Bettye LaVette - Change Is Gonna Come - Expanded Version (2003-2009)

I posted a couple of albums of Bettye LaVette's music, back in 2021. But those were from the 1960s, the start of her music career. She had a little success then, but then faded into obscurity for several decades. As her Wikipedia entry says, she "achieved only intermittent fame until 2005, when her album 'I've Got My Own Hell to Raise' was released to widespread critical acclaim, and was named on many critics' 'Best of 2005' lists." Since then, her career rebirth has continued going strong, all the way until the current day (as I write this in 2023), with her planning to release another new album soon, despite being 77 years old.

She didn't record much during her lost decades, so there isn't material there for stray track albums. But I plan on posting some more stray track albums from her career rebirth, starting with this one.

The bulk of this album is an EP released in 2009 called "Change Is Gonna Come Sessions." By 2009, she still wasn't that well known. But in January 2009, she sang of duet of the Sam Cooke classic "A Change Is Gonna Come" with Jon Bon Jovi at the presidential inauguration celebration for Barack Obama. Her performance was considered a highlight and got a lot of attention. It led to this EP, which naturally contained a studio version of "A Change Is Gonna Come" (without Bon Jovi this time). The rest of the EP (tracks 5 through 10) consisted of more covers of classic songs.

That EP is only 24 minutes long. But prior to that, she performed four more covers for various tribute albums, from 2003 to 2007. So those make up four of the first five songs here. The other one is "Laughter Ever After," in which she sang the lead vocals for a song on an album by Andy Lewis.

I enjoy LaVette's covers, because she does the songs in her own gruff-voiced, soulful style, rather than trying to be like the originals. That's definitely the case here.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Real Real Gone (Bettye LaVette)
02 Laughter Ever After (Andy Lewis & Bettye LaVette)
03 Night Time Is the Right Time (Bettye LaVette, Andre Williams & Nathaniel Mayer)
04 What's Happening Brother (Dirty Dozen Brass Band with Bettye LaVette)
05 Streets of Philadelphia (Bettye LaVette)
06 A Change Is Gonna Come (Bettye LaVette)
07 'Round Midnight (Bettye LaVette)
08 God Bless the Child (Bettye LaVette)
09 Ain't No Sunshine (Bettye LaVette)
10 Ain't That Lovin' You (Bettye LaVette)
11 Lush Life (Bettye LaVette)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cHhJEhkT

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/5ISorDbeK7SFgTW/file

 The cover is exactly the same as the original EP, except I removed the word "Sessions."

The Beach Boys - Party! - Expanded Version (1965)

"Party" by the Beach Boys is arguably the first "unplugged" style album. In 1965, the Beach Boys were taking their time recording their next album "Pet Sounds." But they'd been churning out more than one album a year, and their record company wanted more product. So as a stop-gap measure, the band recorded a bunch of songs, mostly covers, in an acoustic style in the studio. Then they've overdubbed some banter by friends and family to make it sound as if the whole thing had been spontaneously recorded at a party. It worked. The album was a big hit, and it contained the hit "Barbara Ann" as well.

In 2015, the album was re-released in greatly expanded form as "Beach Boys' Party: Uncovered and Unplugged," with 81 tracks. That's way too many tracks for my tastes, since the vast majority were just slightly different versions of the same bunch of songs. But this version did contain seven outtakes of unique songs. So I'm posting the original album in full, with the extra songs at the end. That's the best way to do it in my opinion, because the songs flow into each other due to all the banter and noises between the songs.

Although this was designed as a stop-gap measure, it's a really fun album in its own right, in my opinion. The original version was only 31 minutes long. It's a more satisfying listen with the extra songs, making it a 46 minute long album instead.

01 Hully Gully (Beach Boys)
02 I Should Have Known Better (Beach Boys)
03 Tell Me Why (Beach Boys)
04 Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow (Beach Boys)
05 Mountain of Love (Beach Boys)
06 You've Got to Hide Your Love Away (Beach Boys)
07 Devoted to You (Beach Boys)
08 Alley Oop (Beach Boys)
09 There's No Other [Like My Baby] (Beach Boys)
10 I Get Around - Little Deuce Coupe (Beach Boys)
11 The Times They Are A-Changin' (Beach Boys)
12 Barbara Ann (Beach Boys)
13 Ruby Baby (Beach Boys)
14 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Beach Boys)
15 The Artist [Laugh at Me] (Beach Boys)
16 California Girls (Beach Boys)
17 One Kiss Led to Another (Beach Boys)
18 Riot in Cell Block No. 9 (Beach Boys)
19 Blowin' in the Wind (Beach Boys)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376725/TBECHBYS1965cPrtyExpndd_atse.zip.html

I kept the original cover. The only change I made was that I added the words "Expanded Edition" in the same font as the original.

