Friday, August 10, 2018

Full Show Friday: Steve Miller Band 10/10/92 - Shoreline Amphitheatre

We search the murky back waters of youtube to find full concerts and post them to the site weekly, come back every seven days to help us celebrate Full Show Friday's. These shows are of varying quality and may not be here for long so enjoy them while you can...As always, please support the artist every which way, but especially by seeing them live (if they are still playing)...This week...Steve Miller Band!
Some months our Full Show Friday's will focus on specific artistsyearsvenues, festivals or some combo of it all. This month we focus on summer concert standby's who always played the picturesque Saratoga Performing Arts Center over the years. 

August always makes RtBE think of upstate New York, specifically the town of Saratoga. Going to high school just a few miles from the town, we would spend many August days at the beautiful horse track and hot nights in the state park watching bands from all over. A few years back we presented shows from the venue itself. This month we will highlight some bands who always seemed to roll through and we (mostly) got to see live.  

This week we showcase the Steve Miller Band set from 1992 at Shoreline Amphitheatre. In the early 90's Miller was a touring powerhouse, every summer he would sell out SPAC and for some reason it would be THE summer concert until Dave Matthews somehow took over.

Kind of surprising but also kind of obvious as both are lighthearted, middle of the road, semi-fun nights out for the middle aged upstate (white) fan.

Here is where that caveat mostly from above comes into play; we never went to Saratoga to catch Steve Miller, but I will guarantee he rolled through their in 92 and we passed...weren't into his style, but can't bag on his professionalism.

Pro Shot, Pro Sound, Full Setlist and LOTS of Info Below. Enjoy:


Steve Miller Band - Full Concert Recorded Live: 10/10/1992 - Shoreline Amphitheatre (Mountain View, CA)

Setlist: 0:00:00 - Fly Like An Eagle 0:04:51 - Seasons 0:08:33 - You're So Fine 0:12:09 - Mercury Blues 0:15:36 - I'm Tore Down 0:18:38 - Gangster Of Love 0:20:53 - Livin' In The USA 0:25:15 - Dance, Dance, Dance 0:28:16 - Rock'n Me 0:33:41 - Take The Money And Run 0:37:21 - Jet Airliner 0:42:14 - Monologue 0:44:23 - The Joker Personnel: Steve Miller - guitar, lead vocals Norton Buffalo - harmonica Keith Allen - guitar Byron Allred - keyboards Summary:

Steve Miller was among the major artists who lined up on this 1992 weekend to pay homage to indigenous peoples for an event billed as "All Our Colors: The Good Road Concert, A Benefit for the Traditional Circle of Elders and Youth." Held over two days at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, the concerts commemorated 500 years of survival of the native peoples of the western hemisphere, with appearances by Ry Cooder, Jackson Browne and Santana presented alongside a traditional pow-wow and music from indigenous artists.

Miller used his set to highlight his blues roots: after all, he'd spent his early years on the Chicago club scene, learning the music from the masters. Eventually, he headed to San Francisco where he formed the Steve Miller Band in 1967 and explored the blues within the context of the city's vibrant music scene. Their debut, Children of the Future, received little commercial notice upon its release in 1968. Over the course of continued recordings however, the Miller Band and its leader honed their guitar jam and riff style, and eventually lost the psychedelic tones; by 1973, they'd found themselves a hit with the The Joker. He followed up that album with an even bigger hit, Fly Like An Eagle in 1976, a multi-platinum rock standard, and its companion, Book of Dreams, in 1977.

For much of the '80s and '90s, Miller largely worked as a road dog, touring behind greatest hits collections. For this set, he turned in fresh, acoustic rearrangements of the catalog material on which he'd made his name. A fairly sparse "Fly Like An Eagle," mingled with "par-tay" tunes, as he called them, like "You're So Fine" and K.C. Douglas' "Mercury Blues," which he dedicates to John Lee Hooker, also featured on the bill that day. He dedicated Freddie King's "I'm Tore Down," to Ry Cooder, while throughout his set, Miller was accompanied by his trusty sideman Norton Buffalo, on harmonica. They turn out "Gangster of Love," Miller's own homage to the old time blues styles that inspired him, and "Living in the U.S.A.," his high-energy jam about the American dream, as it was once known. Saving the crowd-pleaser for last, the self-referential "The Joker" can still bring a crowd to its feet, no matter when or where Miller performs it.

Miller would soon record new material on Wide River (1993); in 2010 he finally cut another studio album, Bingo!, to add to his catalog, but the mid-to-late '70s were truly his most prolific years. And yet, this '90s set finds "The Gangster of Love" and the "Space Cowboy" finding new ways to perform old tricks: "The Joker" rides again...

2 comments:

  1. That Gibson Acoustic trouncing tone I just love.Wish I could figure "The Riff" he does as no tutorial plays it correctly..They use capo 3 and the ones who don't still not correct...Probably tunes diff but still riff should stay constant..

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  2. Salute Mr Miller,entire catalog of Material is Epic Rock History..Thank you Mr. Paul as well.lol..

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