Joan Baez - Baez Sings Baez, Volume 5: 1987-1997 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's another Fabio from Rio guest post. This is the fifth and final album of "Baez Sings Baez," naturally featuring Joan Baez. It makes the argument that Baez has been a talented songwriter, by compiling together all the songs she wrote or co-wrote.

Baez's music career has been slowing down as she gets older, which is how things naturally go. Her songwriting has slowed down as well. Most of the songs here are from 1987 to 1992. Only track 12 is from 1997. Since then, Baez has only released three studio albums, and none of them have included any of her own songs.

Fabio wanted to end this with a recent (2025) duet between Baez and Jesse Welles. The odds are good the song was written by Welles. But still, Fabio wanted it to show how Baez is staying alive and lending her voice to political and social causes.

There's a lot more to say. But you'll need to read the notes Fabio wrote for that, which are included in the download zip. Thanks again to Fabio for putting these albums together.

This album is 57 minutes long. 

Oh, one last thing. If you think the cover looks familiar, that's because I used it for the cover of "Volume 4" when I posted that a couple of days ago. But Fabio and I realized that cover image was too far off chronologically. So we found a more appropriate cover for "Volume 4," from 1982, and moved that one to this volume. So you might want to redownload that earlier volume, if you care about covers.

01 Recently (Joan Baez)
02 James and the Gang (Joan Baez)
03 Blues Improv (Joan Baez & Odetta)
04 China (Joan Baez)
05 Warriors of the Sun (Joan Baez)
06 Speaking of Dreams (Joan Baez)
07 Play Me Backwards (Joan Baez)
08 Isaac and Abraham (Joan Baez)
09 I'm with You (Joan Baez)
10 The Dream Song (Joan Baez)
11 Edge of Glory (Joan Baez)
12 Lily (Joan Baez)
13 No Kings (Jesse Welles & Joan Baez)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KXqi9dhf

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/g3JwcWvelfTSjbD/file 

The cover image is from 2000. I don't know the details.

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/4xNLLW9p 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/uxa5jlpb5sQPr8t/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. 

Covered: Tom Waits, Volume 2: 1994-2004 (A Fabio from Rio Guest Post)

Here's the second Covered volume for Tom Waits. Like the Covered albums made for other musical acts, the talent of a songwriter is shown through cover versions, rather than that person performing their own songs.

And like the rest of this series for Waits, most of the heavy lifting in making this album is thanks to Fabio from Rio. He basically found a zillion Waits covers, then whittled them down to his favorites. That was still a very large number, so I then listened to them and whittled them down a lot more.

Fabio also answered my request to do the write-ups for each album in this series. So here's what he had to say about this one. And thanks, Fabio, for all your work on these albums. Take it away:

--- 

Around the mid-1980s, Waits began to break away from conventional arrangements. The music became more percussive and raw, foreshadowing a major stylistic shift. This period marks the end of his "classic singer-songwriter" phase and the start of a more radical artistic reinvention. Waits embraced experimental instrumentation, junkyard percussion, polyrhythms, and global folk influences. His work became deeply theatrical, influenced by Brecht, Weill, and his collaborations with his wife Kathleen Brennan. Songs feel like surreal street operas populated by grotesques and dreamers. This second volume includes mostly songs from that period.

The best known cover here is probably "Way Down in the Hole," due to its use in the HBO series "The Wire." (The Blind Boys from Alabama's version was used as the first season opening music, and other versions were selected for the remaining four seasons, including Waits' own original version.) Norah Jones' delicate outtake "Picture in a Frame" also got some recognition, especially after its inclusion in special editions of her breakthrough album "Come Away With Me."

"I Don't Wanna Grow Up" sounds so natural in the Ramones' catalog that many listeners assume it is an original. It was used as the opening track and first single of their last studio album. Waits' version (from the excellent 1992 album "Bone Machine") is way darker. 

"Little Boy Blue" was only performed by Waits in the movie "One from the Heart." Here we have a bluesy version by jazz singer and pianist Holly Cole. Other highlights of the volume include Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "Whistling Past the Graveyard" and John Hammond's "Big Black Mariah" (which is taken from an album he did fully dedicated to Waits songs). 

On the mellower side, there are soft-sounding melodic folk versions by Shawn Colvin and Valerie Carter that prove Waits can write poignant ballads. Overall, another very nice flowing album with well performed covers that honor Waits' music.

--- 

This album is 58 minutes long. 

01 The Heart of Saturday Night (Shawn Colvin)
02 Whistling Past the Graveyard (Screamin' Jay Hawkins)
03 16 Shells from a Thirty-Ought Six (Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band)
04 I Don't Want to Grow Up (Ramones)
05 Better Off without a Wife (Pete Shelley)
06 Little Boy Blue (Holly Cole)
07 Whistle Down the Wind (Valerie Carter)
08 The Briar and the Rose (Niamh Parsons)
09 Dirt in the Ground (Christine Collister)
10 Heartattack and Vine (Popa Chubby)
11 Invitation to the Blues (Jennifer Warnes)
12 Big Black Mariah (John Hammond)
13 Picture in a Frame (Norah Jones)
14 Way Down in the Hole (Blind Boys from Alabama)
15 Jockey Full of Bourbon (Los Lobos)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/zUDkHa5i

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/2nAIGV2f2Rq1n6p/file

The cover photo was taken in San Francisco in 2002.

Richard Thompson - BBC Sessions, Volume 9: 1996-1997

Here's another BBC album by singer-songwriter Richard Thompson. This one is a collection of studio sessions.

In 1996, Thompson released the double album "You? Me? Us?" In my opinion, it wasn't as strong as most of his previous solo albums, and probably would have been better as a single album. Then in 1997, he released the album "Industry," with Danny Thompson (no relation). Half of the songs were his, and half were instrumentals by Danny. The songs by Richard were great, but the instrumentals mostly seemed like filler. 

Considering both of those albums were flawed, it's nice to have this collection, because it mostly consists of the strongest songs from both of those albums. There are a couple of songs from other albums, such as "Beeswing" and "Keep Your Distance," but not many. I count five songs from "You? Me? Us?" and three songs from "Industry." One song, "Bathsheba Smiles," was unreleased at the time and would appear on his next studio album, "Mock Tudor."

Most of the songs, tracks two through seven and nine through eleven, come from two sessions on the Andy Kershaw radio show. The first track is from the Bob Harris radio show, and the last one is from the Cambridge Folk Festival. (Highlights or even full sets of that festival are often broadcast by the BBC.) All of those songs are unreleased. That leaves just one officially released song, "Lotteryland." It also comes from one of the Andy Kershaw sessions, but it came out on the "The Live and Music Of" box set.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Beeswing (Richard Thompson)
02 Cold Kisses (Richard Thompson)
03 Dark Hand Over My Heart (Richard Thompson)
04 Hide It Away (Richard Thompson)
05 The Ghost of You Walks (Richard Thompson)
06 Train Don't Leave (Richard Thompson)
07 She Cut Off Her Long Silken Hair (Richard Thompson)
08 Lotteryland (Richard Thompson)
09 Drifting through the Days (Richard Thompson)
10 Bathsheba Smiles (Richard Thompson)
11 Keep Your Distance (Richard Thompson)
12 Sweetheart on the Barricade (Richard Thompson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/3fdocN5N

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/mcle0yKdfdbG1ps/file 

The cover photo is from a concert in the Royal Albert Hall, in London, on May 5, 1996.

