Paul McCartney
The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel
Las Vegas, Nevada
April 19, 2009

Lineage: DPA 4060 => bass roll-off => Edirol R09HR => WAV
Location: About 25 feet from stage, directly below left speaker stack

Disc one (72:05):
(1) Entrance (0:37)
(2) Drive My Car (2:32)
(3) Jet (4:52)
(4) Only Mama Knows (4:21)
(5) Flaming Pie (2:54)
(6) Got To Get You Into My Life (3:32)
(7) Let Me Roll It (4:27) =>
(8) Foxy Lady (2:42)
(9) Highway (4:08)
(10) Baby Face (0:37)
(11) The Long and Winding Road (3:53)
(12) My Love (4:59)
(13) Blackbird (4:03)
(14) Here Today (3:01)
(15) Dance Tonight (4:29)
(16) Calico Skies (2:48)
(17) Mrs. Vanderbilt (5:09)
(18) Eleanor Rigby (3:13)
(19) Sing The Changes (4:08)
(20) Band on the Run (5:21)

Disc two (73:56):

(1) Back in the U.S.S.R. (4:33)
(2) Something (4:28)
(3) I've Got a Feeling (6:06)
(4) Paperback Writer (4:10)
(5) A Day in the Life (3:15) =>
(6) Give Peace a Chance (2:21)
(7) Let It Be (4:05)
(8) Live and Let Die (3:56)
(9) Hey Jude (7:08)
(10) Encore break (2:30)
(11) Can't Buy Me Love (2:43)
(12) Lady Madonna (3:13)
(13) I Saw Her Standing There (3:12)
(14) Encore (2:08)
(15) Yesterday (4:13)
(16) Helter Skelter (4:15)
(17) Get Back (6:05)
(18) Sgt. Pepper's (reprise) (1:08) =>
(19) The End (4:10)

Comments:

The Vegas date was added two days after his headlining Coachella set in front of a massive audience; in contrast to Coachella, this show at The Joint represented the smallest paying audience (~2000) he had performed in front of since his first tour with Wings. The show sold out in literally one second; somehow, both TallTaper and I got tickets. People started lining up for this general admission show about eight hours before showtime, and we got there as early as we could to stake out a good spot on the floor. Somehow, we managed to plant ourselves about 25 feet from the stage (equivalent to about 3rd row for a seated audience) and were treated to an amazing performance.

Setlist for this show was similar to Coachella, featuring the expected Beatles hits along with a reasonable dose of relatively recent solo material. The oddities were good picks -- though "Sing The Changes" was kind of a dud, I thought "Calico Skies," "Only Mama Knows," and "Flaming Pie" stood up well against the classics. The acoustic-to-electric "Something" and the "Day in the Life => Give Peace a Chance" medley were definite highlights. Though I was struck by his voice (first time I had seen him since 2005, and I noticed he had to strain to hit some high notes that he'd effortlessly sung three years earlier) his performance was animated, the band was awesome, and his voice was still better than that of 99% of touring musicians. I would still rank this among the top five of concerts I attended.

The recording is terrific; the volume was as powerful as I can ever remember at a rock show. My master had distortions and clipping, but TallTaper's DPAs captured everything just fine. An advantage of the volume was that the music completely drowned out the crowd; the woman behind us singing along with "Hey Jude" made Linda McCartney sound like Pavorotti ... though her painful backing vocals made my hair stand on end, she is completely missing from the tape. (After ten years and hundreds of concerts in the interim, I can still remember this woman's voice - it was that bad.) But I digress -- this is an excellent capture.

I think TallTaper and I have had the only copies of this recording until now; many thanks to TallTaper for deciding it was ok to share widely.

Hopefully this will find a spot in many Beatles fans' collections.

Mp3 samples are included in the comments.