Covered: Randy Newman, Volume 2: 1973-1999

Here's the second out of three "Covered" albums for singer-songwriter Randy Newman.

As I mentioned in "Volume 1," in the early 1970s, Newman was considered a cult albums, very critically acclaimed, but with not much commercial success for his own career. Even the many covers of his songs were rarely hits, though there were exceptions, especially "Mama Told Me (Not to Come)," which was a Number One hit in the U.S. for Three Dog Night in 1970.

But things changed drastically for him in 1977, with the song "Short People." To pretty much everyone's surprise, his version was an massive novelty hit. It made it all the way to Number Two in the U.S., kept out of the top spot only by the all-time classic "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees. It was wildly misunderstood, to say the least. A great many of his songs are sarcastic. For instance, his great song "Political Science" sarcastically advocates for blowing up the world with nuclear weapons. Many people who heard "Short People" didn't realize it was a sarcastic attack on prejudice by pointing out how silly it would be to hate short people for no reason, including ignoring the lyrics of the bridge, which explicitly run counter to the rest of the song. 

But in any case, the song made him a household name, even though his overall sales still didn't increase much. His only two really big hits on the singles charts remain "Short People" and "Mama Told Me (Not to Come)." Since Newman's version of "Short People" is so well known, it's the only song in this series I've included that's performed by him.

I also want to give a special mention to "Sail Away." I think it's an incredible song. But it also shows how unique his songwriting is, and how easy it can be for people to misunderstand his songs if they don't pay attention. It's basically an advertisement for a slave trader prior to the Civil War, attempting to coax Black Africans to come to the U.S. for a better life, when in fact the trader is tricking them into slavery. Yet somehow this sarcastic premise becomes a powerful song about the evils of slavery. It's been widely covered, including by the likes of Bobby Darin, Etta James, Linda Ronstadt, Ray Charles, Gladys Knight, Joe Cocker, and Kirsty MacColl. It was hard for me to pick just one cover, but I thought the version by Etta James is extra powerful.

From the start of Newman's songwriting career, he'd had a sideline writing instrumental music for T.V. shows, which then led to movie soundtrack work. That began way back in 1962, as I mentioned in the previous volume. His first movie soundtrack was in 1971. He did a few more movies here and there over the next couple decades. But his career took a turn in 1995, when he did the soundtrack for the hit movie "Toy Story." One song he did for that, "You've Got a Friend in Me," wasn't a hit per se, barely reaching the singles chart. But it became widely known, and widely beloved by children, and it's gone on to sell over three million copies! Surely that makes it one of the best selling non-hits ever. 

For that song, I've included a duet version between Newman and Lyle Lovett, since it's an interesting one that's also much less well known than the version just featuring Newman.

This album is 50 minutes long. 

01 Have You Seen My Baby [Hold On] (Ringo Starr)
02 Sail Away (Etta James)
03 Last Night I Had a Dream (Fanny)
04 Let's Burn Down the Cornfield (Etta James)
05 Naked Man (Grass Roots)
06 Lucinda (Joe Cocker)
07 Short People (Randy Newman)
08 Baltimore (Nina Simone)
09 Mr. President (Marshall Tucker Band)
10 You Can Leave Your Hat On (Joe Cocker)
11 Louisiana 1927 (Aaron Neville)
12 Political Science (Everything but the Girl)
13 You've Got a Friend in Me (Randy Newman & Lyle Lovett)
14 Feels like Home (Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt & Dolly Parton)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6SB3U9ZA

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/f6YT8V3gAvHLIQ3/file 

The cover image is from 1978.

Covered: Neil Young, Volume 2: 1990-1995

Phew! I had a hell of an adventure getting to Peru yesterday. Perhaps I’ll vent and explain what happened when I have some time. But I’m here and things are back on track, which is what matters. Anyway, here’s some more Neil Young. I’ll try to post another Dionne Warwick album next, when I have a chance.

The rest of the notes here are written by Fabio from Rio. Take it away Fabio:

By the early 1990s, Neil Young was experiencing a somewhat surprising cultural resurgence. After a creatively uneven decade in the eighties, he had his own creative revival starting at the end of that decade. Around the same time, a new generation of alternative rock musicians began openly citing him as a major influence. Bands associated with the emerging grunge and indie scenes embraced both the raw guitar power of albums like "Rust Never Sleeps" and the emotional directness of his acoustic work. Young himself responded by reconnecting with heavier sounds and younger audiences, eventually earning the affectionate nickname "the Godfather of Grunge." The covers collected in this volume reflect that moment of rediscovery, when artists from alternative rock, indie folk and roots music revisited Young's catalog and helped introduce it to a new generation of listeners.

--- 

Note that Fabio wrote individual paragraphs about all the songs in this volume. To see that, please look at the Word file added to the download zip file. Thanks again to Fabio for his help putting these albums together. 

This album is an hour and five minutes long.  

01 Powderfinger (Cowboy Junkies)
02 Cortez the Killer (Matthew Sweet & the Indigo Girls)
03 Interstate (Sand Rubies)
04 Heart of Gold (Lawrence Gowan)
05 Don’t Let It Bring You Down (Amanda Marshall)
06 Tell Me Why (Hemingway Corner)
07 Harvest (Jeff Healey Band)
08 Pardon My Heart (Malcolm Burn)
09 Barefoot Floors (Nicolette Larson)
10 Fuckin' Up (Pearl Jam)
11 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Breits)
12 Tired Eyes (Cowboy Junkies)
13 Down by the River (Indigo Girls)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/CP1Df3ec

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/LOfGFvSDjqXA0te/file

The cover photo dates from 1967. I used the Krea AI program to improve some details. Note that when I first posted this album, I used a cover image that got some complaints. I decided I could do better, and found a different photo. I replaced it about two weeks later. 

Geno Washington - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Cambridge Folk Festival, Cherry Hinton Hall Grounds, Cambridge, Britain, 7-28-1990

Back in 2024, I posted an album of 1960s BBC studio sessions by soul singer Geno Washington. I thought that was all I'd ever post from him. However, I got this BBC concert from musical associate Progsprog. I'm pretty sure it has been publicly unavailable until now, because an Internet search doesn't even come up with a hint of such a recording. So, a big thanks again to Progsprog for sharing. 

Washington was an American who was stationed in Britain as a U.S. soldier in the mid-1960s. He began singing in clubs during his free time, and discovered there was a big demand for soul singers in that country. He had some minor hit singles. But more importantly, two of his live albums were huge sellers. What he did wasn't that original, especially since most of his songs were covers. He was very much in the mold of upbeat singers like Wilson Pickett, James Brown, and Sam and Dave. But he performed that style very well. Those live albums were big sellers because they contained fun music you could dance to.

Washington's career petered out in the 1970s, as styles changed. He quit music entirely for a time, and became a professional hypnotist! Then, in 1980, Dexys Midnight Runners had a Number One hit with a song they wrote about him, "Geno." That revived interest in him, and he resumed performing in clubs in Britain. He put out some new albums in the 1980s. But his bread and butter has been performing the same material he did in the 1960s.

I find it odd that this concert took place at the annual Cambridge Folk Festival, because this is upbeat soul. If this is "folk music," then any music is folk music. But never mind about that. It's a rocking good time.

By the way, I couldn't find any song list for this concert, or even for other concerts he did around this time. So I had to come up with the song titles myself, as I split a single mp3 file into pieces. I had to guess on some of the songs. If anyone has more accurate titles, please let me know. 

Oh, one last thing. Now that I have this "Volume 2," I renamed that 1960s BBC studio sessions collection I mentioned above "Volume 1." Here's the link to that:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2024/08/geno-washington-ram-jam-band-bbc.html 

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is one hour long. 

