Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Would I Lie to Yule?

The concept of Yule being indigenous to Scotland, I think I have just the thing for your holiday jambox.
Who else is indigenous to Scotland and also Christmas Day, hmmmm... let me mull that cider over a bit.
The truth is, I remember her in The Tourists, so let exactly how old I am sink in for a moment. That was at the tail end of the 1970s.
When next I heard her distinctive voice, it was on WLIR-FM in Garden City in about 1981 or so. They were playing this beguiling sorta darkish disco cut called Love Is a Stranger, by this offshoot of The Tourists called Eurythmics. It may have even been a Screamer of the Week, unless those didn't start until 1982, I can't recall.
Then, MTV came on and suddenly every act on WLIR was visible and selling millions. The next Eurythmics platter came out right at the start of 1983 and all Hell broke loose.
The next single broke the world, I'm afraid. The video is still a masterpiece and surely one of the most iconic ever conceived. Once you saw her and heard that voice come out, it was all over.
A decade of massive success followed for the duo, until she went solo at the turn of the 1990s.
Once AIDS surfaced, she got out on the forefront of activism around it, and since then her philanthropy and social conscience work has only multiplied.
And above all, she is still, at 64 today, one of the most beloved and recognizable vocalists of our entire lifetimes.
Yes, the idea of Yule comes from Scotland, but even better so does Annie Lennox, born Christmas Day 1954.
And what more appropriate way to celebrate these dual occasions, than with perhaps the greatest unissued Eurythmics performance?
This one comes from a three-day series of concerts staged near the Brandenburg Gate in the summer of 1987. David Bowie -- his performance of Heroes, right there at the wall, is often considered his best rendition -- was the first night and Genesis were the closing night. Eurythmics were the middle night.
Gorbachev had just come in in the USSR and the East German kids, desperate for a taste of that glasnost, battled the Stasi and cops the whole three days, right there 200 yards from the music.
The band -- by this stage expanded to a septet for live work and much more a full-on rock band than the synthesizer-driven duo they broke out as -- delivered an absolute megamonster of a set to a totally bonkers audience well aware of the mayhem going on nearby.
Eurythmics
Platz der Republik
Berlin, Germany
6.7.1987

01 introduction
02 Sex Crime (1984)
03 Let's Go
04 (I Love You) Like a Ball and Chain
05 The Last Time
06 Here Comes the Rain Again
07 It's Alright (Baby's Coming Back)
08 When Tomorrow Comes
09 There Must Be an Angel (Playing with My Heart)
10 Who's That Girl?
11 Conditioned Soul
12 Right By Your Side
13 Thorn In My Side
14 Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)
15 Would I Lie to You? (incl. Day Tripper)
16 Missionary Man
17 Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves
18 band introductions
19 The Miracle of Love

Total time: 1:44:00
disc break goes after Track 10

Annie Lennox - vocals
Dave Stewart - guitars and vocals
Clem Burke - drums 
Chucho Merchan - bass
Jimmy Zavala - saxophone, flute and harmonica
Pat Seymour - keyboards
Joniece Jamison - vocals

sounds like a master cassette of an original SFB broadcast of the complete show
tape flips in Track 09 and Track 17 repaired and smoothed out by EN, Dec. 2018
This is as jumping a show as I've ever posted in the 5+ years I've been at this page, trust me. Annie makes several references to the situation and you can just feel the energy in the whole place, in both the musicians and the crowd, who do not have to be prompted to sing along whatsoever.
Some people feel that the fact that the wall was not there anymore just a short couple of years later proves their contention that these concerts had a lot to do with making the obsolete GDR government honchos give up the ghost and open things up to German reunity.
It could not have hurt.
So with that I wish everyone a cool Yule, and I'll return on Friday to funk you to death once again. But right now, we are here to celebrate this iconic voice and wonderful woman, on her 64th b'day. Sweet Dreams, y'all!--J.