Fleetwood Mac - BBC Sessions, Volume 10: The Dance - Expanded Version, Warner Brothers Studios, Burbank, CA, 5-23-1997

Note that this is different than the official Fleetwood Mac live album "The Dance," which has sold millions. This contains everything that album contains, plus six additional songs. So if you have that and want more of it, here you go.

In 1987, singer-songwriter Lindsey Buckingham left Fleetwood Mac. In 1991, singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks left. Then in 1995, the last major singer-songwriter, Christine McVie, ended the band. But just two years later, all three of them, plus continual members Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, reunited. They only stayed together for one year before Christine McVie left again. But during that year, they reunited long enough for "The Dance" live album and a concert tour. They mostly sang classic hits, but they did have a few new songs as well.

The reason I can add some songs is because there's a DVD version of "The Dance" with five extra songs: "Gold Dust Woman," "Gypsy," "Go Insane," "Over My Head," and "Songbird." I've added those in using the order the songs were actually performed on this night (which is slightly different from both the album and the DVD, with a few songs shuffled a bit). 

I then went looking for more songs they did on that tour, since they did do about six more. But unfortunately, I could only find those extra songs on audience bootlegs which were a steep drop in sound quality from these songs. However, I did add one song from an audience bootleg, the finale, "Farmer's Daughter." I was able to include this cover of a Beach Boys song because it was done in a stripped down style, with just drums and vocals. As a result, the sound quality didn't matter so much. I also boosted the vocals to make it sound a little better.

A couple of years after I first posted this, I discovered this actually was a BBC concert. The BBC broadcast this exact concert only a couple of months after it happened, well before the official album came out. So I redid the album title, cover art, and mp3 tags to reflect that fact.

This album is an hour and 14 minutes long. The extra material totals 23 minutes.

01 The Chain (Fleetwood Mac)
02 Dreams (Fleetwood Mac)
03 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
04 Everywhere (Fleetwood Mac)
05 Gold Dust Woman (Fleetwood Mac)
06 I'm So Afraid (Fleetwood Mac)
07 Temporary One (Fleetwood Mac)
08 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
09 Bleed to Love Her (Fleetwood Mac)
10 Gypsy (Fleetwood Mac)
11 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
12 Big Love (Fleetwood Mac)
13 Go Insane (Fleetwood Mac)
14 Landslide (Fleetwood Mac)
15 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
16 Say You Love Me (Fleetwood Mac)
17 You Make Loving Fun (Fleetwood Mac)
18 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
19 My Little Demon (Fleetwood Mac)
20 Silver Springs (Fleetwood Mac)
21 Over My Head (Fleetwood Mac)
22 Rhiannon (Fleetwood Mac)
23 Sweet Girl (Fleetwood Mac)
24 Go Your Own Way (Fleetwood Mac)
25 Tusk (Fleetwood Mac)
26 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
27 Don't Stop (Fleetwood Mac)
28 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
29 Songbird (Fleetwood Mac)
30 talk (Fleetwood Mac)
31 Farmer's Daughter (Fleetwood Mac)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/wfhceJBB

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/8zuFNT8YI9BnCUk/file

For the cover, I wanted a photo of all five members of the band at this time. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a good one of them on stage in 1997 because they rarely all stood close to each other. (I found one like that, but it was low-res.) However, I did find this photo of them standing together backstage at one of their 1997 concerts. I used Photoshop to bring Mick Fleetwood (the tallest one) a little closer to the others.

Jim & Ingrid Croce - Jim and Ingrid Too - Expanded Version (1967-1969)

I just posted the 1969 album "Croce," also known as "Jim and Ingrid Croce." It's the main product of a short period in Jim Croce's musical career when he was part of a musical duet with his wife Ingrid. This is basically an extension of that, gathering up some stray pieces of their musical output from 1967 and 1969.

The main portion of this album are seven songs known as "Jim and Ingrid Too." As far as I can tell, this was never released in Croce's lifetime. (He died in a plane crash in 1973.) Instead, when the "Jim and Ingrid Croce" was re-released in 2004 (yet again), that edition included this group of songs on a second record, called "Jim and Ingrid Too."

