Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Juliana Hatfield- Live At Q Division Studios, Dec. 2020

 
 
With the continuation of restrictions due to the ongoing pandemic, live online concert streams have become pretty popular through a lot of 2020. The loss of income from live performances have caused many artists to seek alternative ways to earn a living and to reach out to fans. The live stream concerts help connect the artist with fans and while some shows are pay per view, others are free or rely on donations and selling merch/recordings. 
 
Juliana with the "setlist" for the show
 
Juliana Hatfield performed her first live stream concert on Saturday, December 19th from Q Division Studios in Somerville, MA. She played a solo acoustic performance of her classic second album (or her first with the Juliana Hatfield Three band) from 1993, Become What You Are (played in it's entirety) not once, but twice! After a shaky start (according to her), she repeated the first track on the album, Supermodel and when she completed the album with two bonus tracks (Christmas Cactus, her latest 7" single and Make It Home from the My So-Called Life soundtrack), she switched guitars and played the whole record all over again. Since I wasn't going anywhere, I stuck around and enjoyed part two, the "Martin guitar version" of Become What You Are
 
It was a joy and pleasure to see and hear Juliana perform live, just her voice and guitar. Hearing these songs acoustically without the JH3, takes the songs to a different level especially so many years later from their original release and lays bare the quality of songwriting and song structure and that Juliana is a really good guitar player. Once she became more comfortable and during the second run, she warmed to the idea of doing this again, possibly another album in it's entirety. At the end of the two sets, Juliana answered questions from fans who were able to live comment throughout the stream. We found out she's going to release her next album in 2021 called, Blood and she is planning on recording another "covers" album and she took suggestions about which artist to cover. She said she has some ideas, but suggestions ranged from the Carpenters to Nirvana and everything in between. She seemed interested in the possibility of covering someone like, Madonna, R.E.M. or Dinosaur Jr. (she's cover Dinosaur twice before!), but then again I didn't see Olivia Newton John or the Police on the radar before those records.
 
Juliana played her Martin acoustic guitar for the second set.
 
The sound quality is excellent and if you want to hear the audio only, I recorded the show live directly from the feed (line-out) into my recorder. I've split the tracks and though I considered splitting the two sets, the total download file isn't too large. (For burning purposes, I would suggest splitting the two sets (after track 16) and if you don't want to hear the Q & A from fans online, track 29 is quite long and could be omitted)
Enjoy!

The video of the show is still available online and you can watch it below or on YouTube


 
Essential listen of the week: During the Q & A portion when Juliana asked what album she should play next, a popular request was her unreleased album demos from circa 1996, God's Foot. Got me thinking about those recordings again and are worth another listen. I previously posted about it in 2009.
God's Foot (download mp3)
God's Foot (stream YouTube)


#14yearsoftrouble
Please do NOT sell or profit from this recording!
Do NOT convert to lossy formats.
Please share!

JULIANA HATFIELD
Q Division Studios
Somerville, MA
Live Stream
December 19, 2020
Become What You Are album (acoustic)


01. Supermodel
02. Supermodel (take 2)
03. My Sister
04. This Is the Sound
05. For The Birds
06. Mabel
07. A Dame With A Rod
08. Addicted
09. Feelin' Massachusetts
10. Spin The Bottle
11. President Garfield
12. Little Pieces
13. I Got No Idols
14. Christmas Cactus
15. Make It Home
16. <Talk>

17. Supermodel
18. My Sister
19. This Is The Sound
20. For the Birds
21. Mabel
22. A Dame With A Rod
23. Addicted
24. Feelin' Massachusetts
25. Spin The Bottle
26. President Garfield
27. Little Pieces
28. I Got No Idols
29. <talk (viewers Q & A)>

 

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:17 PM

    Very cool to hear "Make It Home". Very powerful nostalgia factor with that song for me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Morrison6:54 PM

    Can't tell you how excited I am to see this! I LOVED that album, and many others of hers and also of the Blake Babies.

    I got to interview her when this LP came out and she played a small show in Atlanta. Very memorable.

    Thanks very much for sharing this !!

    ReplyDelete
  3. So glad this is available, as the video is down. Thanks! As you may know, JH has done another stream, this time of the Bed album, which is still on YouTube for now. Her plan is to do a different album every month. Any chance you could post audio versions as the livestreams roll out?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Glad you asked. I have the audio of latest stream ready to post. Just tweaking it, it'll be up soon.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Do you have an MP4 rip of this show by chance? TIA

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sorry, I don't. Good idea though.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous11:07 PM

    Thank you!

    ~Queertone

    ReplyDelete