1975-02-24 Rod Stewart & Faces / Blue Oyster Cult

Madison Square Garden

Rod Stewart & Faces at Madison Square Garden, 2/24/1975. In view here, Ronnie, Rod and Mac.

The Faces playing at MSG in front of a wall of Ampeg amps, similar to what the Stones’ 1975 tour set-up would look like.

Ian McLagan looked kind of small sitting at his Steinway Concert Grand. Mac apparently couldn't get a clavinet in white to match the Hammond case, the Steinway and the candles. Kenny Jones is playing his plaid drum set on the riser.

Rod and Ronnie singing together as Mac plays by candlelight. MSG 2/24/1975.

I had listened to many of the earlier Rod Stewart and Faces albums and singles .... I bought the "Coast to Coast" live album after reading a review in Circus magazine in 1974.  I saw them appear on "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert"  and "In Concert" on TV - these shows featured the hot bands in the early 70s - and I taped a radio broadcast (on the King Biscuit radio show) featuring "Twisting the Night Away" and “Sweet Little Rock and Roller" from one recent show.  The Faces were really big at the time and I looked forward to this day intensely for many months - it would be my first trip to the Garden in the big City without parental supervision.  A winter rain fell as we got there and went outside from Penn Station. I had brought my camera and telephoto lense with me, and don’t recall any problem getting them in.

In later years I would see both Ronnie Wood and Ian McLagan, who were then members of the Faces, play with the Rolling Stones, and would see Kenny Jones with the Who. 

Mac, 2 candles, an ashtray on a white Steinway concert grand, and Rod in satin with his mic stand. Rod Stewart & Faces at MSG, 2/24/74

And not to forget Blue Oyster Cult, I did get some photos of them with the dry ice smoke machines in full operation.. Much later on Will Farrow would play the cowbell to "Don't Fear the Reaper" on SNL. But even better, I would catch Dave Matthews Band when they played a version of the song at the 2011 DMB Caravan shows, with Tim Reynolds killing it on the guitar solo.

I shot some of these photos from the far side of MSG with my 200mm telephoto lense, shooting Kodak Tri-X film that I developed at home.

Blue Oyster Cult with the smoke machine going.

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Below: Tour Program:

1975-04-26 Lou Reed

Felt Forum

This show was part of Lou Reed's 1975 world tour, the year after Reed's classic Rock n' Roll Animal live album came out.  Glam rock / glitter rock was all the rage in the early 70s - Jagger, Bowie, Lou Reed, Mott the Hoople and Slade were all part of that, and what I got into early on.

In later years I saw Lou Reed appear as a surprise guest at a show at the Bottom Line, and in a more recent year I found myself alone with him in the lobby of the Film Forum one evening while he was waiting for his wife Laurie Anderson to see a foreign film.  I said hello, not realizing how limited his remaining days would be. 

He passed away on a day that I attended a Phish show in Hartford.  Phish asked for a moment of silence for him, Trey referred to him as one of the greatest artists ever, and they opened the show with Reed's “Rock n' Roll” in tribute.  REM is another great live band that I’ve seen cover songs by Reed and Velvet Underground.

These color photos were all taken on Kodak Ektachrome slide film, with the ISO “pushed” several stops in accordance with the film instructions, for the indoor stage lights. The Felt Forum was an especially dark stage and real test for a film camera without flash.

1975-10-12 Peter Frampton / Rod Stewart & Faces

Nassau Coliseum

I saw both these bands two times during my high school days, and it was amazing that they did this show at Nassau Coliseum together.  The Frampton shows preceded the big commercial success of his classic live album, which came out only a few months after this show.  The most recent "Frampton" studio album at the time, for me, was one of those classic 1970s albums that just worked so well as a collection of great songs; and Frampton was getting heavily popular on the success of that album. 

Peter Frampton tells the interesting story of the famous 1954 custom Les Paul which he used for his classic sound here.

