Gregson & Collister - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1985-1989

I feel a little silly, because I just posted the first Gregson and Collister BBC album a couple of weeks ago (as I write this in mid-September 2026), and already I have to rename that one from "Volume 1" to "Volume 2." That's because this is a collection of different BBC sessions, and after I posted that album, a commenter pointed out a 1985 session I'd previously missed. So that made this one start at an earlier year than the 1987 concert I've posted. Thus, the second BBC album I'm posting from them is "Volume 1."

Here's a link to that other volume, so you hopefully don't get even more confused by having two BBC albums by this duo called "Volume 1." 

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2026/09/gregson-collister-bbc-sessions-volume-1.html

Anyway, that 1985 session mentioned above opens this album with two songs, and it's a very interesting one. I'm pretty sure it was recorded (for the BBC TV show "Old Grey Whistle Test") before Gregson and Collister officially became a duo with that song. Instead, they were members of Richard Thompson's backup band, and those two songs were performed by that band, including some nice lead guitar interplay between Gregson and Thompson.

Tracks 3 through 8 comes from a 1988 BBC "In Concert" radio broadcast. I put it here instead of making a separate volume for it because it's only 20 minutes long. It happens to contain "Home Is Where the Heart Is," which also was played in the 1985 session discussed in the previous paragraph. I changed the song order some so those two versions wouldn't be so close to each other.

Tracks 9 through 11 are from a 1989 BBC studio session. I don't know anything about it except it's supposed to be dated March 3, 1989. If anyone knows more, please let me know.

The remaining tracks, 12 through 18, are from another 1989 BBC studio session. More details can be seen in the mp3 tags.

I believe everything here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is an hour and two minutes long. 

01 Home Is Where the Heart Is (Gregson & Collister with Richard Thompson)
02 Open Fire (Gregson & Collister with Richard Thompson)
03 This Tender Trap (Gregson & Collister)
04 You Rascal You (Gregson & Collister)
05 I Specialise (Gregson & Collister)
06 talk (Gregson & Collister)
07 How Weak I Am (Gregson & Collister)
08 Home Is Where the Heart Is (Gregson & Collister)
09 Blues on the Run (Gregson & Collister)
10 Everybody Cheats on You (Gregson & Collister)
11 This Is the Deal (Gregson & Collister)
12 Blessing in Disguise (Gregson & Collister)
13 Trying to Get You (Gregson & Collister)
14 The Minute You're Gone (Gregson & Collister)
15 talk (Gregson & Collister)
16 Here I Go Again (Gregson & Collister)
17 talk (Gregson & Collister)
18 I Shake (Gregson & Collister)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Gmv44CNm 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/bQvbfyWKBsT6lfb/file

The cover photo comes from a concert at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in January 1989.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison & Ringo Starr - Solo Rockers, Volume 3 (1969-2026) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here's the third and last album compiling the best rockers from the solo careers of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. Once again put together by Mike Solof (with some suggestions from me). 

There's one more best ballads album coming. Then, since McCartney has so much solo career, and his heart keeps on ticking, there's another album of extra rockers from him, and another of extra ballads. (On top of that, you'll also notice slightly more songs from him on these other albums too.)

Most of the songs here come from studio albums. There are a couple of exceptions though. "Soily" is a great McCartney rocker from his Wings years. He put out a live version, but no studio version. The version here is an unreleased studio take. Also, "I'm Losing You" and "Cleanup Time" were both included on Lennon's 1980 album "Double Fantasy." However, these are special remixes done by Mike. Oh, and the last song is an unusual one. "Givin' Grease a Ride" originally appeared on a 1974 album by Mike McGear, McCartney's brother. But Mike (Solof) did another edit to remove McGear and focus on McCartney's participation on it. McCartney co-wrote it, and the backing band on the recording was Wings. 

This album is 59 minutes long. 

31 Soily [Take 7] (Paul McCartney)
32 Goodnight Vienna (Ringo Starr)
33 I'm Losing You [Mike's Mix 2025] (John Lennon)
34 Old Siam, Sir (Paul McCartney)
35 Any Road (George Harrison)
36 Cleanup Time [Mike's Mix 2025] (John Lennon)
37 Spin It On (Paul McCartney)
38 It Don't Come Easy (Ringo Starr)
39 Sue Me, Sue You Blues (George Harrison)
40 House of Wax (Paul McCartney)
41 Whatever Gets You thru the Night (John Lennon)
42 Any Road (George Harrison)
43 Home to Us (Paul McCartney & Ringo Starr)
44 Drowning in the Sea of Love (Ringo Starr)
45 Givin' Grease a Ride [Wings Only Version] [Mike's Mix 2025] (Mike McGear with Paul McCartney and Wings) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/nNBttgVC

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/d5Oeosromzuc9dy/file

The cover is another imagines Beatles reunion image that Mike asked an AI program to make. I pointed out to him that it was odd if the crowd was behind the Beatles, but Mike pointed out it could have been a stage in the center of the crowd. 

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison & Ringo Starr - Solo Rockers, Volume 2 (1969-2026) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here is the second out of three albums where guest poster Mike Solof gathered together rockers from the solo careers of the Beatles. I've already explained pretty much everything you need to know in the write-up to "Volume 1," so I'll keep this write-up short.

All the songs here have been officially released, except for "Dispute and Violence." This was a collaboration between George Harrison and Ravi Shankar that was performed during Harrison's 1974 concert tour. 

This album is an hour and one minute long. 

Note that, for this album and the others in this series and the ballads series, Mike wanted the track numbering to continue from album to album. That way, you can put them in one folder and listen to them as a single album if you want. 

15 So Glad to See You Here (Paul McCartney)
16 What You Got (John Lennon)
17 Wake Up My Love (George Harrison)
18 One (Ringo Starr)
19 Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five (Paul McCartney)
20 Devil's Radio (George Harrison)
21 Instant Karma [We All Shine On] (John Lennon)
22 Have You Seen My Baby (Ringo Starr)
23 Girls School (Paul McCartney)
24 Tight A$ (John Lennon)
25 Cloud 9 (George Harrison)
26 Oh My My (Ringo Starr)
27 Monkberry Moon Delight (Paul McCartney)
28 I Don't Wanna Face It [Mike's Mix 2025] (John Lennon)
29 Dispute and Violence (George Harrison & Ravi Shankar)
30 Only Mama Knows (Paul McCartney)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jjye47MU

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/L7Adyk612Rd8gDn/file

The cover image is another one Mike made using AI, imagining Beatles reunions that never happened. In my opinion, this one has a late 1970s vibe.

Pat Benatar - Greatest Hits Live (1980-2015) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here's another nice guest post by Mike Solof. It's a collection of the best songs by Pat Benatar - as judged by Mike, who is a big fan. But there's a twist, because he chose all live versions. Well, except for three songs at the end he couldn't bear leaving out, which apparently were never performed live.

This album came to be because I had posted a concert by Joan Jett, and I was planning on posting one by Pat Benatar as well. Those two have always been linked in my mind, since they were pioneering female rock and rollers that became famous at the start of the 1980s. Anyway, since Mike is a bigger Benatar fan than I am, I asked him what would be the best concert recording from her. Instead, he came up with this idea, to make something that contains all of her best known songs, most of them performed within a year or two of being recorded.

The songs are in rough chronological order of when they were first released. But the actual performance dates jump all over, from 1980 to 2015. A little over half of the songs here are from bootlegs, but very excellent sounding ones. The following songs, however, are from official live albums: tracks 8, 9, 10, 12, 17, 20, and 24 through 28. You can find more details in the mp3 tags.

Finally, as always with Mike's posts, check out his PDF for comments from him, as well as some more nice photos of Benatar. He's also included a gapless single file version of the album, for those who like that.

This album is two hours and seven minutes long. 

01 Heartbreaker (Pat Benatar)
02 I Need a Lover (Pat Benatar)
03 We Live for Love (Pat Benatar)
04 Treat Me Right (Pat Benatar)
05 You Better Run (Pat Benatar)
06 Hit Me with Your Best Shot (Pat Benatar)
07 Hell Is for Children (Pat Benatar)
08 Promises in the Dark (Pat Benatar)
09 Fire and Ice (Pat Benatar)
10 Helter Skelter (Pat Benatar)
11 Shadows of the Night (Pat Benatar)
12 Lookin' for a Stranger (Pat Benatar)
13 Anxiety (Pat Benatar)
14 Fight It Out (Pat Benatar)
15 The Victim (Pat Benatar)
16 It's a Little Too Late (Pat Benatar)
17 I Want Out (Pat Benatar)
18 Oh Oh Song (Pat Benatar)
19 Love Is a Battlefield (Pat Benatar)
20 Sex as a Weapon (Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo)
21 Invincible (Pat Benatar)
22 We Belong (Pat Benatar)
23 Cool Zero (Pat Benatar)
24 All Fired Up (Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo)
25 True Love (Pat Benatar)
26 Lipstick Lies [Studio] (Pat Benatar)
27 Silent Partner [Studio] (Pat Benatar)
28 Tell It To Her [Studio] (Pat Benatar)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cBKEwVKq

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/2EXi12DYTbXNaf6/file

The cover image was selected by Mike. I don't know when or where it's from, exactly. 

