D'Angelo - Live At Tramps, NYC (Live Album) [1995]

 

On August 30th, 1995 D'Angelo performed at New York City venue Tramps in support of his then newly released album "Brown Sugar" alongside Groove Theory and Vertical Hold.

ticket stub, via @krowdaddy on Instagram

The concert was covered the following day in a New York Times article titled POP REVIEW: D'Angelo Puts His Own Stamp On Songs, Raps and Riffs

"D'Angelo, who sold out two shows at Tramps on Wednesday night, stands apart from most 1990's pop Casanovas. Current rhythm-and-blues teems with singers who want to be the next Marvin Gaye or the next Donnie Hathaway. They dispense standard come-ons and promises in mellifluous voices, adding a little hip-hop braggadocio. But most of them imitate their idols' suavity while ignoring their idiosyncrasies: the attempts to reconcile spiritual and carnal desires, the musical experiments, the unswerving obsessions. D'Angelo has learned from his models' oddities as well as from their slickness.

His early set was short -- barely an hour -- but the music never rushed. D'Angelo's band started with a slow vamp straight from the 1970's, all glimmering electric piano and percussive wah-wah guitar. He arrived, unsmiling, to take over the electric piano and keep the groove simmering. And he sang about longing and lust, with one song about his anger at someone he finds "sleeping with my woman." That song, with its all-profanity chorus, and "Brown Sugar," in which he sang and rapped about being both satiated and eager for more, are clearly from the hip-hop era. But D'Angelo's music always took its time; riffs oozed up from the bass, the guitarist squeezed out slinky asides, Mr. D'Angelo's electric piano rippled and chimed.

As the groove undulated, D'Angelo traded phrases with three female backup singers. He pledged his love in a grainy tenor that was part Stevie Wonder, part Al Green, and he teased in a falsetto akin to Prince's and Smokey Robinson's; the backup vocals moved with and around his phrases like an endless slow dance. In "Jonz in My Bonz," they flirted with each other, the women's voices gradually stacking up harmonies as they sang "on and on, on and on" -- just where D'Angelo's groove went."

New York Times article from September 1st, 1995 by Jon Pareles

Setlist:

0:00 Theme From Shaft [Isaac Hayes cover]

3:38 Sweet Sticky Thing [Ohio Players cover]

4:46 Jonz In My Bonz

8:30 Me & Those Dreaming Eyes Of Mine

13:14 Shit, Damn Motherfucker

18:40 Cruisin' [Smokey Robinson cover]

25:41 I'm Glad You're Mine [Al Green cover]

29:14 Lady

38:28 Encore Break

39:53 Brown Sugar

Note: this is a fanmade cover as this live recording was not officially released.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oJkv9ScbZVasxKDItIbGaKtbeSWD2ZY5?usp=sharing