg concert is from early in his career, before he'd written many of his classic hits. But it's a worthy and interesting show even if you're not a big Mellencamp fan because A) it has great sound quality, B) it consists mostly of cover versions, and C) it's entirely performed solo acoustic. That last one is particularly notable. At this point in his career he almost never performed in acoustic mode. I'm guessing it was the only full show he did in that format for many years before this and many years after.

I don't know what the occasion for the acoustic format was, but I'm guessing it was a benefit concert or something like that. It was broadcast live on the radio, which is why it sounds professionally recorded. It's also rather odd in that a radio DJ came up on stage halfway through the show and briefly interviewed Mellencamp right there. I left that in. (It's only a couple of minutes long.) However, the same DJ returned and talked during the wait for the encore and then after the encore. I cut all that out since most of it was just a lame effort to stall for time and keep the audience engaged.

At this point, Mellencamp was having trouble being taken seriously, as he was originally packaged as a teen pop star. That can be reflected by his name changes towards his real name, from "Johnny Cougar," to "John Cougar," to "John Cougar Mellencamp," to "John Mellencamp." The "Johnny Cougar" name was imposed on him by his record company without his knowledge or permission. One year before this concert, he'd become "John Cougar Mellencamp." Anyway, given his reputation at the time, his song selection here is interesting. Only a few of the songs were written by him: "Crumblin' Down," "Authority Song," "Taxi Dancer," "Thundering Hearts," "Pink Houses," and "Jack and Diane." He didn't play his biggest hit at that point, "Hurts So Good." Instead, he had a lot of relatively obscure choices, such as two songs written by John Prine ("Please Don't Bury Me" and "Sam Stone") and two by Elliott Murphy ("Last of the Rock Stars" and "White Middle Class Blues").

The album is 56 minutes long. Perhaps his time slot was limited, because he almost never spoke between songs, or even paused that long for applause.

01 talk (John Mellencamp)
02 Crumblin' Down (John Mellencamp)
03 All Along the Watchtower (John Mellencamp)
04 Please Don't Bury Me (John Mellencamp)
05 Little Honda (John Mellencamp)
06 Authority Song (John Mellencamp)
07 The Spider and the Fly (John Mellencamp)
08 talk - interview (John Mellencamp)
09 Mercedes Benz (John Mellencamp)
10 talk (John Mellencamp)
11 Sam Stone (John Mellencamp)
12 Taxi Dancer (John Mellencamp)
13 Five O'Clock World (John Mellencamp)
14 Street Fighting Man (John Mellencamp)
15 Thundering Hearts (John Mellencamp)
16 Early Bird Cafe (John Mellencamp)
17 Pink Houses (John Mellencamp)
18 talk (John Mellencamp)
19 Last of the Rock Stars (John Mellencamp)
20 White Middle Class Blues (John Mellencamp)
21 Jack and Diane (John Mellencamp)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693367/JOHNMLLNCMP1984_AgraBallromClvelndOH__7-25-1984_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any good photos of Mellencamp with an acoustic guitar from 1984. So instead I went with one taken at the Farm Aid concert in 1986.