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Peter Frampton wailing on his "Phenix" 1954 Les Paul Custom at Nassau Coliseum, 10-12-75

It seemed almost too coincidental when I first saw the live album in a NYC record store one day in early 1976, because I had seen two of his shows in the last few months... so I bought that album right when it came out - I was a huge fan already but didn't realize how popular the album would make him - and how it would became something like a gold standard for live rock albums.  “Frampton Comes Alive” became a monster success and elevated Frampton to the heights of pop stardom.

I took photos of both the Faces and Frampton with my Kodak Tri-X negative film.  I purchased the film in bulk, loaded it into reuseable film cartridges, and developed it myself in the dark room I had at home.  These images are scanned from my original negatives.

Rod and Ronnie, 1975

Tour Program cover.

Ronnie Wood with Faces at Nassau Coliseum, 10-12-1975

Rod always had the mic stand going in one direction or another.

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Frampton rocking it with his band, 10/12/1975

Frampton soloing, from behind the stage, 10/12/1975

1979-10-31 Bob Marley & the Wailers

Colgate University

For me and for many all over the world, Bob Marley and the Wailers were right at the core of the music I loved, and right there on levels beyond music, expressing so many timeless and important things poetically and beautifully.

This show was a Halloween spectacle, but no one in the band donned a costume, only some of the audience members. 

We drove the back roads of NY from Ithaca to Colgate, one small town after another with its civil war monument, each with the children out trick or treating.  On the way home we were happy to get a healthy dose of a Led Zeppelin's recently released "In Through the Out Door" on FM radio. 

I was amazed at how LOUD the show was; it seemed to peak during the guitar solo of "Heathen."

I had been a fan for years, listening to Marley and reggae and listening to Carribean radio in NYC , but my exposure to and appreciation for reggae would only expand during the next few years.

1980-05-14 The Grateful Dead

Nassau Coliseum

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Grateful Dead at Nassau Coliseum, May 14, 1980

Three months after seeing Pink Floyd play The Wall at Nassau Coliseum, and a week after the Ithaca GD show, I was there when the Dead rolled back into the Coliseum.  These ended up being considered classic shows in that time period, a great one for the Dead.  Selections were played on the radio (King Biscuit) and taped by fans like moi.  The "Feel Like a Stranger" on that tape was a favorite.

I was really glad to hear Comes a Time.  This one was a beautiful version, and incredibly great soundboard tapes now are available.

I had my telephoto in at these shows and got some nice shots right from the seats.

1980-05-15 The Grateful Dead

Nassau Coliseum

Jerry playing the Tiger guitar at Nassau Coliseum, May 1980

These were classic shows in that time period - and this one smoked from the great Jack Straw opener right through. Also see my post for the night before.

This night and the following are memorilaized on the Dead’s “Go to Nassau” CD release, and excellent alternative recordings are available on archive.org, such as Matthew Vernon’s matrix sound version of this show. https://archive.org/details/gd1980-05-15.126692.mtx.dusborne.flac16/gd80-05-15s1t03.flac

I had floor seats this night, everyone stood on their chairs. I walked up to the front section of the floor towards the end and took some shots of Jerry.

1980-09-02 The Grateful Dead

Rochester War Memorial

Jerry and Bob, Rochester War Memorial, 9/2/1980

Bobby flanked by the drummers

Slideshow below.

Another school year for me upstate began with a Rochester show by the Grateful Dead during the first week of September, this one downtown at the War Memorial, a big general admission arena. In the back of the arena there were some plaques and memorials. I guess being able to get in to the Nassau Coliseum shows with my camera and telephoto lense back in the Spring gave me the idea I could do it here again. I had a hard time shooting over the crowd but managed to get right up close to to the stage for a while. I remember being right up there for “Lost Sailor,” when it was a little quieter for awhile. The song was played at all three of the Rochester shows I attended.

Some of the photos I took are above; I picked one with Jerry and Bob from a few rows back, and other samples of the ones I took from up close are in the slideshow.