01 Push It [Instrumental Version] (Geno Washington)
02 Hi-Heel Sneakers - Can I Get a Witness (Geno Washington)
03 talk (Geno Washington)
04 Gimme One More Piece of that Good Thing (Geno Washington)
05 talk (Geno Washington)
06 In the Midnight Hour (Geno Washington)
07 talk (Geno Washington)
08 Bony Moronie (Geno Washington)
09 talk (Geno Washington)
10 If I Wasn't for My Bad Luck (Geno Washington)
11 talk (Geno Washington)
12 Hoochie Coochie Man Blues (Geno Washington)
13 talk (Geno Washington)
14 House (Geno Washington)
15 talk (Geno Washington)
16 I Wish It Would Rain (Geno Washington)
17 talk (Geno Washington)
18 Respect (Geno Washington)
19 talk (Geno Washington)
20 Knock on Wood (Geno Washington)
21 I Can't Turn You Loose (Geno Washington)
22 talk (Geno Washington)
23 Push It (Geno Washington)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xZtuQ3AK

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/S4M36ujNBV1r3sY/file

Considering how obscure this recording has been, I was very pleasantly surprised to find a photo from this exact concert. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

Covered: Shel Silverstein, Volume 2: 1974-2010

Here's the second and final volume celebrating the songwriting of Shel Silverstein for the "Covered" series.

As with all these Covered albums, the songs are in loose chronological order, usually by year. Silverstein was active writing lots of new songs in the 1970s, and a lot of cover versions resulted. Some of his songs were hits, especially on the country charts. But, typically, his songs were more memorable and interesting than the usual hit material. Not many songwriters could write children's songs, funny songs, and even erotic songs. (Hopefully not all in the same song though!)

Silverstein gradually slowed his songwriting, as people do. He only released one album of new songs after 1985. So a lot of the later songs here were actually originally written earlier, sometimes much earlier. He died of a heart attack in 1999, at the age of 68.

It just occurred to me that I don't think I included a link to his Wikipedia page in the Volume 1 write-up, so here it is:

Shel Silverstein - Wikipedia 

To be honest, I know the well known songs written by Silverstein, but not all the lesser known ones. But he's the type of songwriter who wrote quirky gems. So if any of you know of some excellent songs he wrote that I left out, and especially covers of them, please let me know and I'll consider adding them in. 

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Marie Laveau (Bobby Bare)
02 Queen of the Silver Dollar (Emmylou Harris)
03 Alimony (Bobby Bare)
04 I Got Stoned and I Missed It (Dr. Hook)
05 The Danger of a Stranger (Stella Parton)
06 More like the Movies (Dr. Hook)
07 The Ballad of Lucy Jordan (Marianne Faithfull)
08 Put Another Log on the Fire (Bill & Boyd)
09 Numbers (Bobby Bare)
10 I'm Checkin' Out (Meryl Streep)
11 Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out (Tori Amos)
12 The Twistable, Turnable Man Returns (Andrew Bird)
13 The Winner (Kris Kristofferson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Mha2Sjvi

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/FojQ9dwYjS5kuAi/file

I don't know when or where the cover photo was taken. Clearly though, he's older than in the Volume 1 photo, judging from the grey in his beard. The original photo was a black and white one, showing him in a crouching pose in front of some trees. I stripped out the background. Then I used the Kolorize program to colorize the picture.

Kevin Gilbert - Originals (1984-1996) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Here's a really interesting album put together by guest poster Mike Solof. Have you ever heard of Kevin Gilbert? If you have, congrats, because he's not as well known as he sound be. Mike is a huge fan of Gilbert's music, so much so that he put together three albums to showcase Gilbert's musical talent. The first album, this one, consists of the original songs Mike considers the best. Then he's made another one of the best rarities, and a third one of the best cover versions. If you want to get started, this is the obvious first album to listen to. Then, if you're interested, check out the other two. (Then, hopefully, more than that.)

For a quick overview, I'll quote the intro paragraph to his Wikipedia entry, which states me "was an American singer, songwriter, musician, composer, and producer. He was best known for his solo progressive rock projects, Toy Matinee, and his contributions to 'Tuesday Night Music Club' (1993), the debut studio album of Sheryl Crow. Kevin Gilbert died from autoerotic asphyxiation. He was found dead at his Los Angeles-area home on May 18, 1996, at the age of 29."

Here's the link to the rest of the Wikipedia page:

Kevin Gilbert (musician) - Wikipedia

I have to admit I wasn't familiar with Gilbert's music before Mike made these albums, although I'd previously heard good things about his career here and there. After hearing the albums Mike made, I have to agree that Gilbert was a very talented musician who deserves to be much better known than he is. He often combined a catchy pop sensibility with the complexity of prog rock. That is a very difficult combination to pull off. It's a real shame he died so young, and the strange manner of his death probably didn't help his musical legacy.

Note that this albums combines songs from Gilbert's solo albums, as well as songs he did with bands he was in: Giraffe, Toy Matinee, and Kaviar. All the lead vocals are by Gilbert. 

Anyway, Mike has written extensive notes about Gilbert, his life, and why he likes his music so much. You can find that in the PDF included with the download zip, as usual for Mike's guest posts. 

This album is an hour and 23 minutes long. 

01 When Strangers Part (Kevin Gilbert)
02 This Warm Night (Giraffe)
03 Air Dance (Giraffe)
04 Tired Old Man Suite (Kevin Gilbert)
05 Last Plane Out (Toy Matinee)
06 Things She Said (Toy Matinee)
07 The Ballad of Jenny Ledge (Toy Matinee)
08 Goodness Gracious (Kevin Gilbert)
09 Shadow Self [Alternate Version] (Kevin Gilbert)
10 Miss Broadway (Kevin Gilbert)
11 Single (Kaviar)
12 The Sultan of Brunei (Kaviar)
13 The Best Laid Plans (Kevin Gilbert)
14 Certifiable No. 1 Smash (Kevin Gilbert)
15 All Fall Down [Alternate Horn Mix] (Kevin Gilbert)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/GvEgk98D

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/BNCnBxCFRjJRq5o/file

I don't know the details of the cover image. It was found by Mike.

Chris Rea - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: In Concert, Wembley Arena, London, Britain, 3-9-1990

The mini-flood of Chris Rea BBC albums continues. Like all the previous albums in this series so far, this is a BBC concert.

In the previous volumes in this series, I've been describing how Rea's popularity was slowly growing. That peaked around this time, thanks to his 1989 album "The Road to Hell." It went all the way to Number One in the British album chart, and it ended up going Platinum six times over in Britain. (By contrast, he still has very little success in the U.S., due in large part to him not wanting to tour much there.) 

This concert contained the song "The Road to Hell," which reached the Top Ten in Britain. This concert contains that song, as well as his other really big hit up until this point in his career, "Let's Dance."

Unfortunately, as with most of his BBC concerts, the BBC cut the broadcast down to an hour or less. Three of the songs here (1, 6, and 7) were released as bonus tracks on a 2019 deluxe edition of "The Road to Hell." The rest remains unreleased.

This album is 50 minutes long. 

01 The Road to Hell I and II (Chris Rea)
02 You Must Be Evil (Chris Rea)
03 Texas - Josie's Tune (Chris Rea)
04 On the Beach (Chris Rea)
05 Stainsby Girls (Chris Rea)
06 Working on It (Chris Rea)
07 Let's Dance (Chris Rea)
08 Tell Me There's a Heaven (Chris Rea)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2FZ7sPCs

alternate:

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

All I know about the cover image is it was taken at some point in 1990. 