According to the liner notes for that album, around the time the "Croce" album was released in 1969, the duo had a chance to become hosts for a children's TV show in Boston. They recorded 21 songs as an audition tape that showed off their musical versatility. They didn't get the job, but the tape survived. Decades later, only seven of those 21 songs were chosen to be publicly released. I hope more of the rest will be made public someday.

Additionally, two more songs ("The Way We Used To" and "Country Girl") from around this time period were released on the archival album "The Faces I've Been" in 1975. So I've added those in.

Finally, the duo performed live in the studio on a radio show in Philadelphia in 1967. I'll bet that Croce made other such performances for radio stations during his career, but for whatever reason an excellent recording of this one appearance has survived while others have not (or at least haven't been made publicly available through bootlegs). Luckily, several of the songs played weren't otherwise recorded by Jim and/or Ingrid, so I've added them at the end.

This is a fairly good album in my opinion, about as good as the "Croce" album from the same time period. It helps that almost all the songs are written by Jim, or by Jim and Ingrid. The only ones that are covers are the last three songs from the 1967 radio show.

However, like the "Croce" album, it's rather short. Even with all the added songs, it's only 29 minutes long.

This is the last of Croce's early material that I plan on posting (unless something new emerges). But if you like this stuff, I strongly recommend the archival album "Home Recordings: Americana." It was recorded in 1967, with just Jim and his acoustic guitars, and it consists entirely of covers of classic songs. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I haven't posted that here because it seems to be widely available and well known.

01 Child of Midnight (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
02 Marianne (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
03 Railroads and Riverboats (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
04 Hard Times Are Over (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
05 The Railroad Song (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
06 Maybe Tomorrow (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
07 Pa [Song for a Grandfather] (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
08 The Way We Used to Be (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
09 Country Girl (Jim Croce)
10 Darcy Farrow (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
11 Coconut Grove (Jim & Ingrid Croce)
12 Bringin' Mary Home (Jim Croce)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uGtkXvze

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/uhSDGGhFW2n1ewT/file

As far as I can tell, this album has never really existed per se. Instead, the first seven songs have been a bonus disc on a rerelease of a different album. Be that as it may, doing a Google search, I found some album covers for it. All of them used the photo and text in the version shown here, but the photo was either black and white or tinted. I decided to colorize it to give it some more zing.

In February 2025, I updated and improved the image with the Krea AI program.

The Plimsouls - Zero Hour - Expanded Version (1980)

In my last post, I expanded an EP by R.E.M. into a full album. I'm doing it again here, but this time with the 1980 EP "Zero Hour" by the Plimsouls.

Are you familiar with the Plimsouls? They're best known for their 1983 hit "A Million Miles Away." But they're much more than a one-hit wonder. Even though they only put out two full albums before breaking up in 1984, they're one of my favorite 1980s bands.What really makes them stand out is the songwriting and singing of Peter Case, who went on to have a long career as a singer-songwriter.

The Plimsouls' first release was the "Zero Hour" EP in 1980, followed by full albums in 1981 and 1983. Their 1981 album, cleverly called "The Plimsouls," has been available for many years under the title "The Plimsouls... Plus," with this EP plus some other songs added to it. But there's enough material to expand the EP to a full album, adding a bunch of songs to it that all predate their 1981 album.

To start with, I go way back, all the way to 1976, when Case was part of a band called the Nerves. They weren't around long, and only put out one EP. They're best known for the song "Hanging on the Telephone," which became a hit when Blondie covered it. But the Nerves were a band with three songwriters, and "Hanging on the Telephone" was written or sung by Case, so I'm not including it here. Instead, I've included "When You Find Out," the only song on that Nerves EP written and sung by Case. If you look further down the song list, you'll notice the Plimsouls did a version of this, but only as an instrumental. They're different enough versions for me to include both.

The next two songs are by the Breakaways. The Breakaways only existed for a short time. They were co-lead by Case and Paul Collins, the guy in the Nerves who wrote "Hanging on the Telephone." I've only included two songs written and sung by Case. They broke up before they could officially release any music, but some of their stuff eventually came out decades later.

The rest of the album contains just the Plimsouls. The fourth song is an original that was recorded live in 1979. The next five songs are from the "Zero Hour" EP. That's followed by seven more songs, mostly from 1980. I believe "Memory" and "One Way Ticket" are originals.

