God's Own Fool

I was going through some old tapes I've had since pterodactyls ruled the skies, and I found a Christmas concert I taped off the radio featuring the music of Michael Card. As you may recall, I previously shared his music on this blog so even if you never heard of him before, hopefully you checked out his songs I posted before.

The concert starts out with a set of some of Michael Card's better know songs, and the first one he begins with is "God's Own Fool," so it struck me to be a fun idea to post this concert since April Fool's Day is upon us.

The year this was recorded is unknown to me. Considering The Promise came out in 1991 and I recorded this off KJLY in southern Minnesota, that puts this between Christmas 91 and Christmas 93 because by Christmas 94 I had moved out of the listening area of this particular radio station. My guesstimation is that I recorded this in 1993. It's as a good of guess as any, but there is a clue in the concert: he mentions the following week he's going to be performing this same concert in Belfast. That concert, as far as I can tell, was released on video in 1997 (though I am not certain...I don't own the video and it's not on DVD.) So I am not exactly sure what year that was recorded for the video.

Nonetheless, I have this tape. I have tried to find a DJ copy of this musical, but to no avail. While I have been able to track down copies of radio shows on LP and CD that were sent to radio stations for broadcast in the past, I am guessing this was not sent on LP or CD to radio stations, as it was simulcast live. And I wish I had an official radio station copy, because the sound quality on my approximately 15 year old tape leaves a bit to be desired, and worst of all the third part of the concert is incomplete. I regret that, but I am thinking it had to be a 2 hour concert and I only had a 90 minute tape. (Just to say I am SOOOOOO glad I have the ability to record from the radio directly onto my computer now...no more messy tape to deal with!)

Also, a bit of Michael Card's talking (I forget on which track) is missing because of the switch from side A to side B.

So I apologize this concert isn't complete and in better quality, but I present here the full tape I have, divided in tracks, but none of the concert has been edited out. Even the pauses from Michael Card's speech to the time his band starts playing is fully intact....this is just as I taped it off the radio and given to you, including a station ID for you air check fans out there.

01-God's Own Fool
02-My Shepherd (Psalm 23)
03-Know You In the Now; Could It Be?
04-Talking, introductions
05-Jubliee
06-More introductions
07-Band warming up
08-Christmas portion introduction
09-The Promise
10-Reading
11-Unto Us a Son is Given
12-Reading
13-What Her Heart Remembered
14-Joseph's Song introduction
15-Joseph's Song
16-Vicit Agnus Intro
17-Vicit Agnus Noster (Our Lamb Has Conquered)
18-Reading
19-Shepherds' Watch
20-Jacob's Star intro
21-Jacob's Star
22-Reading
23-We Will Find Him
24-Thou the Promise
25-Immanuel intro
26-Immanuel
27-Carols portion (incomplete)

Also, I thought I should point out that the posting of this puts my online files at well over 1 gigabyte. I have 2 gigs available on my online storage site, so we have a ways to go yet, but I thought I would mention that when I run out of space, the first things to get taken down are these larger collections. I am not going to give a date when these files will no longer be available...I will more than likely take down the older ones first to make more space for new ones...but these won't be around forever. So get them while the getting is good.

Thank you, and thanks for listening. And I think I have some really cool stuff to share with you all through the month of April. I plan on making one post per week for the next couple of months, so keep checking back from time to time...there will be some good stuff coming. Maybe familiar stuff to you die hard Christmas music enthusiasts, but hopefully something new as well. I got some good collections planned to share.