The Moody Blues - BBC Sessions, Volume 9: In Concert, NEC Arena, Birmingham, Britain, 3-8-1997

Here's another BBC concert album by the Moody Blues, from 1997.

At the time of this concert, the Moody Blues hadn't released a new album in six years, "Keys to the Kingdom," in 1991. Only one song from it was performed here, "Lean on Me [Tonight]." Otherwise, they performed their hits from the 1960s to the 1980s, with a full orchestra backing them.

It turns out that most of this concert was released on the band's box set, "Timeless Flight." However, I didn't know it was a BBC concert until musical associate Progsprog sent me his copy. It turns out that had one extra song not on the box set, "The Voice." Perhaps the reason that didn't make it to the box set was because a BBC DJ talked extensively during the instrumental intro to that song. But thanks to the use of the MVSEP program, I was able to remove that talking (although there was a little damage to the quality of the underlying music). That's why that song has "[Edit]" in the title.

According to the set list at setlist.fm, about eight more songs were performed. But this is all we have, since the concert was edited down for broadcast by the BBC.  

This album is an hour and three minutes long. 

01 The Voice [Edit] (Moody Blues)
02 Gemini Dream (Moody Blues)
03 Tuesday Afternoon (Moody Blues)
04 talk (Moody Blues)
05 Eternity Road (Moody Blues)
06 talk (Moody Blues)
07 Talking Out of Turn (Moody Blues)
08 I Know You're Out There Somewhere (Moody Blues)
09 Lean on Me [Tonight] (Moody Blues)
10 I'm Just a Singer [In a Rock and Roll Band] (Moody Blues)
11 Nights in White Satin (Moody Blues)
12 Question (Moody Blues)
13 Ride My See Saw (Moody Blues)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/eaPdhoyX

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/KquhjyIjDnE6sUj/file

The cover photo is an appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" TV show, on February 21, 1995. That's Justin Hayward on the left and John Lodge on the right. Lodge was further to the side, but I moved him closer to Hayward with the use of Photoshop.

Various Artists - A Celebration of Townes Van Zandt, University of Texas at Austin, Austin City Limits, Austin, TX, 12-7-1997

Here's something I only recently discovered, so it went to the top of my pile of albums to post, while it was still fresh in my mind. It's a tribute to singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt, from 1997.

Van Zandt died on January 1, 1997 from heart failure. That wasn't that surprising, since he fit the profile of a "live hard and die young" kind of person. He had addictions with alcohol and heroin pretty much is entire adult life, and was manic depressive as well. But he was a much beloved figure in the Texas country music community. So most of his musical friends took part in this concert, put on by the "Austin City Limits" TV show, to honor his legacy.

As you can see from the cover photo, all the various singers were arranged in a large semi-circle facing the audience. There was a largely unseen band in the background supporting them. Each performer generally got one song, though Guy Clark got two, and sometimes there were duets or backing vocals.

If you're not familiar with the songwriting of Van Zandt, this is a good way to learn his best known songs. He didn't write many hit songs (with "Pancho and Lefty" being a big exception), but his songs were often covered by other country artists due to their quality.

As far as I know, everything here is unreleased. I found this on YouTube, converted it to audio, and broke it into mp3s. The sound quality is very good.  

This album is 51 minutes long. 

01 To Live Is to Fly (Guy Clark)
02 talk (Guy Clark)
03 talk (Peter Roman)
04 No Lonesome Tune (Peter Roman with Nanci Griffith)
05 talk (Steve Earle)
06 Ft. Worth Blues (Steve Earle)
07 talk (Steve Earle)
08 talk (Nanci Griffith)
09 Tecumseh Valley (Nanci Griffith)
10 talk (John T. Van Zandt)
11 Highway Kind (John T. Van Zandt)
12 talk (John T. Van Zandt)
13 talk (Willie Nelson)
14 Pancho and Lefty [Edit] (Willie Nelson & Emmylou Harris)
15 talk (Emmylou Harris)
16 If I Needed You [Edit] (Emmylou Harris with Steve Earle)
17 talk (Rodney Crowell)
18 Heavenly Houseboat (Rodney Crowell with Emmylou Harris)
19 talk (Lyle Lovett)
20 Lungs (Lyle Lovett with Steve Earle)
21 talk (Lyle Lovett)
22 talk (Jack Clement)
23 For the Sake of the Song (Jack Clement)
24 talk (Guy Clark)
25 Don't Take It Too Bad (Guy Clark)
26 talk (Guy Clark & Susanna Clark)
27 White Freightliner (Everybody)
28 talk (Guy Clark)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/peaMv6Ki 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/fAfL3f83E5vmOhc/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From right to left: Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Guy Clark, John T. Van Zandt, Nanci Griffith, Steve Earle, and Peter Rowan. The others were part of the circle (on the other side of Harris). But I chose not to fit them in, because if I did, everyone would have looked significantly smaller.

Various Artists - Music for Montserrat, Royal Albert Hall, London, Britain, 9-15-1997

Here's a really interesting benefit concert from 1997. Just look at the list of big stars involved: Carl Perkins, Midge Ure, Phil Collins, Jimmy Buffett, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Sting, Elton John, and Paul McCartney. Most of them performed two or three songs together, and all the big names got together with McCartney to sing some of his songs for the finale. All that, and the sound quality is excellent.

Montserrat is a small island in the Caribbean Sea, and it's still a colony of Britain. In 1979, George Martin, best known as the producer for nearly all the Beatles records, financed the building of a recording studio there. From 1979 to 1989, about 70 albums were recorded there, because musicians enjoyed recording in a beautiful, exotic locale. Many of them were by very big stars, such as "Synchronicity" by the Police and "Brothers in Arms" by Dire Straits.   

Unfortunately, in 1989, the Category Four hurricane Hugo hit Montserrat. It destroyed 90 percent of all buildings on the island, including Martin's recording studio. The studio wasn't rebuilt. Then, in 1995, the main volcano on the island, Soufriere Hills volcano, erupted. The island was basically completely devastated again. Martin then led the effort to stage this benefit concert. All the musicians involved recorded albums on Montserrat. Ultimately, about a million and half British pounds were raised. Later, limited edition lithographs signed by McCartney and Martin raised another million and a half pounds. This money went to help people reconstruct their homes, as well as the building of a new cultural center for the island. 

Here's the Wikipedia entry about this concert, if you want to know more: 

Music for Montserrat - Wikipedia  

For this concert, Martin decided that less was more. He even mentioned in his banter during the concert that he turned down many musical acts who wanted to take part. The focus was just on the biggest stars. One exception was Arrow. He only had one minor hit in 1982, in Britain, "Hot Hot Hot." But he is Montserratian, so it made sense he would be involved. Also, "Hot Hot Hot" went on to be a bigger hit by Buster Poindexter in 1987. 

This concert has been released on DVD, but not in any audio format. So I started with the DVD, converting it to audio format then breaking it into mp3s. "Hot Hot Hot," plus "Volcano" by Jimmy Buffett and "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes" by Midge Ure, were not on the DVD. But luckily I found out they were performed by reading the Wikipedia entry about the concert. Then I found YouTube videos of them. Those had very good sound quality, because they were broadcast on TV. 

In addition to adding some missing songs, I cut some things. Mostly, I cut some interviews that were interspersed between the songs in the DVD. Martin plus some of the big stars like McCartney and Sting were interviewed. It's interesting stuff, but it wasn't part of the concert, so it got the axe. If you want to see that, check out the DVD.

