Let's kick off the March to Spring with a handy little barnburner of a show, taped 40 years ago tonight.
I wasn't going to post it at first, but it was so good and the band was so tight I decided to let it fly.
Today's heroine is among the favorite singers of many, even though she has medical issues now that prevent her from doing it for the time being.
This was not the case 40 years ago, when she could have sung the White Pages and gone straight to Number One.
This performance finds her at the ultra-peak of her considerable vocal powers, backed by her usual coterie of cracktastic session aces.
And the recording... oh dear. Sometime in the mid 1970s these Japanese radio boffins took their game to a whole new strata of capture, and this one continues that lush tradition.
I tweaked it in a couple of places where the applause got choppy and fragmented, and also because I needed practice crossfading in Audacity last night.
Admit it, you woke up today feeling empty inside -- poor, poor pitiful you -- because you don't have a vintage 1970s radio concert from the likes of Linda Ronstadt.
Linda Ronstadt
Budokan
Tokyo, Japan
3.3.1979
CD1
01 Lose Again
02 That'll Be the Day
03 Blue Bayou
04 When Will I Be Loved
05 It Doesn't Matter Anymore
06 Willin'
07 Alison
08 All That You Dream
09 Love Me Tender
10 Just One Look
11 Desperado
CD2
01 Mohammed's Radio
02 It's So Easy
03 Someone to Lay Down Beside Me
04 My Blue Tears/Poor Poor Pitiful Me
05 Tumbling Dice
06 You're No Good
07 Sorrow Lives Here
08 Back In the U.S.A.
Total time: 1:22:42
Linda Ronstadt - vocals & percussion
Waddy Wachtel - guitar, vocals
Dan Dugmore - guitar, pedal steel guitar
Don Grolnick - keyboards
Kenny Edwards - bass, harmonica, vocals
Russ Kunkel - drums & percussion
1st gen cassette of the original FM broadcast
fade in at start and first encore break applause smoothed by EN, March 2019
458 MB FLAC/March 2019 archive link
I will be back later in the week to really get March marching with all the things.
But right now your Linda Ronstadt burns down the Budokan tape has been waiting four decades to find your hard drive.--J.
