Various Artists - The Legendary Ladies of Rock and Roll, Latin Quarter, New York City, 2-19-1987

In the late 1980s, the cable TV network Cinemax arranged a series of about five concerts that brought together many musical legends. Each one was organized around a theme. The theme for this one is obvious in the title: "The Legendary Ladies of Rock and Roll." And that wasn't just hype. For only one concert, a truly impressive collection of famous female singers came together for just this one time: Lesley Gore, Freda Payne, Shirley Alston Reeves, Mary Wells, Ronnie Spector, Brenda Lee, and Martha Reeves. They were joined by Grace Slick and Belinda Carlisle, who didn't do much singing themselves (at least in the edit of the concert we have, that got broadcast on Cinemax), but served as co-hosts.

The only name I didn't recognize at first is Shirley Alston Reeves. That's because she was the lead singer for the Shirelles in the early 1960s, under the name Shirley Owens. By the time of this concert, she'd married for a second time, and changed her name. Also, if you don't know Ronnie Spector, she was the lead singer for the Ronettes, also in the 1960s.

Weirdly for a concert celebrating famous female singers, this begins with two songs sung by men. That's because they were opportunities to give the backing band a chance to warm up with their own spotlight. The band was led by Jimmy Vivino, and prominently featured Clarence Clemons of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band on saxophone. They played on all the songs even though though they only both get credited on the first one. I'm not sure how Chubby Checker (famous for "The Twist" and other early 1960s hits) got involved, but he sang the second track here, a medley of three rock classics.

Apparently, those first two songs didn't make the TV special, but somehow were saved at the same quality for the audio bootleg. Thus, the show really began with the third track, where the two hosts, Grace Slick (of Jefferson Airplane/ Jefferson Starship) and Belinda Carlisle (of the Go-Go's) began introducing the other acts. Then, typically, each singer sang two songs. However, Freda Payne only got to sing one, her biggest hit "Band of Gold," and she did it with Carlisle, who released a cover of it in 1986. For "Soldier Boy" in the middle of the concert, all the other singers came on stage to help with the backing vocals. Then they came out again for the last couple of songs. 

This concert is unreleased in any audio format, as far as I know. However, it was released on video. One can find a copy of that on YouTube as I write this in August 2026, but with only middling quality. Luckily, I found a different source, so the sound quality is excellent. 

01 Shotgun (Jimmy Vivino with Clarence Clemons)
02 Good Golly, Miss Molly - Hound Dog - I Saw Her Standing There (Chubby Checker with Clarence Clemons)
03 talk (Grace Slick & Belinda Carlisle)
04 [Love Is like A] Heat Wave (Martha Reeves)
05 I'm Ready for Love (Martha Reeves)
06 talk (Belinda Carlisle & Lesley Gore)
07 It's My Party (Lesley Gore)
08 You Don't Own Me (Lesley Gore)
09 talk (Grace Slick)
10 My Guy (Mary Wells)
11 talk (Mary Wells)
12 You Beat Me to the Punch (Mary Wells)
13 talk (Belinda Carlisle & Shirley Alston Reeves)
14 Will You Love Me Tomorrow (Shirley Alston Reeves)
15 Tonight's the Night (Shirley Alston Reeves)
16 Soldier Boy (Shirley Alston Reeves with Everyone)
17 talk (Belinda Carlisle)
18 Band of Gold (Freda Payne & Belinda Carlisle)
19 talk (Grace Slick)
20 I'm Sorry (Brenda Lee)
21 talk (Brenda Lee)
22 That's All You Gotta Do (Brenda Lee)
23 talk (Belinda Carlisle)
24 I Can Hear Music (Ronnie Spector)
25 talk (Ronnie Spector with Belinda Carlisle & Grace Slick)
26 Be My Baby (Ronnie Spector with Belinda Carlisle & Grace Slick)
27 talk (Grace Slick)
28 Da Doo Ron Ron (Ronnie Spector with Everyone)
29 Dancing in the Street (Martha Reeves with Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VwHeN1Rb

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/lcAOdJky9fTo1Be/file

The cover is a photo showing all the stars of this concert, presumably taken just before or after the show. Here are their names from left to right, by row. Top row: Lesley Gore, Freda Payne, Shirley Alston, Mary Wells, and Ronnie Spector. Middle row: Grace Slick and Belinda Carlisle. Bottom row: Brenda Lee and Martha Reeves.

I'm pleased how I managed to make cover, as I learned a new technique along the way. I found a color version of this, but it was very low-res. I also found a black and white one with much better resolution. I was able to use Photoshop to get the color while keeping the resolution of the black and white version.  