The Plimsouls weren't really a "new wave" band like so many others in the early 1980s, though they were lumped in with that movement. As you can see from their choice of covers here, they proudly based their music on the rock and soul of the 1950s and 1960s, but then added their own creativity to make it something different. They do covers by James Brown ("Night Train"), Otis Redding ("I Can't Turn You Loose"), Elvis Presley ("Kid Creole"), and a Larry Williams song that was also done by the Beatles ("Dizzy Miss Lizzy").

Three of these extra songs are officially unreleased. But they all come from excellent bootlegs, probably soundboards, so I don't think you'll notice any difference in sound quality.

Altogether, the songs on this album add up to 43 minutes. That's an ideal album length, in my opinion. But what really makes this a worthy album are the originals songs. Even with this, the band's first music, I think the originals go toe-to-toe with the famous covers they did. The whole thing simply rocks.

01 When You Find Out (Nerves)
02 Radio Station (Breakaways)
03 House on the Hill (Breakaways)
04 Thing of the Past (Plimsouls)
05 Great Big World (Plimsouls)
06 Zero Hour [Original Version] (Plimsouls)
07 Hypnotized (Plimsouls)
08 How Long Will It Take (Plimsouls)
09 I Can't Turn You Loose (Plimsouls)
10 Memory (Plimsouls)
11 Night Train (Plimsouls)
12 One Way Ticket (Plimsouls)
13 Kid Creole (Plimsouls)
14 Dizzy Miss Lizzie (Plimsouls)
15 Hush, Hush (Plimsouls)
16 When You Find Out [Instrumental Version] (Plimsouls)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700850/TPLIMSULS1980_ZroHurExpndd_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I've used the cover to the "Zero Hour" EP. Except that cover looked exceedingly boring, because they entire thing was in shades of grey. I've spiced it up by tinting the whole thing blue, and then colorizing some of the text red.

R.E.M. - Chronic Town - Expanded Version (1982)

I must say I'm not a huge R.E.M. fan, so I don't plan on posting a bunch of their stuff here. But I do really like a lot of their songs. I actually think some of the best material they ever did came on their EP "Chronic Town," released in 1982, a year before their first album, "Murmur." So I've expanded that EP to a full album, using other songs from that time period. I think if this had been released as an album, it would be considered one of their very best.

The "Chronic Town" EP only contains five songs, but all of them are very solid. (I selected a different vocal mix for "Gardening at Night," but the difference is minor.) That totals 20 minutes.

To fill out the rest of the album, I next turned to other material released prior to "Murmur." All I know of is their first single, "Radio Free Europe," and its two B-sides, which was their very first release of any kind, back in 1981.

The song "Radio Free Europe" was rerecorded in 1983 and put on that year's album "Murmur." It's that 1983 version that became a minor hit single and still gets played on the radio today. Personally, I prefer the 1983 version. But the band members actually much prefer the original 1981 version, after initially disliking it. In the liner notes to the 1988 compilation "Eponymous," the band even said the original "crushes the other one like a grape." In any case, they're both interesting, and since the 1983 version is widely available on "Murmur" and elsewhere, I've only included the original version.

The rest of the songs here weren't released at the time but came out later. One, "Romance," was redone a few years later for the "Eponymous" compilation, but this is the still unreleased 1982 version. "All the Right Friends" is from 1983, but I've included it here because it was in their setlist as far back as 1981. I want everything here to be from 1982 or earlier, but I used the 1983 version because it has the best sound.

I've included another 1983 song as a kind of bonus track, "Tainted Obligations." It's a strange and very obscure one, because it's not exactly an R.E.M. song, even though lead singer Michael Stipe sings it. It was done by a side project called the "Community Trolls," which was essentially just the duet of Stipe and Matthew Sweet. This is pretty interesting to me because Sweet was a musical nobody at the time, having just started his musical career. He wouldn't hit it big until 1981. But he was living in Athens, Georgia, at the time R.E.M. was starting to make waves, and apparently Stipe saw something in him. They didn't really do much except for this one song, but it's a good one. It wasn't released until many years later.

I've also included an acoustic version of "Gardening at Night" as a bonus track. I don't know when it was recorded, but I'm guessing 1982.

I think this is an excellent album, even if you're only a casual R.E.M. fan. They have a youthful, punky energy that you don't hear so much with their later material. Even the weaker songs are carried along by their enthusiasm.

