One of my projects lately has been trying to post more concerts from this radio show. If you listen to this, hopefully you'll understand why. The sound quality is truly excellent, easily good enough for an official release. And there is no audience noise, which makes it even easier to hear everything being played. The performance is top notch too.
At the time of this concert, Steve Miller and his band had only been moderately successful. He had released seven studio albums. But there had been no hits, and none of the albums had reached Gold status (meaning sales of over half a million in the U.S.).
That all would change just a couple of months later. In October 1973, he would release the album "The Joker." The title song from that album would go all the way to Number One in the U.S., turning Miller into a big star. Not only that, but it would eventually sell over six million copies, making it the biggest hit of his career. Its success would cause the album it came from to go Platinum, meaning sales of over a million copies.
In this concert, he did play "The Joker." But it's quite different from the hit version. It's a simple little acoustic version, lasting just two minutes, and many of the lyrics are different. He also played "Fly like an Eagle." That wouldn't be released until 1976, on the album of the same name. But when it was released it would be another massive hit, reaching Number Two in the U.S. singles chart.
By the way, I'm not sure about the title of track number six. On the bootleg I took this from, it was called "The Sky Is Crying." But while this is a slow blues in a similar style, the lyrics are totally different. My guess is "The Sun Is Going to Shine in Your Back Door Someday." There's other songs with very similar titles (usually "my back door" instead of "your"), but those seem to be quite different as well, so I'm a bit stumped. If anyone knows the correct title, please let us know.
This album is an hour and two minutes long.
01 Fly like an Eagle - My Dark Hour (Steve Miller Band)
02 Just like a Woman (Steve Miller Band)
03 talk (Steve Miller Band)
04 Mary Lou (Steve Miller Band)
05 talk (Steve Miller Band)
06 The Sun Is Going to Shine in Your Back Door Someday (Steve Miller Band)
07 Living in the U.S.A. (Steve Miller Band)
08 Shu Ba Da Du Ma Ma Ma (Steve Miller Band)
09 Look Over Yonders Wall (Steve Miller Band)
10 talk (Steve Miller Band)
11 Gangster of Love (Steve Miller Band)
12 Space Cowboy (Steve Miller Band)
13 Kow Kow Calqulator (Steve Miller Band)
14 The Joker (Steve Miller Band)
15 Seasons (Steve Miller Band)
16 Going to the Country (Steve Miller Band)
17 talk (Steve Miller Band)
18 Jackson-Kent Blues (Steve Miller Band)
19 talk (Steve Miller Band)
20 Rock Me Baby (Steve Miller Band)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/e5gvXw8e
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/en/NFXnHfWURbVcatw/file
The cover photo is from a concert at the Winterland in San Francisco, in 1974.
I downloaded this show from T.U.B.E. but your versions are always better! Thank you very much.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of other versions of this show being bootlegged (none sounds as good as this one!) and they all have Sky Is Crying as the title of track 6, but it clearly isn't that song if you listen to the lyrics. This just sounds like a slow blues with Miller improvising blues lyrics. BTW, "Just Like a Woman" is not the Bob Dylan song but a cover version of Louis Jordan's "Ain't That Just Like a Woman."
ReplyDeleteThanks for that feedback. That's what I'm thinking. "The sun's gonna shine on my back door someday" is one of those generic blues cliches, used in multiple songs. Although I've never understood why it's "back door" and not "front door."
DeleteI just listened to "Just like a Woman" and the Louis Jordan song. I don't think they're the same song at all. Yes, they both have "ain't that just like a woman, do it every time" in the chorus, but that's the only similarity. The melody is different, verses totally different. Even the chorus is different, with Miller only repeating the line once instead of three times, and ending with "baby you're mine." The overall sentiment is the total opposite as well (positive towards the woman instead of negative).