Probably the highlight of the concert was McCartney's set at the end. As he said in the interview which I cut out, he had met the other stars in this concert many times over the years. However, he rarely actually played music with any of them. For instance, he said the last time he played with Clapton was when Clapton guested on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on the White Album by the Beatles in 1968. But McCartney practiced with Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, and Elton John, and really collaborated with tracks 42 to 46 at the end here.

One final note. This was the last major public appearance for Carl Perkins. He was in fine health at the time of this concert. But he died after a series of strokes in January 1998, at the age of 65. 

This album is two hours and 15 minutes long.

01 talk (George Martin)
02 talk (Carl Perkins)
03 Blue Suede Shoes (Carl Perkins)
04 talk (emcee)
05 talk (Midge Ure)
06 Dancing with Tears in My Eyes (Midge Ure)
07 Vienna (Midge Ure)
08 talk (George Martin)
09 talk (Phil Collins)
10 In the Air Tonight (Phil Collins)
11 Take Me Home (Phil Collins with Ray Cooper)
12 talk (Arrow)
13 Hot Hot Hot (Arrow)
14 talk (Jimmy Buffett)
15 Volcano (Jimmy Buffett)
16 talk (Phil Collins)
17 talk (Mark Knopfler)
18 Going Home [Theme from Local Hero] [Instrumental] (Mark Knopfler)
19 talk (Mark Knopfler)
20 Brothers in Arms (Mark Knopfler with Guy Fletcher)
21 talk (Mark Knopfler)
22 Money for Nothing (Mark Knopfler with Sting, Phil Collins, Eric Clapton & Ray Cooper)
23 talk (Phil Collins)
24 Message in a Bottle (Sting)
25 Fields of Gold (Sting)
26 Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic (Sting)
27 talk (George Martin)
28 talk (Elton John)
29 Your Song (Elton John)
30 talk (Elton John)
31 Live like Horses (Elton John)
32 Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me (Elton John)
33 talk (Carl Perkins)
34 Broken Hearted (Eric Clapton)
35 Layla (Eric Clapton with Mark Knopfler)
36 talk (Eric Clapton)
37 Same Old Blues (Eric Clapton with Mark Knopfler & Phil Collins)
38 talk (George Martin)
39 talk (Paul McCartney)
40 Yesterday (Paul McCartney)
41 talk (Paul McCartney)
42 Golden Slumbers (Paul McCartney with Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler & Eric Clapton)
43 Carry That Weight - The End (Paul McCartney with Phil Collins, Mark Knopfler & Eric Clapton)
44 talk (George Martin)
45 Hey Jude (Paul McCartney, Elton John & Everybody)
46 Kansas City - Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey (Paul McCartney & Everybody)
47 talk (Paul McCartney & George Martin) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/WN5He6az 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/rtae3vnAgivMIJf/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From left to right: Carl Perkins, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, and Paul McCartney. Sting is right behind Perkins, but all you can really see of him is his hand on the neck of a bass guitar. In the original photo, the neck of Sting's bass guitar went right over Knopfler's face. In my opinion, it kind of ruined the photo. But there were several photos no doubt taken minutes apart from each other from the same spot. I found one where Knopfler's face was fully visible and the bass guitar neck was lower, and I patched in just that part of the image, using Photoshop. I also used the Krea AI program to flesh out some of the detail.

Various Artists - The Carlsberg Concert - Songs and Visions, Wembley Stadium, London, Britain, 8-16-1997

This is a really fascinating concert, with a format I've never seen before. I highly recommend it. Basically, the idea was to get ten famous musicians to perform one classic song a year, in reverse order, going back to the start of rock and roll in 1955. The stars: Toni Braxton, Seal, Robert Palmer, Jon Bon Jovi, Steve Winwood, k.d. lang, Chaka Khan, Mary J. Blige, Rod Stewart, and Eikichi Yazawa.

Occasionally, the "one song per year" format that meant having the star sing their own hits. For instance, Rod Stewart sang "Maggie May," Robert Palmer sang "Addicted to Love," and k.d. lang sang "Constant Craving." But more often, they sang songs they probably have never sang in public before or since. For example, Seal sang "Stairway to Heaven," Rod Stewart sang "In the Midnight Hour," Bon Jon Bovi sang "Sympathy for the Devil," and k.d. lang sang "I Will Survive!" 

Even more intriguingly, the stars sometimes sang unexpected duets. For instance, Seal and Steve Winwood teamed up to sing U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," and Chaka Khan & Robert Palmer sang a duet version of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." The backing band was the same for all the songs, so there was no time wasted between songs. Stewart was the emcee, making very brief comments between all the songs. If you watch a video of this concert on YouTube, you'll see that each time he introduced a song, iconic images from the year the song was a hit were shown on a huge screen behind the stage.

For better or worse, the "one song per year" rule was only loosely enforced. Sometimes, they played two songs for one year, and more often years went by with no songs at all. They sometimes fudged the years songs came out. For instance, Rod Stewart in his banter implied that "Stairway to Heaven" was released in 1973, when it came out in 1971. The first and last songs were also wildly out of order. And the rule was only even loosely enforced until 1963. At that point, the concert turned into an Elvis Presley tribute, with seven Presley hits in a row. But those are just quibbles. The bottom line is that these big stars sang nothing but classic songs for the whole concert.

In terms of the stars, the one I had never heard of, and chances are you have never heard of, is Eikichi Yazawa. He is very little known in most Western countries, but he's a big star in Japan, filling stadiums there. He has the nicknames "The Boss" and "The King of Rock" there as well. The reason he isn't better known elsewhere is that his hits songs are sung in Japanese. He only did one song in this concert on his own, "Don't Be Cruel." I watched the YouTube video of it. He danced and held the stage with lots of charisma, but unfortunately one can hear a clear Japanese accent on his singing. Still, kudos for the concert organizers in giving him this big platform.

By the way, it may seem odd at first that one of the songs chosen was "Some Guys Have All the Luck," because it wasn't as big of a hit as the other songs here. But that's Robert Palmer had a hit with it in 1982, and then Rod Stewart had a pretty differently arranged hit with it in 1984. So it made perfect sense for the two of them to sing a duet version of it here. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the only time they sang the song together.

I found two main sources for this concert. One was a high quality video file, and the other was a video downloaded from YouTube. It's a good thing I found two, because each of them had songs the other one didn't. Furthermore, "Don't Be Cruel" sung by Yazawa wasn't included on either one. But I managed to find a YouTube video of it, as mentioned above, and I included it in the proper order (since the video kept going with the next song). 

This is called "The Carlsberg Concert" because it was sponsored by the Carlsberg Beer Company. (You can see the company logo in the background in the cover image). It was conceived and directed by someone named Tony Hollingsworth. I had never heard of him before, but it turns out he came up with some really unusual and intriguing concerts. For instance, at the same time I found this one, I found another one where he paired big name American and British music stars like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Jon Bon Jovi with Japanese musicians. I plan on posting that one as well, eventually. Here's his bio page. 

Tony Hollingsworth 

It seems this "one song per year" format has never been repeated in a big concert like this in the many years since. That's too bad. I had never heard about this concert until I randomly stumbled across it the other day. If you know of other "various artists" concerts that you think I should post at my blog, please let me know. It seems there are many of these, like this one, that once appeared on TV and have only existed in video format, so they've gone way under the radar when it comes to being audio bootlegs. 

The music is unreleased, and the sound quality is excellent. I did make a few fixes, such as brief volume drops, but nothing major. Oh, but one consistent problem was that all the lead vocals were low in the mix. So I boosted that for all the songs using the UVR5 audio editing program.

