Unplugged & Jamming



Unplugged & Jamming - various locations
[Red Robin] (69:49, 16 tracks)
also issued by [Dragon] (1996)
New Orleans, , withBB King and Albert Collins (tracks 1-3)
Berkeley Community Center, acoustic set, (tracks 4-7)
MTV 1988, with Stevie Wonder, Jody Watley, Salt & Peppa (track 8)
MTV 1990, (track 9)
MTV Unplugged, (tracks 10-12) (mono)
Night Music, (tracks 13-15) (mono)
Houston Astrodome, (track 16)

01) Life Without You (6:27)
02) Boogie (4:50) "Frosty" (duel with Albert Collins)
03) Texas Flood (6:27) (with B.B. King)
04) Pride And Joy (2:21) (instrumental)
05) Instrumental (4:03) "Rude Mood"
06) Lenny (5:39)
07) Instrumental (7:16)
08) Superstition (4:58)
09) Voodoo Chile (5:36) (cuts in at solo section)
10) Instrumental (3:03) "Rude Mood"
11) Pride And Joy (4:08)
12) Scuttle Buttin' (3:12) "Testify"
13) Crossfire (4:15)
14) Jam (2:05) "Travis Walk"
15) Sailing Shoes (3:24)
16) The Star Spangled Banner (2:02) (bad sound, performed on slide)

Notes and Comments:

Rating: **** , Length: 90 min

The stuff with Albert Collins and BB King is really great. As is the acoustic stuff.

I just got this CD and while the sound is not of audiophile quality it is more than passable. The MTV stuff is of very good quality, while the jams with BB and Albert Collins are good; there isn't much separation or staging in the music, they all seem crowded over to the right a bit.
The solo acoustic stuff is good, albeit a little flat sounding at times. Overall I would say that while the sound quality isn't as good as say a direct to two track Audioquest recording, it is better than most of the top-40 pop stuff that continually pounds the airwaves.

Overall, I liked it..but it's Stevie,so how could I not? The only acoustic cuts are 4-7 and 10-12..the rest of it is all electric stuff.. I was sorta let down by that, expecting an acoustic album -- but its good anyway -- worth my $23.

love it.

I have this CD, the quality is good. The Berkley sessions came out well and so did the MTV sessions.

Two words... grab it! The jam with Albert Collins and BB King on Texas Flood are worth the price of the disc. And you get Superstition with Stevie Wonder, which is awesome; the Star Spangled Banner on slide, which is very cool despite that track's bad sound quality; and both acoustic sets are awesome too.The quality overall is excellent.
I bought it for the MTV Unplugged performances but found all but the Star Spangled Banner a pleasant surprise.

My recommendation is to buy it and buy it quickly.

Love it.

Heres the set list:

New Orleans Feb 88 w/BB King and Albert Collins
Life Without you
Boogie (duel w/ Albert Collins... excellent)
Texas Flood (w/ BB King... also excellent)
very good sound quality on this part

Berkeley Community Center acoustic set
(A little better sound quality than White Lightnin', but not much) (These are the labels from the CD, and are wrong.)
Pride and Joy
Instrumental
Lenny
Instrumental

MTV 1988 w/ Stevie Wonder, Jody Watley and Salt and Peppa
Superstition (pretty good, very good sound)

MTV 1990
Voodoo Chile (cuts in at the solo section. no 1st verse???)

MTV Unplugged 1988
Instrumental
Pride And Joy
Scuttlebuttin' (like I said, CD labels are wrong)

Night Music 1989
Crossfire
Jam
Sailing Shoes
pretty good sound quality on this part, with the Night Music house band

Houston Astrodome 1986
The Star Spangled Banner (on slide no less)
The sound quality is awful, but I'd wanted to hear it for a long time and was impressed... no Jimi-like solo in the middle, just the star spangled banner.

Anyway, overall, I liked it... but it's Stevie,so how could I not? It's about 70 mins long total. Oh yeah, the only acoustic cuts are 4-7 and 10-12. The rest of it is all electric stuff. I was sorta let down by that, expecting an accoustic album -- but its good anyway.

The sound is not of audiophile quality, but it is more than passable. The MTV stuff is of very good quality, while the jams with BB and Albert Collins are good, there isn't much separation or staging in the music, they all seem crowded over to the right a bit. The solo acoustic stuff is good, albeit a little flat sounding at times. Overall I would say that while the sound quality isn't as good as say a direct-to-two-track Audioquest recording, it is better than most of the top-40 pop stuff that continually pounds the airwaves.

The "Unplugged and Jamming" CD is great for the acoustic instrumentals at Berkeley Community Center and the MTV Unplugged stuff. But the best part is the liner notes describing this collection of "unique performances by the late, laminated Stevie Ray Vaughn." I was laughing so hard I had to start the song over. I guess when he stopped gettting plastered he got laminated instead.

It's awesome. He does a jam w/ Albert Collins and BB King. It also has his first acoustic set in addition to his MTV Unplugged set, which has Pride and Joy. It also has the one and only time he played the Star Spangled Banner, which was at the Houston Astrodome

(MTV stuff and other dates...) Favorite part is Life Without You from New Orleans in '88. Great speech in the middle of the song - slows down and says "less than two years ago I found myself down on the ground and I couldn't get up, I mean I was tryin and I couldn't...". Finishes the speech, then rips into a solo - it gets me every time. The rest of the disc has been widely discussed - it's a great one for your collection.

-- but its good anyway -- worth my $23.

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