The Doobie Brothers - WLIR Ultrasonic Concert Series, Ultrasonic Recording Studios, West Hempstead, NY, 5-31-1973

The Doobie Brothers have gone through some significant musical shifts during their long musical career. Most of their success came in the 1970s, when they were popular for most of the decade. But in the early 1970s they were more of a rocking band, with Tom Johnston their main singer and songwriter. But he had health issues as the decade went on, and was increasingly sidelined, to the point that he quit the band in 1977. He was gradually replaced by Michael McDonald, who led the band in more of a soft rock and soul direction.

Personally, I'm not a fan of McDonald's music. When I think of him, I think cheesy "yacht rock." I much prefer the band's sound before he took the band over. Therefore, when it comes to looking for a concert bootleg of the band from the 1970s, I'd want something from, oh, about 1973 to 1975, after the band had some hits but before Johnston was sidelined by McDonald. But for whatever reason, there's slim pickings when it comes to bootlegs from that time period. It turns out there's really just one recording that fits the bill with excellent sound quality, and that's this one.

This show sounds pretty good because it was broadcast live on the radio at the time. I've posted a few other shows from this same "Ultrasonic" series. That said, I could tell there were some problems, especially with the bass sounding way too loud. So I sent the recording to musical associate MZ. He told me that the recording "was missing frequencies 15000-17000 Hz, and boosting volume on these frequencies made the sound clearly and not so bass-heavy." He also added some more stereo image. I think it sounds significantly better now.

There still is one other problem. The tape ran out while recording the song "Without You." Whoever bootlegged it adjusted it so it fades out instead of coming to a sudden halt. Luckily, the song had been going seven minutes at that point, so I think nearly all of it was recorded. It's possible there were more songs after that, but maybe not because one would think they would want to end on a high note, and they played all their hits by that point in the show.

At this point, the Doobie Brothers were more rocking than they would be later. You might be surprised.

This album is 50 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On September 12, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I changed the title and the cover art to be consistent with other albums from this same Ultrasonic radio show.

01 talk (Doobie Brothers)
02 South City Midnight Lady (Doobie Brothers)
03 talk (Doobie Brothers)
04 Clear as the Driven Snow (Doobie Brothers)
05 talk (Doobie Brothers)
06 Long Train Running (Doobie Brothers)
07 talk (Doobie Brothers)
08 Listen to the Music (Doobie Brothers)
09 talk (Doobie Brothers)
10 China Grove (Doobie Brothers)
11 Rockin' Down the Highway (Doobie Brothers)
12 talk (Doobie Brothers)
13 Disciple (Doobie Brothers)
14 Jesus Is Just Alright - Disciple (Doobie Brothers)
15 Without You (Doobie Brothers)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/nPYePnF9

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/sp0W2TocXQrfDCB/file

The cover is a promo photo taken in New York City in April 1973. The lettering of the band name at the top comes from one of their albums.

Lou Reed - WLIR Ultrasonic Concert Series, Ultrasonic Recording Studios, Hempstead, NY, 12-26-1972

A weird thing just happened to me. I've never ever had a dream involving this blog in any way, but I had one last night. I don't remember much about it, but I know it involved me posting a Lou Reed concert from 1972. Actually, that was pretty much it. It was a very boring dream! But hey, I figure if my dream was telling me that, I'd better follow though. As it so happens, I know of only one Reed bootleg concert from 1972 that has excellent sound quality, so my dream must have been referring to that one. ;) Here it is.

After Reed left the Velvet Underground in mid-1970, he didn't do any recording or touring for over a year. In fact, for a time there, he worked as a typist in his father's accounting firm! But he put out an album in early 1972, simply called "Lou Reed," and another one in late 1972, "Transformer," and resumed touring around the middle of the year. All the other bootlegs of him from 1972 that I've heard sound fairly poor to awful. (If you know of any really good ones, please let me know.) But this one stands out because it was recorded for the radio. I've posted concerts by Dr. John, Jonathan Edwards, and Fleetwood Mac as part of this same radio show.

