Showing posts with label Graham Parker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Graham Parker. Show all posts

Sunday, August 16, 2026

Children of the Americas Radiothon, United Nations Building, New York City, 11-18-1989, Part 1 - Warren Zevon, Graham Parker, Ten Years After, Etc...

Back in 2024, I posted a 1988 "Hungerthon" concert that took place at the United Nations (U.N.) building in New York City. This seems to have been a yearly event for some time. I couldn't find anything about the other years, but I found most or all of the 1989 concert, which also took place at the U.N. building. I found enough for three parts. Here's "Part 1."

It seems this concert took place in two stages on the same day. In the first stage, a bunch of less famous acts performed in the United Nations waiting room. This is a smaller venue, just outside of the General Assembly, where the U.N. diplomats meet and vote. These acts, all the ones included here, played to a relatively small crowd. I'm not sure if I have all of these acts. I did find a mention on the Internet that Poco also performed, but I couldn't find a recording of their set. So it's possible there were others I missed as well. If anyone has more, please let me know.

All the music here was broadcast live on a local radio station, which is why we have this with excellent sound quality. The downside though was that since it was a "radiothon" meant to raise money, there were very frequent appeals for donations. The phone number to call was pitched often, practically between every song. So I carefully edited all that out, since those appeals and that phone number are now defunct. I also had to do a lot of editing of the applause, because talkative DJs typically spoke mere moments after each song ended. But I think I was able to patch in enough applause, from spots where some applause was allowed, to make this sound coherent.

Also, for most of these musical acts, there were interviews, usually lasting a few minutes, right in the middle of each performance. I cut all those out. I want this to have replay value, and those interviews weren't so interesting. Most of these performances are solo acoustic in nature, but not all of them.

By the way, here's the link to the 1988 United Nations concert:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2024/06/various-artists-children-of-americas.html 

If anyone has these concerts from any other years (with worthy sound quality), please let me know and I'll try to post those as well.

As far as I know, these recordings have been very rare. I haven't seen them on any of the usual bootleg sharing sites. So hopefully this posting will get the music to a wider audience. 

This album is an hour and 45 minutes long.

01 Dance with Me Baby (Southside Johnny)
02 Little Calcutta (Southside Johnny)
03 talk (Southside Johnny)
04 Trapped Again (Southside Johnny)
05 The Horses (Rickie Lee Jones)
06 talk (Rickie Lee Jones)
07 On Saturday Afternoons in 1963 (Rickie Lee Jones)
08 Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner (Warren Zevon)
09 talk (Warren Zevon)
10 Boom Boom Mancini (Warren Zevon)
11 Splendid Isolation (Warren Zevon)
12 talk (Warren Zevon)
13 Werewolves of London (Warren Zevon with Paul Schaffer)
14 Rock and Roll Music to the World (Ten Years After)
15 Victim of Circumstance (Ten Years After)
16 I'm Going Home (Ten Years After)
17 talk (Ten Years After)
18 Choo Choo Mama (Ten Years After)
19 Drown in My Own Tears (David Bromberg)
20 talk (David Bromberg)
21 Summer Wages (David Bromberg)
22 Testify (David Bromberg)
23 Big Man on Paper (Graham Parker)
24 talk (Graham Parker)
25 Green Monkeys (Graham Parker)
26 talk (Graham Parker)
27 Slash and Burn (Graham Parker)
28 talk (Richie Havens)
29 They Dance Alone (Richie Havens)
30 Lives in the Balance (Richie Havens)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8Widw8qm

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/vYQYdYY00B8VCzb/file

I couldn't find ANY photos of any musicians performing in this concert. However, I did find some art relating to it, so I used that. The cover image here is from a T-shirt with a design created by famous artist Peter Max, especially for this concert. The text at the bottom is mostly the same, but I made some changes, especially adding all the text in red.

Monday, December 8, 2025

Various Artists - Dave Edmunds' All Star Rock 'n' Roll Revue, Warfield Theater, San Francisco, CA, 4-7-1990

The world lost another musical great last week (as I write this in early December 2025). Lead guitarist Steve Cropper died on December 3, 2025. He was 84 years old. I wanted to post something to celebrate his music. But that was a bit tricky, since he was mostly a session musician and songwriter. While he did put out some album under his own name, that was just a small part of his musical legacy. And when he toured, he almost always was part of bands supporting other stars.

