Tom P*tty & the Heartbreakers - Waiting for Tonight - Non-Album Tracks (1986-1988)

It is widely viewed that Tom P.'s 1987 album "Let Me Up (I've Had Enough)" is one of his least impressive. For instance, at rateyourmusic.com, which averages hundreds of ratings, it is the lowest rated of all his albums.  

(Note that I'm not using the full name of this artist due to concerns about copyright issues.)

But consider that the album before it, "Southern Accents," was highly acclaimed, and the albums he would do right after, "Full Moon Fever" and the first Traveling Wilburys album, would be both critically acclaimed and sell millions of copies. So what gives with "Let Me Up?"

It turns out the problem was one of song selection. In fact, there are so many excellent songs from the 1986 to 1988 time period that I was able to make an alternate album that uses none of the songs on "Let Me Up" and yet I'd argue would rate as one of his very best, had it ever been released with these songs on it.

Some of the songs come from his "Playback" box set, but many are so obscure that they didn't even appear on that. Four of them remain completely unreleased. Since very little in the way of studio bootlegs has emerged for P., I had to use live versions, which I edited to remove crowd noise. Most of those songs were played very rarely, or sometimes just once. So in a couple of instances I had to resort to using audience recordings that are less that pristine, but I think it's worth it because all of these are said to have been written by the group.

In the case of "King of the Hill," that would later be a hit for Roger McGuinn of the Byrds in 1991. But it was actually written by Tom P. a few years before. In 2018, a studio version P. and McGuinn performing a duet version of it in 1987 finally emerged. I doubt a version of P. doing it solo exists.

If you're a P. fan, you should download this album! In my opinion, in a better world, at least three of these songs - "Got My Mind Made Up," "Ways to Be Wicked," and "Waiting for Tonight" - should have been released and become big hits. But the album is solid all the way through, even though it's nearly 50 minutes long.

By the way, I added P. singing solo lead on the Traveling Wilburys song "Last Night." It's one of the very few good Wilburys outtakes that has appeared on a bootleg. I put it as an unnumbered bonus track since it repeats a track from the well-known Wilburys album.

This album is 48 minutes long, not including the two bonus tracks.

I'm not including the track list due to copyright issues. But you can find it in the mp3 download file.

https://pixeldrain.com/u/4HDyJZKu

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/IZr5KypyzP2wGAX/file

The cover is a modified version of the 1987 single for "All Mixed Up," with the text changed.