It was 1988, and a 24-year-old Tracy Chapman – all of eight weeks into her major-label debut – had just wrapped up a short three-song set on a side stage at a huge Nelson Mandela tribute concert when disaster struck: Stevie Wonder, who was about to take the main stage, discovered that the floppy disk with his synth programming had disappeared!
(In retrospect, I didn’t need to say “it was 1988”. The fact that one paragraph has the words “Stevie Wonder”, “floppy disk”, “synth programming”, and “Nelson Mandela” might have given that away.)
Short one floppy disk and one Stevie Wonder, Chapman and her guitar are sent out to the main stage to play the beautifully melancholy Fast Car, while the stage crew rushes to address the seeming variety of technical difficulties, with the sound of mic checks occasionally drowning her out.
Needless to say, the audio engineering isn’t amazing, but the performance is notable because you can see a turning point in her career in real-time. She starts out the impromptu second set visibly nervous, and eventually breaks out in a grin at the realization that she has a packed stadium in the palm of her hand. Fun stuff.