01 Radio Free Europe (R.E.M.)
02 Sitting Still (R.E.M.)
03 There She Goes Again (R.E.M.)
04 White Tornado [Instrumental] (R.E.M.)
05 Wolves, Lower (R.E.M.)
06 Gardening at Night [Different Vocal Mix] (R.E.M.)
07 Carnival of Sorts [Box Cars] (R.E.M.)
08 1,000,000 (R.E.M.)
09 Stumble (R.E.M.)
10 Romance (R.E.M.)
11 Ages of You (R.E.M.)
12 All the Right Friends (R.E.M.)
13 Tainted Obligations (Community Trolls [Michael Stipe & Matthew Sweet])

Gardening at Night [Acoustic Version] (R.E.M.)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697042/REEEM1982_ChroniTwnExpnded_atse.zip.html

The cover art is simply the cover for the EP, unchanged.

U2 - Wide Awake in America - Expanded Version (1984-1985)

In 1984, U2 released the acclaimed album "The Unforgettable Fire." In 1985, they weren't ready to put out a new album yet (and in fact they wouldn't do so until 1987), so to fill the gap they released an EP called "Wide Awake in America." One side consisted of two songs that were outtakes from "The Unforgettable Fire" sessions, and the other side contained two live versions of songs from that album.

This album includes the two studio songs from "Wide Awake in America." I've decided to keep that title and cover art, but this has a lot more, adding nine more songs to it into a normal length studio album. Four songs are B-sides. Two more songs would later be released on a deluxe version of "The Unforgettable Fire."

That leaves just three songs at the end. One, "Sweet Jane," is a live Lone Justice cover of the famous Velvet Underground. Although it's essentially a Lone Justice song, from one of their compilation albums, I decided to include it because Bono joined them and sang about half of the lyrics. "Silver and Gold" is a U2 song released on a 1985 various artists album. Finally, "Driving to Midnight Mass, Dublin, Christmas Eve" is a poem that Bono recites (though he didn't write it).

The eleven songs here (not counting the bonus tracks discussed below) total 43 minutes, which makes for a nice album length. U2 was into creating moody soundscapes during this time period, so four of the songs are instrumentals. Maybe that's why they felt they didn't have enough material for another album in 1985.

I've added three bonus tracks. One is a cover of U2 doing the Bruce Springsteen song "My Hometown." Springsteen had a hit with it just the year before. It seems odd at first that U2 would cover it, especially since U2 hardly did any covers at all at the time. But consider the lyrics of the song, and consider that the band played the song in Dublin, their hometown, with members of their families in the audience. I'm only including it as a bonus track due to the sound quality. It comes from an audience bootleg. The sound is okay, but not up to the level of all the other songs, which are officially released.

The other two bonus tracks are the two live songs from the "Wide Awake in America" EP. Personally, I put these elsewhere in my music collection, with other live U2 songs from that era. But you may well organize things differently, so I'm including them here to give you options.

01 Boomerang I [Instrumental] (U2)
02 Love Comes Tumbling (U2)
03 The Three Sunrises (U2)
04 60 Seconds in Kingdom Come [Instrumental] (U2)
05 Boomerang II (U2)
06 Bass Trap [Instrumental] (U2)
07 Disappearing Act (U2)
08 Yoshino Blossom [Instrumental] (U2)
09 Sweet Jane (Lone Justice & Bono)
10 Silver and Gold [Sun City Version] (U2)
11 Driving to Midnight Mass, Dublin, Christmas Eve (Bono)

A Sort of Homecoming [Live] (U2)
Bad [Live] (U2)
My Hometown (U2)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701183/UTWO1984-1985_WdeAwkeinAmrica_atse.zip.html

The cover art is just the official cover of the EP.

Midnight Oil - Species Deceases - Expanded Version (1984-1990)

This Midnight Oil album follows a very similar pattern to the last album by them that I posted. With that one, the band released a four-song EP called "Bird Noises," and I expanded it to a full album. This time around, it's the 1985 EP called "Species Deceases." The four songs that make up that EP total 16 minutes. I'd added enough songs to turn it into a 42 minute-long album instead, while keeping the same name.

The "Species Deceases" EP was surprisingly successful for Midnight Oil. It went straight to the top of the singles chart in Australia and stayed their for six weeks. In fact, it was the only number one hit they ever had. All four songs got a lot of play on Australian radio, but probably the best known song is "Hercules." (By the way, that title refers to Hercules aircraft used by the US and British military, not the legendary Greek hero.)

