Tom P*tty & Mudcrutch - I Can't Fight It - Non-Album Tracks (1973-1975)

Before Tom P.'s long career with the Heartbreakers began in 1976, he played with Mudcrutch from about 1971 to 1975. Actually, it's more like Mudcrutch morphed into the Heartbreakers, since some key guys were in both. Strangely, P. got Mudcrutch together for a new album and tour in 2008, and then another new album and tour in 2016. 

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

But the music of the original 1970s version of Mudcrutch has largely been forgotten. I'm guessing P. felt these were his formative years, and most of his music from then wasn't up to snuff compared to what he did later. But I beg to differ. I've assembled an album of Mudcrutch's best stuff that I think holds its own with some of the early albums with the Heartbreakers.

Seven of the 12 songs here were released in excellent sound quality on the "Playback" box set. Another one was released on the "An American Treasure" box set. Two more have very good sound quality because they were officially released at the time as B-sides. (Mudcrutch only released two singles during its 1970s existence.) But for one of the B-sides, "Wild Eyes," I replaced a section of the song near the beginning with a repeat of the same section later in the song, due to lots of pops and crackles. There still are some pops, but hopefully it's not nearly as noticeable as it was.

That leaves just two songs that are still officially unreleased on this album. Actually, they have a bunch of other songs that have shown up on bootlegs, but I feel those aren't good enough to make to cut.

I decided to include Mudcrutch's version of "Don't Do Me like That" even though P. redid the song in 1979 and had a big hit with it then. I think this version is nearly as good, and should have been a hit for Mudcrutch. "I Can't Fight It" is the other clear standout, in my book. Unfortunately, they used the F-word in it, probably preventing them from releasing it at the time.

By the way, the band was just called "Mudcrutch," But I've gone with "Tom P. & Mudcrutch" in the mp3 files so these can come up if one is searching one's music collection for Tom P. songs

This album is 41 minutes long. 

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/79Si5kZi

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3FynXPvik8GuXZK/file

For the cover art, I originally used a cover I found on the Internet, but I don't remember where I got it from. The version I found was mostly tinted, but there were some places where the colorizing didn't look right, so I tinted it. I added the album title at the bottom, but "Mudcrutch" was already on the image.

However, later on, I figured out how to do decent colorizations using the program Pixbim, so I found a different photo of the band, from a photo shoot in December 1974, and I colorized that. I've included the old version down here, since it's a totally different photo.