Like some of my other Dead shows, this performance was later the subject of a soundboard release by Charlie Miller, who seems to pick the same shows I like the most (although that’s many hundreds of shows). The second set packs in so many tunes, plus interesting and beautifully melodic jams with string synths in the Space section, a fine Morning Dew and a rockin Sugar Magnolia set closer.

Another example of the Dead playing with great energy at a really high level and another top notch show in this era. In the following month they would do the classic acoustic shows in NY and SF.

1980-10-01 Bob Marley & the Wailers (Cancelled Show)

Landmark Theatre

There was so much great music to listen to in 1980 and the new Bob Marley album, Uprising!, was high among our favorite choices.    

The show listed here was to have been been part of the balance of the 1980 tour, which was cancelled after the Pittsburgh show when Bob Marley fell ill.  It was of course a huge disappointment at the time, but not nearly as much of a disappointment as when we learned how sick he was, and ultimately in the following year, when we learned of his passing. 

Uprising! remains a timeless reggae classic.

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36 years later, I visited Nine Miles, JA, Bob's childhood home and his final resting place.... photos in the gallery below show the school built by Bob’s Mother there, a window on the outside of the Mausoleum, Bob’s childhood home. It was interesting to see the area after reading about it and seeing photos of the funeral procession and the Nine Miles area, e.g. in the Marley books “Catch a Fire” and “Reggae King of the World”.

Bob Marley’s framed gold record for the 1980 album Uprising!, on display in Nine Miles, JA

1982-03-30 I-Tal (Reggae at The Haunt)

The Haunt; Ithaca NY, 1982

The Haunt

I brought my camera to the club for one of the reggae shows, and have a few shots of what it looked like in the Haunt. When you entered the club, straight ahead and to the left was the bar, and to the right was the stage; most of the middle area from the stage back became a dance floor every night. These photos are facing the stage and unfortunately don’t show other views of the club - there were large photo prints and mirrors around on the walls, everything was made of what seemed like raw wood, and the bar had some basic christmas-tree lights around it. Here you can see some of the big rectangular mirrors in which you could see people on the dance floor reflected from behind the stage, and the reggae colors painted boldly on the back wall.

Among the great things they had up on the wall were the “annual photos” taken on a day each springtime. Hundreds of people would crowd into the alley at happy hour for one big super-wide angle shot of everyone, and they would blow the photos up big and hang them in there.

Slideshow below: The Cleveland-based band I-Tal playing at The Haunt in Ithaca, NY, 1982.

1982-04-16 Carlton Bryan and Crossroads (Reggae at The Haunt)

The Haunt

Crossroads poster featuring Vision and Carlton (sitting in the front.)

With The Haunt established as a top reggae venue, new bands started coming, including a talented youngster named Carlton Bryan, and his band. Carlton Bryan wrote some great songs and had not only a strong voice but some serious lead guitar chops. Bryan teamed up with a well-established vocalist, Vision (Walker), who previously worked with The Wailers. He would work with Peter Tosh as well (becoming a member for the Mama Africa tour, and featured in my photos from that tour), and I believe he is still musically active today.

We would see Carlton before the shows, and he would always say how much he loved to play in Ithaca. In this era, Jon Peterson at The Haunt was making much of this possible by, among other things, letting the bands stay up at his house during stints in Ithaca.

We attended many performances by Crossroads in Ithaca and surrounding areas.

A couple of years later, I would go to see my third Steel Pulse show in New York City, and to my pleasant surprise, when the band came out I saw Carlton Bryan out there - he was playing lead guitar with them for awhile. I took the picture below at the 1984 Steel Pulse show. Carlton is playing the double-necked guitar that appeared on the cover shots of an album he put out around that time. (More on the Steel Pulse show is in another post here.)

Carlton Bryan soloing with Steel Pulse, 1984. Tyrone Downie, longstanding keyboard player with Bob Marley & The Wailers, also joined that night.

Above right and left: Setlists used by Carlton Bryan and Crossroads during performances in 1982.