Various Artists - Playboy After Dark (CBS Television City, Los Angeles, CA), Volume 8: December 1969 to February 1970

Here's the seventh volume of the episodes I compiled of the "Playboy After Dark" TV show. It's the third volume of the show's second season.

I'll only mention some things about a couple of the performances. The rest should be evident just by listening. 

This episode features a previously unknown chapter of Lesley Gore's music career. She'd had a string of hits from 1963 to 1967, but her music went out of style. She continued to release some singles, but they all flopped. In 1972, she put out an album for the first time since 1967, "Someplace Else Now," that recast her in a singer-songwriter mode, similar to Carole King and her seminal 1971 album "Tapestry." In her Playboy TV appearance, she sang two songs that were moving into that mode. Neither of them were officially released by her anywhere, as far as I could tell. One of them, "Didn't We," is a Jimmy Webb song that was covered by many musical artists in this time period. 

Another bit of lost history are the two songs by Joanne Vent and Muscatel. Vent was an attractive White woman with a soulful, bluesy voice, who seemed to have potential for a big music career, a la Janis Joplin. She put out a solo album in 1969, called, "The Black and White of It Is Blues." Unfortunately, as one review I read put it, "Great voice, but not such a great album." At the time of this show, she was getting ready to release a second album with a new backing band, called Muscatel. I found a web link of someone selling a test pressing of it on eBay. But somehow that album never came out. The two songs she sang here suggest what her second album could have sounded like. She also was part of a duet in Volume 5, and shows up again in Volumes 10 and 11.

It's great that Fleetwood Mac is included here. But unfortunately, their performance was badly edited down. Their one song, "Rattlesnake Shake," is only two and a half minutes long. It's clear the performance was longer, since the song both fades in and fades out. They also did a second song, "Coming Your Way," but it only showed up for half a minute at the very end of that particular episode, under an overdubbed advertisement for T.W.A. Airlines. So I didn't bother to include that.

I've mentioned that each episode ended with talking over the music. But, by chance, that only impacted one song in this volume,  "The Category Stomp by John Hartford. That's why that one has "[Edit]" in its title.

This album is an hour and eight minutes long. 

01 Something (Dolores Hall)
02 Just Because of You (Dolores Hall)
03 A Simple Thing as Love (John Hartford)
04 Natural to Be Gone (John Hartford)
05 The Category Stomp [Edit] (John Hartford)
06 Let's Get Together (Jack Jones)
07 If You Want Me To (Chambers Brothers)
08 Love, Love, Love (Chambers Brothers)
09 Georgia on My Mind (James Brown)
10 Yesterday (Vicki Anderson)
11 By the Time I Get to Phoenix (James Brown)
12 God Bless the Child (Jack Jones)
13 The More I See You (Jack Jones)
14 Rattlesnake Shake (Fleetwood Mac)
15 Hello Young Lovers (Lesley Gore)
16 Didn't We (Lesley Gore)
17 High Sheriff of Calhoun Parrish (Tony Joe White)
18 Groupy Girl (Tony Joe White)
19 Slow Train (Joanne Vent & Muscatel)
20 Long Walk to D.C. (Joanne Vent & Muscatel)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JdGHbzj8

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/HAcJNqwRYyI9p09/file

The cover image shows Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac. It's a screenshot I took from one of these episodes.

Various Artists - The TAMI Show, Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, CA, 10-29-1964

When I recently posted the 1964 NME Poll Winners' Concert, I got a request to post another stellar 1964, known as "The TAMI Show." Like the NME concerts, this has to be one of the greatest collection of musical talent on one stage in the 1960s. The TAMI Show was made for a movie, which was released at the end of 1964. But I haven't seen just the audio available. So I converted a video of the movie into audio and chopped it into mp3s.

There's so much to say about the TAMI Show. I'm going to try to be relatively brief. It seems some clever people decided that rock music was all the rage in 1964, so if they could get enough big stars together for a concert, it would make a profitable movie. They did, and it did. The result was a classic, regularly cited as one of the best music movies of all time. In 2006, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

The key about the concert is that all the songs were performed live, at a time when lip-syncing was standard for TV appearances. Jan and Dean emceed the concert. They also performed its theme song, "Here They Come (From All Over the World)", written by songwriters P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri. The concert brought together some British Invasion bands (Gerry & the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, and the Rolling Stones) with Motown acts (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, and the Supremes), plus some other big names, like the Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, and Lesley Gore.