This album is two hours and 37 minutes long.

01 Papa Was a Rolling Stone (Rod Stewart, Chaka Khan, Mary J. Blige & Steve Winwood)
02 talk (Rod Stewart)
03 Unbreak My Heart (Toni Braxton)
04 talk (Rod Stewart)
05 Kiss from a Rose (Seal & Mary J. Blige)
06 talk (Rod Stewart)
07 Keep the Faith (Jon Bon Jovi)
08 Sympathy for the Devil (Jon Bon Jovi)
09 talk (Rod Stewart)
10 Constant Craving (k.d. lang)
11 talk (Rod Stewart)
12 Nothing Compares 2 U (Rod Stewart & Mary J. Blige)
13 talk (Rod Stewart)
14 Ain't Nobody (Chaka Khan)
15 talk (Rod Stewart)
16 Bad Medicine (Jon Bon Jovi)
17 talk (Rod Stewart)
18 I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (Seal & Steve Winwood)
19 talk (Rod Stewart)
20 Addicted to Love (Robert Palmer)
21 Some Guys Have All the Luck (Robert Palmer & Rod Stewart)
22 talk (Rod Stewart)
23 Every Breath You Take (Chaka Khan & k.d. lang)
24 talk (Rod Stewart)
25 Another One Bites the Dust - Good Times (Mary J. Blige)
26 talk (Rod Stewart)
27 I Will Survive (k.d. lang)
28 talk (Rod Stewart)
29 Is This Love (Seal)
30 talk (Rod Stewart)
31 Tonight's the Night (Rod Stewart)
32 talk (Rod Stewart)
33 Stairway to Heaven (Seal)
34 talk (Rod Stewart)
35 Maggie May (Rod Stewart)
36 talk (Rod Stewart)
37 Travelin' Band (Jon Bon Jovi)
38 Proud Mary (Jon Bon Jovi)
39 talk (Rod Stewart)
40 You're All I Need to Get By (Seal & Toni Braxton)
41 talk (Rod Stewart)
42 Gimme Some Lovin' (Steve Winwood)
43 talk (Rod Stewart)
44 [You Make Me Feel Like] A Natural Woman (Mary J. Blige)
45 talk (Rod Stewart)
46 In the Midnight Hour (Rod Stewart)
47 talk (Rod Stewart)
48 Like a Rolling Stone (Seal, Jon Bon Jovi & Robert Palmer)
49 talk (Rod Stewart)
50 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Chaka Khan & Robert Palmer)
51 Dancing in the Street (Steve Winwood & Chaka Khan)
52 talk (Rod Stewart)
53 All My Loving (k.d. lang & Chaka Khan)
54 talk (Rod Stewart)
55 Love Me Tender (Toni Braxton)
56 Hound Dog (Steve Winwood)
57 That's All Right, Mama (Jon Bon Jovi)
58 All Shook Up (Robert Palmer)
59 Jailhouse Rock (Rod Stewart)
60 Don't Be Cruel (Eikichi Yazawa)
61 Heartbreak Hotel (Rod Stewart, Robert Palmer, Jon Bon Jovi, Steve Winwood & Eikichi Yazawa)
62 Hey Jude (Everybody) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bD6sqiV8

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/l69yltKzWGqfd88/file

The cover image shows a promotional photo taken in conjunction with this concert. The version I found was very wide but vertically narrow, so I split it into two parts, to allow me to make everyone appear larger. From left to right, top row: Eikichi Yazawa, Toni Braxton, Seal, Robert Palmer, and Jon Bon Jovi. From left to right, bottom row: Steve Winwood, k.d. lang, Chaka Khan, and Rod Stewart. Mary J. Blige seems to have missed the photo shoot. I used the Krea AI program to fill in some detail. 

Covered: Henry Mancini: 1959-1998

I have so much material for Covered series albums that I'm going to try to make another concerted effort to post a lot more of them. So here's another, focusing on the songwriting of Henry Mancini.

Mancini is a bit of a left field choice for the Covered series, since he mostly composed instrumental music for movies, and is far removed from rock and roll. But he was responsible for so many classic songs that I feel I can't leave him out. The intro to his Wikipedia article sums him up well, stating that Mancini "was an American composer, conductor, arranger, pianist and flutist. Often cited as one of the greatest composers in the history of film, he won four Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, and twenty Grammy Awards, plus a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995."

Mancini was born in 1924 and grew up in rural Pennsylvania. After graduating from high school, he studied at the prestigious Julliard School of Music in New York City for two years. But then he was drafted in the U.S. Army and fought in World War II from 1943 to 1945. After the war, he became a pianist and arranger for the Glenn Miller Orchestra (which continued despite the fact Miller died in World War II). In 1952, he got a job writing music for movies for Universal Pictures, a major movie studio in Hollywood. 

However, he didn't really become famous until after he left that company in 1958 to become an independent composer and arranger. One of his first jobs was writing the theme for a new TV show called "Peter Gunn." His song, the "Peter Gunn Theme," was a big hit for Duane Eddy, and has since become an often covered classic. It won an Emmy award and two Grammys, and put Mancini in high demand writing for more TV and movie projects.

Mancini typically only wrote music, usually instrumentals. But sometimes he would work with another songwriter who would write the lyrics. His next major hit, "Moon River," was such a case, with the lyrics written by famed songwriter Johnny Mercer. The version sung by actress Audrey Hepburn in the movie of the same name in 1961 went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song, as well as Grammys for Song of the Year and Record of the Year.

After that, Mancini kept steadily releasing music for decades, including scores for dozens of movies. He recorded over 90 albums on his own, from big band to jazz to light classical. He became, and remains, one of the biggest names in the "easy listening" genre. 

For this album, I tried to boil the selections down to just his very best known songs, so that even people who aren't typically into can easy listening style can enjoy this. For instance, I find it hard to believe there's anyone out there who doesn't enjoy hearing the highly creative "Pink Panther Theme." Like that song, the vast majority of songs here are instrumentals. "Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet" wasn't actually written by him, but his arrangement changed the song so drastically that I've included it here anyway.

Most of Mancini's best known songs date from the 1960s. After that decade, he switched more to arranging songs written by other people, though he did sometimes write his own material. Some of the songs near the end of this album are covers of songs from much earlier in his career. I generally tried to avoid Mancini's own versions, as I usually do with these Covered albums. But I have two songs by him here since I couldn't find good versions of those ones otherwise.

He was still composing and arranging, though less prolifically, when he died of pancreatic cancer in 1994 at the age of 70 years old. His music made such a cultural impact that in 2004 he was the subject of a U.S. postage stamp. 

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Peter Gunn Theme (Ray Anthony & His Orchestra)
02 Moon River (Audrey Hepburn)
03 Baby Elephant Walk (Lawrence Welk & His Orchestra)
04 Theme from Hatari (Henry Mancini & His Orchestra)
05 A Shot in the Dark (Shirley Scott)
06 The Shadows of Paris (Elsie Bianchi)
07 Pink Panther Theme (Those Fantabulous Strings)
08 Slow Hot Wind (Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66)
09 Two for the Road (Peggy Lee)
10 Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet [A Time for Us] (Johnny Mathis)
11 Send a Little Love My Way (Anne Murray)
12 Newhart (Henry Mancini)
13 Days of Wine and Roses (Ella Fitzgerald & Joe Pass)
14 Dreamsville (Dave Grusin with Diana Krall)
15 Charade (Monica Mancini)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/YcfTBdHW

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/nDvHfXT0X64bFSQ/file

The cover photo dates from 1985. I don't know any other details.

