Paul McCartney (2/Cd) Codename Falconer

Falconer Theater, Copenhagen, Denmark – July 24th, 1991

Disc 1 (53:15): Mean Woman Blues, Be-Bop-A-Lula, We Can Work It Out, San Francisco Bay Blues, Every Night, Here There And Everywhere, That Would Be Something, Down To The River, And I Love Her, She’s A Woman, I Lost My Little Girl, Ain’t No Sunshine, I’ve Just Seen A Face, Hi Heel Sneakers, Good Rockin’ Tonight

Disc 2 (44:55): Twenty Flight Rock, Band On The Run, Ebony And Ivory, I Saw Her Standing There, Coming Up, Get Back, The Long And Winding Road, Ain’t That A Shame, Let It Be, Can’t Buy Me Love, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Inspired by his appearance on MTV Unplugged, Paul McCartney took the show on the road for several intimate performances. It was an interesting and appropriate idea. In a way, this was McCartney coming full circle in his return to the stage by duplicating a tactic he used almost twenty years before by playing small gigs on the university tour in 1972 with Wings.

Copenhagen was the last of six concert on the “Secret Gig” that summer. Codename Falconer seems to utilize two different tape sources. Most of the show is sourced from a fair but distant audience recording which is very noisy. Two songs, “Mean Woman Blues,” “We Can Work It Out,” are in such drastically better sound quality. It could be a soundboard recording or an excellent audience tape. There is a cut in “And I Lover Her” but the show is otherwise complete.

The setlist revolves around the numbers played in the television special. “Mean Woman Blues,” “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” and the Beatles tunes “And I Love Her” and “She’s A Woman” were all included on the program. Some songs were dropped like “Blackbird” and “The Fool” and were replaced by the as-yet-unreleased “Down The By River,” and the Eddie Cochran cover “Twenty Flight Rock.”

McCartney added an electric set for the second half of the show. “Ebony And Ivory” is the most interesting track included for it’s rarity. “Coming Up” is played in hard rock style arrangement, much different than the common disco tinged version.

Paul tells the story of meeting Fat Domino in New Orleans before “Ain’t That A Shame.” The show ends with the same arrangement of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” employed on the Flowers In The Dirt tours of 1989 and 1990, an album which had no contributions on this secret gig tour.

Recollections of this concert , including footage of “Mean Woman Blues,” can be found on the WogBlog. The definitive statement of this era is of course the Unplugged television special and there are several very good releases of both audio and video and it is an essential piece to own. These audience tapes, while not absolutely necessary, are interesting additions to the collection.