Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-2-1972, Part 1: David Peel, Herbie Mann, J. Geils Band & More

Here is the first part of the second day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. I'm doing this day by day, so this goes back to "Part 1" instead of "Part 4" of the entire festival. This is kind of a grab-bag for musical acts from the second day where I only have small portions of their sets.

Unfortunately, so much time has passed since this festival that a lot has been lost. I only was able to learn some basics about which acts performed on which day (though even that is sometimes questionable, especially since some of the acts performed more than once), and which ones were the headliners. Also, only bits and pieces of the music have survived. I've previously mentioned the official double album, "Mar y Sol: The First International Puerto Rico Pop Festival," long out of print. Some of the songs on this album come from that. (Specifically, tracks 1, 11, and 13.) But most of the songs come from an audience bootleg I mentioned in my previous write-ups. The good news is that the sound quality is surprisingly good for an audience bootleg. I didn't try any of my usual audio editing tricks on those songs, because they sounded like a soundboard already. But the bad news is how we often have only portions of many sets. For instance, I'm sure Dr. John played a lot more than just one song! I assume all the acts here performed more songs. But something is better than nothing.

The J. Geils Band set is the longest here, at 22 minutes. A New York Times review that was down on the festival in general liked that performance, at least, writing, "The J. Gells band finally played a set that deserved the accolades it has received in the past." Too bad there isn't more of it. 

This album is an hour and 13 minutes long.

01 Wang Dang Doodle (Dr. John)
02 All the Things You Are [Instrumental] (Dave Brubeck & Gerry Mulligan)
03 Take Five [Instrumental] (Dave Brubeck & Gerry Mulligan)
04 The Pope Smokes Dope (David Peel & the Lower East Side)
05 talk (David Peel & the Lower East Side)
06 Up Against the Wall (David Peel & the Lower East Side)
07 talk (David Peel & the Lower East Side)
08 New York City Hippie (David Peel & the Lower East Side)
09 Mother Where Is My Father (David Peel & the Lower East Side)
10 Memphis Underground [Instrumental] (Herbie Mann)
11 Respect Yourself [Instrumental] (Herbie Mann)
12 Never Can Say Goodbye [Instrumental] (Herbie Mann)
13 talk (J. Geils Band)
14 Looking for a Love (J. Geils Band)
15 talk (J. Geils Band)
16 Homework (J. Geils Band)
17 Crusin' for a Love (J. Geils Band)
18 Sno-Cone [Instrumental] (J. Geils Band)
19 Wait (J. Geils Band)
20 talk (J. Geils Band)
21 Whammer Jammer (J. Geils Band)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/77vXqgBR

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/0qsJyXsMdlKWoD1/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It shows Herbie Mann playing flute in front, with other band members. 

The J. Geils Band - The Fillmore, Detroit, MI, 4-25-2009

Here's an excellent concert by the J. Geils Band in 2009. The band broke up in the early 1980s, and only had occasional reunions up until this time. This concert was broadcast on the radio at the time, so the sound quality is excellent. 

The other day, I came across a YouTube video discussing the break-up of the J. Geils Band in the early 1980s. They'd been moderately commercially successful until 1981. That year, they released two singles, "Centerfold" and "Freeze-Frame," that were massive. "Centerfold" even was the Number One song in the U.S. for several weeks. This success proved their undoing. The band's lead singer Peter Wolf wanted to stick to the band's blues and R&B roots, but some other band members wanted to go into a pop direction. Wolf left the band before they could release a new album. The rest of the band released an album without him anyway, but it flopped and the band broke up.

After that, Peter Wolf had a successful solo career for a while, but that eventually petered down to a low level. Meanwhile, many other band members actually left the music business for some years. For instance, lead guitarist J. Geils opened a car shop restoring vintage cars, and bassist Danny Klein attended cooking school and then became a professional chef! But the band reunited for about a dozen concerts in 1999. Then they had another concert in 2005, and one in 2006. That takes us to 2009, when they had another short reunion tour, but only six concerts that year. There would be more short tours from 2011 to 2015, and then the band broke up for good. 

The band has only released three live albums. But the only one that includes most of their famous songs, "Showtime," from 1982, is short at only 45 minutes. And it was recorded when the band was falling apart, and has some issues. So, in my opinion, this is their definitive live concert recording to provide an overview of their entire career. Nothing here is from after 1981. But it has pretty much every essential song they did. And while nearly thirty years had passed since their hit-making days, you wouldn't know it at all from listening to this.

