Riptide Pride: Robert Palmer 75

 

Robert Palmer - Murderess

Let's interrupt the Jazz fare with a milestone birthday for someone who's dead over 20 years, yet still seems culturally ubiquitous somehow.

He began as the Seventies did, in a sorta Prog-Soul-Blues-Rock amalgam called Vinegar Joe, who had recorded an album under another name right before he joined.

After three albums with them that went next to nowhere, they broke up and he went solo, as so many refugees from bands do.

He started to make solo albums in the mid 1970s, gradually building an audience with his evolving brand of soulful rock and funk.

For a couple of these records, he was even backed by The Meters, as funkified a New Orleans outfit as shall e're be.

As the Eighties began and MTV started, he began to have minor hits in the charts and move towards a kind of sophisticated, gentlemanly persona and image, which would really start to flourish and become iconic as the decade progressed.

Then -- after a splashy stint in a supergroup -- he dropped his 1985 platter, called Riptide, and folks began to get, well... addicted.

This album's several #1 singles propelled him into the ionosphere, and -- after 15 years at it -- he immediately became a global superstar.

More records and more hits followed until he died too young, in 2003.

I probably lean towards the music of Robert Palmer in his pre-glory days, with songs like Clues and Johnny and Mary, and of course his classic, hit version of Moon Martin's Bad Case of Loving You.

But it's the 1986 sold-out tour for Riptide that we visit on this, what would have been the man's 75th b'day, for this wild concert I have refurbished from an uncirculated, 1st gen FM source.

Robert Palmer 

Open Air Theatre 

San Diego State University

San Diego, CA 

7.26.1986

01 Monogamy

02 Discipline of Love

03 Communication

04 Every Kinda People

05 Dance for Me

06 Tell Me I'm Not Dreaming

07 What's It Take

08 I Didn't Mean to Turn You On

09 Murderess

10 Woke Up Laughing

11 Stupid Cupid

12 Shoot the Moon

13 Pride

14 Riptide

15 Get It Through Your Heart

16 Save Your Love (For Your #1)

17 Johnny & Mary

18 Some Like It Hot

19 You Are In My System

20 Planet of Women

21 New Day Rising/Jealous

22 Flesh Wound

23 Addicted to Love

24 Hyperactive

25 Bad Case of Loving You

26 No, Not Much

Total time: 1:36:44

disc break goes after Track 13

Robert Palmer - vocals 

Eddie Martinez - guitar & vocals

Frank Blair - bass & vocals

Dony Wynn - drums 

Sally Ven-Yu Berg - drums, percussion & vocals

Alan Mansfield - keyboards & guitar

Julie Homi - keyboards & vocals 

Kit McClure - clarinet, saxophone, flute & vocals

B.J. Nelson - vocals & percussion

1st gen off-air cassettes of the original live Westwood One broadcast, at some point transferred to MiniDisc

edited, retracked, repaired and remastered by EN, January 2024
674 MB FLAC/direct link

I understand that the pre-FM source for the majority of this performance circulates, but to be honest the mix for the later rebroadcasts of this sounded dull and empty to me, and attempts to remaster it fell flat.

This live mix, done on the fly as the whole show went out over the Westwood One network, blows it clean off the airwaves in my opinion, so it's this, largely uncirculated FM tape on which I chose to work.

Anyway I shall return with two more missives for the month, but I hope you enjoy what I've done with this one, all in honor of Robert Palmer's 75th birthday today. And if not? No offense: I didn't mean to turn you on!--J.

1.19.1949 - 9.26.2003