Covered: Will Jennings, Volume 2: 1988-1999

Here's "Volume 2" celebrating the songwriting of Will Jennings.

With "Volume 1," I showed that Jennings co-wrote many popular hits in the late 1970s and all through the 1980s. His winning streak continued through all of the 1990s in this volume.

Jennings co-wrote five Number One hits in the U.S. in Volume 1. He only co-wrote two in this volume: "Roll with It" and "My Heart Will Go On." But it was a fluke "Tears in Heaven" only reached Number Two (held back by "Save the Best for Last" by Vanessa Williams), since it was one of the top five best selling singles of the year. Rolling Stone Magazine also put it on their list of the top 500 songs of all time.

I found an article that talked a bit about Jennings' involvement with "Tears in Heaven." Eric Clapton wrote the music and lyrics for the first verse, with lyrics about the tragic and untimely death of his young son. However, he got stuck at that point. He'd been impressed with Jennings being involved co-writing many hits for Steve Winwood, so Clapton recruited him to help. Jennings not only wrote the lyrics of the other verses, he wrote both the music and lyrics of the bridge. So that's a good example showing that while he was best known for his lyric writing, he was capable with music composition too.

The biggest hit here, though, has to be "My Heart Will Go On," the theme song for the blockbuster "Titanic" movie. It was a Number One song in the U.S., Britain, and over twenty more countries. It was the best selling single of 1998, and is currently listed as the tenth best selling single of all time, as I write this in 2025! It basically won all the awards, including Academy Award for Best Original Song, Grammy Award for Song of the Year, Grammy Award for Record of the Year, and Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song. 

The music to the song was written by James Horner. He didn't write many other big hits, but he did the scores to well over 100 movies. Originally, director James Cameron just wanted the theme song to be an instrumental. But Horner felt it needed lyrics, so he secretly got Jennings to write the lyrics, since he'd worked with Jennings on a few songs previously. After Cameron heard it, he wasn't keen on having vocals. But he was under intense pressure from the movie studio to make a profit since "Titanic" was the most expensive movie ever made up until that point. So Cameron ultimately gave the okay, and was glad he did, since the song helped make the movie the top grossing film of all time up until then.

After that though, Jennings didn't have many more hits. No doubt, at that point, he could have retired and slept on a hill of money from his "My Heart Will Go On" profits alone. He did have some more music projects into the early 2000s, but seems to have retired by about 2005. He died in 2024 at the age of 80.

As with "Volume 1," all the songs here are the original versions, which were usually hits. I could have included many more lesser hits, but I generally wanted to limit these volumes to the bigger hits, which usually were the best songs. 

This album is 57 minutes long. 

01 Roll with It (Steve Winwood)
02 If We Hold On Together (Diana Ross)
03 Don't You Know What the Night Can Do (Steve Winwood)
04 Many a Long and Lonesome Highway (Rodney Crowell)
05 Holding On (Steve Winwood)
06 The Blues Come Over Me (B.B. King)
07 Tears in Heaven (Eric Clapton)
08 What Kind of Love (Rodney Crowell)
09 Help Me Up (Eric Clapton)
10 My Heart Will Go On [Love Theme from Titanic] (Celine Dion)
11 I Want to Spend My Lifetime Loving You (Tina Arena & Marc Anthony)
12 Please Remember Me (Tim McGraw)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/3Pu5JVo1 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/XOU3PDIFFAyEJhE/file

The cover photo is from 1999. In full picture, Jennings is holding a Grammy Award in his hands.

The Rolling Stones - BBC Sessions, Volume 8: In Concert, Trans World Dome, St. Louis, MO, 12-12-1997

To quote Michael Corleone in "Godfather III," "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!" Every time I think I'm done posting BBC albums by the Rolling Stones, it seems I find another one. This one typically isn't considered a BBC album because it was broadcast on U.S. radio at the time, and also shown on pay-per-view TV. But I found out from the BBC website that it was broadcast on the BBC at the same time, so that makes it a BBC album in my book.

At the time of this concert, the Rolling Stones were promoting their latest album, "Bridges to Babylon." Four songs are from that album: "Anybody Seen My Baby," "Saint of Me," "Flip the Switch," and "Out of Control." Also notable are some guest stars: Dave Matthews, Taj Mahal, and Joshua Redman. The song the band played with Taj Mahal, "Corrina, Corrina," was only ever performed by them at this one concert.

In 1998, the band released a live album of their 1997 tour. It contained three songs from this exact concert: "Waiting on a Friend," "Corrina, Corinna," and "The Last Time." Otherwise, everything here has not been officially released in any audio format. However, a DVD of this concert also exists. 

Sigh. Due to the belated discovery of this album, the two Rolling Stones BBC albums that come after this have been renumbered. If you want to get the updated versions (with revised cover art and mp3 tags), here are the links:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-rolling-stones-bbc-sessions-volume_24.html

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-rolling-stones-bbc-sessions-volume.html

This concert is two hours and 28 minutes long.

01 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Rolling Stones)
02 Let's Spend the Night Together (Rolling Stones)
03 talk (Rolling Stones)
04 Flip the Switch (Rolling Stones)
05 Gimme Shelter (Rolling Stones)
06 talk (Rolling Stones)
07 Wild Horses (Rolling Stones with Dave Matthews)
08 talk (Rolling Stones)
09 Anybody Seen My Baby (Rolling Stones)
10 Saint of Me (Rolling Stones)
11 talk (Rolling Stones)
12 Corrina, Corrina (Rolling Stones with Taj Mahal)
13 talk (Rolling Stones)
14 Out of Control (Rolling Stones)
15 talk (Rolling Stones)
16 Waiting on a Friend (Rolling Stones with Joshua Redman)
17 talk (Rolling Stones)
18 Miss You (Rolling Stones)
19 talk (Rolling Stones)
20 All about You (Rolling Stones)
21 talk (Rolling Stones)
22 Wanna Hold You (Rolling Stones)
23 talk (Rolling Stones)
24 It's Only Rock 'n Roll [But I Like It] (Rolling Stones)
25 The Last Time (Rolling Stones)
26 talk (Rolling Stones)
27 Like a Rolling Stone (Rolling Stones)
28 Sympathy for the Devil (Rolling Stones)
29 Tumbling Dice (Rolling Stones)
30 talk (Rolling Stones)
31 Honky Tonk Women (Rolling Stones)
32 Start Me Up (Rolling Stones)
33 Jumpin' Jack Flash (Rolling Stones)
34 talk (Rolling Stones)
35 You Can't Always Get What You Want (Rolling Stones)
36 Brown Sugar (Rolling Stones)

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

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/pEwrUXIMbAPo9Je/file

I couldn't find any good images from this exact concert. The cover photo is from another concert in the same tour, in August 1997. From right to left, that's Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood, Keith Richards, and Charlie Watts.

Suzanne Vega: BBC Sessions, Volume 5: In Concert, Shepherd's Bush Empire, London, Britain, 2-11-1997

Here's another album of singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega performing for the BBC. This time, it's a concert from 1997.

In late 1996, Vega released the studio album "Nine Objects of Desire." This concert was from the tour supporting that album. Naturally, many of the songs performed are from that album.

