Various Artists - The Best of the Rest, Volume 2, Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 1974-1975

And so we come to almost the last album of live music from Ebbets Field radio broadcasts. (I say almost because there's at least one exception coming up, hopefully, but more about that later.) As I explained with "The Best of the Rest, Volume 1," there are four obscure and now out of print official albums collecting songs from many different Ebbets Field concerts. I've removed the ones that ended up on full concerts I've posted here, and sorted what remained in chronological order. So here's the second volume of that. 

"Volume 1" dealt with songs from 1973 and 1974 concerts. This continues with 1974 and 1975 ones. The Ebbets Field venue didn't close until mid-1977, but this doesn't have anything from 1976 or 1977 on it.  

Once again, this album contains many musical acts that weren't that popular at the time, because they were only performing at a venue that held a maximum of 250 people. Yet many other musical acts from this era have been forgotten, while most of these still have loyal fan bases. The management of the venue really had a knack for booking quality acts, and quality tends to be remembered. 

Anyway, I mentioned there's one more album coming. That's because a commenter recently told me he has the full Wendy Waldman concert from this venue. So hopefully I'll be able to post that soon. Once again, if anyone else has recordings from this venue, please do share! In my search for recordings from this venue, I came across a mention that at one point a couple of decades ago in the pre-Internet era, there was a (now defunct) music store in the Denver area that somehow got access to the entire trove of radio broadcasts from this venue and was selling them as bootlegs. So I'm fairly certain a lot more of these recordings ARE "out there" but maybe have never been converted to digital format. (That's the case with the Waldman one.) Please help bring them into public circulation!

I'd especially love to have the full broadcasts of the musical acts on these "Best of the Rest" volumes, because they're often the types of acts that have only been rarely bootlegged with worthy sound quality. Actually, sometimes never bootlegged at all. They're also the kinds of acts that often don't have official live albums either.

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 Grits Ain't Groceries - Soul Jones (Wet Willie)
02 Playing My Music (Papa John Creach)
03 Mas Zacate (El Chicano)
04 Thirsty Boots (Eric Andersen)
05 No Regrets (Tom Rush)
06 Lovin' You (Minnie Riperton)
07 Down So Low (Tracy Nelson)
08 Mercedes Benz (Goose Creek Symphony)
09 You Can Only Say So Much (Michael Murphey)
10 You Tell Me Why (Beau Brummels)
11 Ninety Miles an Hour [Down a Dead End Street] (Katy Moffatt)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2wQqPamk

alternate: 

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

Like "The Best of the Rest, Volume 1," I wanted to do something different for the cover art. As I mentioned for that album, there are very, very few photos that can be found on the Internet showing the inside of the Ebbets Field venue. But I found this one from a Runaways concert in 1976 that shows much of the stage, and more. Once again, one can see some of the bleacher seats with orange shag carpeting. And you can see some of the area above the stage. If you look closely, some of the amplifiers have the words "ListenUp" on them, since that was the company providing the professional recording for these radio broadcasts.

Unfortunately, I don't have any audio recording from any Runaways concert here, just this photo. 

Tom Rush and Orphan - Ebbets Field, Denver, CO, 10-22-1974

Here's a 1974 concert by singer-songwriter Tom Rush. For the first fifteen minutes the band Orphan played some of their own songs without him. Then for the remainder of the show, he performed with Orphan backing him up.

In recent days, I've been really getting into the recordings of concerts from the Ebbets Field venue in Denver, Colorado. One reason I like it is because it was a small venue, holding only about 250 people, so they got some lesser known musical acts there. Yet they had excellent taste, and lots of their concerts were professionally recorded and broadcast on a local radio station. Thus, we get recordings from the likes of Tom Rush, when there are very, very few concert recordings of him from this era, due to him not being a big name. So expect a lot more along these lines with future Ebbets Field posts.

Tom Rush was one of the first of the singer-songwriters that came out of the 1960s folk movement. His first album was released in 1962. In addition to writing many of his own songs, he was one of the first to record versions of songs by other emerging singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, and James Taylor, helping them establish their careers. His most famous original song is "No Regrets," which he wrote in 1968. The Walker Brothers had a big hit with it in 1975.

Here's his Wikipedia entry. He's 85 years old as I write this in 2026.

Tom Rush - Wikipedia 

Rush's music career proceeded in the normal way until 1974, with him releasing a new album every year or two. But his 1974 album "Ladies Love Outlaws," which he was touring to promote when this concert happened, would be his last album for a while. He got burned out on his music career, especially touring, and retired to a farm in New Hampshire. He didn't resume his music career until 1981. So this concert is a good time for a concert, marking the end of the first phase of his career.

I don't know much about the band Orphan. They're so little known that they don't even have a Wikipedia page, which is pretty unusual. However, I was able to learn from elsewhere that they released studio albums in 1972, 1973, and 1974. They seem to have broken up or faded away after that. But this concert isn't the only time they appear in my music collection. I also have a 1972 bootleg concert of singer-songwriter Jonathan Edwards where they backed him, just like they backed Rush here. Perhaps I'll post that one sometime soon, because it's a good one. They mentioned their previous connection Edwards in some of their banter between songs, and played one of his songs, "Train of Glory."

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is an hour and 15 minutes long. Just the Tom Rush set is exactly an hour long.

01 talk by Larry Bruce (Orphan)
02 It's a Good Day (Orphan)
03 talk (Orphan)
04 Everyone Lives to Sing (Orphan)
05 It's So Hard (Orphan)
06 Be My Woman Tonight (Orphan)
07 talk (Orphan)
08 Train of Glory (Orphan)
09 talk by Larry Bruce (Tom Rush with Orphan)
10 Jenny Lynn (Tom Rush with Orphan)
11 talk (Tom Rush with Orphan)
12 Desperados Waiting for a Train (Tom Rush with Orphan)
13 talk (Tom Rush with Orphan)
14 Mother Earth (Tom Rush with Orphan)
15 talk (Tom Rush with Orphan)
16 Hobo's Mandolin (Tom Rush with Orphan)
17 talk (Tom Rush with Orphan)
18 The Panama Limited (Tom Rush with Orphan)
19 talk (Tom Rush with Orphan)
20 Child's Song (Tom Rush with Orphan)
21 Who Do You Love (Tom Rush with Orphan)
22 talk (Tom Rush with Orphan)
23 No Regrets (Tom Rush with Orphan)
24 talk (Tom Rush with Orphan)
25 Ladies Love Outlaws (Tom Rush with Orphan)
26 talk (Tom Rush with Orphan)
27 Glory Road (Tom Rush with Orphan)
28 talk by Larry Bruce (Tom Rush with Orphan)
29 Lost My Driving Wheel (Tom Rush with Orphan)
30 Rotunda (Tom Rush with Orphan)
31 talk by Larry Bruce (Tom Rush with Orphan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/iASCHZt6

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/2N85SGayuGPjGJ2/file

The cover image is from a concert at the Great Southeast Music Hall in Atlanta, Georgia, on October 7, 1974. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program.