In terms of sound quality, there was one problem. Sometimes, a soundboard is so good at capturing what was happening on stage that it captures very little of the audience noise. That's what happened here. So when each song ended, it sounded like a small amount of applause from a tepid audience. To fix that, I just carefully boosted the volume on the applause after every song while keeping everything else the same. 

This album is two hours long. 

01 talk (J. Geils Band)
02 First I Look at the Purse (J. Geils Band)
03 Homework (J. Geils Band)
04 talk (J. Geils Band)
05 Hard Drivin' Man (J. Geils Band)
06 talk (J. Geils Band)
07 Pack Fair and Square (J. Geils Band)
08 Sanctuary (J. Geils Band)
09 Night Time (J. Geils Band)
10 talk (J. Geils Band)
11 Cruisin' for a Love (J. Geils Band)
12 talk (J. Geils Band)
13 So Sharp (J. Geils Band)
14 Detroit Breakdown (J. Geils Band)
15 talk (J. Geils Band)
16 Serves You Right to Suffer (J. Geils Band)
17 Give It to Me (J. Geils Band)
18 talk (J. Geils Band)
19 Musta Got Lost (J. Geils Band)
20 Love Stinks (J. Geils Band)
21 Looking for a Love (J. Geils Band)
22 talk (J. Geils Band)
23 Whammer Jammer [Instrumental] (J. Geils Band)
24 [Ain't Nothin' but A] House Party (J. Geils Band)
25 talk (J. Geils Band)
26 Just Can't Wait (J. Geils Band)
27 talk (J. Geils Band)
28 Freeze-Frame (J. Geils Band)
29 Start All Over (J. Geils Band)
30 Where Did Our Love Go (J. Geils Band)
31 talk (J. Geils Band)
32 Peachtree Street (J. Geils Band)
33 talk (J. Geils Band)
34 Centerfold (J. Geils Band)
35 Love-Itis (J. Geils Band)
36 talk (J. Geils Band)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VCtEKEmC 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/vwhQ7AJJRfEtJxf/file

The cover photo of lead singer Peter Wolf is from a concert at the House of Blues, in Boston, on February 19, 2009.

Thank You and Farewell - The Closing of the Fillmore East, Fillmore East, New York City, 6-27-1971, Part 2: The J. Geils Band

I just posted Part 1 of this album series of sets from the final concert at the Fillmore East in 1971. Please read my write-up there for an explanation about what this concert was all about. There were seven music acts in this concert, and I'm presenting them in their order of appearance. The second act is the J. Geils Band.

Nowadays, the J. Geils Band are best known for their huge 1982 pop rock hits "Centerfold" and "Freeze-Frame." But at the time of this concert, their music was more heavily influenced by blues and R&B. They had a reputation for being hard-working, lively concert performers, generally better on stage than on their albums.

The band did release one live album from around this time period. "Full House" is a live album that was both recorded and released in 1972. So there's a lot of similarity between the song selections on that album and in this concert. But there are some differences, and this concert is longer. 

Like most of this overall concert, this performance is unreleased. But the sound quality is excellent because it was professionally recorded and broadcast live on the radio.

This album is 42 minutes long.

Note that the track numbering starts at 8 instead of 1 because the numbering continues where it left off with the previous act. That way you can easily play all the songs from the whole concert if you so desire.

08 talk by Bill Graham (J. Geils Band)
09 Sno-Cone [Instrumental] (J. Geils Band)
10 Wait (J. Geils Band)
11 talk (J. Geils Band)
12 First I Look at the Purse (J. Geils Band)
13 talk (J. Geils Band)
14 Whammer Jammer [Instrumental] (J. Geils Band)
15 talk (J. Geils Band)
16 Homework (J. Geils Band)
17 talk (J. Geils Band)
18 Pack Fair and Square (J. Geils Band)
19 talk (J. Geils Band)
20 Cruisin' for a Love (J. Geils Band)
21 talk (J. Geils Band)
22 Serves You Right to Suffer (J. Geils Band)
23 Hard Drivin' Man (J. Geils Band)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17205340/VA-THNKYOUNFRWLL197102JGilsBnd.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QAhPshgr

The cover photo is from this exact concert. However, the only photo I could find was a rather blurry  and black and white one. I used the Palette program to convert it to color. I then added the colorful blobs in the background from another picture, because the photos I found of this concert had a light show with that kind of imagery. (You can see it on the Part 1 Albert King set, for instance.) I couldn't do anything about the blur, but at least you hopefully get the general idea. 