The good news is the sound quality is fantastic, due to it being professionally recorded for the radio. The bad news is the show is on the short side, probably due to that radio station giving Reed a limited amount of time. This is just shy of one hour long. Reed seems to have opted for playing his best known songs at that point in his career, so it's almost like a greatest hits. His "Transformer" album had been released the month before, and "Walk on the Wild Side" became an unlikely hit. He played four songs from that album, two songs from his first solo album, and five songs from his Velvet Underground days.

The only thing I did with this recording was break his talking between songs onto their own tracks. This was a bit tough because he usually started talking while the applause from the previous song was going full blast. I suppose he did that also due to him feeling rushed because of the time limitation for the radio show.

If you're a fan of the Velvet Underground, you should love this. The band was tight and rocking. Most of the songs are from his Velvet Underground days, since many of the songs on Reed's first two solo albums actually were written back then. Plus, the sound quality is far superior to virtually all known Velvet Underground live recordings. 

This album is 57 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On September 12, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I changed the title and the cover art to be consistent with other albums from this same Ultrasonic radio show.

01 talk (Lou Reed)
02 White Light-White Heat (Lou Reed)
03 talk (Lou Reed)
04 Vicious (Lou Reed)
05 I'm Waiting for the Man (Lou Reed)
06 talk (Lou Reed)
07 Walk and Talk It (Lou Reed)
08 talk (Lou Reed)
09 Sweet Jane (Lou Reed)
10 Heroin (Lou Reed)
11 talk (Lou Reed)
12 Satellite of Love (Lou Reed)
13 Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed)
14 I'm So Free (Lou Reed)
15 talk (Lou Reed)
16 Berlin (Lou Reed)
17 talk (Lou Reed)
18 Rock and Roll (Lou Reed)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UmvqqAku

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/gai6eCgArltqUnr/file 

In September 2025, I replaced the cover photo, as I didn't think the previous one looked very good. It was black and white, and then I tinted it. Instead, I found a different black and white photo of him, taken some time in 1972, and colorized it using the Kolorize program.

Jonathan Edwards - WLIR Tuesday Night Ultrasonic Concert Series, Ultrasonic Recording Studios, Hempstead, NY, 12-12-1972

If you've been following this blog for a while, I hope you've gotten a sense of the type of music I post and you know I'm not going to post something unless I think it's good. I further hope you'll trust me enough to try out some artists you're not too familiar with. If you like early 1970s acoustic-based singer-songwriters like James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Neil Young, and so on, I strongly urge you to give this a try.

Jonathan Edwards had a brief moment in the spotlight with the song "Sunshine." It was a number four hit in the US in 1971 and did about as well in Canada, though it seems to have been ignored in Britain. The album it came from, simply called "Jonathan Edwards," is kind of a sleeper classic, and I also strongly recommend you should get that one if you don't have it already.

Since then, Edwards has kept his music career going all the way until today, but at a much lower profile. He never had another song or album reach the top 100 in the charts, but he's kept plugging away anyway. When I went looking for a photo of him from the early 1970s to use for the album cover, I was shocked at how there were virtually no photos of him from that time, so I fear his music has largely been forgotten. And that's a shame, because he's a lot better than just one hit song or even one well regarded album.

This is an entire concert from him, slightly over one hour long. It's a bootleg recording, yes, but it sounds fantastic, better than a lot of official live albums from the time. It was recorded in a radio station record studio in front of a very small audience and played live on that radio station. So this is no ordinary concert recording. It's just Jonathan Edwards and his acoustic guitar and harmonica, plus one other musician who changes instruments from song to song, usually playing either bass or violin.

Basically, this is like having Edwards sitting on your porch playing his best songs and telling stories. I wish he would have released an album just like this back in the day; maybe he would have had more success. After his hit, he had trouble capturing how good his music was on his albums. (It hasn't helped that he changed record companies fairly often, so there never has been any best of compilation, or any other sort of archival releases.)