John Carpenter - John Carpenter Presents: Trailers of the Mind... It's All in Your Head! (1974-1994) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here's another guest post by Mike Solof. He really outdid himself this time, with this collection of John Carpenter's movie music. 

Mike is a big fan of the movies of John Carpenter, who is especially renowned in the horror genre. But it turns out Carpenter composed the music for nearly all of his movies, and Mike is a fan of that music as well. His original plan was to collect his favorite songs from most of Carpenter's movies, and post that. However, some of the songs had spoken dialogue from the movies over them, and others did not. I thought that was an imbalance, and asked him if he could add in some more dialogue. Mike took that suggestion and ran with it. He labored many, many hours carefully adding dialogue, until all the songs here are a mix of music and that dialogue. In so doing, he created something new: songs from the movies with dialogue that helps set an ominous mood and reminds you of key movie scenes. He spent a long time getting the timing of the words and music to be to his satisfaction.

In case you're not familiar with Carpenter's name, you'd probably recognize many of his movies, such as "Halloween," "The Thing," "The Fog," Escape from New York," "Christine," "They Live," and many more. Personally, I'm not into the horror movie genre. But even I found this an interesting listen.  

If you want to know more, as usual, please read the PDF that Mike wrote and added to the download zip. 

01 The Fog [Prologue - The Curtain Rises] (John Carpenter)
02 Dark Star - Hello Bomb [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
03 Assault on Precinct 13 - This Is a Goddamn Seige [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
04 Assault on Precinct 13 - Hey, This Is Regular Vanilla [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
05 Halloween - The Evil Has Gone [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
06 Halloween - Halloween Theme [Death Has Come to Your Little Town] [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
07 The Fog - There's Something in the Fog [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
08 The Fog - We're Honoring Murderers [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
09 Escape from New York - I Heard You Were Dead [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
10 Halloween 2 - You Don't Know What Death Is [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
11 Halloween 3 - The Hills Ran Red with Blood [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
12 The Thing - Weird and Pissed Off [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
13 Christine - Show Me [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
14 Prince of Darkness - This Is Not a Dream [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
15 They Live - I've Got One that Can See [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)
16 In the Mouth of Madness - The Curtain Closes [Mike's Mix 2026] (John Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Z6EV9Jbp

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/6HM3OKjRehmqVD2/file

The cover art is a graphic made by someone named Tyler Champion. The original was in just two tones. I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program. Then I added the text at the top and bottom.

Various Artists - Les Paul & Friends, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York City, 8-18-1988

Les Paul never liked rock and roll all that much, but he is one of the key people who made rock and roll what it is nonetheless. I'll explain more about his massive influence on music further down below. But first, this was a tribute concert to honor Paul when he was still in good enough health to perform. He was 73 years old at the time of this concert, but he would go on to live another 21 years before dying in 2009. A lot of musical stars showed up to honor him and perform music with him: Eddie Van Halen, B. B. King, Carly Simon, Steve Miller, Rita Coolidge, David Gilmour, Stanley Jordan, and the Stray Cats.

I think Les Paul isn't as well known as he should be today, because he made his considerable mark on music before the rock and roll era ever began. Here's the intro to his Wikipedia entry: 

"Les Paul was an American jazz, country, and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier, and inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the solid-body electric guitar... and served as inspiration for the Gibson Les Paul. While he is mainly known for jazz and popular music, he had an early career in country music. In the 1950s, he and his wife, singer and guitarist Mary Ford, made numerous recordings, selling millions of copies. Paul is credited with many recording innovations. His early experiments with overdubbing, delay effects such as tape delay, phasing, and multitrack recording were among the first to attract widespread attention. His licks, trills, chording sequences, fretting techniques, and timing set him apart from his contemporaries and inspired many guitarists of the present day. Among his many honors, Paul is one of a handful of artists with a permanent exhibit in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. [He] is the only inductee in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame."

In this concert, Paul played lead guitar on some instrumentals by himself. He also served as the emcee, introducing the guest stars. He then played guitar for some of the guest stars as well.

This is that was broadcast on the Cinemax TV channel. Maybe this is all of it, or maybe there was more, I don't know. You can find the video of this on YouTube. However, this has never been officially released in any audio format. 

This album is exactly one hour long. 

01 How High the Moon [Instrumental] (Les Paul)
02 talk (Les Paul)
03 Lover [When You're Near Me] [Instrumental] (Les Paul)
04 talk (Les Paul & Eddie Van Halen)
05 Echo Tribune - Back Pain Boogie [Instrumental] (Eddie Van Halen)
06 talk (Les Paul)
07 Every Day I Have the Blues (B.B. King)
08 talk (Les Paul & B.B. King)
09 It Happens (Carly Simon)
10 talk (Les Paul & Carly Simon)
11 talk (Les Paul)
12 God Bless the Child (Steve Miller)
13 talk (Les Paul)
14 Am I Blue (Rita Coolidge)
15 Somewhere Over the Rainbow [Instrumental] (Les Paul)
16 talk (Les Paul)
17 It's Been a Long, Long Time [Instrumental] (Les Paul)
18 Deep in the Blues [Instrumental] (David Gilmour)
19 talk (Les Paul & David Gilmour)
20 talk (Les Paul & Stanley Jordan)
21 Georgia on My Mind [Instrumental] (Stanley Jordan)
22 talk (Les Paul & Waylon Jennings)
23 I Really Don't Want to Know (Waylon Jennings)
24 Blue Suede Shoes (Stray Cats & Everyone)
25 How High the Moon [Instrumental] (Everyone)
26 Vaya con Dios [Instrumental] (Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JHeRRgbe

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/bI4yBNMPj5h56H8/file

I assume the cover photo was taken either before or after the concert. From left to right, top row: B.B. King, Waylon Jennings, and Eddie Van Halen. In the middle is Les Paul. Left to right, bottom row: Stanley Jordan and Steve Miller.

Oh, by the way, I have some very good choices for the cover art. In addition to the one I chose, I've included two more in the download zip. One shows Les Paul with Eddie Van Halen, and the other shows most of the big name stars playing together for the finale. 

Suzanne Vega - Cover Versions, Volume 1: 1986-1997

Generally speaking, Suzanne Vega has filled her albums with originals, and almost no cover versions. But that doesn't mean she's never performed covers, it's just that she's usually done them in concert or for non-album projects. She has an appealing, unique voice, and great taste in covers, so I've collected all the cover songs I could find (with worthy sound quality, that is). I was able to find enough for two albums. Here's the first one.

The first song here, "In a Lonely Place," needs an explanation. It was written by the Smithereens, and appears on the 1986 Smithereens album "Especially for You." The vocals were mainly sung by the band's lead singer Pat DiNizio, but Vega added prominent backing vocals. Musical associate Lil Panda is a big Suzanne Vega fan, and wanted to hear a version with just Vega singing. Using the latest audio editing technology, he somehow managed to nearly completely remove DiNizio's vocals. The other version is perfectly fine, but it's interesting to hear it done this way too. So that's why this song has "[LilPanda Vega Mix]" in the title.

The other songs here generally come from tribute albums, or appearances on albums by other musical acts. (And they're presented in chronological order by year, as I usually do for albums like this one - see the mp3 tags for year and source details.) But there are a couple of exceptions, which are unreleased live versions. For "Chinese Bones," Vega had the honor of being a guest vocalist at a Grateful Dead concert. She chose to sing this Robyn Hitchcock song. And "Beyond Belief," maybe my favorite Elvis Costello song, comes from one of her own concerts.

This album is 43 minutes long. 

01 In a Lonely Place [LilPanda Vega Mix] (Smithereens & Suzanne Vega)
02 Stay Awake (Suzanne Vega)
03 Chinese Bones (Grateful Dead with Suzanne Vega)
04 Beyond Belief (Suzanne Vega)
05 China Doll (Suzanne Vega)
06 Cassidy (Suzanne Vega)
07 The Long Voyage (Hector Zazou with Suzanne Vega & John Cale)
08 Story of Isaac (Suzanne Vega)
09 Angel (Joe Jackson with Dawn Upshaw & Suzanne Vega)
10 Buy and Sell (Suzanne Vega) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1r77vBDH

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/CL2MWskBQNXJRTG/file

The cover image is from 1990. That's all I know about it. 

