The Allman Bros and The Indigo Girls, both acoustic, played at the Radio and Records Convention to entertain the attendees. I worked for the Radio company that owned R & R at the time, so I attended the Convention and show. The show was held after the day’s meetings, in a small red velvet cabaret-type room. Small round bar tables on different levels, small stage in the front. When the meetings broke up, it was officially free time, so the delegates could shmooze, visit booths, go to a hospitality room, etc. There must have been 500 delegates at the convention. I made a beeline for the show, secured a table next to the stage and tried to keep my excitement in check. I looked around and wondered where 500 people were going to sit–there was room for MAYBE 200 people, if they crammed. To my surprise, only about 100 people attended! The Indigo Girls opened, just the two of them, acoustic guitars and voices. (a man wandered onto the stage to take a recorder solo during “Closer To Fine”. I’m sure he had never played the instrument before that day!) They were tremendous. I had never seen them before and was truly blown away. After a small intermission, the ABB took the stage. They were feisty, smiling and talking, appeared to be happy to be playing a small acoustic show. Dickey’s comments later bore this out. Like the above mentions, it was a trancendant show.
THE REASON THERE ARE GOOD COPIES, I’m sure, is that it was recorded by Sony to help spark interest in their brand new format, MiniDisc. The idea was to give all delegates a MiniDisc of the show. So there may be a few hundred “official” MiniDisc copies out there, tho I can’t remember seeing one. Back at work after the weekend, I found out that the plan had backfired–the format was so new that no one had a MiniDisc player. So due to some demand, a small amount (maybe 100? 200?) of official CDs were created from the show tapes, featuring show tracks from The Indigo Girls and the ABB. My wife had major personal contacts within Radio and Records and even still could only come up with one CD. I’m looking at it as we speak, 13 years later.
