Buffalo Springfield - Market Hall, Dallas, TX, 4-20-1968

Last week or thereabouts, I posted a Buffalo Springfield concert from 1967. (it's popularly known as the "Teen and Twenty Club" show, but as I explain in that post, I believe it actually took place at the "Salty Cellar.") In that post, I lamented the lack of much recorded live Buffalo Springfield in quality sound. But in addition to that concert, there's this one. That one was an audience bootleg recorded right on stage with a reel-to-reel, and this is an actual soundboard bootleg. These are two the concerts of theirs I feel have the sound quality that makes them worthy of repeated listens.

This concert, recorded at Market Hall in Dallas, Texas, in April 1968, is as good as most soundboard recordings from that era. The one snag though is that it's a rather short show, at only 29 minutes. That's a refection of the fact that Buffalo Springfield simply weren't that popular back in those years, despite having a few hit singles, so they almost always had to perform short opening sets for bigger acts. This is almost certainly their full set from that day.

Because it's so short, I've added in two extra songs at the front. These two were recorded about a month later, in Long Beach, California, on May 5, 1968. It turns out that Long Beach concert was the very last one the band ever did (unless you could reunions decades later). The Long Beach bootleg has fairly decent sound, but it gets worse in many places, plus, the set list is almost exactly the same as the Dallas show. I've included the two songs that were only played at Long Beach, "Good Time Boy" and "Mr. Soul." "Good Time Boy" has pretty good sound, about the same as the Dallas show, but "Mr. Soul" has some significant sound issues that plague most of the rest of the Long Beach recording.

For both the Long Beach and Dallas recordings, I put the between-song banter on their own tracks, and also cut out most of the aimless guitar tuning and noodling. I also boosted the talking, since that was really low in the mix. I especially like Neil Young's sardonic comment right before "Rock and Roll Woman": "One more hit record, and we won't have to nail our equipment together before we start."

Most of the songs are the same as the ones they played at the Salty Cellar in 1967. But they do play two different ones: "A Child's Claim to Fame" and "Uno Mundo." But there are lots of differences in the performances, especially on the solos. That's particularly true on "Bluebird," which stretches to 12 minutes this time.

Oh, and one very nice aspect to this recording is that Neil Young appears on all of it, whereas he's missing for all but three of the songs on the Salty Cellar recording. (See the blog post there for an explanation.)

By the way, there's another quality live recording of this band at the Hollywood Bowl in 1967. You can find it on YouTube. The problem with that one is that the microphone they were using emitted a high-pitched whine for the entire duration of the show. That makes it unlistenable for me. It seems to me that's a problem that could be fixed with audio software these days, but it's beyond my limited abilities. If anyone has the skills to tackle that, please let me know.

01. Good Time Boy (Buffalo Springfield)
02. talk (Buffalo Springfield)
03. Mr. Soul (Buffalo Springfield)
04. talk (Buffalo Springfield)
05. Rock and Roll Woman (Buffalo Springfield)
06. talk (Buffalo Springfield)
07. A Child's Claim to Fame (Buffalo Springfield)
08. talk (Buffalo Springfield)
09. Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Buffalo Springfield)
10. talk (Buffalo Springfield)
11. Uno Mundo (Buffalo Springfield)
12. For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
13. talk (Buffalo Springfield)
14. Bluebird (Buffalo Springfield)

https://www90.zippyshare.com/v/5lEpzrCM/file.html

The photo for the cover art comes from a concert in Salt Lake City in March 1968. The band name text and colors comes from a November 1967 concert poster. I added the black behind the lettering to raise it up.