Various Artists - Dave Edmunds' All Star Rock 'n' Roll Revue, Warfield Theater, San Francisco, CA, 4-7-1990

The world lost another musical great last week (as I write this in early December 2025). Lead guitarist Steve Cropper died on December 3, 2025. He was 84 years old. I wanted to post something to celebrate his music. But that was a bit tricky, since he was mostly a session musician and songwriter. While he did put out some album under his own name, that was just a small part of his musical legacy. And when he toured, he almost always was part of bands supporting other stars.

I looked around, and found this concert, which I'd never known of before. Cropper was part of the backing band, along with Terry Williams (ex-Rockpile), Phil Chen (ex-Rod Stewart), the Memphis Horns, and others, so he played on every song.

This tour probably happened thanks to Ringo Starr of the Beatles. In 1989, Starr put on the first of many "His All-Starr Band" concert tours. These consisted of Starr plus a rotating group of other musical stars who weren't big enough of their own to play big concert venues. But when they were packaged together, along with an ex-Beatle, they were. Dave Edmunds looked at that formula and immediately decided to try the same thing. He brought together Kim Wilson, former lead vocalist of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Graham Parker, and Dion. Each of them played about a half an hour set, with Edmunds playing both at the start of the concert and at the end.

The shows were successful, it seems. But Edmunds only attempted this for this one tour. In fact, he joined the "His All-Starr Band" tours in 1992 and 2000. Perhaps that's because Edmunds went into semi-retirement after 1990. He only put out one more album of new material, in 1994. And he only did one more significant tour, in 2007, before retiring from music for good in 2017.

This concert was the last show of the tour. I read that a double album of this exact concert was released, but only in Japan. However, if that's true, it would only be a minority of this recording, since this is a very long concert, at nearly three hours! This concert was also broadcast for the King Biscuit Flower Hour radio show, which is why we have it with excellent sound quality.

One last thought. A while back, I made two "Covered" album for Steve Cropper. So if you want to remember all the great songs he helped write, that's probably an even better way to do it. Here are the links to those:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/05/various-artists-covered-steve-cropper.html

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/05/various-artists-covered-steve-cropper_30.html

This album is two hours and 47 minutes long. 

01 talk (Dave Edmunds)
02 Last Night [Instrumental] (Dave Edmunds)
03 Fallin' through a Hole (Dave Edmunds)
04 Feel So Right (Dave Edmunds)
05 Closer to the Flame (Dave Edmunds)
06 Don't Talk to Me (Dave Edmunds)
07 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Dave Edmunds)
08 talk (Dave Edmunds)
09 Wrap It Up (Kim Wilson)
10 It Comes to Me Naturally (Kim Wilson)
11 Wasted Tears (Kim Wilson)
12 I Believe I'm in Love with You (Kim Wilson)
13 There Is Something on Your Mind (Kim Wilson)
14 Tuff Enuff (Kim Wilson)
15 talk (Kim Wilson)
16 Nervous Fella (Kim Wilson)
17 talk (Dave Edmunds)
18 Get Started, Start a Fire (Graham Parker)
19 Under the Mask of Happiness (Graham Parker)
20 talk (Graham Parker)
21 Local Girls (Graham Parker)
22 talk (Graham Parker)
23 My Girl (Graham Parker)
24 Slash and Burn (Graham Parker)
25 talk (Graham Parker)
26 Lady Doctor (Graham Parker)
27 talk (Graham Parker)
28 My Love's Strong (Graham Parker)
29 Soultime (Graham Parker)
30 Heat Treatment (Graham Parker)
31 talk (Dave Edmunds)
32 King of the New York Streets (Dion)
33 talk (Dion)
34 The Night Stood Still (Dion)
35 talk (Dion)
36 Ruby Baby (Dion)
37 talk (Dion)
38 Written on the Subway Wall (Dion)
39 Runaround Sue (Dion)
40 The Wanderer (Dion)
41 talk (Dion)
42 Abraham, Martin and John (Dion)
43 From Small Things [Big Things One Day Come] (Dave Edmunds)
44 I Hear You Knocking (Dave Edmunds)
45 talk (Dave Edmunds)
46 Ju Ju Man (Dave Edmunds)
47 King of Love (Dave Edmunds)
48 talk (Dave Edmunds)
49 Crawling from the Wreckage (Dave Edmunds)
50 Paralyzed (Dave Edmunds)
51 talk (Everyone)
52 [Sitting On] the Dock of the Bay (Everyone)
53 I'm Ready (Everyone)
54 Keep A-Knockin' (Everyone) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/w4EEsJQM

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4B7YTBcfLApwM51/file

The cover photo is from a concert at the Marlboro Blues Festival, in Chicago, Illinois, on March 24, 1990. From right to left: Steve Cropper, Dave Edmunds, Graham Parker, and Dion.

Don McLean - BBC Sessions, Volume 7: In Concert, Cambridge Folk Festival, Cherry Hinton Hall Grounds, Cambridge, Britain, 7-28-1990

When I first posted a BBC album by Don McLean, I hadn't found much by him yet, and I thought I might end up with maybe three BBC albums. But here I am with a seventh one, and an eighth on the way. This is an acoustic concert from 1990.

The reason I found two more is thanks to musical friend Progsprog. This one was particularly rare. I got some other BBC albums by a die-hard McLean fan, and even that person didn't know of this one. So hopefully this will put it into wider circulation. With it being a BBC recording, the sound quality is excellent.

By 1990, McLean was far from his 1970s commercial heyday. But he was still releasing new music, and his 1990 album "Headroom" got good reviews. He only performed two songs from it here though, "Headroom" and "Have You Seen Me," done together. But he included some unusual choices, along with the obligatory "Vincent" and "American Pie."

This album is 52 minutes long. 

01 Everyday (Don McLean)
02 talk (Don McLean)
03 Superman's Ghost (Don McLean)
04 talk (Don McLean)
05 Sea Man (Don McLean)
06 Vincent (Don McLean)
07 This Little Light of Mine (Don McLean)
08 La La Love You (Don McLean)
09 Homeless Brother (Don McLean)
10 Headroom - Have You Seen Me (Don McLean)
11 American Pie (Don McLean)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jds3gZTd

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/tCKQuET0b7qvGxZ/file

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

Covered: Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham, Volume 2: 1968-2023

Here's the second and final album of the Covered series for the songwriting team of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham.

In the first volume, I noted that Penn and Oldham had a lot of success writing hit songs from about 1966 to 1968, while based in Memphis, Tennessee. The first song here is from 1968. But after that, there was a sharp drop with their musical successes. Penn later claimed that there was a lot of fruitful collaboration between white songwriters like Spooner and him and the black singers they were mainly writing for during that time period, but that changed as the years went on. He saw the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 as a key moment. After that, race became more of an issue, and the expectation grew that soul music songs sung by black singers would be written by black songwriters too.

Due to this changed environment, Penn and Oldham split up. Oldham moved to Los Angeles, where he found a lot of success playing keyboards as a session musician. That continued for decades, with him playing on albums by the likes of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Aretha Franklin, Jackson Browne, the Everly Brothers, J.J. Cale, Linda Ronstadt, and many, many more. 

Meanwhile, Penn moved to Nashville, the home of country music, and tried to find success writing country songs. However, although his style had always been an interesting combination of soul and country music, he didn't do well writing just  for country singers. In 1973, he finally released his first solo album, "Nobody's Fool." While it was critically acclaimed, it sold very little. He did have some success as a songwriter and/or producer, but in a low-key way.