Covered: George Harrison, Volume 2: 1972-1989

Here's the second volume out of six "Covered" albums celebrating the songwriting of George Harrison.

When this album starts, in 1972, Harrison was seemingly on top of the world. His 1970 solo album "All Things Must Pass" was a huge critical and commercial success, hitting Number One in the U.S., Britain, and many countries. It surprised many by outselling the solo albums of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. 

For the first half of the 1970s, Harrison maintained a very active musical career. In addition to putting out his own solo albums, he produced and/or played on albums by other musical acts. We can see that here, especially with his help for fellow ex-Beatle Ringo Starr. There are no less than five songs here performed by Starr. 

"Back Off Boogaloo" follows the pattern of "Octopus's Garden" and "It Don't Come Easy" on the previous volume, in that it was solely credited to Starr when in fact it was co-written by Harrison. It was a big hit in 1972, especially in Britain, where it made it all the way to Number Two in the singles chart. But while those two songs I just mentioned are still credited only to Starr, in 2017, the official credits for "Back Off Boogaloo" changed to be a co-write with Harrison.

The same pattern continued for Starr's next big hit, "Photograph," which went all the way to Number One in 1973 in the U.S., Canada, and other countries. But this one was the first one to be officially credited to Starr and Harrison from the very beginning. Like all the other Starr songs mentioned above, it seems Starr started it, but needed a lot of help from Harrison to finish it off. Starr later said he was good at writing a verse or two, and a chorus, but then he often would get stuck. He also said of Harrison helping his songwriting in this era, "I only know three chords and he'd stick four more in, and they'd all think I was a genius."

But Harrison also wrote or co-wrote songs for others during this time period: "The Holdup" by David Bromberg, "So Sad (No Love of His Own)" by Alvin Lee and Mylon Lefevre, "Far East Man" by Ron Wood, and "I'll Still Love You (When Every Song Is Sung)" by Cilla Black. In all those cases, the cover versions included here came first. For "So Sad" and "Far East Man," Harrison released his own versions a year or two later.

Here's a fun fact about the version of "Something" by James Brown. That great song has been covered around 1,000 times, making it one of the most covered songs of all time. But Harrison said that Brown's version was his favorite out of all the covers he'd heard. In an interview many years later, he said, "There are a lot of really good versions of 'Something.' But the one that is just a killer, and nobody even knows about it except for a few friends of mine, is the James Brown version of it. He put it out as the flip side to a revamped version of 'Think.' And you gotta play it, it's just unbelievable." He even sent Brown a postcard complimenting him on it and suggesting that it should be released as an A-side instead.

Unfortunately, in the mid-1970s, Harrison lost a lot of the passion he'd had for his music career up until then. Here's a quote taken from a Wikipedia article: "Writing for Rolling Stone in 2002, Mikal Gilmore commented that 'the crises [Harrison] faced in the mid-1970s changed him,' and that depression was a key factor. Depression permeated many of the songs that Harrison wrote during this period, an issue that was not helped by his continued heavy drinking and cocaine use." As a result, he mostly stopped writing songs for others, and put out fewer albums himself. This trend deepened in the 1980s, when he only put out three studio albums, compared to six in the 1970s (with one of them being a double album).

As a result, Harrison's music didn't get the same attention in the 1980s, so there weren't as many covers. That's especially the case since he did very little to promote his career. The only concert tour he took in the 1970s and 1980s was in 1974. Only the last three songs here are from the 1980s. One of those, by the way, "Run So Far," was written for a 1989 album by Eric Clapton. However, Harrison's own version would be released in 2002.

This album is one hour long. 

01 Back Off Boogaloo (Ringo Starr)
02 What Is Life (Olivia Newton-John)
03 The Holdup (David Bromberg)
04 Photograph (Ringo Starr)
05 Something (James Brown)
06 Don't Let Me Wait Too Long (Rotten to the Core)
07 You and Me [Babe] (Ringo Starr)
08 I'd Have You Anytime (Ralfi Pagan)
09 So Sad [No Love of His Own] (Alvin Lee & Mylon Lefevre)
10 Sunshine Life for Me [Sail Away Raymond] (Ringo Starr)
11 Far East Man (Ron Wood)
12 I'll Still Love You [When Every Song Is Sung] (Cilla Black)
13 Dark Horse (Thomas Harris)
14 Wrack My Brain (Ringo Starr)
15 Cloud Nine (Gary B.B. Coleman)
16 Run So Far (Eric Clapton)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PETt92E9 

alternate: 

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

The cover image is from the 1970s, but I don't know the exact year. 

Nick Lowe - Party of One Demos (1988)

I really need to post more Nick Lowe albums. I have a bunch ready to go, but I'm so swamped I never get around to them. However, this is something I only discovered a few days ago (as I write this in May 2026), so it went to the top of my pile of stuff to post.

In 1990, Lowe released the album "Party of One." It was a good album - in my opinion, all of Lowe's albums are at least good - but it didn't sell that well. Somehow, an album's worth of demos from that album has been leaked to the public, with excellent sound quality. It contains all the songs from that album, plus seven more (tracks 6, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16, and 18). Two of those extras ended up as bonus tracks for the album (tracks 9 and 14). Another two (tracks 11 and 18) wound up on a 1992 album by a band he briefly joined, "Little Village." Another one, the great "I Live on a Battlefield," appeared on his next studio album in 1994, "The Impossible Bird." That leaves "I've Got Work to Do" and "Love's Been Gone Too Long" still unreleased.

On the "Party of One" album, all the songs were performed with a full band. Whereas this is just Lowe on vocals and guitar, though the songs are fairly fleshed out. He often added bass and backing vocals as well. Personally, I like this stripped down version better than the album version.

Everything here is unreleased except for two songs: "Rocky Road" and "Don't Think about Her When You're Trying to Drive." These exact versions of those have shown up on a "Party of One" EP.

This album is 58 minutes long. 

01 You Got the Look I Like (Nick Lowe)
02 Shting-Shtang (Nick Lowe)
03 I Don't Know Why You Keep Me On (Nick Lowe)
04 [I Want to Build A] Jumbo Ark (Nick Lowe)
05 What's Shakin' on the Hill (Nick Lowe)
06 Love's Been Gone Too Long (Nick Lowe)
07 All Men Are Liars (Nick Lowe)
08 Refrigerator White (Nick Lowe)
09 You Stabbed Me in the Front (Nick Lowe)
10 Honey Gun (Nick Lowe)
11 Fool Who Knows (Nick Lowe)
12 Who Was That Man (Nick Lowe)
13 Rocket Coast (Nick Lowe)
14 I've Got Work to Do (Nick Lowe)
15 Gai-Gin Man (Nick Lowe)
16 I Live on a Battlefield (Nick Lowe)
17 Rocky Road (Nick Lowe)
18 Don't Think about Her When You're Trying to Drive (Nick Lowe) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qgCNMcrb

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/nNPgZSSrFS9rhf2/file

The cover image is supposed to have been taken in London in 1989. The original was in black and white. But, as I usually do, I used the Kolorize program to colorize it. For his hair, I checked with color images from around this time, and he'd already gone totally grey/white. 

Klaatu - The Sampler Album (1976-2005) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here's another Mike Solof guest post. This one came about because I was conversing with Mike, and the band Klaatu somehow came up. I mentioned that I'd heard of them, but I'd never gotten around to listening to their music. So Mike volunteered to enlighten me by making a sampler album containing what he considers the cream of their crop.

The band has a very unusual history. Probably their biggest claim to fame is that when their debut album came out in 1976, there was a widespread rumor that their album actually was a secret Beatles reunion album. Of course that wasn't true. But I can understand why some people believed the rumor, because the band had a Beatlesque sound. And I consider that a very good thing. If you like that style of music - and who doesn't? - you should give this a listen.

There's a lot more to this band and their history. But I'm not going to tell it here. For one thing, Mike has written extensive liner notes, which are included in the download zip, as is his wont. And you can also read Wikipedia for more:

Klaatu (band) - Wikipedia

I asked Mike why Woman is only a bonus track. Here's his response. "In case you are all wondering (and I know you all are) why I considered 'Woman' a bonus cut and not part of the main set, here's the answer (taken from Wikipedia): 'The trio very briefly reunited in 1988 at George Martin's AIR Studios in London with John Jones to record a single, "Woman," though no one was particularly happy with the results as the song was written by someone outside of the band (Paul Vincent Gunia) for the German television series Tatort. Initially, Long had wanted to merely use the Klaatu name, but could not get the rest of the band's approval without their involvement. The single was released only in West Germany and did not chart, making it an extremely rare item in the Klaatu catalogue; Draper confirmed that the song was considered for a few rarities compilations, but all three band members had agreed to not include the track.'"