Here's an interesting little fact: most of the songs from this concert were written by Edwards, but about three or four were written by Joe Dolce, who would later have a huge number one hit, all over the world in 1980,"Shaddap Your Face." Dolce had a long career as a songwriter and poet before his novelty hit, and he and Edwards were in a band together in the late 1960s. A story Edwards tells during the concert about an unnamed band member who took acid in the countryside and got shocked by an electric fence is actually a reference to Dolce.

There was only one problem with this concert, and that's that it didn't have Edward's hit song "Sunshine" on it. The bootleg recording wasn't complete, because right as it gets cut off, one can hear Edwards counting in to starting another song. I'm sure he wanted to end the show with his hit. Luckily, I was able to find a live acoustic performance of him doing that song for a TV show, so I added that in at the end. It didn't have any crowd applause when the song finished, which sounded weird since all the other songs do. So I copied some applause from another song earlier in the concert to make that last song fit in with the others.

By the way, I cut out some of the dead air between songs, such as when the guitar is getting tuned. Also, one tradition in the WLIR Ultrasonic concert series was that halfway through the concert there would be an intermission in which the musician would be interviewed by the emcee / host. I cut that out, since it doesn't bear repeated listening. But you can hear the emcee talking between songs some, especially near the end when he has a request for the song "Athens County." He was miked up, so he sounds as loud and clear as Edwards whenever he speaks.

This album is an hour and two minutes long. 

UPDATE: On September 12, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I changed the title and the cover art to be consistent with other albums from this same Ultrasonic radio show.

01 Travelin' Man (Jonathan Edwards)
02 King of Hearts (Jonathan Edwards)
03 Someone Better Listen (Jonathan Edwards)
04 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
05 The Ballad of Upsy Daisy (Jonathan Edwards)
06 My Home Ain't in the Hall of Fame (Jonathan Edwards)
07 Sometimes (Jonathan Edwards)
08 Morning Train (Jonathan Edwards)
09 Stop and Start It All Again (Jonathan Edwards)
10 Rolling Along (Jonathan Edwards)
11 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
12 Angelina (Jonathan Edwards)
13 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
14 Jump's Breakdown (Jonathan Edwards)
15 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
16 Jesse (Jonathan Edwards)
17 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
18 Shanty (Jonathan Edwards)
19 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
20 Train of Glory (Jonathan Edwards)
21 Everybody Knows Her (Jonathan Edwards)
22 talk (Jonathan Edwards)
23 Athens County (Jonathan Edwards)
24 You Are My Sunshine - Sunshine (Jonathan Edwards)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/WMJ2QeVL

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/KF6tAyuUkasYQ9h/file

As I mentioned above, I was amazed at how few good photos there are of Edwards from the 1970s. Luckily, I found one, from a concert in 1973. In February 2025, I improved it with the help of the Krea AI program.

Dr. John - WLIR Tuesday Night Ultrasonic Concert Series, Ultrasonic Recording Studios, Hempstead, NY, 11-6-1973

Dr. John passed away earlier this month at 77 years old (as I write this in June 2019). To mark the occasion, and celebrate his considerable musical legacy, I'm posting this album. I think if you want just one Dr. John live album, it should be this one.

Dr. John's was first put on the musical map in 1968 with the release of his first solo album, after having a minor role for many years prior to that. But he didn't really hit it big until 1973, when he had his two and only hit singles, "Right Place, Wrong Time" and "Such a Night." Unfortunately, he got addicted to heroin and went into a musical decline for much of the rest of the 1970s. He eventually kicked his addiction and became a long-standing New Orleans musical institution.

Luckily, this album captures him at his peak, near the end of the year he had his most commercial success. Furthermore, it's an excellent sounding recording. The New York radio station WLIR had weekly live concerts in the early 1970s, and this is a part of that. It was recorded in a studio, but it's in front of a small audience. So as far as ideal recording circumstances for a live album, it doesn't get much better than that.