In 1994, Penn and Oldham reunited for Penn's second solo album, "Do Right Man." This mostly consisted of Penn's versions of his biggest hits from the 1960s. It was critically acclaimed. And while it also wasn't a big seller, it generated enough interest for Penn and Oldham to essentially start a new career as duo, going on tour to promote the occasional new album by Penn. Since then, Penn has released three more studio albums. The two of them have built up a following. As I write this in 2025, they are still going on tour, despite the fact that they're both in their early eighties.

Penn continues to write new songs, though it seems not often with Oldham anymore. He's had the occasional successful late career song. For instance, "Don't Give Up on Me" was the title track to Solomon Burke's acclaimed 2002 album by that same name. And "Memphis Women and Chicken" from Penn's 1994 album is usually performed in the concerts by Penn and Oldham.

Most of the songs here were written by Penn with others instead of Oldham. However, "Lonely Women Make Good Lovers" was written by Oldham without Penn. Unlike the hit-filled Volume 1, there really aren't any big hits here, though arguably some could be considered classics, and the songwriting is still at a consistently high level. Some of the songs were written much earlier than when the versions here were recorded. For instance, "Keep On Talking," recorded by Texas in 2023, was first released by someone else in 1965. In cases like that, these are the versions I like best.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 I Met Her in Church (Box Tops)
02 A Woman Left Lonely (Janis Joplin)
03 Rainbow Road (Percy Sledge)
04 Lonely Women Make Good Lovers (Bob Luman)
05 Zero Willpower (Irma Thomas)
06 Like a Road Leading Home (Jerry Garcia Band)
07 Where There's a Will [There's a Way] (Dan Penn)
08 Time I Took a Holiday (Nick Lowe)
09 Don't Give Up on Me (Solomon Burke)
10 Memphis Women and Chicken (Gary Nicholson)
11 I Hate You (Nicki Bluhm)
12 Keep On Talking (Texas)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/9MFesvnn

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ImNWdOz5yf5WAU7/file

I don't know what year the cover photo is from. But I did find this photo of the two of them together, probably in the 1990s. I used Photoshop to move them closer together.

Richard Thompson - BBC Sessions, Volume 6: 1988-1991

I had a weird dream last night (as I write this in October 2025). In the dream, I heard the song "Al Bowlly's in Heaven" by Richard Thompson, but I noticed a famous Queen song was basically the same song, just with different words and very different production. I don't think it's true that any Queen song resembles that one, but it was a fun was to be reminded what a fantastic song "Al Bowlly's in Heaven" is. And it also reminded me that it's time to post another Richard Thompson album. So here's the next BBC album from him. This one is a collection of BBC studio sessions, all solo acoustic.

Everything here remains unreleased. The first five songs are from an appearance on the Andy Kershaw Show in 1988. Tracks 6 through 9 are from another 1988 radio show, the Richard Skinner Show. "She Moved through the Fair" is a live cut from the "Folk on Two" radio show. The remaining songs, tracks 11 through 16 are from a 1992 radio show called "Kaleidoscope."

Unfortunately, "Al Bowlly's in Heaven" isn't on here, but it is on the "BBC Sessions, Volume 2" album I've posted here. That's probably the greatest song about war-related PTSD ever written. Most of the songs here are from his albums at the time, like 1988's "Amnesia" and 1991's "Rumour and Sigh." But there are a few rarities and older ones as well.

This album is 48 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On November 8, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I found an earlier volume in this series that I'd missed, so the volume number changed. That meant the title, cover art, and mp3 tags changed too. 

01 Killerman Gold Posse (Richard Thompson)
02 Waltzing's for Dreamers (Richard Thompson)
03 Pharoah (Richard Thompson)
04 Push and Shove (Richard Thompson)
05 Killing Jar (Richard Thompson)
06 Turning of the Tide (Richard Thompson)
07 talk (Richard Thompson)
08 Two Left Feet (Richard Thompson)
09 Valerie (Richard Thompson)
10 She Moved through the Fair (Richard Thompson)
11 I Feel So Good (Richard Thompson)
12 1952 Vincent Black Lightning (Richard Thompson)
13 The Choice Wife [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
14 I Misunderstood (Richard Thompson)
15 Don't Let a Thief Steal into Your Heart (Richard Thompson)
16 God Loves a Drunk (Richard Thompson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xJM8VVUy

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/wL8TMxaJTATURtx/file

The cover photo is from 1992. That's all I know about it. 

Covered: Nile Rodgers & Bernard Edwards, Volume 2: 1980-2015

Here's the second and final Covered album highlighting the talents of the songwriting duo Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards.

As usual, the songs here are in rough chronological order. At the beginning time period for this album, 1980, Rodgers and Edwards were in crisis. They'd had hit after hit in the late 1970s. In fact, the first song here, "Upside Down" by Diana Ross, would top the singles chart in the U.S. and many other countries in 1980. However, pretty much all their hits songs were in this disco genre, and the popularity of disco was crashing hard in 1980. "Upside Down" was one of the last gasps. They basically broke up their wildly successful band Chic, keeping it together only because they owed more records to their record company. Rodgers in particular was depressed by the changing musical trends and developed a bad drug habit.

Disco was so reviled due to overexposure that people actually organized the mass destruction of disco records. Rodgers and Edwards responded by focusing most of their energies on writing and producing songs for other musical acts. Unfortunately, I can only include songs in which they're writers or co-writers, not songs they only produced. But Rodgers in particular became one of the hottest producers in the music business in the 1980s. For instance, he helped produce David Bowie's smash album "Let's Dance" in 1983 and Madonna's smash album "Like a Virgin" in 1984. He also produced albums for Duran Duran, Sheena Easton, Jeff Beck, Thompson Twins, Mick Jagger, the B-52's, Grace Jones, Al Jarreau, Steve Winwood, Cyndi Lauper, and many more. In the 1990s, he produced for Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, David Lee Roth, the Stray Cats, and again many more.

Note that I've included the song "Let's Dance" by David Bowie despite the fact that the song is solely credited to Bowie. That's because in my opinion Rodgers, who produced the song, totally deserved cowriting credit. Believe it or not, when Bowie first presented the song to Rodgers, it was a folk song, with just Bowie's voice and an acoustic guitar! Rodgers utterly transformed the song with a new arrangement, changing the chords, the key, the rhythm, and just about everything else but the basic melody and words. It went on to be a Number One hit in the U.S., Britain, and many other countries. Bowie even later cited Rodgers as the main reason for the song's massive success. (Note that a demo of the song was later released, but this is already after Rodgers had transformed the song, not the original acoustic demo.) 

I would suspect that Rodgers often helped co-write songs as part of his production duties without getting official songwriting credit. One example where he did get credit was "Tick Tock" by Stevie Ray Vaughan (as part of the Vaughan Brothers), which he co-wrote with Vaughan. 

The songwriting success for this duo slowed down as they got older, as is common. That was magnified by the fact that they focused much more on producing. Unfortunately, the Rodgers and Edwards partnership was cut short in 1996 when Edwards died of pneumonia while on tour with Chic in Japan. As I write this in May 2025, Rodgers is still alive and is 72 years old.

By the 2010s, one would have thought that the biggest songwriting success for Rodgers was behind him. But in 2013, he collaborated on four songs with Daft Punk, and of them was "Get Lucky." This would go on to be one of the biggest hits of the decade. It reached Number One in many countries, though it stalled out at Number Two in the U.S. for several weeks. With this new popularity, Rodgers' 1970s band Chic released their first single in 23 years with "I'll Be There" in 2015, and it went to the top of the dance singles chart (though it didn't make the pop singles chart).