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft (Klaatu)
02 Anus of Uranus (Klaatu)
03 Sub-Rosa Subway (Klaatu)
04 Doctor Marvello (Klaatu)
05 We're Off You Know (Klaatu)
06 Sir Bodsworth Rugglesby III (Klaatu)
07 Around the Universe in Eighty Days (Klaatu)
08 Little Neutrino (Klaatu)
09 A Routine Day (Klaatu)
10 The Love of a Woman (Klaatu)
11 I Can't Help It (Klaatu)
12 True Life Hero (Klaatu)
13 Knee Deep in Love (Klaatu)
14 I Don't Wanna Go Home (Klaatu)
15 California Jam (Klaatu)
16 All Good Things (Klaatu)

Woman (Klaatu)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vcsQKLJM

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/473QSPC1alBVbpl/file

Klaatu was a notoriously elusive band. For the band's first few years, there were no publicly available photos of them at all. They finally relented a bit in the early 1980s, when they briefly went on tour. So I think this promo photo dates from that time. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program. Also, the background was just blank white. So I took some artwork of the pyramids from one of their album covers and put that in the background to make things look a little more interesting.

Frank Zappa - 1971-1988 Strictly Commercial Live (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Guest poster Mike Solof has been busily slaving away in the salt mines, coming up with more albums to post at this blog. In particular, he's got a big Beatles project coming that hopefully will knock your socks off. Unfortunately, I've fallen behind getting some things ready to post, but hopefully I'll catch up soon. For this album, he came up with the idea of collecting live versions of all the songs on the Frank Zappa best of collection "Strictly Commercial."

I'll leave most of the explaining to Mike, in his PDF notes included in the download zip. But Zappa was well known for his lead guitar playing, and he's able to stretch some songs out here. For instance, the official album is about an hour and 17 minutes long, whereas this is almost two hours long. A lot of the difference there is with "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow." The official album has the three minute long single version, but this is a 20-minute-long live version of the entire suite. 

As is Mike's style, he's included a gapless single file of the album in the download zip, for those who prefer to hear it that way.

By the way, all the songs here feature Frank Zappa, except for one. His only Top Forty hit in the U.S. was "Valley Girl," in 1982. But that featured his daughter Moon Unit Zappa on lead vocals instead of him, and she was only 14 years old at the time. So it turns out he never performed the song before dying in 1993. But, much later, in 2010, his children Dweezil and Moon Unit performed the song in concert just once. So that's the version included here. But note the sound quality is a bit rough on that compared to everything else. It's one of only two unreleased versions (along with "Sexual Harassment in the Workplace)." All the others were chosen from the many dozens of official live albums.

This album is an hour and 56 minutes long. 

01 Peaches en Regalia (Frank Zappa)
02 Don't Eat the Yellow Snow (Frank Zappa)
03 Dancin' Fool (Frank Zappa)
04 San Ber'dino (Frank Zappa)
05 Let's Make the Water Turn Black (Frank Zappa)
06 Dirty Love (Frank Zappa)
07 My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama (Frank Zappa)
08 Cosmik Debris (Frank Zappa)
09 Trouble Every Day (Frank Zappa)
10 Disco Boy (Frank Zappa)
11 Bobby Brown Goes Down (Frank Zappa)
12 I'm the Slime (Frank Zappa)
13 Joe's Garage (Frank Zappa)
14 Fine Girl (Frank Zappa)
15 Planet of the Baritone Women (Frank Zappa)
16 Sexual Harassment in the Workplace [Instrumental] (Frank Zappa)
17 Tell Me You Love Me (Frank Zappa)
18 Montana (Frank Zappa)
19 Be in My Video (Frank Zappa)
20 Valley Girl (Dweezil Zappa & Moon Unit Zappa)
21 Who Are the Brain Police (Frank Zappa)
22 Muffin Man [Extra Guitar Mix] (Frank Zappa) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/424ohU9v 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/WWM2Cx8sAJ0funq/file

The cover art is by Greg Joens. The original version was in black and white. I colorized it (because I hate black and white covers) with the use of the Kolorize program.

Various Artists - Covered: Denny Randell & Sandy Linzer: 1964-1998

Here's another songwriting duo highlighted for my "Covered" series: Denny Randell and Sandy Linzer. I wouldn't be surprised at all if you have never heard of them. I hadn't either, until recently. But while they didn't write any massive hits, they have enough hits for a solid album.

Randell and Linzer were both born in 1941. They were introduced to each other in 1963, and immediately began co-writing songs. The first song here, "Dawn (Go Away)," was written by Linzer with Bob Gaudio, a member of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and an impressive songwriter in his own right. I've already posted a "Covered" album for the Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio songwriting team. 

Randell and Linzer wrote a lot of songs for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, sometimes with Gaudio. I've included three such songs here (and a Franki Valli solo one). But "Working My Way Back to You" was also a hit for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons in 1966. I included the 1979 version by the Spinners instead because that was a much bigger hit. In fact, it was the biggest hit this songwriting team ever had, reaching Number One in Britain and Number Two in the U.S. 

In a similar way, "Can't Get Enough of You Baby" was a small hit for Question Mark and the Mysterians in 1967, but not enough to make the U.S. Top Forty. I included the 1998 version by Smash Mouth instead, since that was a bigger hit, making the Top Forty chart.

Probably another success was the song "I Believe in You and Me." (Linzer wrote it with someone else.) Whitney Houston had a Top Five hit in the U.S. with it in 1996. But, frankly, I find Houston's typically histrionic over-singing hard to take. It turns out the song was first released by the Four Tops in 1982. So I've included that version instead. It wasn't a hit, but the singing is much better.

I've been posting a lot of "Covered" albums featuring songwriters who got started in the early or mid-1960s. Nearly all of them stopped having hits by the end of the 1970s, due to changing musical trends (except for later covers of their earlier songs). But Randell and Linzer were a rarity in that they kept writing more hits through the end of the 1980s. The last original hit here is "Talk It Over" by Grayson Hugh in 1989.

However, their songwriting partnership petered out at the end of the 1970s. The vast majority of the songs up to and including "Native New Yorker" in 1977 were written by both of them. But the songs that come after that were written by one of them or the other, usually with other songwriting partners (except for tracks 12 and 17, which I mentioned above are not the original hit versions). 

Both Randell and Linzer also worked in other aspects of the music business, for instance producing albums, and promoting and developing the musical careers of some acts. Both of them are still alive, and about 85 years old, as I write this in 2026.

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 Dawn [Go Away] (Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons)
02 A Lover's Concerto (Toys)
03 Let's Hang On (Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons)
04 Attack (Toys)
05 Opus 17 [Don't You Worry 'bout Me] (Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons)
06 I'll Be Back Up on My Feet (Monkees)
07 Penny Arcade (Cyrkle)
08 Breakin' Down the Walls of Heartache (Johnny Johnson & the Bandwagon)
09 You Can Do Magic (Limmie & Family Cookin’)
10 Swearin' to God (Frankie Valli)
11 Native New Yorker (Odyssey)
12 Working My Way Back to You - Forgive Me Girl (Spinners)
13 Use It Up and Wear It Out (Odyssey)
14 I Believe in You and Me (Four Tops)
15 Fresh (Kool & the Gang)
16 Talk It Over (Grayson Hugh)
17 Can't Get Enough of You Baby (Smash Mouth)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qTodsFSL

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/KB4ibMU7sghsd7T/file

I guess it's pretty obvious that the cover is two photos put together in Photoshop, but I couldn't find any images of the two of them in the same frame. That's Sandy Linzer on the left, with the suit and tie, in 1977. I don't know the date of the Denny Randell photo on the right, but it's probably from the 1960s. 

Various Artists - Covered: Billy Steinberg & Tom Kelly: 1980-2019

I don't keep a close eye on music news, but yesterday I happened to hear that songwriter Billy Steinberg died. Specifically, he died on February 16, 2026, at the age of 75. That probably doesn't mean anything to most people, because I don't think he's very well known as far as songwriters go. But it meant something to me, because I had already made a "Covered" album of the songs he and songwriting partner Tom Kelly made. (It's one of several dozen "Covered" albums I've made but haven't gotten around to posting yet.) Due to his death, I decided to post this sooner rather than later.

Steinberg and Kelly wrote a lot of hits from the 1980s to the 2000s that you probably know without ever knowing who wrote them. Even though they were male, somehow they had the most success with females covering their songs. They had five Number One hits in the U.S., all sung by women: "Like a Virgin" by Madonna (1984), "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper (1986), "Eternal Flame" (co-written with Susanna Hoffs and recorded by the Bangles in 1989), "So Emotional" by Whitney Houston (1987), and "Alone" by Heart (1987).

