The Blues Project - The Matrix, San Francisco, CA, 9-1966

I previously posted a couple of albums featuring the Doors playing at the Matrix in San Francisco in 1967. That put me in the mood to post this, which also is a concert that took place at the Matrix. Like the Doors concerts, the sound quality is fantastic. Since it is known the owner of the Matrix recorded the Doors with professional equipment, I strongly suspect that's what happened here, a few months earlier.

Let me explain some about the Blues Project, if you're not familiar with them. Chances are you don't know much about them, because they had a lot of talent and potential, but broke up too soon. They were formed in 1965 and broke up in 1967. They had some reunions in the 1970s and after, but their moment was gone. 

Unfortunately, the band's name was misleading. While they did play blues, they also played folk, soul, jazz, rock, and pop, and mixed them together in different combinations. They had a lot of variety because they had several talented singer-songwriters. The best known is probably organist Al Kooper, who already had co-written the song "This Diamond Ring," which was a Number One hit in the US by Gary Lewis and the Playboys in 1965, and would go on to more success by founding Blood, Sweat and Tears. But the band's guitarists Steve Katz and Danny Kalb also wrote and sang for the band, and had later success as well. 

Having different talents like this in the band made it something special for a brief time, but it also caused the band to split up, in the same way that Crosby, Stills, Nash and sometimes Young always seemed to be squabbling, reuniting, and breaking up.

This concert recording happens to have taken place at an excellent time. At this point, the band was still united, and would put out their second album, "Projections," two months later. But in the spring of 1967, Kooper and Katz would leave, then more would follow, with the band ending in the summer of 1967, shortly after appearing at the Monterey Pop Festival.

This concert has been kind of released over the years. What I mean is, several versions have come out, but they appear to be "grey market" releases that aren't entirely legal, and no profits go to the artist. The sound quality is excellent, as I mentioned above. However, the vocals between songs were very low, to the point that one could barely hear them. I boosted those quite a lot. I had to boost them so much that that resulted in a lot of hiss for those bits. So I used some noise reduction on them. I'm very, very reluctant to use that on any actual music, but I figure it's far less of a problem using it only on the talking between songs.

This concert features two sets by the band on the same night. You can hear when they took a break. Fortunately, they only played one song in both sets, "Flute Thing," and that was an instrumental jam with lots of variation with each take. It's also not known which night this was exactly. As you can see from the cover art, the band played the Matrix for a week in September 1966, so it could have been recorded on any of those days.

If you like classic rock from the 1960s, I suggest you give this a listen. I'm sure this band would be much more famous today if they'd stayed together longer. And the bland name didn't help either. I'd argue this is probably their best recording, better than any of their official material.

This album is an hour and 37 minutes long.

01 talk (Blues Project)
02 Louisiana Blues (Blues Project)
03 talk (Blues Project)
04 Steve's Song (Blues Project)
05 talk (Blues Project)
06 I Can't Keep from Cryin' Sometimes (Blues Project)
07 talk (Blues Project)
08 Caress Me Baby (Blues Project)
09 talk (Blues Project)
10 Flute Thing [Instrumental] (Blues Project)
11 talk (Blues Project)
12 Wake Me, Shake Me (Blues Project)
13 The Way My Baby Walks (Blues Project)
14 talk (Blues Project)
15 Love Will Endure (Blues Project)
16 Jelly, Jelly (Blues Project)
17 talk (Blues Project)
18 Cheryl's Going Home (Blues Project)
19 talk (Blues Project)
20 You Can' Catch Me (Blues Project)
21 talk (Blues Project)
22 Shake That Thing (Blues Project)
23 talk (Blues Project)
24 Catch the Wind (Blues Project)
25 talk (Blues Project)
26 You Can't Judge a Book by the Cover (Blues Project)
27 talk (Blues Project)
28 Flute Thing [Instrumental] (Blues Project)
29 talk (Blues Project)
30 Hoochie Coochie Man (Blues Project)
31 If You Don't Come Back (Blues Project)

https://www.imagenetz.de/jKYtV

As mentioned above, the cover art is a poster for the week long set of shows the band played at the Matrix from which this concert comes. Since the original poster was rectangular, I squished it some vertically, and cropped out the top and bottom. I also removed a few small words, such as the club's street address, and added "1966."