Note that nearly all the songs presented here are the original hit versions. But one exception is "Thinking of You" by Paul Weller. He had a Top 20 hit with it in Britain in 2004. However, it first was a hit for Sister Sledge back in 1984. The other exception is "Everybody Dance." I included a hit version by Evolution in 1993. But it was first a hit for Chic back in 1977.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Upside Down (Diana Ross)
02 Backfired (Debbie Harry)
03 Why (Carly Simon)
04 The Jam Was Moving (Debbie Harry)
05 Let's Dance (David Bowie)
06 Kissing with Confidence (Will Powers with Carly Simon)
07 Tick Tock (Vaughan Brothers)
08 Everybody Dance (Evolution)
09 Thinking of You (Paul Weller)
10 Get Lucky (Daft Punk)
11 I'll Be There (Chic)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZPKXNq3N

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/k5MpBQsKfqqwW8O/file

For the cover image, I found black and white photos of Rodgers and Edwards in 1981. I combined them and moved their bodies close together. Then I colorized them using the Kolorize and Photoshop programs.

Bob Dylan - Toad's Place, New Haven, CT, 1-12-1990

I'm excited to present this Bob Dylan concert, especially since it sounds better than ever before. Some say this is the greatest concert Dylan ever did, or at least the most interesting. It can't be denied it's the longest, by a good margin. The concert was over four hours long! For the first time in many years, Dylan performed in a club (Toad's Place), with a crowd of only 750 people. He basically did a live rehearsal to get warmed up before going on a world tour, trying out lots of rarities.

However, I never even had this in my music collection until a couple of days ago, due to poor sound quality. All that has emerged from the concert is an unreleased audience bootleg. But things changed in mid-March 2025 when Captain Acid posted an upgrade to it. He did phase and level correction, and new equalization. I listened to the result, and I was impressed. 

Then I decided to do what I could to improve that version still more. I'm willing to make more drastic edits than most people. When it comes to audience bootlegs, my one big trick is to use the MVSEP audio editing program to remove the crowd noise. The taper had to be standing in the middle of a packed audience that was very excited to see Dylan do such a special show in a small venue. That meant there was a constant ambient noise of people talking and hollering through the songs. I basically got rid of all that, while keeping the crowd noise at the ends of songs and between songs. This technique more or less can make an audience boot sound like a soundboard instead. 

After that, I ran all the songs through the UVR5 audio editing program, to adjust the balance between the vocals and everything else. I boosted Dylan's vocals a little bit overall. But I also made extra little boosts here and there when some of his singing was harder to hear. This also allowed me to get rid of more crowd noise that had been missed by the MVSEP program. For instance, at the start of "Everything Is Broken," someone standing near the taper could be heard saying over the music, "get down to her level... can't see anything." I got rid of that entirely, and other little bits like that. 

I could have put "[Edit]" in the titles to many songs, due to the extra editing work I did. But I only put that in the titles of the two songs I did the most work on, "Across the Borderline" and "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry." The latter was the biggest pain in the butt, because some excited fan kept shouting "Woo!" noises through the song. I had to get rid of each of those individually. There's only a couple that remain, when the "Woo" noises overlapped with Dylan's vocals. I also got rid of some dead air between songs, but there wasn't much of that.

I wouldn't say this sounds as good as an excellent soundboard now, but there certainly some soundboards that sound worse than this. It's still rather rough, but I think that's part of its charm, capturing a small club atmosphere, where you can hear individual people clapping and cheering. 

Here's some more information on the concert and how it came to be. In late 1989, Dylan's career was revitalized with the release of the studio album "Oh Mercy," his best album in many years. However, his concerts didn't seem inspired... until this one. Rolling Stone Magazine wrote an entire article about this concert, entitled "Bringing It All Back Home: Dylan Thrills With Exhaustive Show." It read: "The January 12th show was a striking contrast to Dylan's recent lackluster, perfunctory performances, at which he has appeared so indifferent that the audience has been lucky if he acknowledged its presence, much less invested any of himself in his songs. But at Toad's, he rose to the challenge of his first scheduled club date in countless years with a brilliant marathon show."

Here's a link if you want to read the entire article. I highly recommend giving it a read:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bringing-it-all-back-home-dylan-thrills-with-exhaustive-show-71301/

Before Dylan, other musical acts had started using Toad's Place for secret open rehearsals. The most famous of these was the Rolling Stones, who gave a legendary performance there just five months prior to this concert. (I've thought about posting that concert too, but the audience bootleg for that one sounds much worse than this one.) Probably, Dylan heard about the Stones doing that, and decided he wanted to give that a try as well. He demanded 100 percent of the ticket sale profits, which the club happily gave him. No doubt, they more than made up for that with alcohol sales during the extremely long concert. Plus, the credibility it gave the venue was priceless. Since then, many other musical acts have done similar open rehearsal type shows there.

Dylan was backed by G.E. Smith on lead guitar (who was in the Saturday Night Live band), Tony Garnier on bass, and Christopher Parker on drums. The band came onstage shortly before 9 P.M., and played for an hour, then left the stage. Brian Phelps, the owner of the club, was later interviewed about the concert. Here's what he said happened next: 

"Dylan asked me if he could play another set. And we said sure, go ahead! You know, and they asked again, and played a third. Can I play another? You know what? Yeah! Go ahead! There's no problem!  He wasn't sure what he was going to play, it was like a practice session, because he was going on this theater tour. I think most of the theaters were 5,000 seats on up, and our show was like a practice session... Well for him anyways, but for the people that were there, they were just loving it, and they really couldn't believe it."

Dylan's fourth and final set began around 1:00 A.M. Phelps had to shut the bar down at that time due to state law. But instead of stopping the show, staffers just collected all of the drinks from the crowd so the show could go on. Dylan finally finished at 2:20 A.M.! He threw his harmonica into the adoring crowd, and walked off after 4 hours, 20 minutes. 

He ended up performing 50 songs in total. But what's really interesting in that he generally avoided playing most of his best known, most frequently played songs in favor of rarities. Many of the songs had never been performed by him before. All of these were done in concert for the first time: "Trouble No More," "I've Been All Around This World," "Political World," "Where Teardrops Fall," "What Was It You Wanted," "Oh Babe, It Ain't No Lie," "Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love)," "Wiggle Wiggle," "Key to the Highway," and "Dancing in the Dark." And yes, you read that right, that last song mentioned was "Dancing in the Dark," as in the huge 1984 hit by Bruce Springsteen. It was the one and only time Dylan played it in concert. If you listen carefully to the recording, it's clear Dylan didn't remember most of the words to it, but he was having a fun time winging it anyway.

In addition to all those debuts, there were lots of rarities played. For instance, he did the Traveling Wilburys song "Congratulations," apparently after someone in the audience shouted for it. That was only one of three times he ever performed that. A bunch of the debuts I mentioned were covers: "Trouble No More," "I've Been All Around This World," "Oh Babe, It Ain't No Lie," "Key to the Highway," and "Dancing in the Dark." But he played many other covers too: "Walk a Mile in My Shoes," "Everybody's Movin'," "Across the Borderline," "Paid the Price," "Help Me Make It Through the Night," "Lonesome Whistle," "Confidential," "So Long, Good Luck and Goodbye," "Peggy-O," "When Did You Leave Heaven," "In the Pines," and "Precious Memories." That's a lot of covers, 18 in all.

Unfortunately, because this concert was a kind of open rehearsal, Dylan repeated some songs to make sure the band played them to his satisfaction. "I've Been All Around This World" and "Where Teardrops Fall" were played twice. That wasn't so bad, but "Political World" was played three times. I decided I didn't want to hear all those repeats every time I listen to this. But some other people might, so I'm including the extra versions, but only as bonus tracks. I kept the last versions in the main song list, assuming they improved as they played the songs more.