Billy Steinberg was born in Fresno, California, though his family moved to Palm Springs when he was a teenager. After graduating from college, he formed a band called Billy Thermal. However, they didn't have any success, and one album they recorded around 1980 wasn't released until decades later, after he made a name for himself as a songwriter. He had his first songwriting success with "How Do I Make You," which was a hit for Linda Ronstadt in 1980.  

Tom Kelly was born in a small town in Illinois in 1952. He went to a college in that state, but dropped out to pursue a music career. He was a backing musician for Dan Fogelberg in 1976 and 1977. He also did a lot of session work, for instance singing backing vocals on Toto albums. He had his first songwriting success with "Fire and Ice," a minor hit for Pat Benatar in 1981.

Both Steinberg and Kelly independently had songs on Benatar's 1981 album, "Precious Time." They met at a party that year, and soon began writing together. Previously, both of them had written lyrics and music. But they soon fell into a pattern where Steinberg generally wrote the lyrics while Kelly wrote the music. Their really big break as a songwriting team was "Like a Virgin" by Madonna. After that, they were in high demand. What's on this album is just the cream of the crop of the many dozens of songs they wrote for well-known musical acts.

Their partnership continued very fruitfully until the mid-1990s. At that point, Kelly tired of songwriting and dropped out of the music business. He'd already had enough success to live on the royalties he'd made. However, Steinberg kept going with new songwriting partners. From the mid-1990s until the mid-2000s, he mostly wrote with Rick Newels, who already was a successful professional songwriter. From the mid-2000s to about the mid-2010s, he mostly wrote with Josh Alexander.

Steinberg had a lot of songwriting success after he stopped working with Kelly. But I listened to his big hits and, to be honest, didn't like them very much after about 2000. They suffer the same problems as most popular pop music since about 2000: formulaic and forgettable. So I generally didn't include most of those. To be honest, even a lot of their earlier stuff was formulaic and forgettable, but sometimes, in fact many times, they had some real winners.

But in case you're curious, Steinberg's biggest later hits include "I Turn to You" by Melanie C (2000), "Love Doesn't Have to Hurt" by Atomic Kitten (2003), "Too Little Too Late" by JoJo (2006), "Don't Hold Your Breath" by Nicole Scherzinger (2011), and "Give Your Heart a Break" by Demi Lovato (2012). After that, the hits petered out, although some older songs keep getting rerecorded and making the charts again, especially "Alone" and "I Drove All Night." For instance, Alyssa Reid went all the way to Number Two in the British charts with "Alone" in 2012, although it was titled "Alone Again" and had the now practically obligatory rap section.

I'm not a fan of Whitney Houston's version of "So Emotional." But since it was a massive Number One hit, I wanted to include it in some form. I found a radically different cover version by Jon McLaughlin from 2019 that I like much better, so I used that instead. Had it not been for that song, this album would end in 2000.

Here are their Wikipedia pages: 

Billy Steinberg - Wikipedia

Tom Kelly (musician) - Wikipedia  

That album is an hour and ten minutes long. 

01 How Do I Make You (Linda Ronstadt)
02 Fire and Ice (Pat Benatar)
03 Like a Virgin (Madonna)
04 Sex as a Weapon (Pat Benatar)
05 True Colors (Cyndi Lauper)
06 Eternal Flame (Bangles)
07 Alone (Heart)
08 In Your Room (Bangles)
09 I Touch Myself (Divinyls)
10 My Side of the Bed (Susanna Hoffs)
11 I Drove All Night (Roy Orbison)
12 Night in My Veins (Pretenders)
13 Lucky Love [Acoustic Version] (Ace of Base)
14 I'll Stand by You (Pretenders)
15 Falling into You (Celine Dion)
16 California (Belinda Carlisle)
17 One and One (Edyta Gorniak)
18 Everytime It Rains (Ace of Base)
19 The Consequences of Falling (k.d. lang)
20 So Emotional (Jon McLaughlin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/d2ZX8iYV

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/mbkA9S64SvICLiu/file

I don't know the details of the cover photo. But that's Tom Kelly on the left and Billy Steinberg on the right. There are patches of white in Steinberg's hair, which went completely white in later photos of him. 

Various Artists - Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, Waldorf Astoria, New York City, 1-20-1988

Yesterday (January 28, 2026), Bruce Springsteen dropped a new song about the current problems with ICE in Minneapolis, called "Streets of Minneapolis." It's good to see a protest song that addresses current issues, since there haven't been many of those in recent years. (He wrote, recorded, and released it in four days!) Here's a link, if you haven't heard it already:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWKSoxG1K7w 

Anyway, I wanted to post something from Springsteen after hearing that inspiring song. However, some recent computer problems I've been having have flared up again, which means I currently can't use Photoshop, which in turn means I can't make new album covers until that's fixed. So I looked around to see if I had some Springsteen-related album ready to go, cover and all. Luckily, I did. (I have soooo many albums I could post tomorrow, if only I had the time to finish them off. Sigh!) This one doesn't have a ton of Springsteen content, but it's a really interesting (thought short) concert. So, in a way, my current computer issues have an upside in that they're getting me to finally post this.

Now, finally, to the music. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame started in the early 1980s. In 1986, they had their first induction ceremony, complete with a short concert featuring some of the inductees and other famous musicians. This has become a yearly tradition. Some concerts have been a lot more memorable than others. In my opinion, the ones from 1988 and 1989 were the most interesting, with the biggest star power. I haven't collected the others (though I very may well do so with some of them in the future), but I've made albums of those two. This is the 1988 one.

1988 was a really big year for the Hall of Fame, because their rule is that artists are only eligible for induction 25 years after their first record (be it a single or album). And when they were making their decisions in 1987 for this ceremony, that meant they were looking at the artists who put out their first records in 1962. It just so happens that was the first year of recordings for the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Beach Boys! Those are three of the biggest and most influential musical acts of all time. The Drifters and the Supremes were inducted that year as well, plus some non-performers, like Berry Gordy.

The induction ceremony had a lot of intrigue and drama in it. The Beatles are arguably the biggest (and best, IMHO!) musical act ever, so they were the main focus here, even overshadowing Dylan and the other very big names. Since John Lennon was assassinated in 1980, he was represented by his wife Yoko Ono, and his sons Julian Lennon and Sean Lennon, and each of them gave short speeches. Ex-Beatles George Harrison and Ringo Starr were there, and also gave speeches. 

However, the big no-show was Paul McCartney. He was in the middle of a lawsuit still connected to the break-up of the band back in 1970, so he felt he couldn't attend due to that. He put out a statement: "I was keen to go to and pick up my award, but after 20 years the Beatles still have some business differences which I had hoped would have been settled by now. Unfortunately, they haven't been [settled], so I would feel like a complete hypocrite waving and smiling with [Harrison and Starr] at a fake reunion." 

It turns out the lawsuit, which involved the division of profits from record sales, was settled a year later. So that was unfortunate timing as far as this concert goes. But at least that opened the door to the "Anthology" collaboration between the ex-Beatles a few years later.

Normally, when I post albums like this, I skip long speeches and focus on the music. But I'm making an exception here. I didn't include all the induction speeches, but I thought the ones relating to the induction of the Beatles and Dylan were important enough to include. They're all together at the beginning of this album, and they are about 19 minutes long in total. If you don't want to hear them, or just hear them once or twice, there's still about 40 minutes of music after that.

A big element of the drama involved Mike Love, a member of the Beach Boys. Love is one of the most notorious assholes in rock and roll, something I've discussed in other posts. But he really outdid himself this time. He appeared to be drunk, and used his induction speech to insult various famous musicians in the audience. This led to a funny quip from Dylan during his acceptance speech: when he listed people he wanted to thank, he thanked Love for not mentioning him in his speech!

Anyway, there are lots of interesting stories about what happened during this event. But instead of trying to summarize them all here, I'll just point out to an article from Rolling Stone Magazine that does a good job:

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 

I've also posted a text file in the download zip that has the text to that article.

Regarding the music here, everything was professionally recorded, so the sound quality is excellent. However, I found the lead vocals were rather low in most of the songs, so I boosted that up with the help of the MVSEP program. Also, there was a problem in the performance of "Stop in the Name of Love." Mary Wilson of the Supremes was asked to sing the song (since Diana Ross was another prominent no show). But it was clear for this songs, as well as all the other songs, that there hadn't been any practice beforehand, so everyone was just winging it. For the first chorus at the start of the song, Wilson sang the song in one key, while the band (or at least most of it) played in another key. That sounds pretty painful to my ears. So I erased that, and patched in a chorus from later in the song. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in its title.