1982-08-11 Steel Pulse

The Ritz

Photos I took from the floor at the Ritz, Steel Pulse, August 1982

In early Summer of 1982 I made one of my excursions to Greenwich Village to look for records and stumbled upon a brand new album by Steel Pulse called “True Democracy.” I bought it and played it a few times, at which point I felt like I needed to listen to it more, and then more, and well, you know the rest. I was already a fan, I had all three of the previous albums. Among reggae fans these were already considered classics. We would find some EPs, dub versions and rarities by Steel Pulse now and then in the Village.

Steel Pulse’s first album had only come out around the time I started college an I got to know about Steel Pulse originally through Jah Lounge’s radio show. One night he played a dub version of the great tune “Reggae Fever,” the only time I ever heard that version.

By the time the world lost Bob Marley, Steel Pulse was considered among the handful of bands that were likely successors to become the most successful reggae band in the world.

The Ritz was a unique and amazing venue. Before shows they showed videos (movies and clips on film), mostly that we had never seen before, including great reggae artists.

I don't think there was an early show - only one per night. The show time on ticket says 11.30pm. In the Ritz there was no backstage entrance to the stage area and performers had to walk through the crowd before the show in order to get to the stage. Often times, they went unnoticed, but on this first night we turned and saw David Hinds coming through with a big yellow top hat over his Congo Dread. I returned for the show the next night .

On another day in NYC around this time, I picked up a Village Voice and saw inside, unmistakenly, a picture of David Hinds with his “Congo Dread,” in the “On the Street” Column with photos by Amy Arbus

1982-08-12 Steel Pulse

The Ritz

Steel Pulse at The Ritz, 1982

See my N1 post. Additional photos below.

Steel Pulse during “Ku Klux Klan,” at The Ritz, NYC 1982 (Band member dressed in hood at middle right)

David Hinds during “Blues Dance Raid” - “From them pocket dem draw handcuff ….”

1983-07-06 Peter Tosh (with Word Sound & Power)

Concerts on the Pier (Pier 84, NYC)

Among the great reggae and new wave shows I saw at the Pier was Peter Tosh on the Mama Africa tour.

Below are photos I took on this night of Tosh and the great Donald Kinsey on lead guitar. Around this time, I picked up a copy of a single that Donald released on his own, “Music Makes Me Feel Alright.” A great blues/rock guitarist, Kinsey is an American who played with Albert King and others, and whose tone and vibrato echoed the unique sound of Mick Taylor to me. Mama Africa included Tosh’s reworked version of Johnny B. Goode, which provided Mr. Kinsey with a good backdrop for one of his many great guitar solos on his Gibson SG.

Also featured in the band and in one photo below (taken during the percussion jam) was Constantin “Vision” Walker, who had been associated with the Wailers in the earlier days, and who appeared in Ithaca and other places in upstate NY where we got to catch him often, while he teamed up with another fine guitar player, Carlton Bryan (see my posts for Carlton Bryan and Crossroads, and for Steel Pulse). Carlton sports a “Peter Tosh World Tour” shirt in the photos I took of him with Steel Pulse at the Pier.

Tosh boldly smoked a large spliff during the performance, which he would relight from time. A difficulty keeping it lit resulted from the dreadlocks over his face as he danced and sweated.

Only a month later, this band recorded a live album in Los Angeles, and the Captured Live video shows an hour of sonic and visual treats similar to this show in NYC.

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There were many great shows at Pier 84 in those days and I remember one (it may have been this show, or maybe an earlier date - possibly in 1982) at which a brand new sound technology was demonstrated for the audience before the show. JVC was a cosponsor of these shows and, on the stage before the show they described something called a "compact disk" (CD) which, they claimed, would revolutionize the way people listen to music. To my knowledge, this was the first time that anyone there had ever heard of a CD, as well as the first time they actually heard a CD. One was popped into a JVC CD player and cranked up on the PA sound system. Of course, in the subsequent years, CDs overtook vinyl much faster than had been expected.