The concert is probably best known for the performance by James Brown, and for good reason. The whole thing is worth watching, but especially his part. The Police even immortalized it in their song "When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around," with the lyric:  

Turn on my V.C.R. 
Same one I've had for years
James Brown on the T.A.M.I. Show
Same tape I've had for years

In other words, Sting (who wrote that song) has a video of the TAMI Show, and is fascinated by James Brown's performance, watching it over and over. It's easy to see why. Brown's dancing is so extraordinary, it almost defies the laws of physics. He was moonwalking, and more, back when Michael Jackson was just a little baby. The lyrics are also interesting in that the TAMI Show was very hard to find for decades, generally only being available as a bootleg video, so that probably was an especially prized possession for Sting. It was finally remastered and rereleased as a DVD in 2010.

I worked from the DVD version, converted it to audio, and chopped it into mp3s. The sound quality isn't great, but it's as good as you could hope for from a 1964 concert. The lead vocals were rather low in the mix, so I used the UVR5 program to boost them relative to the instruments.

There was some controversy at the time whether James Brown or the Rolling Stones should be the final act in the show. At the time, the Stones had barely toured the U.S. at all. In fact, this would be only the third stop on their first big U.S. tour. But they were rapidly rising stars, enough for them to be chosen as the final act. However, James Brown wasn't pleased about that, and made sure to steal the show.

Mick Jagger, lead singers for the Stones, later said, "James Brown was probably the best thing about our trip. He is a fantastic artist. When you've seen him, you've seen the act to end all acts. We appeared with him on the TAMI Show and we had to follow him. It was a disaster in a way because nobody can follow James Brown, it’s impossible." Despite the competition, it was a friendly rivalry, and they were on good terms with him when they crossed his path at various times in later years.

By the way, the "TAMI Show" stood for either "Teenage Awards Music International" and "Teen Age Music International" - the producers were inconsistent about the meaning. The fact that they were inconsistent shows it didn't really matter much. Apparently, they just wanted an interesting sounding acronym. 

Here's a good article about the concert, written in 2025, if you want to know more:

https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/teenagers-world-unite-2/

And here's the Wikipedia article:

T.A.M.I. Show - Wikipedia 

This album is an hour and 52 minutes long. 

01 [Here They Come] From All Over the World (Jan & Dean)
02 talk (emcee)
03 talk (Jan & Dean)
04 Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry)
05 Maybellene (Chuck Berry & Gerry & the Pacemakers)
06 Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
07 It's Gonna Be Alright (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
08 Sweet Little Sixteen (Chuck Berry)
09 How Do You Do It (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
10 Nadine (Chuck Berry)
11 I Like It (Gerry & the Pacemakers)
12 That's What Love Is Made Of (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
13 You've Really Got a Hold on Me (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
14 Mickey's Monkey (Smokey Robinson & the Miracles)
15 Stubborn Kind of Fellow (Marvin Gaye)
16 Pride and Joy (Marvin Gaye)
17 Can I Get a Witness (Marvin Gaye)
18 Hitch Hike (Marvin Gaye)
19 talk (Jan & Dean)
20 Maybe I Know (Lesley Gore)
21 You Don't Own Me (Lesley Gore)
22 You Didn't Look Around (Lesley Gore)
23 Hey Now (Lesley Gore)
24 It's My Party - Judy's Turn to Cry (Lesley Gore)
25 The Little Old Lady from Pasadena (Jan & Dean)
26 Sidewalk Surfin' [Surfin' Safari] (Jan & Dean)
27 Surfin' U.S.A. (Beach Boys)
28 I Get Around (Beach Boys)
29 Surfer Girl (Beach Boys)
30 Dance, Dance, Dance (Beach Boys)
31 Little Children (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
32 Bad to Me (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
33 I'll Keep You Satisfied (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
34 From a Window (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
35 When the Lovelight Starts Shining through His Eyes (Supremes)
36 Run, Run, Run (Supremes)
37 Baby Love (Supremes)
38 Where Did Our Love Go (Supremes)
39 Hey Little Bird (Barbarians)
40 talk (Jan & Dean)
41 Out of Sight (James Brown)
42 Prisoner of Love (James Brown)
43 Please, Please, Please (James Brown)
44 Night Train (James Brown)
45 Around and Around (Rolling Stones)
46 Off the Hook (Rolling Stones)
47 Time Is on My Side (Rolling Stones)
48 It's All Over Now (Rolling Stones)
49 I'm Alright (Rolling Stones)
50 Let's Get Together (Rolling Stones & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vRghL7X4

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/IlezlVz2skiZmQ5/file

Since James Brown had the most renowned performance in this concert, I decided it was fitting to have a photo of him on the cover. That photo is from this exact concert. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program. All the other text and graphics comes from original promotional material for the concert. But I used Photoshop to do some repositioning and other editing.