King Biscuit Flower Hour Show #1
Air date: February 18, 1973
Blood Sweat and Tears
Bruce Springsteen
Mahavishnu Orchestra with John McLaughlin
Recorded at:
Blood Sweat and Tears
North Mesquite High School
Dallas, TX
January 20, 1973
Bruce Springsteen
Max's Kansas City, NYC
January 31, 1973
Mahavishnu Orchestra with John McLaughlin
Century Theater, Buffalo, NY
January 27, 1973
01 Bill Minkin - KBFH #1 Intro
02 Commercial - Pioneer
03 Blood Sweat and Tears - I Can't Move No Mountains
04 Blood Sweat and Tears - Snow Queen
05 Blood Sweat and Tears - Maiden Voyage
06 Blood Sweat and Tears - When I Die
07 Bill Minkin - KBFH #1 Break
08 Commercial - Pioneer
09 Commercial - Newmark & Lewis
10 Alison Steele - WNEW ID
11 Bill Minkin - Write To KBFH
12 Bruce Springsteen - Bishop Danced
13 Commercial - Pioneer
14 Commercial - Newmark & Lewis
15 Bill Minkin - Segment Intro
16 Mahavishnu Orchestra with John McLaughlin - Dawn
17 Bill Minkin - KBFH #1 Break
18 Commercial - Newmark & Lewis
19 Bill Minkin - Write To KBFH
Brought to you through the efforts of the Collective For Live Music.
Our pal Sam Eliot's Mustache found this audio on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1mZCtJZJWI&t=1849s
He recorded the streaming audio, burned it as WAV files and sent it to me to chapter.
I chaptered it but also took the time to remove several hundred bits of (what I think is...) radio static. I didn't get everything but it's improved over the streaming audio.
I want to note that while this is "flac files of wavs" it is most likely "lossy" - streaming audio is usually not CD quality audio. I lack the expertise to analyze the stream (I could figure it out but I have to go to work in an hour...). Saving as a wav allows us to burn CD-rs so it makes sense and compressing them as flac to save space is also smart. I just want to call out that this is not a direct transfer from a reel source.
The gang felt that this was an historically important show; the start of the rise of syndicated live concerts distributed nationally. This outweighs the fact we didn't record this ourselves and can't verify the source.
It sounds very good; there's virtually no hiss that I can hear. Some "hum" that's probably 60 Hz and the 120, 180, etc. harmonics...which could be stage amps and monitors. Whatever this is, it's really good quality and a great historical document of a vintage radio broadcast.
My guess is this is recorded off-the-air from WNEW in New York. The other announcer (not Bill Minkin) is a female disk jockey; she's inserting intro and outro remarks, and a WNEW-FM station identification. The commercials are for Newmark & Lewis, which the internet tells me was based in the New York area (mainly Long Island). I note that the vocal talent on these commercials have a regional New York accent that stands out to my West Coast California accent ears.
The YouTube channel has a print ad for the show as a graphic; I haven't been able track a high-resolution copy of this down yet. Does anyone have access to Rolling Stone magazine archives?
One really weird thing about this show was Springsteen's choice of song. His debut album was released six weeks prior on January 5, 1973. Now... if your first album was out there, and you had a national performance platform, what would you do? Well, I'd pick my single "Blinded By The Light" and play the friggin' heck out of it. What I wouldn't do is pick a song that wasn't on the album...and wasn't on ANY album for the next 25 years (it finally turned up on 1998's "Tracks.)" But that's what he did.
Another weird thing about the past: High profile rock bands played high schools. Blood Sweat & Tears are playing a high school here. The Kinks played at my high school (Ygnacio Valley High School, Concord, CA) in the summer of 1970. Miles Davis played at our cross-town rival, Las Lomas High School. Santana played there, too.
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Also... I "asked the Internet" and got a Bing Copilot response that I cut and pasted into a jpg in the artwork file.
It says, "the show was special as it marked the reunion of the band after lead vocalist David Clayton-Thomas rejoined the group."
I didn't hear Clayton-Thomas's distinctive vocals on this at all. He's not there, and Concert Vault says it's Jerry Fisher.
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| This is just wrong. |
And in point of fact, they do NOT play "Hi De Ho (That Old Sweet Roll)," "Spinning Wheel," "Lucretia McEvil," or "You've Made Me So Very Happy."
This is our future: we ask the Internet, and it gives us incorrect information.
Đ®åⒻṬëŕṽøï says, "Please do not believe everything you read on the internet, including this sentence."
The download was corrected Thursday November 20, 2025 to include the name of the WNEW announcer, Alison Steele, "the Nightbird."
