Unheard Bernie Worrell Live Music

Records/Books
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I happened to be browing through Bernie’s Discography on Discogs late last night, and I saw a new release that had not been added by me:

(there’s issues with the entry, I know, I’ll get around to fixing it if @silentboatman doesn’t beat me to it)

And also… there was one copy for sale! I saw that it said it was a CD-R but that didn’t bother me much, I wanted to make sure to grab this while it was still up there. So I bought it and paid and it’s already on its way to me. I found out after, that this was also on bandcamp (strange that it doesn’t come up when you search for Bernie Worrell on the site, though):

No one else has mentioned this release before, and it obviously escaped my radar while I was putting together the Quarantine project: Quarantine Project - P-funk projects that did not get a physical release - #38 by Dan.Wooridge - even though it’s existed for NINE YEARS! (the seller apparently bought it from the bandcamp page, though currently it’s download-only)

Anyway, this morning after I paid, the seller advised me that he has two rare Bernie live sets up for sale. They were too rich for my blood, but he graciously sent me rips of them. Here are the releases, in case anyone here wants them this badly:

And here are the files: https://www.dropbox.com/s/h5x4ce6g5a8v1z9/Worrell%2C%20Bernie.zip?dl=0

The Frontier Ranch set is plagued by distortion on the first big note of every song - you’ll understand what I mean when you hear it. I think it’s an audience recording, but other than the aforementioned issue, it’s very good. The Lynagh’s set is excellent, though. Wish I could afford physical copies - these were given as perks for funding Bernie’s cancer treatments, so not very many are out there in the wild, and it’s a very rare occurrence that one of those people will unload them.

It would be nice to know when these concerts were recorded, but it doesn’t appear that they’ve been added to setlist.fm. I believe Lynagh’s is in Lexington, KY and Frontier Ranch is in Boulder, CO.

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Thanks for sharing! WesNWorrell is also not listed on Bernie’s site, strange. I wonder if the seller made the CD-R him/herself with the bandcamp download, or if the CD-R is from bandcamp.

Regarding the live shows. I checked the pfunkarchive and Bernie apparently played at Lynaghs 1999, 2000 and 2002. So probably one of those dates.

The WOO Warriors played at the Hookahville festival (at the Frontier Ranch) in 2004 (Sept 4). So that must be that show. jambase link

Also worth checking out (if anybody missed it :slightly_smiling_face:) is the link @MotherFunkin posted about a while back.

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Thanks, that was posted before I joined the forums, but I remember reading (and liking) his story, but I never followed up on that link. Maybe because I was such a novice funkateer that I thought I only needed Bernie’s first three albums.

I just checked out that archive, and it’s amazing. First link I went to, amazing setlist, unique from many other shows I’ve seen, and outstanding sound quality. I highly recommend to anyone who hasn’t checked it out.

I think I want to download all of these… but I haven’t figured out how to use jdownloader for it yet. I actually already had jdownloader; looks like I last used it about 5 years ago. @MotherFunkin, if you see this, perhaps post a quick tutorial? (If I figure this out before I hear back, I’ll let you know).

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(15 minutes later…)

never mind, I see that downloading is easy to do from the menu at the right side of the page. I assumed they were only for streaming and you had to do something sneaky to download that I wasn’t seeing… haha

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I’ve been going through all this music, and it’s outstanding - out of 50 unique shows, there are maybe 5 where the quality isn’t great, and from December 2012 through May 2014, the setlists get really repetitive. However, those shows would be treasures if they were all we had available to us, so I’m only criticizing it from the perspective of someone with access to dozens of even more interesting shows.

There are a total of 103 songs played at these shows, not counting anything listed as unidentified or an improv jam or tease. There are 53 songs that are played just once ever - and you can hear 34 of these songs just by downloading 6 shows:

2003-05-02
2004-07-29
2008-03-07
2009-03-11
2015-05-29
2015-05-30

During those 6 shows, the only Bernie concert staples you won’t hear are:

Y-spy (which appears in 19 of these shows)
Take me To the River (which is in 16)
Get Your Hands Off (15x)
BWO is Landing (15x)
Supergroovalistic… ((13x)
So Uptight (Move On) (12x)

But there are a handful of shows from 2013 where you can find all of those songs, except Supergroovalistic, but grab one of the shows from 98-01, and you’ll get that, along with comin’ round the mountain, thumpasorus, and downstroke, all of which he never played after 2004. 2000-12-28, 2001-08-24 and 2002-06-29 have all four of those. Both for quality and for the variety of the setlist, I’d suggest the 2000 or 2002 set.

If you just downloaded the first 6 I mentioned, one from 2013, and the 2000 show, you’d have an excellent representation of Bernie’s post-1996 live career, and at least one live version of 70 different songs, including all of the ones he liked to play live the most.

…of course, that’s IF you want to be efficient about it. I, on the other hand, am looking forward to diving into 90 hours of live Bernie - I’m loving it so far. No two nights are the same, really. Such great playing all around, and there will only ever be one Bernie.

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Every now and then I’ll be sharing links to tracks I’m trying to identify. I realize not every song CAN be identified, but just in the first 1996 show I found one marked as “?” when it was just Blood Secrets from Blacktronic Science, and I’m sure I’ll find more. Anything instrumental that I don’t immediately recognize, I’m not going to try to name, but in the case of this track, it has lyrics and I’m sure someone here knows what it is:

(go to track 21, audio preview is just track 1)

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Great summary! I haven’t had the time to listen to all of it. :slightly_smiling_face:

Don’t know what track that is. Got a reggae feel to it. And what a great sound on the recording! Here is the sound preview (I think it’s the right one).

Link to the show: https://archive.org/details/bwww1996-11-08.dsm6.flac16

Just realized that this was the first show with the WOO Warriors. Pretty cool!

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what about track 4 from this show? anyone recognize it?

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It was Real Life Dreams from Funk of Ages. I couldn’t make the words out very well but it turned out the same song was played at the next show and it was crystal clear (and properly labelled, anyway).

and if you think that first show sounded great, about 40 of them sound better than that one!

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Damn, of course it’s Real Life Dreams. I can’t understand I missed that. :upside_down_face:

Sound familiar, but can’t recall. Argh, it’s like torture not knowing!

About links on the forum. If you don’t want to show a link preview, you can start the line/link with a space. Could be useful in cases like this when the preview is just the first track instead of the site itself. Just a tip. :slight_smile: