Robben Ford Live at Hop Singh's early to mid 80s

Robben Ford Band at Hop Singh’s, Marina De Rey, CA somewhere around 1983 to 1985 Another entry from my vast collection of bootleg cassettes is this performance by the Robben Ford Band. This is really representative of the shows Robben was doing after the Yellowjackets and before his Talk To Your Daughter album came out. I had seen him many times from the late 70s thru the 90s and up until this time he had been working with various bands. Russell Ferrante had been keyboardist for most of them and Jimmy Haslip, Curtis Robinson Jr., or even Neil Stubenhaus was on bass, but now he had settled in with Roscoe Beck, with whom he would play for quite some time. The drummer was Vinnie Colaiuta who had become well known playing the clubs with A-listers as well as being an in demand studio drummer. Another local musician who was breaking out big at the time was Brandon Fields. I had seen him with many bands around town and he had a cutting alto sax sound that was reminiscent of David Sanborn. Robben was touring with the Miles Davis band at the time and for this gig he brought along Adam Holzman on synth who was also playing with Miles. The set list has a few songs for which I don’t know the names, so help me out if you know them. 0:00 Unknown 6:10 I Ain’t Got Nuthin’ But The Blues 16:30 Call Of The Wild 25:10 Revelation 37:08 Unknown 44:00 I Put A Spell On You 52:00 Talk To Your Daughter 1:02:44 Baby I’ve Got News For You Back in the 80s there were a bunch of great jazz clubs in the Los Angeles area. Hop Singh’s was only open from 1983 to 1986, but it had a lot of great jazz and blues artists…and even Weird Al played there. It was a big barn of a place with a huge stage and seating on 3 sides. The place had a great sound system, and on top of the kitchen and restrooms was a balcony with the mixing board and sound man and also a seating area where you got the best sound in the whole place. Hop Singh’s had a South-Seas decor and there were fishing nets draped on the walls including one hung like a hammock out in front of the balcony. At the time I had a really good Sony portable cassette deck and a couple of good sure microphones that I would sneak into clubs in my backpack. I would set it under the table and toss the microphones out into the net on the left and right and would get a pretty good stereo recording. Getting levels was difficult because I couldn’t mess with the machine during the show so I had to guess. I used a 10db pad on the mic inputs to help cut down on overload. This tape probably sounded better back in the 80s but I played it to death for at least a decade before it went into storage. I have another Robben bootleg that I will probably post even though the sound was recorded too hot. It’s from a year or so later at Hop Singh’s and a slightly smaller band. I also have one from At My Place in Santa Monica and another from The Ice House in Pasadena that I will most likely post.