Oh, also, during all the talking between songs, where band leader Paul Shaffer was trying to direct things, one or more people on stage kept playing guitar so loudly that it nearly drowned out what anyone was saying. So for most of those tracks, I used MVSEP to lower the volume of the guitar enough to make the talking more audible.  

The songs "I Saw Her Standing There" and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" were officially released on the compilation album "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Volume 1: 1986-1991." Everything else here remains unreleased.

By the way, when it comes to the song list below, I only listed the name of the main lead singers. For all the songs, there was one of the most amazing gatherings of musical talent ever seen on one stage together. But it's next to impossible to figure out who was on stage doing what, other than the lead vocals. So that's why I kept the credits in the titles relatively simple. 

However, just as one example, it was Jeff Beck who started playing the "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" riff that led to that song being played, right when it seemed everyone was leaving the stage. Some of the others who were on stage at least part of the time but don't get mentioned in the song titles include: Neil Young, Paul Simon, Johnny Moore, Joe Blunt, Clyde Brown, Tom Fogerty, Les Paul, Arlo Guthrie, Yoko Ono, Ringo Starr, Little Richard, Peter Wolf,  Dave Edmunds, Jeff Lynne, Julian Lennon, Sean Lennon, Little Steven, and Clarence Clemons.  

This album is an hour and six minutes long. 

01 talk (Mick Jagger)
02 talk (Ringo Starr)
03 talk (George Harrison)
04 talk (Yoko Ono)
05 talk (Julian Lennon)
06 talk (Sean Lennon)
07 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
08 talk (Bob Dylan)
09 Twist and Shout (Johnny Moore)
10 All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan with George Harrison)
11 talk (Paul Shaffer)
12 I Saw Her Standing There (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
13 talk (Paul Shaffer)
14 Stand by Me (Ben E. King & Julian Lennon)
15 talk (Paul Shaffer)
16 Stop in the Name of Love [Edit] (Mary Wilson)
17 talk (Paul Shaffer)
18 Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On - Hound Dog - Honey Hush (Elton John)
19 talk (Paul Shaffer)
20 Barbara Ann (Beach Boys)
21 talk (Paul Shaffer & John Fogerty)
22 Born on the Bayou (John Fogerty with Bruce Springsteen)
23 talk (Paul Shaffer & John Fogerty)
24 Like a Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan with Bruce Springsteen)
25 talk (Paul Shaffer)
26 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Mick Jagger with Bruce Springsteen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SpmdHRju

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/yv9ChPKPJqpFcYT/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From right to left: Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and Mick Jagger.

Chris Rea - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Wembley Arena, London, Britain, 12-19-1988

Here's a fourth BBC album starring singer-songwriter Chris Rea. This is a concert from 1988. I've got a lot more of these coming soon. 

Since the last BBC concert from him I posted, in 1986, his career continued to gather momentum. He had one of the biggest hits of his entire career in 1987, with "Let's Dance." It made it to Number 12 on the British singles chart. (He was still having no success in the U.S., and so he wasn't bothering to tour there.) Then, just a month prior to this concert, he had probably his best known hit, "Driving Home for Christmas." It reached Number 10. But it became one of those Christmas songs that keeps coming back every Christmas season. It has returned to the charts in Britain every year since 2007, and has gone Triple Platinum in Britain as a result.

Given all that, it's a disappointment that neither of those songs are included here. According to setlist.fm, he actually DID play both songs in this concert, as you can see here:

Chris Rea Concert Setlist at Wembley Arena, London on December 19, 1988 | setlist.fm 

Unfortunately, the BBC chopped this concert down to an hour's length, as they often do to fit the music into hour-long radio time slots. And for some reason, they didn't include those two, as well as some of his other best known songs, like "Fool (If You Think It's Over)." If anyone has more of this concert, please let me know and I'll add it here. Rea only played "Driving Home for Christmas" sometimes in the late 1980s, then dropped it from his concerts until 2014. So you won't find it on most of the BBC albums I post after this as well.

The music here is unreleased, and the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 54 minutes long. 

01 Nothing's Happening by the Sea (Chris Rea)
02 Stainsby Girls (Chris Rea)
03 Josephine (Chris Rea)
04 On the Beach (Chris Rea)
05 Working on It (Chris Rea)
06 Loving You Again (Chris Rea)
07 Steel River (Chris Rea)
08 It's All Gone (Chris Rea)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/7mcoJceH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/EMn8hkrkTLuVQaW/file

The cover photo shows Rea at the San Remo Music Festival, in San Remo, Italy, on February 24, 1988. 

The Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe - Athens Music Festival, Winterville, GA, 9-25-1988

I'm particularly psyched to post this album. Until a few days ago (writing this in early January 2026), I had no idea this existed. I'm still kind of surprised that it exists, because it's very unique. For the entire duration of this (admittedly fairly short) concert, the Indigo Girls (Emily Saliers and Amy Ray) performed with Michael Stipe, the lead singer of R.E.M. I looked it up at a very comprehensive R.E.M. fan site, and this is the one and only time the two musical acts collaborated so extensively like this. Luckily for us, someone recorded it.

At the time of this concert in late 1988, R.E.M. had become big stars, thanks in part to their hit "The One I Love" from the year before. The Indigo Girls, by contrast, were just starting to make it. They released their debut album, "Strange Fire," in 1987. But it came out on a small record label and didn't get much notice at the time. Their next album, "Indigo Girls," would come out in early 1989 and would go double Platinum, meaning sales of over two million copies in the U.S. But that was still in the future.

Stipe and R.E.M. started out playing in small clubs in Athens, Georgia, and they kept ties to the area after becoming famous. The Indigo Girls also were largely based in Athens as their career gathered momentum. For instance, that's where they recorded their "Strange Fire" album. So Stipe became aware of them, and wanted to help them succeed. When their "Indigo Girls" album came out, Stipe had prominent vocals on the song "Kid Fears," and the other members of R.E.M. played on the song "Tried to Be True." This R.E.M. helped break that album.

Furthermore, both Stipe and the Indigo Girls almost never co-wrote songs with outsiders. But the three of them wrote the song "I'll Give You My Skin" together. It came out on a benefit album called "Tame Yourself" in 1991, as well as the Indigo Girls compilation album "Rarities" much later. 

Both "Kid Fears" and "I'll Give You My Skin" were performed at this concert. However, neither of those songs had been released yet, so this connection between Stipe and the Indigo Girls was probably a big surprise to most of the people in the audience.  

Furthermore, most of the other songs performed would have been a surprise to anyone in the audience who had all the R.E.M. and Indigo Girls albums released up until that point. In addition to the songs mentioned above, "Prince of Darkness" was the only other Indigo Girls original, and that one also wouldn't be released until the "Indigo Girls" album came out. Two R.E.M. songs were played as well, but they were obscure. "Hairshirt" came out on the band's "Green" album, but that album wouldn't be released until a couple of months after this concert. So did "Untitled (The Eleventh Untitled Song)." But that was a secret bonus track at the end of the album. It's actually be officially referred to by three different names in different sources, since the title isn't mentioned on the album at all. In addition to "Untitled" and "The Eleventh Untitled Song," it's also been known as "11."

So that means there wasn't a single original song performed here that had been officially released by either act at the time of this concert. But most of the songs, seven out of 11, were covers. Here's a quick list of the original artists for each of those songs:

Ain't No Sunshine - Bill Withers
First We Take Manhattan - Leonard Cohen
Midnight Train to Georgia - Gladys Knight & the Pips
Harpers - Hugo Largo
All Along the Watchtower - Bob Dylan
Dark Globe - Syd Barrett
Summertime - George Gershwin

What I like most about this concert is that it wasn't just a case of "I'll play my song and you play your song," like the Songwriters' Circle albums I've been posting recently. The three musicians (and it was just Stipe, Ray, and Saliers on stage, with acoustic guitars) genuinely collaborated on most of the songs. In early 1989, the Indigo Girls would be the opening act for a high profile R.E.M. tour. On most nights, Stipe would come out and add his vocals to "Kid Fears." But it was just that one song. They never collaborated in public like this before or since, at least as far as I know.

They played in front of a small audience, as you can hear in the recording. (It was a benefit for P.E.T.A. - the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, with a bunch of other local musical acts on the bill.) So we're lucky to get any recording of this at all, and it's only an audience boot. But it happens to be a very good sounding one. It may have come from the audio feed of a video, because one can find a video of this concert on YouTube.

However, the boot had one big problem: a constant level of hiss throughout the entire recording. Luckily for us, though, audio editing technology has come a long way in recent years. I used the "Denoise" option in the MVSEP program for all the songs. It worked like magic, completely wiping away the hiss. So this sounds much better than ever before, in my opinion, basically as good as a soundboard boot. 