This really was a remarkable concert for Dylan. It seems to have been the only one he ever did like this, where he let it all hang out and played whatever the hell he wanted for as long as he wanted. He even warmed up enough to chat some with the audience and take requests, which he basically never did. It's not just the longest Dylan concert by a mile, it's also one of a handful of the longest concerts by any famous rock musician, period. He even beat the longest Bruce Springsteen concert ever by a few minutes, and Springsteen is famous for his long concerts.

Here's one more anecdote from Brian Phelps, the owner of Toad's Place:

"[Many years later,] I actually gave the whole rundown to his son Jakob, from the Wallflowers, who have played Toad's a number of times, and I told him about his father's show. He started peppering me with questions about it, and he really enjoyed the whole story about how it happened, and the length of the show, and everything that went on that night. He was a great great guy too. Jacob enjoyed the history of the club, and the history of playing in the same place where his father played his longest show in."

This concert is three hours and forty minutes long, without the bonus songs. Including those, it's four hours and two minutes long. The actual concert was still longer than that, due to some short breaks between sets.

 01 Walk a Mile in My Shoes (Bob Dylan)
02 One More Cup of Coffee [Valley Below] (Bob Dylan)
03 Rainy Day Women No. 12 and 35 (Bob Dylan)
04 Trouble No More (Bob Dylan)
05 Tears of Rage (Bob Dylan)
06 I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine (Bob Dylan)
07 It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
08 Everybody's Movin' (Bob Dylan)
09 Watching the River Flow (Bob Dylan)
10 What Was It You Wanted (Bob Dylan)
11 Oh Babe, It Ain't No Lie (Bob Dylan)
12 talk (Bob Dylan)
13 Lenny Bruce (Bob Dylan)
14 I Believe in You (Bob Dylan)
15 talk (Bob Dylan)
16 Man of Peace (Bob Dylan)
17 Across the Borderline [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
18 Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (Bob Dylan)
19 All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan)
20 talk (Bob Dylan)
21 Tight Connection to My Heart [Has Anybody Seen My Love] (Bob Dylan)
22 What Good Am I (Bob Dylan)
23 Wiggle Wiggle (Bob Dylan)
24 Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again (Bob Dylan)
25 Paid the Price (Bob Dylan)
26 Help Me Make It through the Night (Bob Dylan)
27 Man in the Long Black Coat (Bob Dylan)
28 Congratulations (Bob Dylan)
29 Dancing in the Dark (Bob Dylan)
30 Lonesome Whistle Blues (Bob Dylan)
31 Confidential (Bob Dylan)
32 In the Garden (Bob Dylan)
33 Everything Is Broken (Bob Dylan)
34 talk (Bob Dylan)
35 So Long, Good Luck and Goodbye (Bob Dylan)
36 Where Teardrops Fall (Bob Dylan)
37 talk (Bob Dylan)
38 Political World (Bob Dylan)
39 Pretty Peggy-O (Bob Dylan)
40 I'll Remember You (Bob Dylan)
41 Key to the Highway (Bob Dylan)
42 talk (Bob Dylan)
43 Joey (Bob Dylan)
44 Lay Lady Lay (Bob Dylan)
45 I Don't Believe You [She Acts like We Never Have Met] (Bob Dylan)
46 When Did You Leave Heaven (Bob Dylan)
47 Maggie's Farm (Bob Dylan)
48 I've Been All Around This World (Bob Dylan)
49 In the Pines (Bob Dylan)
50 Highway 61 Revisited (Bob Dylan)
51 Precious Memories (Bob Dylan)
52 Like a Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan)

I've Been All Around This World [First Version] (Bob Dylan)
Political World [First Version] (Bob Dylan)
Political World [Second Version] (Bob Dylan)
Where Teardrops Fall [First Version] (Bob Dylan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/c3pudHMC

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/3lYIq83WpMHkgLV/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. In the original, his eyes couldn't be seen due to the shadow from his hat. But thanks to the magic of AI art, I was able to make an adjustment there while keeping the rest of the image the same. I also found a photo of one of the tickets from this concert, and I thought that was nice, so I added that in at the top left.

Suzanne Vega - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, Dominion Theatre, London, Britain, 6-1-1990

Here's a third album of Suzanne Vega performing for the BBC. Like this first two, it's a BBC concert. This time, it's from 1990.

When I first posted this, all I could find was a partial version that was 38 minutes long and had some issues, such as fake applause added, the wrong song order, and no banter between songs. But a couple of days after I posted it, a commenter named Brian sent me the entire show. This is much, much better. So I completely redid the post with the new version.

In 1990, Vega release the studio album "Days of Open Hand." I had previously posted a 1989 BBC concert by her, but this one differs significantly by including lots of songs from the then-new album. It also includes a great cover of "Beyond Belief," my favorite Elvis Costello song.

The BBC often edits concerts down to an hour or less. But at least once, the BBC broadcast this entire concert. I know this because the first song in the complete version Brian sent me had a BBC DJ talking over the start of the song, mentioning that even the opening act (Brian Kennedy) was broadcast as well. As I often do, I used the UVR5 audio editing program to get rid of that DJ talk. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in the title. 

Two songs near the end, "The Queen and the Soldier" and "Tom's Diner," also were edited. That's because there was some static here and there during those songs, probably from trouble with the radio reception. Luckily, it only affected those two songs, and both of them happened to be acoustic or acappella. Using UVR5 again, I discovered that nearly all the static appeared on the drum track. I simply erased that, since there were no drums otherwise. That's why those two have "[Edit]" in their titles too.

This album is an hour and 18 minutes long.

01 Rusted Pipe [Edit] (Suzanne Vega)
02 Tired of Sleeping (Suzanne Vega)
03 talk (Suzanne Vega)
04 Straight Lines (Suzanne Vega)
05 Marlene on the Wall (Suzanne Vega)
06 Cracking (Suzanne Vega)
07 Room Off the Street (Suzanne Vega)
08 Freeze Tag (Suzanne Vega)
09 Neighborhood Girls (Suzanne Vega)
10 Gypsy (Suzanne Vega)
11 talk (Suzanne Vega)
12 Luka (Suzanne Vega)
13 Some Journey (Suzanne Vega)
14 Left of Center (Suzanne Vega)
15 In the Eye (Suzanne Vega)
16 talk (Suzanne Vega)
17 Book of Dreams (Suzanne Vega)
18 Men in a War (Suzanne Vega)
19 The Queen and the Soldier [Edit] (Suzanne Vega)
20 talk (Suzanne Vega)
21 Beyond Belief (Suzanne Vega)
22 Tom's Diner [Edit] (Suzanne Vega)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UMPWBRKu

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/qvCN3xFLzYE7ukE/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Van Morrison - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: One Irish Rover, Barbican Centre, London, Britain, 2-19-1990

Here's another BBC album performed by Van Morrison. This time, it's another concert, though note it's a short one.

For the last album in this series, I used material from a 1991 BBC documentary about Morrison called "One Irish Rover." That was made up of music from several different sources, which includes this concert. But only about half of the music here actually made it to that documentary. Luckily though, a bootleg exists of more. So, unlike "Volume 4," everything here has soundboard-level sound quality. It is a fairly short concert though, at less than an hour. I'm not sure if that's because the boot is incomplete or if it was just a short concert.

 The interesting thing about this concert is that Morrison was backed by a full orchestra, specifically the Danish Radio Big Band. So, like the concert for "Volume 4," which was a short concert filmed expressly for the BBC documentary, this too could have been put on mainly to be filmed for the documentary in order to have some songs with an orchestra. But Morrison's usual band at the time was also on hand, including keyboardist Georgie Fame. He can be heard occasionally on call and response vocals.

