Monday, February 24, 2020

The Byrds – Bloomfield College, Bloomfield 1970




The Byrds – Bloomfield College, Bloomfield 1970

Bloomfield College, Bloomfield, NJ – October 24, 1970

Roger McGuinn (guitars, vocals)
Clarence White (guitars, mandolin, vocals)
Gene Parsons (drums, percussions, banjo, vocals)
Skip Battin (bass, vocals)

This concert was previously posted as “New Jersey 1970”, but my source for these new files says that it’s much better quality, so here it is again, with audio files tagged and artwork added.

The original tape has two tracks that were medleys (1-2 and 7-8); I’ve separated them so this new sequence has 18 tracks instead of the 16 original ones.

I have also “rearranged” the audio tracks, transferring spoken parts (and more) to where they belong, at the beginning and at the end of each track.

1. Lover Of The Bayou (3:01)
2. Johnny B. Goode (instrumental ending) (0:47)
3. You Ain't Going Nowhere (2:44)
4. Old Blue (4:09)
5. Positively 4th Street (3:44)
6. My Back Pages (2:22)
7. B.J. Blues (1:24)
8. Baby What You Want Me To Do (2:36)
9. Home Sweet Home (In The Morning I'll Be Gone) (2:26)
10. Truck Stop Girl (4:09)
11. Soldier's Joy - Black Mountain Rag (2:01)
12. Mr. Tambourine Man (2:54)
13. Take A Whiff (On Me) (3:18)
14. Chestnut Mare (5:26)
15. It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) (3:08)
16. Ballad Of Easy Rider (2:40)
17. Jesus Is Just Alright (2:54)
18. Eight Miles High (16:03)

Artwork Included (front, back)

4 comments:

Rocking--Byrd said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
david said...

Nice job, RB, thanks !

Kevin Lockley said...

Thank you R.B. This is a real improvement on the previous version.

Steve said...

Yes, the sound is good--thanks for that. The concert is also good, with a band in its full powers as a live act and a format which becomes a standard throughout the rest of the group's history, at least until Gene Parsons was dismissed. The acoustic set is a great idea, as these musicians all have acoustic backgrounds and it gives Clarence White a chance to show just how good he was on guitar, even without the B-bender. The only discordant note is is the horrible high harmony on Home Sweet Home, an otherwise nice song. It sounds like McGuinn, who only sounds good in falsetto when he's with other singers. This band doesn't sound much at all like the original group and in fact play very few of the old songs. The exception is a long version of Eight Miles High, which doesn't sound like the original recording at all--it's even on a different key (starting with Am instead of Em) and the 12-string barely appears. The vocals always sound kind of rough, especially the harmony vocals, and they even sound drunk at points, although I'm sure they weren't. Thanks for this rehab job on the original concert, it worked very well.