Again, I just want to highlight how unique and special this concert was. I looked up Stipe's concert performance history at setlist.fm. Until today, as I write in 2026, he has never performed in concert as long as this without R.E.M. backing him up. That's true even with R.E.M. breaking up in 2011. He rarely performed without R.E.M. at all, and when he did, it was always for special occasions, like tribute concerts, where he sang a few songs at most. It's too bad these three people didn't perform together more often, because it's a really interesting combination.

This album is 53 minutes long. 

01 talk (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
02 Ain't No Sunshine (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
03 talk (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
04 First We Take Manhattan (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
05 talk (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
06 Hairshirt (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
07 talk (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
08 I'll Give You My Skin (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
09 talk (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
10 Midnight Train to Georgia (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
11 talk (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
12 Prince of Darkness (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
13 talk (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
14 Untitled [The Eleventh Untitled Song] (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
15 talk (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
16 Kid Fears (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
17 Harpers (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
18 talk (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
19 All Along the Watchtower (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
20 Dark Globe (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)
21 Summertime (Indigo Girls & Michael Stipe)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VbdGARLv

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/k7QFujm0Kg5HsSD/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert, taken from a video of it I found on YouTube. I feel bad, because I was only able to include Michael Stipe and Emily Saliers, leaving out Amy Ray. I wanted to include all three. However, there were multiple cameras, and the one focusing on Stipe and Saliers had very different lighting and angle than another camera focusing on Saliers and Ray. Putting them together just didn't look right. 

Little Feat with Bonnie Raitt - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Town and Country Club, London, Britain, 12-8-1988

Here's the second and last Little Feat BBC album that I've found. Like the first one, it's a concert. It also features Bonnie Raitt playing on a few songs, and even sharing lead vocals on a couple of them.

At the end of the 1970s, Little Feat broke up. They also lost their main musical force, lead vocalist and lead guitarist Lowell George, who died in 1979. But the regrouped with the album "Let It Roll." Not only was it a surprise hit, but they actually had more commercial success than ever before. It contained two big hit songs, " Hate to Lose Your Lovin'" and "Let It Roll." I was just watching an NFL Thursday Night Football game last night, and the show played part of "Let It Roll" as background music at one point, showing how that song has become an establish classic. 

I think the key to their resurgence was Craig Fuller. You may not have heard of him, but he's a very talented songwriter. For instance, he wrote "Amie," a hit by the Pure Prairie League in 1972. He joined Little Feat when they reunited, and cowrote eight out of ten songs on their "Let It Roll" album. He also became one of the band's main lead vocalists. He stayed with the band until 1993, and occasional reunions after that. 

Anyway, the typical version of this concert bootleg is just short of an hour long. The BBC often cut concerts down to that length to make it fit an hour-long radio show time slot. But I found one version that was longer - an extra 40 minutes. I also found a set list of the correct song order, and saw the longer version had a scrambled song order. So I put the concert back pretty close to the correct order. ("Down on the Farm" is slightly out of place.)

As I mentioned above Bonnie Raitt was a guest star on some songs. For four songs, she played slide guitar and sometimes sang backing vocals. But for two songs, "Man Size Job" and "Rock and Roll Doctor," she shared lead vocals. Check the song list for the songs she was on, because she came and went from the stage multiple times. Note that Raitt has a long history with Little Feat, as she absolutely loves that band. For instance, I've also posted an episode of the "Midnight Special" from 1977 when she performed with the band then as well.

Here's a random side note. For years, I've been using the program TagScanner to help with making the mp3 tags and fixing the file names for the albums in my music collection. I've never had any notable problem with the program in all that time, except for one weird quirk: any time I have a song with "Little Feat" in the name, and I save a change, it changes it to "Little feat" (lower case "f"). Every single damn time! If I try "Little Fead" or anything else similar? No problem. Just the exact spelling of "Little Feat" specifically. And it's never happened with any other musical act name. It's so bizarre! Would anyone have an explanation for this? (Luckily, I also use a second program, called Mp3tag, so I fixed this problem in that program.) 

This album is an hour and 39 minutes long. 

01 Fat Man in a Bathtub (Little Feat)
02 Spanish Moon (Little Feat)
03 talk (Little Feat)
04 All that You Dream (Little Feat)
05 talk (Little Feat)
06 Cajun Girl (Little Feat)
07 Down on the Farm (Little Feat)
08 Hate to Lose Your Lovin' (Little Feat with Bonnie Raitt)
09 Oh Atlanta (Little Feat)
10 talk (Little Feat)
11 Man Size Job (Little Feat & Bonnie Raitt)
12 talk (Little Feat & Bonnie Raitt)
13 Rock and Roll Doctor (Little Feat & Bonnie Raitt)
14 talk (Little Feat)
15 Let It Roll (Little Feat)
16 talk (Little Feat)
17 Old Folks Boogie (Little Feat)
18 Dixie Chicken (Little Feat with Bonnie Raitt)
19 Tripe Face Boogie (Little Feat)
20 Willin' (Little Feat with Bonnie Raitt)
21 Feats Don't Fail Me Now (Little Feat with Bonnie Raitt)
22 talk (Little Feat)
23 Apolitical Blues (Little Feat)
24 Teenage Nervous Breakdown (Little Feat) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/skqfCimg

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/EV2oJrVtpbvtSoZ/file

The cover photo is from an appearance on the "Saturday Night Live" TV show in 1988. I believe one band member got cropped out because he was way to the side. I would have liked to use a photo of the band with Bonnie Raitt from this time, but I couldn't find any like that except from the 1970s. To be honest, it was hard to even find a decent photo of the band from around 1988 at all.

Leo Sayer - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Bristol Hippodrome, Bristol, Britain, 5-29-1988

Here's a BBC concert by singer-songwriter Leo Sayer. It's the second BBC one I've come across by him.

I've gotta admit, just like the last musical act I've posted (Death Cab for Cutie), I'm not particularly keen on the music here. But musical friend Progsprog recently shared some of his music with me, and I noticed this concert. I also took notice of how very obscure it is. In all my digging for BBC material in recent years, I've never come across even a mention of it. So I figure it's kind of my duty to help share this sort of thing. I may not been excited about it, but Sayer has sold a ton of music, so no doubt there will be some people who will enjoy hearing this.

Sayer had a decade of hits, from 1973 to 1983. In the late 1980s, his career took a commercial downturn. In fact, he didn't release a studio album between 1983 and 1990. But when this concert took place in 1988, he still was only a few years from his hit-making era. Plus, this concert has the advantage of being a full one, instead of edited down to an hour or less, like many BBC concerts. So pretty much all of his best known songs can be found here.

The music here is unreleased (and very rare - thanks again to Progsprog for sharing), and the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is an hour and 35 minutes long.

UPDATE: On October 1, 2026, I updated the mp3 download. The music is exactly the same, but I changed the album title due to finding an earlier BBC concert he did. That resulted in me having to change the text on the cover art and in the mp3 tags. 

01 Leave My World Alone (Leo Sayer)
02 Wonderworld (Leo Sayer)
03 Moonlighting (Leo Sayer)
04 One Step (Leo Sayer)
05 talk (Leo Sayer)
06 Don't Wait until Tomorrow (Leo Sayer)
07 Giving It All Away (Leo Sayer)
08 Orchard Road (Leo Sayer)
09 One Man Band (Leo Sayer)
10 You Make Me Feel like Dancing (Leo Sayer)
11 The Show Must Go On (Leo Sayer)
12 Working Man (Leo Sayer)
13 Easy to Love (Leo Sayer)
14 More than I Can Say (Leo Sayer)
15 Endless Flight (Leo Sayer)
16 talk (Leo Sayer)
17 Sally (Leo Sayer)
18 How Much Love (Leo Sayer)
19 When I Need You (Leo Sayer)
20 Something New (Leo Sayer) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/nw4LChDJ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/aoBUI34FWW7u3vs/file

The cover image is from 1987. That's all I know about it.

Tracy Chapman & Natalie Merchant - Donmar Warehouse, London, Britain, 3-25-1988

I'm extra psyched to be presenting this album. It's actually two acoustic sets making up one concert. The first half features Natalie Merchant when she was still the lead singer for the band 10,000 Maniacs, and the second features Tracy Chapman. They're linked by a duet, but also by more, as I will explain. 

I had been aware of this concert for a long time. I put the duet of Merchant and Chapman singing " Where the Soul Never Dies" on a stray tracks album a few years ago, in fact. But I never considered posting it because I thought the sound quality was a little lacking. However, with the improvements in audio editing technology in recent years, I thought I'd give it a try. I think it sounds very good.

