John Mellencamp - Timothy White's Rockstars, Belmont Mall Studios, Belmont, IN, 7-10-1987

Rcently, I searched to see if I could find any BBC performances by John Mellencamp. I came up blank - he probably haven't performed in Britain much. But in the search, I did find a really great American radio show performance he did in 1987, near the height of his fame.

"Timothy White's Rockstars" is a radio show broadcast on a US radio network. I've already posted a show from that featuring Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi. It a good show in that it mixes in live performances (without a studio audience) with extensive talking. What I've done here is I've cut the talking way down. I've removed all the talking by DJ Timothy White, for instance. I also got rid of a couple of long interview segments with John Mellencamp. But I kept Mellencamp's comments that were directly relevant to the songs being played. With some clever editing, I think the result is it seems as if this was a concert (with no audience) and some banter before each song. That's what I was aiming for, anyway.

I used the audio editing program Spleeter for some other editing. For instance, I removed a couple of cases where the DJ started talking a few seconds before a song ended. I also boosted the lead vocals in some cases. So, technically speaking, pretty much every track here should have "[Edit]" in their titles. But I saved that for just one song, the instrumental "Walk, Don't Run," which had really drastic editing in it. The DJ Timothy White talked over a big chunk of it, giving thank yous and credits at the end of the show. This damaged the underlying music so much that it didn't sound good. Luckily, the instrumental repeated some parts almost exactly, so nothing really important was lost.

The result of all my editing is that you're left with an excellent sounding bunch of songs, plus some interesting banter. Because this was recorded in a studio with no audience, the songs often sound as good as the studio versions.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Introduction (John Mellencamp)
02 Paper in Fire (John Mellencamp)
03 talk (John Mellencamp)
04 Hard Times for an Honest Man (John Mellencamp)
05 talk (John Mellencamp)
06 Cherry Bomb (John Mellencamp)
07 talk (John Mellencamp)
08 Shama Lama Ding Dong (John Mellencamp)
09 talk (John Mellencamp)
10 Small Town (John Mellencamp)
11 talk (John Mellencamp)
12 Empty Hands (John Mellencamp)
13 talk (John Mellencamp)
14 Down and Out in Paradise (John Mellencamp)
15 talk (John Mellencamp)
16 Rooty Toot Toot (John Mellencamp)
17 talk (John Mellencamp)
18 Pink Houses (John Mellencamp)
19 talk (John Mellencamp)
20 R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A. (John Mellencamp)
21 Walk Don't Run [Instrumental] [Edit] (John Mellencamp)

https://www.imagenetz.de/iqspc

The cover photo was taken at a concert in Ohio University some time in 1987.