UPDATE: On October 5, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program. The image is still blurry in places, but not as much as before.

J. Geils Band - Winterland, San Francisco, CA, 11-5-1977

There are many artists I haven't posted any music from yet. Here's one, the J. Geils Band. I post a lot of acoustic music here, but sometimes it's good to just rock in a party mode, and they're good for that.

The J. Geils Band is best known for their big 1981 hits "Centerfold" and "Freeze-Frame." But they had been around since the late 1960s. Although they released many studio albums and had some success with them, they were widely considered to be better on a live stage than in a recording studio. They only released two albums from their 1970s prime, one in 1972 and the other in 1976. The 1976 one, "Blow Your Face Out," was actually recorded in 1975. 

I like this bootleg concert better. For one thing, it took place two years later, so they had more material to draw from. This came after their studio album "Monkey Island" was released, and they played four songs from that. For another thing, it's significantly longer. "Blow Your Face Out" is an hour and 15 minutes long. This concert is an hour and 51 minutes long. So, basically, it would be a triple album in vinyl record terms instead of a double album.

In terms of sound quality, this is a great one. It was professionally recorded and filmed for some reason (you can watch the video of it on YouTube), so it sounds just as good as their official live albums. 

There are only a couple of problems. The first one is typical for these kinds of bootleg recordings: the talking between songs and the cheering after them was a bit quiet, so I boosted the volume of those parts. 

Also, there are flaws with two songs. The first song, "Somebody," originally faded in. It was only for a few seconds, and I fixed it by patching in a later repeat of the opening chords. But that does mean there's nothing before the first song, such as an emcee introducing the band, or the crowd cheering when they band took the stage. 

The other song with a flaw is "Serves You Right to Suffer." If you watch the video of this concert on YouTube, you'll see the start of the song is missing. It's impossible to know how much is missing, but in concerts the band usually extended this song to about nine minutes or so, and this version is only four and a half minutes long, so there's a significant loss. However, whoever posted this bootleg before me already came up with a fix, by having a lot of crowd noise to cover up a slow fade-in. I didn't do that at all, but it sounds okay by me, so I kept it that way.

01 Somebody [Edit] (J. Geils Band)
02 talk (J. Geils Band)
03 Detroit Breakdown (J. Geils Band)
04 Homework (J. Geils Band)
05 talk (J. Geils Band)
06 It Ain't Right (J. Geils Band)
07 Floyd's Hotel (J. Geils Band)
08 talk (J. Geils Band)
09 Surrender (J. Geils Band)
10 Sno-Cone [Instrumental] (J. Geils Band)
11 talk (J. Geils Band)
12 So Sharp (J. Geils Band)
13 Gettin' Out (J. Geils Band)
14 talk (J. Geils Band)
15 Start All Over Again (J. Geils Band)
16 Looking for a Love (J. Geils Band)
17 talk (J. Geils Band)
18 Monkey Island (J. Geils Band)
19 I'm Falling (J. Geils Band)
20 talk (J. Geils Band)
21 Must of Got Lost (J. Geils Band)
22 Give It to Me (J. Geils Band)
23 talk (J. Geils Band)
24 Where Did Our Love Go (J. Geils Band)
25 Whammer Jammer [Instrumental] (J. Geils Band)
26 [Ain't Nothin' but A] House Party (J. Geils Band)
27 talk (J. Geils Band)
28 Southside Shuffle (J. Geils Band)
29 Serves You Right to Suffer [Edit] (J. Geils Band)
30 Cruisin' for a Love (J. Geils Band)
31 talk (J. Geils Band)
32 Raise Your Hand (J. Geils Band)
33 talk (J. Geils Band)
34 Make Up Your Mind (J. Geils Band)
35 talk (J. Geils Band)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/sg6sASgr

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/e0BLm3u8TiWaM2Q/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/fECic

I'm happy to say that the cover photo comes from this exact concert. That's a lucky break, but I especially like this one. It uses a rare overhead view of the lead singer Peter Wolf, with fans at the edge of the stage reaching out for him. It's very evocative of big 1970s rock and roll concerts, in my opinion.