Blood, Sweat and Tears with Janis Ian - PBS Soundstage, Park West, Chicago, IL, 8-12-1975

Here's another episode of the "PBS Soundstage" TV show. This one is headlined by the band Blood, Sweat and Tears. But they also performed some songs with singer-songwriter Janis Ian on lead vocals.

As I've said before, one of the things I like most about this TV show is how it often encouraged collaborations by having the main musical act supplemented by a guest act. Let me explain why I think Ian was chosen.

Blood, Sweat and Tears was extremely popular around 1970. But their popularity soon declined. One problem was the lead singer with a distinctive voice, David Clayton-Thomas, left the band for a solo career in 1972. But his solo career didn't have much success, and the band's popularity went further down without him. So, in 1975, he rejoined the band. The first album with him back in the band was called "New City," released in April 1975. One of the songs on that was "Applause," written by Ian. So I think that's why Ian was chosen.

Meanwhile, Ian had a big hit in 1966 with "Society's Child," when she was still a teenager. But she didn't have much success for quite a few years after that. But that changed in July 1975, when she released "At Seventeen" as a single. It caught fire, and made it all the way to Number Three in the U.S. charts. 

I don't know the exact timing of this concert. It's possible the August 1975 date in the title is the broadcast date, not the date the concert was recorded. It would be interesting to find out, due to Ian's popularity surging in the middle of 1975. It would also be interesting if Blood, Sweat and Tears helped her with the guest spot before her resurgence began.  

This concert began with several songs just performed by Blood, Sweat and Tears. The heavily relied on songs from their new album at the time, "New City." Tracks 1, 4, 5, and 7 are from that album. But for tracks 5, 6, 7, and 8, they were joined by Ian on vocals.  

The last song, "At Seventeen," isn't from this concert. Or at least this version isn't. I strongly suspect there are a couple more songs from this concert that I don't have, because these episodes were an hour long (without commercial breaks), and this one is more than ten minutes short of that. If anyone has more of this concert, or at least just knows the songs played, please let me know. But I thought it was kind of weird to have Ian in concert in 1975 and not include her big hit from that year. So I added in an unreleased performance of "At Seventeen" done on the "Saturday Night Live" TV show in September of that year.

This album is 48 minutes long. 

01 Got to Get You into My Life (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
02 Yesterday's Music (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
03 And When I Die (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
04 Ride Captain Ride (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
05 Applause (Blood, Sweat & Tears & Janis Ian)
06 In the Winter (Blood, Sweat & Tears & Janis Ian)
07 I Was a Witness to a War (Blood, Sweat & Tears & Janis Ian)
08 Hallelujah (Blood, Sweat & Tears & Janis Ian)
09 At Seventeen (Janis Ian)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rPWqF6Zg

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/caOBVkVtix43iAB/file

The cover is a screenshot of Blood, Sweat and Tears lead singer David Clayton-Thomas, from this exact concert.

Blood, Sweat & Tears - Psychedelic Supermarket, Boston, MA, 2-23-1968

Here's a very unusual and interesting concert recording. When Blood, Sweat and Tears released their debut album "Child Is Father to the Man" in early 1968, they were practically a different band compared to when they released their next album, "Blood, Sweat and Tears." The main difference was they lost their band leader and main lead vocalist, Al Kooper, and gained a new lead vocalist, David Clayton-Thomas. For decades, it was thought there were no live recordings of this original, Al Kooper-led version of the band. But in 2006, this bootleg emerged. It's been widely shared since then, but I've made some changes to make it sound better than ever before.

Blood, Sweat and Tears started out of the ruins of the Blues Project, which broke up in mid-1967. (As an aside, I recently posted one of their last performances as part of the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.) Both Al Kooper and Steve Katz left the Blues Project and became the two main leaders of the new Blood, Sweat and Tears. Both of them wrote songs and sang lead vocals, though Kooper sang more of the songs. The new band started playing concerts in late 1967, but they'd only played a dozen or so concerts until performing the concert presented here. It took place only about four days after the release of their album "Child Is Father to the Man."

This version of the band didn't last long. Their album got very good reviews and limited but promising sales for a new band. (It reached Number 47 on the U.S. album chart.) However, some other band members, especially Katz and drummer Bobby Colomby, thought the band could do much better if they had a stronger lead vocalist. So they kicked Kooper out of the band in April 1968, at the end of their short tour to promote their debut album. This was a pretty shocking move, because Kooper was the de facto leader of the band. In addition to singing and writing songs, he was largely responsible for picking the many cover songs the band did, and coming up with arrangements in the band's unusual horn section-heavy style. Keep in mind this was about a year before other rock bands with horn sections like Chicago and the Ides of March had a lot of success.