Speaking of vinyl’s last stand before CDs took over, around this time many reggae artists were releasing (in small batches) 12 inch “extended play” vinyl singles with dub or extended versions (“EPs”). EPs were the size of regular vinyl albums, but there was more room for the grooves to be cut on the vinyl, since total time was less than an album, and they played at 45 rpm. They sounded incredible (still do). With Mama Africa, Tosh released some 10 inch EPs, which was an unusual format.

[1984-07-03] Steel Pulse / Freddie McGregor

Concerts on the Pier

Carlton Bryan solos, Tyrone Downie helps out on the keyboards.

Steel Pulse at Pier 84, NYC, 1984

David Hinds and Tyrone Downie.

David Hinds, Tyrone Downie and Carlton Bryan.

I had taken these photos but had no stub and had a hard time confirming the exact date of this show.

Steel Pulse’s fifth studio album, Earth Crisis, came out as 1983 passed into 1984, and it was another strong one. As usual, the album tracks were nicely complimented by a few dub and extended versions (of songs like “Roller Skates,” and “Stepping Out”) that became available in the record shops that year.

Steel Pulse remained mostly in its original configuration, with Phonso Martin still in the band, although there was a change in the lead guitar slot. I hadn’t heard anything about it previously, and when they hit the stage I was very surprised to see Carlton Bryan up there. As detailed in previous posts, Carlton’s own band had been almost a house band at The Haunt, “Upstate NY’s reggae capital,” in 1981-2, and I saw him play there many times.

Another great surprise came when David Hinds announced that Tyrone Downie would sit in on keyboards. One fantastic and influential multi-keyboardist, Downie joined up with Bob Marley and the Wailers early on and provided so much to the classic sounds of all of the great Bob Marley studio records. He was the regular keyboard player during the Wailers tours, including the one I saw in 1979.

The wide image at top of Carlton soloing with David looking on and Tyrone holding down the keyboards is one of my favorites. Carlton is playing the double-necked guitar that is shown on the cover of a studio album from around that timeframe.

Steel Pulse in 1984 with Tyrone Downie and Carlton Bryan joining. Phonso Martin at right, Bumbo on keyboards at left.

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Freddie McGregor opening up for Steel Pulse at the Pier.

1984-09-08 Dennis Brown

Concerts on the Pier (Pier 84)

Another one of the Concerts on the Pier, Dennis Brown.

The cool ruler of lover’s rock and reggae music, Dennis Brown was one of Bob Marley's favorite singers, and one of mine too.

1994-07-31 Traffic

Saratoga Performing Arts Center

One of my favorite classic rock bands, Traffic reunited and opened for the Dead during 1994, and then played a number of US shows at excellent venues on their own as part of their reunion tour supporting their outstanding album "Far From Home." Two week later they would play a smoking hot set at the Woodstock ‘94 show, and a great video of that is available.

I had good orchestra seats at SPAC for this.

In later years the image of Capaldi singing "Light Up or Leave Me Alone" would pop into my head when I heard the original, or the Phish rendition. I remember thinking that Winwood still looked so young in 1994 when I saw him at this performance, which was only the first time I saw him perform after waiting a long while.

1997-08-02 Further Festival

Shoreline Ampitheatre

Three photos taken at Shoreline. Ratdog with Weir and Wasserman in view; Jorma playing his red Gibson ; Phil Lesh (in a red sweatshirt) joins Hornsby for a tune.

2005-08-25 Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers

North Fork Theatre at Westbury

2006-03-29 Leon Russell

Vail Village

While staying at the Sitzmark in Vail Village, you can catch the show from the rooftop or the street right in front of the hotel. Leon appeared at one of the free “Street Beat” performances held in 2006.

2008-03-12 Little Feat

Ridgefield Theater

Slideshow: Little Feat in Ridgefield, featuring Richie Hayward on drums and Saun Murphy on vocals.