Overall, the sound quality is very good. However, there were some concerning gaps. A chunk of the middle of the song "Caramel," was missing, about a minute. The second half of the last song, "Gypsy," was also missing. Furthermore, the start of "Marlene on the Wall" was missing. I generally filled these gaps by using portions of versions recorded at the "Sessions at West 54th" TV show that same year. That's why those three songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. Additionally, some of the audience cheering between songs didn't seem to line up, meaning the cheering of the end of one song didn't match with the start of the next one. I tried to fix that by adding more cheering. But I suspect some songs could be missing, plus there could be missing banter. So if anyone has more of this concert, let me know, so I can add it in. But at least what is here should sound fine, after my fixes.

This unreleased album is 54 minutes long.

01 Stockings (Suzanne Vega)
02 Rock in This Pocket [Song of David] (Suzanne Vega)
03 talk (Suzanne Vega)
04 Caramel [Edit] (Suzanne Vega)
05 Small Blue Thing (Suzanne Vega)
06 Marlene on the Wall [Edit] (Suzanne Vega)
07 Fatman and Dancing Girl (Suzanne Vega)
08 The Queen and the Soldier (Suzanne Vega)
09 Room Off the Street (Suzanne Vega)
10 Blood Makes Noise (Suzanne Vega)
11 talk (Suzanne Vega)
12 Luka (Suzanne Vega)
13 Tom's Diner (Suzanne Vega)
14 talk (Suzanne Vega)
15 Men in a War (Suzanne Vega)
16 Gypsy [Edit] (Suzanne Vega)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rbm2Sewe

alternate:

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

The cover photo is from January 1997, but I don't know more details.

Suzanne Vega - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: 1991-2023

Here's another album of Suzanne Vega performing for the BBC. This time, it's a collection of studio sessions.

As you can see from the title, this deals with a very long chronological era, 22 years, from 1991 to 2023. So this is a grab bag of lots of different things. Everything here is unreleased, except for tracks 5 and 6, which came out on a B-side to the song "99.9F" in 1992.

The first four songs are from a concert at the 1991 Cambridge Folk Festival. Maybe the BBC broadcast more of her performance, but I could only find these songs. I removed the applause at the ends of the songs using the MVSEP program, like I did with a few other live songs on this album.

The next four songs, tracks 5 to 8, are from a 1992 studio session. As mentioned above, two of them were released on a B-side. Tracks 9 to 11 are from an appearance on a BBC TV show in 1993. Track 12, an acappella version of "Tom's Diner," is from another BBC TV show, in 1994. Tracks 13 and 14 are from yet another BBC TV show, "Later... with Jools Holland," in 1997. 

After that, there's a very big chronological jump, to 2014, for track 15. That's from the BBC Folk Awards show that year. Then track 16, "Marlene on the Wall," is from the Glastonbury Festival in 2022. She did a whole set, but if there's a worthy recording of it, I couldn't find it. This is the one song the BBC posted on YouTube. Finally, the last three songs are from a 2023 BBC "Piano Room" session. That includes a cover of the Blondie classic "Dreaming," plus a song Vega wrote about the Ukraine war that started in 2021, "Last Train from Mariupol." And there's a second version of "Tom's Diner." I included both because they're very different from each other, with this one being backed by an orchestra.

There probably are some other BBC sessions from this 22 year time period that I'd missed. (Plus I didn't find anything interesting from before 1991.) If you have them, please let me know and I'll add them in.

This album is an hour and two minutes long.

01 Cracking (Suzanne Vega)
02 Predictions (Suzanne Vega)
03 talk (Suzanne Vega)
04 Men Will Be Men (Suzanne Vega)
05 Rock in This Pocket (Suzanne Vega)
06 In Liverpool (Suzanne Vega)
07 Gypsy (Suzanne Vega)
08 When Heroes Go Down (Suzanne Vega)
09 As a Child (Suzanne Vega)
10 talk (Suzanne Vega)
11 Blood Makes Noise (Suzanne Vega)
12 Tom's Diner [Acappella Version] (Suzanne Vega)
13 Birth-day [Love Made Real] (Suzanne Vega)
14 Headshots (Suzanne Vega)
15 Horizon [There Is a Road] (Suzanne Vega)
16 Marlene on the Wall (Suzanne Vega)
17 Dreaming (Suzanne Vega)
18 Last Train from Mariupol (Suzanne Vega)
19 Tom's Diner [Orchestral Version] (Suzanne Vega)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cmnEdZ25

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/MoxcFP0aYONvO36/file

The cover photo was taken near the Gorge Amphitheatre in George, Washington, during a Lilith Fair tour on July 5, 1997.

Van Morrison - BBC Sessions, Volume 7: In Concert, Waterfront Hall, Belfast, Ireland, 2-3-1997

Here's another Van Morrison BBC album. This time, it's a concert from 1997.

I'm not a big fan of Morrison's music in the 1980's, where he leaned more into New Age sounds with more overt Christian messaging. But in my opinion he rebounded in the 1990s, with more of a focus on rootsy R&B and jazz. His renaissance continued with the album "The Healing Game," released in April 1997. A Rolling Stone Magazine article in 2019 listed the album as one of his ten best, the only album on that list from after 1980.

Although this concert took place a couple of months prior to the release of that album, he already was playing songs from it: "Fire in the Belly," "Rough God Goes Riding," "If You Love Me," "Sometimes We Cry," "Burning Ground," and "The Healing Game."

This album has two sources. The first ten songs are from a BBC radio broadcast, which was also filmed and shown on TV. Apparently, it's not just from February 3, 1997. There are some songs from February 2nd, but I don't know which is which. Luckily for us, in the filming of this concert, there were some outtakes that leaked to the public. I found those on YouTube, and added them in as the last four songs. The song order for the whole thing is scrambled compared to the actual order performed in concert, so I just stuck those four at the end. 

Overall, the sound quality is excellent. However, one of the extra songs, "Tupelo Honey - Why Must I Always Explain," was suddenly cut off before the song ended. Luckily, the song dropped off to a near end about ten seconds prior to that. Probably it would have built back up before finishing. But I just cut it off at that point, and then added in some cheering from the end of other songs to give it more of a natural sounding ending.

This album is an hour and 18 minutes long.

01 Days like This (Van Morrison)
02 Fire in the Belly (Van Morrison)
03 Rough God Goes Riding (Van Morrison)
04 Into the Mystic (Van Morrison)
05 Sometimes We Cry (Van Morrison)
06 Enlightenment (Van Morrison)
07 It Once Was My Life (Van Morrison)
08 If You Love Me (Van Morrison)
09 The Healing Game (Van Morrison)
10 See Me Through - Soldier of Fortune - Burning Ground (Van Morrison)
11 The Waiting Game (Van Morrison)
12 Ain't That Lovin' You, Baby (Van Morrison)
13 Vanlose Stairway (Van Morrison)
14 Tupelo Honey - Why Must I Always Explain (Van Morrison)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VzLSGDdw

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/6sMsQvFxFJoHNZw/file

The cover photo is from the Glastonbury Festival on June 29, 1997.

Covered: Roger Cook & Roger Greenaway, Volume 2: 1971-1998

Here's the second of two "Covered" albums featuring the songwriting talents of Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway.

This album starts in the early 1970s, with Cook and Greenaway continuing their successful songwriting partnership begun around 1965. They did very well in the early 1970s, as more pop groups made the charts with songs written by professional songwriters like them. One particular highlight was "Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress)" by the Hollies, mainly written by Hollies vocalist Allan Clarke with Cook, although Greenaway got credited too. Although it didn't reach Number One in the U.S. or Britain, it ended up being one of the best selling songs of the year.

