Philadelphia (Piccadilly Circus PCCD-033/034/035)
Wachovia Center, Philadelphia, PA – September 23, 2005
Disc 1: Twin Freaks (opening), Magical Mystery Tour, Flaming Pie, Jet, I’ll Get You, Drive My Car, Till There Was You, Let Me Roll It, Got To Get You In My Life, Fine Line, Maybe I’m Amazed, Long & Winding Road
Disc 2: memory of John & George, In Spite Of All The Danger, I Will, Jenny Wren, For No One, Fixing A Hole, English Tea, I’ll Follow The Sun, Follow Me, Blackbird, Eleanor Rigby, Too Many People, She Came In Through The Bathroom Window, Good Day Sunshine, Band On The Run, Penny Lane
Disc 3: I’ve Got A Feeling, Back In The USSR, Baby Face, Hey Jude, Live & Let Die, Yesterday, Get Back, Helter Skelter, Please Please Me, Let It Be, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – The End. Bonus track, so called “Sgt Kidz Version”, Philadelphia, September 22nd, 2005: Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – The End
Philadelphia is the first of three sets by Piccadilly Circus covering Paul’s current tour. It is sourced from an excellent stereo audience DAT tape, as are the others. (The balance and timbre are very close to the Toronto tape.) It covers the second show in Philly on September 23rd in its entirety with a bonus track from the previous evening and is a very enjoyable, lively recording and concert containing all of the usual between song stories. He tells “the gap” story before “Fine Line” (the incident occurred two shows before this in Tampa), the “Bouree” story before “Blackbird” (and plays the Bach melody out of tune), and the Pasadena story before “I Will”.
Before “Till There Was You” Paul says “You know when we first started out mainly, we used to play in the clubs, in the rock and roll clubs, the R&B clubs but um, there were some other clubs that were better paid and we kinda used to try and aspire to them you know. There were these cabaret clubs but the only trouble to get gigs at those clubs you had to do some sort of smoochy numbers you know you had to put a few of them in your act and you could get in you know. So this is one of the songs we put in. And actually the guy who was our roadie then helping us is here tonight in the audience Mr. Neil Aspinall. This smoochy one is for him.”
The bonus track comes from the first Philly show on September 22nd (the artwork says October 23rd) and is the final encore when triplets aged 6 Audrey, Jennifer and Joseph Johnson, joined Paul onstage and helped sing “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “The End” with him, dubbed the “Sgt. Kidz” version. This comes from another audience recording that is far from the stage and is merely fair too good, rating perhaps a six out of ten. It is a nice touch although the kids aren’t very audible.
The artwork by Piccadilly Circus is the style as the others, using the photo from the tour programme on the cover with red lettering printed on thick glossy cardboard stock. The label did use really gorgeous picture discs for this release, something they didn’t do with the other US 2005 releases and is a really nice touch. Any of the three releases are recommended and hopefully they’ll release more great tapes from this tour.
