Various Artists - Bridge School Benefit 1988, Oakland Coliseum Arena, Oakland, CA, 12-4-1988

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm a big fan of the annual Bridge School Benefit Concerts, and I recently was given soundboard versions of most of the complete shows from 1988 to 1999. All I had of the 1986 show with excellent sound quality was the Bruce Springsteen set, which I just posted. But I have the entire 1988 show, so here it is. There has been a very good audience bootleg circulating for years, so good that one might even mistake it for a soundboard. But this is an actual soundboard and it sounds even better than that other version.

I have a particular fondness for this show, because it was one of the first concerts I attended, when I was a teenager. Consider the list of performers: Neil Young, Nils Lofgren, Billy Idol, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia & Bob Weir (the two leaders of the Grateful Dead), Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Tracy Chapman, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY). The vast majority of those are musical legends, in my book. 

The one artist that the crowd looked at skeptically was Billy Idol, because all the performances were supposed to be acoustic or at least semi-acoustic in nature and one doesn't think of "Billy Idol" and "acoustic" in the same sentence. But he played a genuinely acoustic set and get a good reaction.

The soundboard recording was generally great, but it had some problems. I mostly fixed them. The most glaring problem was that portions of two songs were missing: "Comes a Time" by Neil Young and "Gates of Eden" by Bob Dylan. Luckily, I had that very good audience bootleg I mentioned above. I used that to patch in the missing bits, which is why those two songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. I also used that audience bootleg to fill in some other missing bits, such as intros to a couple of the performers. (The voice making the intros belongs to actor Timothy Hutton.) But some intros either didn't happen or are missing from both versions, for instance with Bob Dylan's set. With Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, the recording cut in part way through the artist name in both versions, only a couple seconds apart.

One great thing about soundboards is that the songs are clear because there's very little crowd noise. But, taken to extremes, that can be weird when there's almost no cheering when the songs end. Strangely, there was a lot of variability with the crowd noise in this soundboard recording: sometimes the cheering sounded normal, and other times there was almost no cheering heard at all, especially at the ends of sets. So I used the audience bootleg version to patch in more applause whenever necessary, using the actual applause from that song. As a result, the applause may vary a bit from song to song, with some guess work on my part as to how loud the reaction actually was, but there should be a decent crowd response after each and every song.

Another thing I did was trim some dead air. For instance, the Tom Petty set started with over a minute of guitar tuning. I cut all that out. I also cut back on some of the cheering. For instance, the applause might go on for two minutes after a set ended, but I'd cut that after only a minute. I figured this concert was long enough as it is.

Note that Neil Young, who brought the concert together along with his wife Pegi Young, played a short set to start the show. On the last number, "American Dream," Crosby, Stills and Nash walked onto stage during the song to sing harmony vocals. That's why you get a huge surge of applause partway through the song, even on the soundboard version, because the audience recognized who they were. Then Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young came back to do the last set of the night. By the way, I've previously posted the CSNYset at this blog, together with their 1986 Bridge School Benefit show. I'm keeping that post up if you just want their set.

Here's some other random notes. Billy Idol was backed by a couple other musicians, but still basically had an acoustic sound. Bob Dylan was assisted only by guitarist G. E. Smith. Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead were also assisted by bassist Rob Wasserman. When Tom Petty performed at the 1986 Bridge School Benefit, it was just him on stage. But this time he was assisted by all of his backing band, the Heartbreakers. So that was more of a semi-acoustic set, especially due to the presence of some drumming. Also, if you look closely at the credits, you'll see that Neil Young backed Nils Lofgren for a song, and Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir for a song. He played harmonica and sang backing vocals. Finally, Tracy Chapman and Nils Lofgren joined CSNY for the very last song, "Teach Your Children."

This album is three hours and 52 minutes long. That makes it the longest album I've posted at this blog so far, beating out a 1975 Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder concert by only one minute. Currently, I'm only offering it as a single download. But if there's a demand to break this up into pieces, I could do that too.

01 talk (Neil Young)
02 Comes a Time [Edit] (Neil Young)
03 Sugar Mountain (Neil Young)
04 This Note's for You (Neil Young)
05 talk (Neil Young)
06 American Dream (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
07 talk (Nils Lofgren)
08 Dreams Die Hard (Nils Lofgren)
09 talk (Nils Lofgren)
10 Live Each Day (Nils Lofgren)
11 Believe (Nils Lofgren with Neil Young)
12 talk (Nils Lofgren)
13 Keith Don't Go (Nils Lofgren)
14 No Mercy (Nils Lofgren)
15 talk (Billy Idol)
16 Untouchables (Billy Idol)
17 talk (Billy Idol)
18 Sweet Sixteen (Billy Idol)
19 talk (Billy Idol)
20 Bo Diddley (Billy Idol)
21 talk (Billy Idol)
22 To Be a Lover (Billy Idol)
23 talk (Billy Idol)
24 Prodigal Blues (Billy Idol)
25 San Francisco Bay Blues (Bob Dylan)
26 Pretty Boy Floyd (Bob Dylan)
27 With God on Our Side (Bob Dylan)
28 Girl from the North Country (Bob Dylan)
29 Gates of Eden [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
30 Forever Young (Bob Dylan)
31 talk (Jerry Garcia & Bob Weir)
32 Wang Dang Doodle (Jerry Garcia & Bob Weir with Neil Young)
33 Friend of the Devil (Jerry Garcia & Bob Weir)
34 Throwing Stones (Jerry Garcia & Bob Weir)
35 Ripple (Jerry Garcia & Bob Weir)
36 Even the Losers (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers)
37 talk (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers)
38 Blue Moon of Kentucky (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers)
39 talk (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers)
40 The Wild One, Forever (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers)
41 talk (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers)
42 Refugee (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers)
43 talk (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers)
44 Don't Come Around Here Anymore (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers)
45 The Waiting (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers)
46 talk (Tracy Chapman)
47 If Not Now (Tracy Chapman)
48 What Child Is This (Tracy Chapman)
49 Fast Car (Tracy Chapman)
50 Mountain O' Things (Tracy Chapman)
51 All That You Have Is Your Soul (Tracy Chapman)
52 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
53 Helplessly Hoping (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
54 Love the One You're With (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
55 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
56 This Old House (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
57 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
58 Southern Man (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
59 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
60 Don't Say Goodbye (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
61 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
62 Compass (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
63 talk (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
64 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
65 Southern Cross (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
66 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young with Tracy Chapman & Nils Lofgren)

UPDATE: On June 8, 2023, the link has been removed due to a request by people associated with the Bridge School Benefits. Sorry about that.

The cover is the promotional poster for this concert. I cropped it and stretched it horizontally a bit to get it to fully fit into a square shape.