I looked around, and found this concert, which I'd never known of before. Cropper was part of the backing band, along with Terry Williams (ex-Rockpile), Phil Chen (ex-Rod Stewart), the Memphis Horns, and others, so he played on every song.

This tour probably happened thanks to Ringo Starr of the Beatles. In 1989, Starr put on the first of many "His All-Starr Band" concert tours. These consisted of Starr plus a rotating group of other musical stars who weren't big enough of their own to play big concert venues. But when they were packaged together, along with an ex-Beatle, they were. Dave Edmunds looked at that formula and immediately decided to try the same thing. He brought together Kim Wilson, former lead vocalist of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Graham Parker, and Dion. Each of them played about a half an hour set, with Edmunds playing both at the start of the concert and at the end.

The shows were successful, it seems. But Edmunds only attempted this for this one tour. In fact, he joined the "His All-Starr Band" tours in 1992 and 2000. Perhaps that's because Edmunds went into semi-retirement after 1990. He only put out one more album of new material, in 1994. And he only did one more significant tour, in 2007, before retiring from music for good in 2017.

This concert was the last show of the tour. I read that a double album of this exact concert was released, but only in Japan. However, if that's true, it would only be a minority of this recording, since this is a very long concert, at nearly three hours! This concert was also broadcast for the King Biscuit Flower Hour radio show, which is why we have it with excellent sound quality.

One last thought. A while back, I made two "Covered" album for Steve Cropper. So if you want to remember all the great songs he helped write, that's probably an even better way to do it. Here are the links to those:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/05/various-artists-covered-steve-cropper.html

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/05/various-artists-covered-steve-cropper_30.html

This album is two hours and 47 minutes long. 

01 talk (Dave Edmunds)
02 Last Night [Instrumental] (Dave Edmunds)
03 Fallin' through a Hole (Dave Edmunds)
04 Feel So Right (Dave Edmunds)
05 Closer to the Flame (Dave Edmunds)
06 Don't Talk to Me (Dave Edmunds)
07 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Dave Edmunds)
08 talk (Dave Edmunds)
09 Wrap It Up (Kim Wilson)
10 It Comes to Me Naturally (Kim Wilson)
11 Wasted Tears (Kim Wilson)
12 I Believe I'm in Love with You (Kim Wilson)
13 There Is Something on Your Mind (Kim Wilson)
14 Tuff Enuff (Kim Wilson)
15 talk (Kim Wilson)
16 Nervous Fella (Kim Wilson)
17 talk (Dave Edmunds)
18 Get Started, Start a Fire (Graham Parker)
19 Under the Mask of Happiness (Graham Parker)
20 talk (Graham Parker)
21 Local Girls (Graham Parker)
22 talk (Graham Parker)
23 My Girl (Graham Parker)
24 Slash and Burn (Graham Parker)
25 talk (Graham Parker)
26 Lady Doctor (Graham Parker)
27 talk (Graham Parker)
28 My Love's Strong (Graham Parker)
29 Soultime (Graham Parker)
30 Heat Treatment (Graham Parker)
31 talk (Dave Edmunds)
32 King of the New York Streets (Dion)
33 talk (Dion)
34 The Night Stood Still (Dion)
35 talk (Dion)
36 Ruby Baby (Dion)
37 talk (Dion)
38 Written on the Subway Wall (Dion)
39 Runaround Sue (Dion)
40 The Wanderer (Dion)
41 talk (Dion)
42 Abraham, Martin and John (Dion)
43 From Small Things [Big Things One Day Come] (Dave Edmunds)
44 I Hear You Knocking (Dave Edmunds)
45 talk (Dave Edmunds)
46 Ju Ju Man (Dave Edmunds)
47 King of Love (Dave Edmunds)
48 talk (Dave Edmunds)
49 Crawling from the Wreckage (Dave Edmunds)
50 Paralyzed (Dave Edmunds)
51 talk (Everyone)
52 [Sitting On] the Dock of the Bay (Everyone)
53 I'm Ready (Everyone)
54 Keep A-Knockin' (Everyone) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/w4EEsJQM

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4B7YTBcfLApwM51/file

The cover photo is from a concert at the Marlboro Blues Festival, in Chicago, Illinois, on March 24, 1990. From right to left: Steve Cropper, Dave Edmunds, Graham Parker, and Dion.