What makes this album even more interesting is that only three of the songs performed were from the debut album that had just been released ("I Love You More than You'll Ever Know," "Morning Glory," and "Somethin' Goin' On"). They played three songs that would be on their very successful next album ("More and More," "You've Made Me So Very Happy" and "Smiling Phases.") All three of them were already arranged by Kooper, and the versions on their next album would closely follow his arrangments. But on that album they would be sung by Clayton-Thomas, whereas this gives one a chance to hear how Kooper sang them. Furthermore, there's the song "Camille." Kooper announced during the concert this would probably be the band's next single. In fact, that wouldn't be the case, because he wrote it and he would be kicked out of the band. So it showed up on his solo album released in early 1969, "I Stand Alone."

Okay, so that's some history of the band and this concert. Now, let me explain this recording. I've included the text file from an earlier version (posted by someone named Knees) because it contains a lot of interesting information in greater detail than what I'm writing here. To make a long story short, around 2005, a rock journalist decided to go looking through some old cassettes to find an interview that person had done with Jimi Hendrix. They found the Hendrix interview, but let the tape keep playing and discovered this forgotten concert recording on it as well. They sent the Hendrix interview to the Hendrix estate, and asked them to make a digital transfer of this concert as well, which they did. Even Al Kooper was pleasantly shocked when he learned about it and heard it, because he thought nobody had ever bothered to record any live performances of the original Blood, Sweat and Tears.

This recording is just an audience bootleg. The person mentioned above named Knees made many audio edits to improve the sound quality. It sounds very good for an audience boot. However, one problem I noticed was that the lead vocals were way down in the mix. I was able to fix this with help from the MVSEP program. Now, one could easily believe this was a soundboard boot instead.

I don't know the real name of the original recorder. They may have purposely left their name out of this, since they were a rock journalist. And strong evidence that they were comes in the form of the bonus track. This is a twenty-minute long interview with Jim Fielder, the bassist of the band. The band was opening for Big Brother and the Holding Company, starring Janis Joplin. The interview took place shortly after their set finished. One can tell because one can hear Joplin faintly singing in the background during the interview.

This album is 47 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

01 More and More (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
02 You've Made Me So Very Happy (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
03 I Love You More than You'll Ever Know (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
04 talk (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
05 Morning Glory (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
06 talk (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
07 Camille (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
08 talk (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
09 Smiling Phases (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
10 Somethin' Goin' On (Blood, Sweat & Tears)

Jim Fielder Interview (Blood, Sweat & Tears)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QpUKe5Dj

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/s1XnN8VvPQ0i8Ga/file

The cover shows, from left to right, horn players Dick Halligan, Jerry Weiss, and Randy Brecker, and then Al Kooper on keyboards. It was taken at one of the band's very first concerts, at The Scene, in New York City, on November 25, 1967. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Canva program, plus some touch-ups with Photoshop.

Blood, Sweat and Tears - Woodstock Festival, Max Yasgur's Farm, Bethel, NY, 8-17-1969

I just posted the Band's performance from the famous 1969 Woodstock Festival. I mentioned in that post that the sets of most of the famous artists at Woodstock have been officially released as individual albums, but a few have slipped through the cracks. I'm posting the skipped ones that I like. The Band was one, and Blood, Sweat and Tears is another.

In my opinion, the first two Blood, Sweat and Tears albums are excellent. Their second album, simply called "Blood, Sweat and Tears," was hugely commercially successful in 1969. But for whatever reason, they quickly declined in both critical and commercial popularity after that. I'm mainly interested in what they did in 1968 and 1969. But there haven't been any official live albums from that time period, Even the bootlegs from that time are few in number and just average sounding audience recordings. So this Woodstock recording is very welcome, since it's in great soundboard quality.

The concert is 53 minutes long. Their set was a fine performance, containing all their best known songs from that time.

01 talk (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
02 More and More (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
03 Just One Smile (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
04 Somethin' Comin' On (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
05 I Love You More than You'll Ever Know (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
06 Spinning Wheel (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
07 Sometimes in Winter (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
08 Smiling Phases (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
09 talk (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
10 God Bless the Child (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
11 talk (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
12 And When I Die (Blood, Sweat & Tears)
13 You've Made Me So Very Happy (Blood, Sweat & Tears)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15252599/BloodSweatT_1969_Woodstck_Festival__8-17-1969_atse.zip.html

The album cover photo is from the concert in question. Not all of the many band members are seen.