This has never been released, and in fact there isn't any live recordings I know of from Dr. John's peak years in the late 1960s and early 1970s. (There is a album from 1975, not much later, but he already was a mess by then, and it shows.) This performance has been available as a grey market release for a long time. But for some reason that version doesn't include the last two songs, and has other issues, such as getting some of the song titles wrong.

The song list is very good as well, with Dr. John doing a mix of the songs he's known best for as well as some choice rarities, such as the sappy Jackie DeShannon hit "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" done New Orleans style. All in all, it's nearly an hour and a half of music.

UPDATE: On September 12, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I changed the title and the cover art to be consistent with other albums from this same Ultrasonic radio show.

01 Loop Garoo (Dr. John)
02 Walk On Gilded Splinters (Dr. John)
03 Danse Kalinda da Boom (Dr. John)
04 Stag-O-Lee (Dr. John)
05 Travelin' Mood (Dr. John)
06 Junco Partner (Dr. John)
07 Life (Dr. John)
08 Put a Little Love in Your Heart (Dr. John)
09 Tipitina (Dr. John)
10 Mess Around (Dr. John)
11 I've Been Hoodooed (Dr. John)
12 Such a Night (Dr. John)
13 Right Place, Wrong Time (Dr. John)
14 Let the Good Times Roll (Dr. John)
15 Wang Dang Doodle (Dr. John)
16 Mama Roux (Dr. John)
17 Qualified (Dr. John)
18 Little Liza Jane (Dr. John)
19 Mama Don't Allow No Dr John in Here (Dr. John)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hnxNpTua 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/VhhPX6LJK3MSSyE/file

For the cover, I found a photo of Dr. John performing in Montreux, Switzerland, in July 1973, a few months before this concert. I think Elton John would be envious of his outfit! ;)

Fleetwood Mac - WLIR Ultrasonic Concert Series, Ultrasonic Recording Studios, Hempstead, NY, 10-8-1974

I've wanted to post something from the 1972 to 1974 Bob Welch-led era of Fleetwood Mac, that mostly forgotten time between the end of the Peter Green-led blues years and the start of the Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham dominated pop rock years.

Unfortunately, there just isn't much to post. For instance, I can't do a stray tracks album since pretty much zero stray tracks have been made public. In fact, because Fleetwood Mac went way down in popularity at this time, even the number of good bootlegs is very small.

Luckily, there is this one concert as an exception. It comes right at the end of that era (a month or two before Welsh left and Nicks and Buckingham joined), and it's a really nice concert. Because it was recorded in a recording studio (though with an audience) it has excellent sound quality. I think it shows this version of the band is very underrated.

By the way, keep in mind that Christine McVie is in the band through this whole time period. She already was doing the pop rock thing that would explode in popularity in 1975 and after. I think some of her songs here would be huge hits if they would have been included on the "Rumours" album a few years later instead.

UPDATE: On September 12, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. I removed two extra songs at the end, because they're from a different concert and I now have posted that concert in full. I also made changes to the cover art and title to match other albums from the same radio show.

01 The Green Manalishi [With the Two Prong Crown] (Fleetwood Mac)
02 Spare Me a Little of Your Love (Fleetwood Mac)
03 Sentimental Lady (Fleetwood Mac)
04 Future Games (Fleetwood Mac)
05 Bermuda Triangle (Fleetwood Mac)
06 Why (Fleetwood Mac)
07 Angel (Fleetwood Mac)
08 Homeward Bound (Fleetwood Mac)
09 Rattlesnake Shake (Fleetwood Mac)
10 Hypnotized (Fleetwood Mac)
11 Black Magic Woman (Fleetwood Mac)
12 Mystery to Me (Fleetwood Mac)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qwR4XCbR 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/e6qPr2VGybHaGRb/file

For the album cover, I found some cover art from a popular bootleg of the show, using actual photos from the show. The front cover of this bootleg just had a photo of one of the band members (Bob Welch), so I used the back cover instead, and added the text from the front to the middle of it.