Their partnership was shook up in 1975. Apparently, Cook really got into country music, so much so that he decided to move from Britain to Nashville, Tennessee, the capital of the country music business. He has apparently lived there ever since. (Both Cook and Greenaway are still alive as I write this in 2025.) Cook's move really hurt their songwriting partnership, due to sheer communication difficulties, as well as Cook's new focus on country music. I believe they still wrote some songs together, but a lot less than before. Greenaway wrote with some other professional songwriters, like Geoff Stevens and Barry Mason. But he had less success after the 1970s, and switched mostly to business administration in music companies. 

Meanwhile, Greenaway also had less success than before after the 1970s, but he still had some hits through the end of the 1990s, mostly on the country charts. In 1997, he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, the first person from Britain to do so.

As I mentioned in Volume 1, there are many more hit songs I could have included, but didn't. I wanted to keep this to the best of the best. But here's a list of all the hit songs Cook and/or Greenaway was involved in:

List of songs written by Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway - Wikipedia

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Something Tells Me [Something's Gonna Happen Tonight] (Cilla Black)
02 Long Cool Woman [In a Black Dress] (Hollies)
03 Softly Whispering I Love You (English Congregation)
04 Like Sister and Brother (Drifters)
05 Blame It on the Pony Express (Peter Noone)
06 Kissin' in the Back Row of the Movies (Drifters)
07 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 [Blow Your Whistle] (Gary Toms Empire)
08 Jeans On (David Dundas)
09 You're More than a Number in My Little Red Book (Drifters)
10 I Believe in You (Don Williams)
11 Talking in Your Sleep (Crystal Gayle)
12 Love Is on a Roll (Don Williams)
13 One Night at a Time (George Strait)
14 I Just Want to Dance with You (George Strait)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ifx4TE6M

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/mxGCD6UKB776Skt/file

The cover photo shows Cook and Greenaway in 1972. That's Greenaway on the left and Cook on the right. This originally was a black and white photo. But I colorized it using the Palette program.

Paul Carrack - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, Shepherd's Bush Empire, London, Britain, 11-18-1997

I've posted a couple of early 1980s BBC concerts that co-starred Nick Lowe and Paul Carrack. I'm planning on posting a couple of Nick Lowe solo career BBC concerts also. I'm more of a Lowe fan, but I've discovered a couple of Carrack solo career BBC concerts, so I'm posting them as well. Here's the first one, from 1997.

Paul Carrack has had a very strange music career. He sings lead vocals on many famous hits, but he's only had one sizable hit in the U.S., "Don't Shed a Tear" in 1987, and none in Britain. Yet he's the lead vocalist on "How Long" by Ace, "Tempted" and "Loving You Tonight" by Squeeze, and a bunch of Mike and the Mechanics hits, including "Silent Running," "Over My Shoulder," and "The Living Years." I think he'd be much more famous if his name had prominently featured on all those hits. 

Carrack has often been recruited as a band member or session player mostly because of his excellent, soulful voice, not to mention his keyboard playing and songwriting skills. One gets to see all that one display here. It's a relatively short (and unreleased) concert, at less than an hour. But it features some of the hits mentioned above by Ace, Squeeze, and Mike and the Mechanics, although oddly, not his big solo hit, "Don't Shed a Tear." Perhaps that's because this concert took place in Britain, and while that was a Top Ten hit in the U.S., it only reached Number Sixty in the British singles chart.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Another Cup of Coffee (Paul Carrack)
02 You Give Me Something (Paul Carrack)
03 Eyes of Blue (Paul Carrack)
04 Time to Let Go (Paul Carrack)
05 The Way I'm Feeling Tonight (Paul Carrack)
06 Perfect Love (Paul Carrack)
07 Satisfied (Paul Carrack)
08 Tempted (Paul Carrack)
09 talk (Paul Carrack)
10 Over My Shoulder (Paul Carrack)
11 The Living Years (Paul Carrack)
12 How Long (Paul Carrack)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/t6BxoVmo

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/UKB637Sd7B2cGdU/file

The cover photo shows Carrack in a Mike and the Mechanics concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London on April 18, 1996.

Supertramp - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: In Concert, Sheffield Arena, Sheffield, Britain, 9-26-1997

I posted four Supertramp BBC albums a while back, all from the 1970s. I thought that's all there was, but I recently discovered material for a fifth one. This is a concert from 1997.

I was a bit reluctant to post this, because it doesn't include Roger Hodgson. Hodgson left Supertramp for good in 1983. The band was led by Rick Davies from that point on. Both Hodgson and Davies wrote and sang songs for the band. For instance, Davies wrote the hits "Bloody Well Right," "Rudy," and "Goodbye Stranger." But Hodgson wrote more hits, including "Dreamer," "Give a Little Bit," "Take the Long Way Home," "Breakfast in America," and "The Logical Song." So while both were very talented, I'd say Hodgson was the bigger reason for the band's success. Thus, it's pretty rough not having him in the band.

Still, Supertramp carried on without him (while he had a solo career). They released albums in 1985 and 1987, then took a long break before releasing "Some Things Never Change" in 1997. That's what they were promoting for this concert and tour. I think it sounds pretty good overall, and very Supertramp-y, since everyone but Hodgson remained. Still, it's a bit weird hearing band member Mark Hart sing "Take the Long Way Home" and "The Logical Song" instead of Hodgson. I'm rather surprised the concert didn't feature "Cannonball," which was the one big hit the band hand (in 1985) after Hodgson left. But no doubt this was edited down from a longer concert, and the BBC must have cut that one out.

This concert is unreleased. However, note that an official album from this concert tour was released, called "It Was the Best of Times."

This album is an hour and 14 minutes long.

UPDATE: On February 21, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. Someone sent me another version of this concert that had a somewhat different song list. It had three songs I didn't have already: "Breakfast in America," "Bloody Well Right," and "Goodbye Stranger." It also had two songs that I didn't have to edit, since there wasn't a BBC DJ talking over them.

01 It's a Hard World (Supertramp)
02 You Win, I Lose (Supertramp)
03 talk (Supertramp)
04 Listen to Me Please (Supertramp)
05 Sooner or Later (Supertramp)
06 Rudy (Supertramp)
07 Another Man's Woman (Supertramp)
08 Breakfast in America (Supertramp)
09 Bloody Well Right (Supertramp)
10 Take the Long Way Home (Supertramp)
11 The Logical Song (Supertramp)
12 Crime of the Century (Supertramp)
13 Goodbye Stranger (Supertramp)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/txyAAgEU

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/n943IHMeNGE4UML/file

The cover photo was taken in Paris, France, in 1997. That's Rick Davies on keywords and John Helliwell on the saxophone in the background.

The Everly Brothers - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Manchester Apollo, Manchester, Britain, 5-24-1997

A while back, I posted an album of BBC studio sessions by the Everly Brothers done in the 1960s and early 1970s. That was all I could find at the time when it came to the Everly Brothers and the BBC. But then I discovered this unreleased 1997 BBC concert.

1997 is later than I'd prefer for this duo. Their hit-making days were long over. But they were in their fifties, and their vocal powers hadn't diminished yet. Plus, they were supported on lead guitar by the very talented Albert Lee.

The sound quality is excellent, as you'd expect from the BBC. In terms of set list, there aren't many surprises - nearly every song is a classic hit from the 1950s or 60s.

By the way, since I found this one, I renamed the earlier BBC collection "Volume 1," and updated the cover art and mp3 tags. If you want that updated version, you can find it here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-everly-brothers-bbc-sessions-1963.html

This album is 57 minutes long.

