We'll ascend the high wire and get crazy, attempting 5 posts in 6 days as the herald angels clear their throats here.
Let's kick it off with the requisite milestone trip around the Sun for another of those underrated and undersung superstars.
Hard to believe she is turning 70 today. I feel older and less relevant every minute.
Yes, all the heroes of our youth are ready for assisted living facilities. She's probably fine, it's me that's ready for the home.
Speaking of home, I remember being there in suburban Caucasiastan all those moons ago, watching the then-new MTV channel when, lo and behold, they first came on and had to show actual music videos.
I remember the total, galactic void.... the dearth of Black artists yawning from the chasm of white focus group data when you'd check the early days of MTV.
Remember when David Bowie went on there and ripped them, live? I think I was watching that when it first aired... the look on the poor guy who was interviewing him's face was the look of pure, "My pathetic, safe excuses have just ended any hope I had of a credible career" terror.
I remember back then, they'd show one Black artist. Not often, but they allowed one.
I have no idea why. Maybe because she was English, and her music could be vaguely associated with the then-exploding New Wave? Because her stuff seemed less overtly "urban" than Rick James'?
Thoroughly racist programming decisions of long-irrelevant mass media outlets notwithstanding, today is the 70th birthday of the very iconic Joan Armatrading, and I've remastered this tasty master FM cassette to really excite the occasion.
Joan Armatrading
Orpheum Theatre
Boston, Massachusetts USA
2.21.1982
01 Sky TV introduction/Joan greets the audience
02 Stop Talking
03 Show Some Emotion
04 I'm Lucky
05 I Wanna Hold You
06 Rosie
07 Is It Tomorrow Yet?
08 Love & Affection
09 The Weakness In Me
10 Eating the Bear
11 When I Get It Right
13 Me, Myself, I
14 You Rope You Tie Me
15 Kissin' & a-Huggin'
16 Tall In the Saddle
17 Back to the Night
18 How Cruel
19 Willow
20 WBCN-FM outro
Total time: 1:26:54
disc break goes after Track 11
Joan Armatrading - guitar, harmonica & vocals
Gary Sanford - guitar & vocals
Jeremy Meek - bass & vocals
Dean Klevatt - keyboards & vocals
Justin Hildreth - drums
Julian Diggle - percussion
master cassette of a 1982 rebroadcast of the original WBCN-FM simulcast of the Sky TV broadcast of the complete concert
moderately remastered December 2020 by EN
543 MB FLAC/December 2020 archive link
I'm a little under the weather -- nope, not COVID -- but I'm hard at work in here flipping the bits into order for a weekend of astonishing music.
You'd better drop the pilot and send a little love & affection to wish Joan here an auspicious 70th birthday first, tho.--J.