Before I say more about the recording, let me share the interesting story behind how this concert came to be. 

In 1987, Tracy Chapman was a struggling musician living in Boston, performing in small clubs and sometimes on street corners. But that year, she finally got her big break and got signed to a major record label, Elektra Records. Meanwhile, Natalie Merchant was becoming a star as the main singer and songwriter for the band 10,000 Maniacs. In the summer of 1987, they released their third album, "In My Tribe." It made the Top Forty in the U.S. album charts, putting them on the map as a nationwide popular act.

It so happened that 10,000 Maniacs was also signed to Elektra Records. One day, in late 1987, she discovered a demo tape of some of Chapman's songs while visiting the record company's New York City office. She was very impressed, so much so that she actually cried from being emotionally moved by the songs. In late 1987 and early 1988, Chapman recorded her debut album. It would be released in April 1988 under the title "Tracy Chapman." 

Then, in late February 1988, Elektra Records had Chapman perform a special concert in Boston to help build anticipation for her upcoming album. Even though only 150 people could fit in the club, lots of journalists and music industry insiders were invited. Merchant heard about the concert. She was so interested in that demo tape she'd heard that she flew to the concert and met Chapman after the show. Merchant later said, "I felt a kinship because her record was made from the soul rather than to make money. There was similarity between us in the lyrical sentiment and musical quality." A few days later, Merchant sent Chapman a copy of her "In My Tribe," album, and the two began communicating.

This soon led to Merchant inviting Chapman to a concert in London the following month. Actually, it was two concerts, on March 24th and 25th, both at the Donmar Warehouse, which only held about 200 people. This was designed to introduce Chapman to a European audience, as she'd never performed outside the U.S. before. At this point, Merchant had never really done any solo concerts, only concerts with 10,000 Maniacs. But she pushed herself to perform solo in order to help Chapman promote her upcoming album in this way. And even though Merchant was a star and Chapman was an unknown, Merchant opened the concert to help give Chapman a bigger spotlight. The effort worked, because some British journalists attended one or both of the concerts and started to spread word about her music in Britain. Chapman then played a few more solo concerts in Britain, opening for John Martyn, before returning to the U.S.

When Chapman's debut album was released in April 1988, it was out of step with the musical trends of the time. So at first, it did reasonably well, but not great. The album sold 250,000 copies by June. That month, she got to take part in a concert honoring Nelson Mandela that was broadcast worldwide. That caused her sales to skyrocket. A couple of months later, her album reached Number One in the U.S. album chart. Eventually, it went on to sell over 20 million copies. It also helped open the door for many other acoustic-based singer-songwriter types.

So it turns out this concert (and the one at the same venue the day before) was important for both Merchant and Chapman. For Merchant, it was the start of her doing solo work, though it would still be a few years before she left 10,000 Maniacs. And for Chapman, it helped build her reputation at a key time, when her debut album was still a few weeks away from being released.

Merchant further helped Chapman by having her be the opening act for 10,000 Maniacs for a few months, back before the Nelson Mandela concert. Merchant later commented, "She certainly doesn't need any help from me in retrospect. I played with her in England and had her tour with us to get my crowd to see her rather than have her relegated to women's bins or folk bins in the stores. When she toured with us not many people had heard the album, but people sat completely enthralled and she got standing ovations most nights." 

Thanks to this essay, where I found much of the information here:

https://tracychapmanonline.substack.com/p/tracy-chapman-natalie-merchant-10000-maniacs 

Now, let's get to this recording. I found recordings of the two sets separately, and put them together. But I'm sure they're from the same source. It's an audience bootleg, but a pretty good one. Because the crowd was small, there was almost no crowd noise during the songs. However, the big problem that stopped me from posting this in the past was hiss. So I tried something new. MVSEP has a conversion setting called "Denoise." I tried it, and it did a really great job of getting rid of the hiss, even during the songs, while keeping everything else. This works better than "noise reduction," which often harms the music. 

So that fixed most of the problem. However, the sound of Merchant's set was a bit rougher. The songs sounded pretty good, but the banter was often hard to understand. So I ran the talking tracks through Adobe's "Enhance Speech" program, which specifically helps with the clarity of speech. That helped a lot. The one remaining problem after that was that the first minute or so of Chapman's "For My Lover" was missing. Luckily, that song has some repetition in it, and the verses that were lost were repeated later in the song. So I just copied parts of the song to fill in the missing portion. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in its title.

On a final note, some of the songs performed in this concert still haven't been officially released. "After Talking to Myself" by Natalie Merchant has been performed in concert a few times, but it's not even known what the song title is. And Chapman played some songs that would show up on her second album "Crossroads," like "Born to Fight" and "This Time," plus, "If I" and "Be My Baby," which remain unreleased. And their duet of the traditional song "Where the Soul Never Dies" also remains unreleased by both of them.

This album is an hour and 38 minutes long. The Natalie Merchant set is 43 minutes long, and the Tracy Chapman one is 56 minutes long. (Also, just as a nitpicky thing, some versions of this bootleg I've seen list March 20th as the date, but I believe the more accurate date is there were two shows, on March 24th and 25th, and this is from the 25th.)

By the way, note that on the same day I'm posting this, I've added three songs to the Chapman "Acoustic Demos" album I made. All three of them are still unreleased songs recorded way back in 1986, in great sound quality, so you really should give those a listen. Here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/10/tracy-chapman-acoustic-demos-1986-1988.html 

01 talk (Natalie Merchant)
02 A Campfire Song (Natalie Merchant)
03 talk (Natalie Merchant)
04 Gun Shy (Natalie Merchant)
05 talk (Natalie Merchant)
06 Everyone a Puzzle Lover (Natalie Merchant)
07 talk (Natalie Merchant)
08 Don't Talk (Natalie Merchant)
09 talk (Natalie Merchant)
10 The Painted Desert (Natalie Merchant)
11 talk (Natalie Merchant)
12 Lilydale (Natalie Merchant)
13 What's the Matter Here (Natalie Merchant)
14 Maddox Table (Natalie Merchant)
15 talk (Natalie Merchant)
16 Verdi Cries (Natalie Merchant)
17 talk (Natalie Merchant)
18 Like the Weather (Natalie Merchant)
19 After Talking to Myself (Natalie Merchant)
20 talk (Tracy Chapman)
21 Why (Tracy Chapman)
22 If I (Tracy Chapman)
23 Across the Lines (Tracy Chapman)
24 This Time (Tracy Chapman)
25 Behind the Wall (Tracy Chapman)
26 Baby Can I Hold You (Tracy Chapman)
27 talk (Tracy Chapman)
28 Fast Car (Tracy Chapman)
29 talk (Tracy Chapman)
30 If Not Now (Tracy Chapman)
31 For My Lover [Edit] (Tracy Chapman)
32 Born to Fight (Tracy Chapman)
33 talk (Tracy Chapman)
34 Mountains O' Things (Tracy Chapman)
35 talk (Tracy Chapman)
36 Talkin' 'bout a Revolution (Tracy Chapman)
37 talk (Tracy Chapman)
38 Be My Baby (Tracy Chapman)
39 Where the Soul Never Dies (Tracy Chapman & Natalie Merchant)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/X4dRftSL

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/SojSNsOlHUBpier/file

The cover photo of Merchant and Chapman is from this time period, though I don't know the exact details. The background was white, but I used Photoshop to change it to black. I also used Krea AI to improve the image quality.

The O'Jays - BBC In Concert, Hammersmith Odeon, London, Britain, 2-5-1988

I didn't think I'd find any BBC concerts by the O'Jays, since the BBC isn't strong with American soul music. But I happened to come across this one, so here it is.

The O'Jays had their commercial peak in the 1970s, when the had eight Gold or Platinum albums in the U.S., and big singles like "Back Stabbers" and "Love Train." This concert took place in 1988. That happened near the end of their hit making years, with a Number One soul hit, "Lovin' You," in 1987. Curiously, that song wasn't included here. 

Instead, it's pretty much all 1970s hits. The pace is pretty relentless. There was no banter between songs whatsoever, and also almost no time for applause, except at the very end.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is very good. 

This album is 43 minutes long. 

01 Sing a Happy Song (O'Jays)
02 Use ta Be My Girl (O'Jays)
03 Your Body's Here with Me (O'Jays)
04 Love Train (O'Jays)
05 Living for the Weekend (O'Jays)
06 Stairway to Heaven (O'Jays)
07 Cry Together (O'Jays)
08 Make a Joyful Noise (O'Jays)
09 Back Stabbers (O'Jays)
10 For the Love of Money (O'Jays) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/DCZeFh2K 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/HqDrgFQZ9rxOMkg/file

The cover image shows the O'Jays in a concert in 1989. I don't know the details.