Badfinger - Ungano's Club, New York City, 11-25-1970

When I first posted this album of a bootleg Badfinger concert, I called it "Somewhere in New York, 1971," because that was the best guess information I had on where and when it took place. However, a couple of commenters suggested that it's more likely to have taken place at the Ungano's Club in New York City in November 1970. It so happens I already had posted a Badfinger bootleg concert that took place at Ungano's on November 24, 1970. But my new best guess is that this one took place at Ungano's a day later, on November 25, 1970. I'll explain why shortly. But even though the two concerts have extremely similar set lists, both are worthy of hearing, in my opinion, due to the extreme rarity of live recordings from this band with this level of excellent sound quality. In fact, I'd say this one sounds slightly better than the November 24th one I've already posted.

This bootleg has been in the public domain for a while, but it was little noticed because the sound quality was poor. However, Lil Panda found a much better source. This has to be at least tied for the best sounding live Badfinger recording, in my opinion. In fact, it's such a clean soundboard that there's almost no audience noise to be heard, except after a couple of songs. In fact, with some of the songs ending with no applause whatsoever, I suspect that some of the recordings were stopped as soon as the song ended. However, a good amount of banter between songs is here. So the lack of any crowd reaction for many songs is kind of a mystery to me. Another possibility is that they played at a small venue with an indifferent crowd. But I find it hard to believe that there would be total silence after the last song they played. Anyway, weird though it is, it helps make the recording that much more pristine, almost like this was a practice concert done in a studio.

Now, let me get back to the mystery about when and where this was recorded. Apparently, the recording was poorly labeled, with the only info that it took place somewhere in the state of New York at some point in 1971. It turns out the band only played four concerts in New York in 1971, and all of them were in the month of May. So I originally went with that information. But after getting comments suggesting otherwise, I dug a little deeper. I couldn't find any definitive proof of anything. However, I took a close look at the band's set lists from 1970 and 1971. Set lists varied, but by 1971, the set lists included some new songs, so this is much more likely to be from late 1970.

Is it from the Ungano's Club, and if so, when, exactly? That's harder to say. What is known is that Badfinger played Ungano's three nights in a row, on November 24th, 25th, and 26th, and probably did two shows each night. This was a very pivotal series of shows for them, because it took place in New York City, and many members of the press sent reporters to review them. It was such a big deal that on one of the nights, even former Beatle George Harrison unexpectedly showed up. He introduced the band at the start of their set, then stayed for the whole concert. Afterwards, he met the band backstage and presented them with a bootleg recording of the concert that he'd just made with a tape player he'd brought with him.

Now, some commenters suggested that this in fact was the exact same concert recording at the November 24th one. That's not the case. While the set list was exactly the same until near the end of the set, I've compared the two, and the songs are different, and the banter is different. As an example, in the other recording, "Feelin' Alright" lasted eight minutes, and in this one, it lasted 12 minutes. I also don't think either of these recordings are the one made by Harrison. For one thing, both of them sound too good to be audience boots. For another, he only taped one show, and we have two probable soundboard recordings. My best guess is that because the Ungano shows were so important for the band, with media attending, someone had the good idea to make soundboard recordings of them.

But hey, it's quite possible I'm wrong. I hope time will tell. Also, some people have labeled this as being from November 25th, so I'm going with that. (Most likely, it was the late show.) But it's possible it's from the 24th or the 26th. It also would make sense if both were from the same night, since obviously the recording equipment was working for at least one set. But a further wrinkle is that my post of the November 24th concert includes one song, "Johnny B. Goode," that is said to be from November 25th, and is also a soundboard recording. So it's probable at least two nights were recorded with that level of quality, if that song is indeed from the 25th. (I considered moving that song here, but I ultimately decided not to change that other album, since all these dates are only best guesses anyway.)

On a different note, the last two songs are not from this concert. They come from an appearance on the German TV show "Beat Club" in February 1970. I've included these because I didn't have a better spot for the Beat Club songs (I didn't want to put them on my BBC albums because they're very similar versions to songs on those). Plus, these two songs were not played in the main New York concert here. It was especially glaring to me that they didn't play "Come and Get It" in the concert, since that was a Number One hit for them. But apparently they didn't play it in concert much during this time period because is was written by Paul McCartney and they didn't want to be known as a "one-hit wonder" of someone else's song.

This album is 42 minutes long. The New York concert without the last two songs is 37 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On November 12, 2023, I changed the title of this album, but not the music. As mentioned above, I realized this most likely took place at the Ungano's Club in 1970. So I had to change the title, the cover art, and all the mp3 tags to reflect that.

01 My Dark Hour (Badfinger)
02 Midnight Sun (Badfinger)
03 talk (Badfinger)
04 Better Days (Badfinger)
05 talk (Badfinger)
06 Blodwyn (Badfinger)
07 talk (Badfinger)
08 We're for the Dark (Badfinger)
09 talk (Badfinger)
10 Feelin' Alright (Badfinger)
11 I Can't Take It (Badfinger)
12 No Matter What (Badfinger)
13 Rock of All Ages (Badfinger)
14 Come and Get It (Badfinger)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15931648/Badfngr_1970_UngnosClubNewYorkCity__11-25-1970_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from a screenshot I took of an appearance on the British TV show "Top of the Pops" in 1971. (Unfortunately, it was a lip-synced performance or I would have wanted to do something with the audio.)