01 Green River (Everly Brothers)
02 Kentucky (Everly Brothers)
03 Bowling Green (Everly Brothers)
04 talk (Everly Brothers)
05 So Sad [To Watch Good Love Go Bad] (Everly Brothers)
06 Claudette (Everly Brothers)
07 talk (Everly Brothers)
08 Crying in the Rain (Everly Brothers)
09 When Will I Be Loved (Everly Brothers)
10 Ebony Eyes - He Stopped Loving Her Today (Everly Brothers)
11 talk (Everly Brothers)
12 Bye Bye Love (Everly Brothers)
13 All I Have to Do Is Dream (Everly Brothers)
14 talk (Everly Brothers)
15 Long Time Gone (Everly Brothers)
16 Blues Stay Away from Me (Everly Brothers)
17 'Til I Kissed You (Everly Brothers)
18 Walk Right Back (Everly Brothers)
19 Cathy's Clown (Everly Brothers)
20 Wake Up, Little Susie (Everly Brothers)
21 Lucille (Everly Brothers)
22 talk (Everly Brothers)
23 Let It Be Me (Everly Brothers)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jjcioVYs

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/E1gtBbruRuJAHId/file

The cover photo is from 2000. I found a few photos from 1997, but I liked this one better.

Amanda Marshall - Acoustic and Full Band Rarities (1992-2024) (A Mike Solof Guest Post)

Before I finish off the last day of the 1982 US Festival, here's a guest post by Mike Solof.

Personally, I had never heard of Amanda Marshall until Mike came to me with this album idea. It turns out she has a great voice, but she never had a big hit song or album, at least in the U.S. (She's Canadian, and her albums were big sellers in Canada.) She's had a strange career in that she put out three albums in 1995, 1999, and 2001, and then waited 22 years before reviving her career with an album in 2023.

Anyway, if you want to know more about her, I suggest you read Mike's PDF included in the download. Also, here's her Wikipedia page:

Amanda Marshall - Wikipedia

One kind of curious thing I should also mention though is this is kind of two albums in one. There's basically an album of acoustic rarities, and another album of full band rarities presented here. But Mike wanted them bundled together. So there's an overall album cover, as well as covers for the acoustic and full band sections. 

ACOUSTIC RARITIES:

01 Birmingham (Amanda Marshall)
02 Fall from Grace (Amanda Marshall)
03 Trust Me [This Is Love] [Acoustic Version] (Amanda Marshall)
04 Dark Horse (Amanda Marshall)
05 Shades of Grey (Amanda Marshall)
06 Calgary (Amanda Marshall)
07 I Hope She Cheats (Amanda Marshall)
08 Believe in You (Amanda Marshall)
09 Castles Made of Sand [Edit] (Amanda Marshall)
10 Love Lift Me (Amanda Marshall)
11 Why Don't You Love Me (Amanda Marshall)
12 Chill Out for Christmas (Amanda Marshall)

FULL BAND RARITIES:

01 Marry Me (Amanda Marshall)
02 I Can't Stand the Rain - Let It Rain (Amanda Marshall)
03 Cross My Heart (Amanda Marshall)
04 Don't Let It Bring You Down (Amanda Marshall)
05 Just Love Me (Amanda Marshall)
06 Until We Fall In (Amanda Marshall)
07 Hey Goodlooking (Amanda Marshall)
08 Closer to the Ground (Amanda Marshall)
09 Eleanor Rigby (Amanda Marshall)
10 Believe in You [Long Version] (Amanda Marshall)
11 This Could Take All Night (Amanda Marshall)
12 Chrome Plated Heart (Amanda Marshall)
13 Snake Charm (Amanda Marshall)

https://www.imagenetz.de/eb9qq

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bFSqwS82

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/UaJcwUO056tCIpe/file

I'm not sure about any of the details of the cover photo. Mike picked it.

Ray Davies - Westbury Music Fair, Westbury, NY, 10-20-1997

The posting of this album is another side effect of posting a flood of "VH-1 Storytellers" albums. Ray Davies of the Kinks was the performer for the very first Storytellers episode in 1996, and the show was basically modeled after his solo concerts at the time, which mixed songs with lots of banter, including readings from his autobiography, "X-Ray."

Hearing the Davies episode made me want to hear a full-length concert by him from this time period. In 1998, he released the album "Storyteller." It was basically a live album of these solo concerts he was doing at the time. (It had one new studio track at the end.) He did acoustic concerts from 1995 to 1999, backed only by a second guitar player. "Storyteller" is a great album, but it's only 70 minutes long (not including that studio track). I wanted a full, long concert.

Unfortunately, all of the bootlegs of his solo concerts from the late 1990s are audience boots, with poor to middling sound... with one exception. That exception is this concert from Westbury, New York, which is a true soundboard. Not only is the sound quality great, but it seems Davies performed an extra long concert with some rarely performed songs. For instance, according to the setlist.fm website, he only performed "My Diary" three times in his entire music career, and this was the only solo acoustic version.

That said, there were some issues with this recording. For example, the volume of the banter between song was way lower than the songs. There also was hiss, especially with the banter. I managed to fix the volume imbalances and get rid of most of the hiss. I also fixed other problems, like occasional dropouts. This sounds noticeably better than the bootleg version floating around the Internet, in my opinion. Basically, it sounds just as good as his "Storytellers" album, only it's twice as long, with lots more songs and more banter. I think this is a "must have" for any Kinks/ Ray Davies fan, especially since it's the only known soundboard recording from this time period.

This concert is two hours and 16 minutes long.

01 talk (Ray Davies)
02 Lola (Ray Davies)
03 talk (Ray Davies)
04 A Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy (Ray Davies)
05 Shangri-La (Ray Davies)
06 talk (Ray Davies)
07 My Diary (Ray Davies)
08 Animal Farm (Ray Davies)
09 Dead End Street (Ray Davies)
10 Celluloid Heroes (Ray Davies)
11 talk (Ray Davies)
12 Victoria (Ray Davies)
13 talk (Ray Davies)
14 20th Century Man (Ray Davies)
15 talk (Ray Davies)
16 London Song (Ray Davies)
17 talk (Ray Davies)
18 That Old Black Magic (Ray Davies)
19 talk (Ray Davies)
20 That Old Black Magic [Reprise] (Ray Davies)
21 Tired of Waiting for You (Ray Davies)
22 talk (Ray Davies)
23 Set Me Free (Ray Davies)
24 talk (Ray Davies)
25 See My Friends (Ray Davies)
26 Autumn Almanac (Ray Davies)
27 talk (Ray Davies)
28 X-Ray (Ray Davies)
29 Minnie the Moocher (Ray Davies)
30 talk (Ray Davies)
31 Art School Babe (Ray Davies)
32 talk (Ray Davies)
33 A Well Respected Man (Ray Davies)
34 talk (Ray Davies)
35 The Ballad of Julie Finkle (Ray Davies)
36 talk (Ray Davies)
37 Back in the Front Room (Ray Davies)
38 talk (Ray Davies)
39 You Really Got Me (Ray Davies)
40 talk (Ray Davies)
41 Waterloo Sunset (Ray Davies)
42 talk (Ray Davies)
43 You Really Got Me [Reprise] (Ray Davies)
44 Come Dancing (Ray Davies)

https://www.imagenetz.de/dnrTi

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/bTVrWFtN

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/nneKIumMHs33gMj/file

The cover photo was taken a concert in Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, England, in March 1997.