The "Volume 4" concert I've been mentioning took place in late 1989. This one took place in early 1990. However, no new album had been released in the meantime. His next studio album, "Enlightenment," wouldn't be released until late 1990. None of the songs here were from that. However, three of them, the last three here, were from his 1989 album "Avalon Sunset."

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 talk (Van Morrison)
02 I Will Be There (Van Morrison)
03 Here Comes the Knight (Van Morrison)
04 Haunts of Ancient Peace (Van Morrison)
05 Celtic Swing (Van Morrison)
06 Got to Go Back (Van Morrison)
07 A New Kind of Man (Van Morrison)
08 Listen to the Lion (Van Morrison)
09 Vanlose Stairway (Van Morrison)
10 I'd Love to Write Another Song (Van Morrison)
11 Orangefield (Van Morrison)
12 Whenever God Shines His Light (Van Morrison)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/GJgjHpis

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/3ctkoRwuY2Qq1Kp/file

The cover photo is taken from a screenshot of the "One Irish Rover" video. I ran it through the Krea AI program to improve the details.

Van Morrison - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1984-1995

When I posted Van Morrison's "BBC Sessions, Volume 1," I commented that it was a shame Morrison hardly ever performed for the BBC in 1980s. Musical associate MZ saw that comment, and sent me some stuff. Based mostly on that, I was able to put together this album of BBC sessions.

"Sense of Wonder" is from an appearance on the BBC TV show "The Old Grey Whistle Test" in 1984. "In the Garden" is from another BBC TV show in 1986. 

The next four songs come from a BBC TV special about Morrison called "One Irish Rover." It collected a bunch of different performances. One of them featured Van Morrison and Bob Dylan in 1989 singing just as a duo in Athens, Greece, on a hill overlooking the Acropolis. It's great to have these two musical giants collaborate, but to be honest it generally seemed like Dylan was winging it and didn't know Morrison's songs that well. But he did play some nice harmonica, and he sang more assertively on "One Irish Rover." The last of those four songs, "And It Stoned Me," was from the same session, but wasn't actually included in the "One Irish Rover" show. (You can find YouTube videos of all four songs, if you're interested in seeing and not just hearing them.)

"Whenever God Shines His Light" is from the BBC TV show "Top of the Pops," in 1989. Most appearances on that show are lipsynced, but not this one. It's a duet of Morrison and Cliff Richard, the same as on Morrison's 1989 studio album "Avalon Sunset." The next two songs, "Avalon of the Heart" and "So Quiet in Here" are from an appearance on the "Late Show," another BBC TV show, in 1990. Finally, the last two songs are from the show "Later... with Jools Holland" in 1995.

Everything here is unreleased on audio format, though the "One Irish Rover" show has been released on video. For the songs with cheering studio audiences, I used the MVSEP program to get rid of the cheering. "Whenever God Shines His Light" has "[Edit]" in the title because the first few seconds were missing. I fixed that by patching in some music from later in the song.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Sense of Wonder (Van Morrison)
02 In the Garden (Van Morrison)
03 Crazy Love (Van Morrison with Bob Dylan)
04 Foreign Window (Van Morrison with Bob Dylan)
05 One Irish Rover (Van Morrison with Bob Dylan)
06 And It Stoned Me (Van Morrison with Bob Dylan)
07 Whenever God Shines His Light [Edit] (Van Morrison & Cliff Richard)
08 Avalon of the Heart (Van Morrison)
09 So Quiet in Here (Van Morrison)
10 Don't Worry about a Thing (Van Morrison)
11 That's Life (Van Morrison)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/gfJA3oVS

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/NQkCrr4NOO0M1l5/file

The cover photo is from a photo shoot in Bath, Britain, in May, 1989.

The Rolling Stones - BBC Sessions, Volume 7: In Concert, Wembley Stadium, London, Britain, 7-7-1990

Here's another nice Rolling Stones concert for the BBC, this one from 1990.

The Rolling Stones had a lot of problems for most of the 1980s, effectively breaking up for a couple of years. But they got back together with a new studio album in 1989, "Steel Wheels," and then had their first concert tour since the one started in 1981. It was their longest and most lucrative by far at that point in the band's history. By the time of this concert, the name of the tour had changed from "Steel Wheels" to "Urban Jungle," the set list had changed, and the set design had been redone. The tour came to an end about a month after this.

One thing I like about this concert is that it was still done with what I consider the "real" Stones, meaning when the band still had five long-term band members in it. At the end of the tour, bassist Bill Wyman would retire permanently. Many years later, in 2021, drummer Charlie Watts died. So now, as I write this, the band is technically only a trio of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood, plus backing musicians. 

The band's 1989 "Steel Wheels" was pretty good, but it was hard for it to complete with all the classic albums and songs they'd done previously. They played five songs from that album in this concert: "Sad Sad Sad," "Almost Hear You Sigh," "Rock and a Hard Place," "Mixed Emotions," and "Can't Be Seen." However, "Can't Be Seen" wasn't included in the BBC broadcast for some reason, so it's the only song played that isn't included here either. (I'm not counting an instrumental recording of part of the song "Continental Drift" that was played right before the concert began.)

That means the other 19 songs were from the band's previous albums, and pretty much every single one of them was a popular classic. So this is the nearly the last excellent recording of the version of the band with Bill Wyman firing on all cylinders. As far as I know, this remains unreleased.

The only problem with this album's sound quality was the vocals were a bit low in the mix. So I used the UVR5 audio editing program to boost the vocals.

This album is two hours and ten minutes long.

01 Continental Drift [Instrumental Version] (Rolling Stones)
02 Start Me Up (Rolling Stones)
03 Sad Sad Sad (Rolling Stones)
04 Harlem Shuffle (Rolling Stones)
05 Tumbling Dice (Rolling Stones)
06 talk (Rolling Stones)
07 Miss You (Rolling Stones)
08 talk (Rolling Stones)
09 Almost Hear You Sigh (Rolling Stones)
10 talk (Rolling Stones)
11 Ruby Tuesday (Rolling Stones)
12 talk (Rolling Stones)
13 Angie (Rolling Stones)
14 talk (Rolling Stones)
15 Rock and a Hard Place (Rolling Stones)
16 talk (Rolling Stones)
17 Mixed Emotions (Rolling Stones)
18 Honky Tonk Women (Rolling Stones)
19 Midnight Rambler (Rolling Stones)
20 talk (Rolling Stones)
21 You Can't Always Get What You Want (Rolling Stones)
22 talk (Rolling Stones)
23 Happy (Rolling Stones)
24 Paint It, Black (Rolling Stones)
25 2000 Light Years from Home (Rolling Stones)
26 Sympathy for the Devil (Rolling Stones)
27 Street Fighting Man (Rolling Stones)
28 Gimme Shelter (Rolling Stones)
29 It's Only Rock 'N Roll [But I Like It] (Rolling Stones)
30 talk (Rolling Stones)
31 Brown Sugar (Rolling Stones)
32 Jumpin' Jack Flash (Rolling Stones)
33 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Rolling Stones)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/dAbprsDr

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/mE8IcjOnqlrTdPJ/file

The cover photo is of the band from this exact venue, Wembley Stadium, but about a month later. From left to right, that's Ronnie Wood, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and Bill Wyman.

Knebworth Festival, Knebworth House, Knebworth, Britain, 6-30-1990, Part 8: Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd was the eighth and final musical act to perform at the 1980 Knebworth Festival.

At this point, Pink Floyd was essentially David Gilmour plus backing musicians. The band's former leader Roger Waters left the band in 1983. But I think it says quite a lot that the Gilmour-led version of Pink Floyd was still so popular in 1990 that it was the closing act of this festival, over such big names as Phil Collins and Paul McCartney, and even the trio of Eric Clapton, Dire Straits, and Elton John playing together.

