James Taylor
From Carnegie to Berkeley
Setlist:
Carnegie Hall, New York City
May 26-27, 1974
You Can Close Your Eyes
Riding On A Railroad
Blossom
Long Ago And Far Away
Sunshine Sunshine
Me And My Guitar
Country Road
You’ve Got A Friend
Promised Land
Berkley Community Center
Berkely, California
March 16, 1970
This is probably the wrong date for this show, see the comments. If anyone has the actual date let me know.
Let it Fall Down
Brighten Your Night With My Day
One Man Parade
Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight
Fire and Rain
Mockingbird – duet with Carly Simon
Ain’t No Song
Sweet Baby James
Long Ago and Far Away
Riding on a Railroad
Highway Song
Fire and Rain
You Can Close Your Eyes
Notes from Mat, circa 2009.
People do strange things in the world of bootlegs. I once got a recording of a Grateful Dead show with a three page explanation of how the recording came to be. I’ve long since lost the explanation, and have forgotten the details, but the gist was that one really obsessed guy spent several years hunting down various versions of the show (as in recorded by several different people) to get the absolute best quality for each song. He sent lots of e-mails, made tons of phone calls, etc all trying to get the perfect version.
Of a concert. One show. Years he spent getting just the right recording. From a band that has hundreds, if not thousands of shows recorded to tape. That’s the obsession I tread in every day.
It isn’t always the obsessive, weirdness of finding the perfect recording, sometimes, lots of times actually people like to make compilations. They take a variety of songs from different shows and make a compilation to fit their needs. Some times it is a collection of their favorite songs. Other times it might be to make a live version of their favorite studio album. Or whatever, people like to make mix-tapes. I don’t blame them sometimes you can create a really great show from a string of concerts.
Enter James Taylor. This particular bootleg is one of those mixes.
I know that the first part (from “You Can Close Your Eyes” to “Promised Land” ) is from a concert at the Carnegie Hall in 1974 (though whether it was May 26 or 27 is up for debate.) The rest of the songs are from March 16, 1970, probably. Etree lists it as an unknown date in 1970, but a crappy bootlegger (he’s actually trying to sell the show, which is really bad karma and thus he gets no link) gives the March 16 date.
Why someone would take two perfectly good shows, cut them in half and then merge them together is beyond me (other than to give it the name “From Carnegie to Berkely” but that seems really asinine.) The two shows seem to be available in a complete form, but for whatever reason, someone decided to split them like this. Somewhere I got this split copy (sorry I can’t remember where I’m unorganized like that.) Now I’m going to share it. I suppose since I’m complaining about it, I should actually track down both full shows, but that’s more trouble than its worth. Truth be told I didn’t realize it was split like this before I uploaded it, but now that it is uploaded I might as well share. Plus, who cares, right?
It is a good sounding show. I’m pretty sure they are both soundboard recordings. James is for the most part doing his acoustic-country-rock thing, with some nice piano work on the Berkeley set by Carole King. If you like James, then this is a nice set even if it isn’t a complete show.