As I mentioned back in my write-up for Part 1 of this festival, most all of the music from this festival remains officially unreleased, aside from a highlights album and video. But the exception to this is this Pink Floyd set. It was first released in full as part of "The Later Years" box set. Then it later got a stand alone release. Even so, I'm including it here so the entire festival can appear in one place.

Pink Floyd toured all over the world from 1987 to 1989, in the wake of their "Momentary Lapse of Reason" album. However, they wouldn't do another big tour until 1994, after the release of their "Division Bell" album that year. In between, the only full concert they played was this one. 

On the band's classic 1973 album "Dark Side of the Moon," the wordless vocals for the song "The Great Gig in the Sky" were sung by Clare Torry. So it was a special treat when she assisted the band by singing that part in this concert. Beautiful and talented Candy Dulfer also played saxophone.

This album is an hour and one minute long.

01 talk by Tommy Vance (Pink Floyd)
02 Shine On You Crazy Diamond [Parts 1-5] (Pink Floyd)
03 The Great Gig in the Sky (Pink Floyd with Clare Torry)
04 talk (Pink Floyd)
05 Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd)
06 Sorrow (Pink Floyd)
07 Money (Pink Floyd)
08 Comfortably Numb (Pink Floyd)
09 talk (Pink Floyd)
10 Run like Hell (Pink Floyd)
11 talk (Pink Floyd)

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/zDzX4AZ7

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/NWoJW1HfISeoTcK/file

The cover photo of lead singer David Gilmour is from this exact concert.

Knebworth Festival, Knebworth House, Knebworth, Britain, 6-30-1990, Part 7: Paul McCartney

The seventh performance at the 1990 Knebworth Festival was by Paul McCartney.

McCartney didn't do any tours for all of the 1980s until the last few months. Then he went on a big world tour that lasted until the end of July 1990. So this was much like another stop on that tour, though playing to an even bigger crowd, of 120,000 people. 

The set list was composed of songs typical from his tour that year, though cut down to fit within the allotted time slot. That included two songs written by fellow ex-Beatle John Lennon, "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Give Peace a Chance." Technically, he was promoting his 1989 album "Flowers in the Dirt," but he only played one song from it, "We Got Married." This concert was also the first time he played the Beatles song "Birthday" in concert.

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 talk by Cathy McGowan & Timothy Dalton (Paul McCartney)
02 Coming Up (Paul McCartney)
03 Back in the U.S.S.R. (Paul McCartney)
04 I Saw Her Standing There (Paul McCartney)
05 talk (Paul McCartney)
06 We Got Married (Paul McCartney)
07 talk (Paul McCartney)
08 Birthday (Paul McCartney)
09 talk (Paul McCartney)
10 Let It Be (Paul McCartney)
11 talk (Paul McCartney)
12 Live and Let Die (Paul McCartney)
13 talk (Paul McCartney)
14 Someone Else I'd Like to Be (Paul McCartney)
15 talk (Paul McCartney)
16 Hey Jude (Paul McCartney)
17 talk (Paul McCartney)
18 Strawberry Fields Forever (Paul McCartney)
19 Give Peace a Chance (Paul McCartney)
20 talk (Paul McCartney)
21 Yesterday (Paul McCartney)
22 talk (Paul McCartney)
23 Can't Buy Me Love (Paul McCartney)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/GS2fFQHm

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/dIowcvXP5mBOUcI/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Knebworth Festival, Knebworth House, Knebworth, Britain, 6-30-1990, Part 6: Eric Clapton, Dire Straits & Elton John

The sixth performance at the 1990 Knebworth Festival was a rather unusual collaboration between Eric Clapton, Dire Straits, and Elton John.

Collaboration between these three famous musical forces was rare, but not unprecedented. In particular, Mark Knopfler, leader of Dire Straits, and Eric Clapton became good friends in the late 1980s and toured together a lot in 1987 to 1989. Elton John joined them for at least one full concert, in Tokyo, Japan, in 1988. 

Meanwhile, Dire Straits broke up in 1986, at the conclusion of the tour to promote their 1985 album "Brothers in Arms." They got back together for about five shows in 1988 and 1989, mostly benefit concerts, and usually with Clapton included. Then they did this festival, their only performance of 1990. A full reunion followed, leading to the band's final album, "On Every Street," in 1991. This concert didn't actually include all of Dire Straits. Mark Knopfler, John Illsey, and Alan Clark took part, but Guy Fletcher was missing. Instead, the band was rounded out by Clapton, Ray Cooper, and Phil Palmer. But still, it was considered a Dire Straits reunion.

The first four songs were sung by Clapton. Then Dire Straits joined in. One song played, "Think I Love You Too Much," was an original that never made it onto a Dire Straits (or Mark Knopfler) album, despite being a good song that got played a lot on the Dire Straits world tour in 1991 and 1992. This was the first time it was performed in concert. Elton John joined in for the last four songs, three of which were sung by him.

I don't recall any wind noise trouble with this performance. Also note that it's the longest set of the festival, because it was basically three big acts put together.

This album is an hour and 16 minutes long.

01 talk by Dave Dee (Eric Clapton)
02 Pretending (Eric Clapton)
03 Before You Accuse Me (Eric Clapton)
04 Old Love (Eric Clapton)
05 Tearing Us Apart (Eric Clapton)
06 Solid Rock (Eric Clapton & Dire Straits)
07 talk (Eric Clapton & Dire Straits)
08 I Think I Love You Too Much (Eric Clapton & Dire Straits)
09 Money for Nothing (Eric Clapton & Dire Straits)
10 talk (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
11 Sacrifice (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
12 Sad Songs [Say So Much] (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
13 Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)
14 Sunshine of Your Love (Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler & Elton John)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HoBf13LZ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4oHFJrfaG2Kgn1R/file

For the cover, I wanted a photo of Clapton, Knopfler, and John together at this concert. I couldn't find any, since they were spread out on stage. However, I did find one of Clapton and John.

Knebworth Festival, Knebworth House, Knebworth, Britain, 6-30-1990, Part 5: Phil Collins & Genesis

The fifth performance at the 1990 Knebworth Festival was both Phil Collins and Genesis. Phil Collins did the first half as a solo artist and then the second half as part of Genesis.

By 1990, Phil Collins was massively popular. His album "...But Seriously," released late in 1989, was the best selling album in Britain in 1990, staying Number One in the charts for a stunning 15 weeks. It hit the top of the charts in the U.S. and most elsewhere too. Yet at the same time, he was continuing to be very successful as part of Genesis. At the time of this concert, their last album was "Invisible Touch," released in 1986 and another massive seller. The next Genesis album would come out in 1991. In between tours to support those albums, Genesis did almost no live performances. But they made an exception for their festival, since it was such a high profile gig.

By this point in the festival, it seems the wind died down. I don't remember any rustling noises in this set.

This album is an hour and one minute long.

01 talk by Rob Lowe (Phil Collins)
02 In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins)
03 Colours - Drum Duet (Phil Collins)
04 talk (Phil Collins)
05 Another Day in Paradise (Phil Collins)
06 Sussudio (Phil Collins)
07 Mama (Genesis)
08 That's All (Genesis)
09 Throwing It All Away (Genesis)
10 talk (Genesis)
11 Turn It On Again - Somebody to Love - [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction - Twist and Shout (Genesis)
12 Reach Out, I'll Be There - Lovin' Feelin' - Pinball Wizard - Midnight Hour - Turn It On Again [Reprise] (Genesis) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/XAEy2mka

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/OnuN85P8jJcMiRb/file

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.