So that's a strong start to make up an album, but really, all the songs here are excellent. The first song, "Sad Dark Eyes" is a studio outtake that surprisingly remains unreleased, even though the band put out a huge box set containing lots of rarities in 2017. "Blackfella-Whitefella" is a song by the Australian band Warumpi. This is a version jointly done by them and Midnight Oil while the two bands toured remote parts of the Australian outback in 1986.

Midnight Oil is known for almost never performing any covers, but "almost never" isn't the same as "never." Three more songs here are covers: "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding," "Know Your Product," and "Instant Karma."

This album covers the period of the band's greatest commercial success, including when the broke through in the US with "Beds Are Burning" and other great songs. I think they did so well because they were peaking creatively, and that extends to this collection of stray tracks.

01 Sad Dark Eyes (Midnight Oil)
02 Progress (Midnight Oil)
03 Hercules (Midnight Oil)
04 Blossom and Blood (Midnight Oil)
05 Pictures (Midnight Oil)
06 Blackfella-Whitefella (Midnight Oil & Warumpi)
07 [What's So Funny 'Bout] Peace, Love and Understanding (Midnight Oil)
08 You May Not Be Released (Midnight Oil)
09 Wreckery Road (Midnight Oil)
10 Love Life (Midnight Oil)
11 Know Your Product (Midnight Oil)
12 Instant Karma (Midnight Oil)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5BTh6GV9

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/jHl0RFiy4LZbJ04/file

The cover art is simply the exact cover of the "Species Deceases" EP.

Midnight Oil - Bird Noises - Expanded Version (1978-1982)

Yep, I'm going to apply my usual "stray tracks" approach to Midnight Oil. I think they're a great band, and they aren't as appreciated as they should be these days. I used to think the band didn't have much in the way of worthy stray tracks, but it turns out I just wasn't looking hard enough. This is the first of four stray tracks albums I've put together. Plus I have some other stuff (live and/or acoustic) to post here eventually.

In 1980, Midnight Oil released an EP called "Bird Noises." This is that, plus much more. I'm not a fan of listening to just an EP, since it's too short to be a satisfying listening experience. The "Bird Noises" EP is only 15 minutes long. I've found some other songs from that same era to turn this into a 39-minute long album.

In 2017, Midnight Oil reunited after 15 years. To celebrate that, they put out two very extensive box sets full of rarities. Unfortunately, those didn't sweep up all their good rarities. Three of the songs here come from one of those box sets, but three more are still officially unreleased. Those three are studio outtakes that somehow have been bootlegged. Their sound quality is pretty good, though a notch below the rest here.

One of those three songs is "Bakerman." That's a song from the band's 1984 album "Red Sails in the Sunset." But a surprise twist is that the version on that album is an instrumental and the (officially unreleased) version here has vocals.

Note that for this album, and the other Midnight Oil stray tracks albums I've compiled, I didn't just include all the stray tracks I could find. There are many non-album songs that I don't think are that good, including some from the 2017 box sets. In my opinion, the songs here make up a solid album.

One last comment: Midnight Oil is known for almost never doing any cover songs, but I've actually found a bunch of covers for their stray tracks albums. This album has two. The first song "Take Me Down Easy" was originally done by Jo Jo Gunne, and the last song "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" was a 1960s hit by the Animals.

01 Take Me Down Easy (Midnight Oil)
02 No Time for Games (Midnight Oil)
03 Knife's Edge (Midnight Oil)
04 Wedding Cake Island [Instrumental] (Midnight Oil)
05 I'm the Cure (Midnight Oil)
06 Bakerman [Vocals Version] (Midnight Oil)
07 I Want to Live Here (Midnight Oil)
08 Parking Station Blues (Midnight Oil)
09 Ghost of the Roadhouse (Midnight Oil)
10 We Gotta Get Out of This Place (Midnight Oil)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ztF2KqTo

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/q1k7VIGCknic8BE/file

For the cover art, I simply used the cover of the "Bird Noises" EP.

Paul McCartney - Wings Over Europe - Expanded Version (1972-1973)

Here's something nice from Paul McCartney. Recently, he released deluxe versions of his early 1970s albums "Wild Life" and "Red Rose Speedway." If only you buy the rare super deluxe packaged version of both do you get an extra album called "Wings Over Europe." It's a compilation of the best soundboard recordings from live Paul McCartney shows from 1972 and 1973.

I had already had a live album I'd created myself that was nearly the exact same thing, drawn from the same four or five concerts where portions of each show had come out either officially or on bootleg. But I welcome the improved sound quality and consistency of this new official live album.

I wouldn't post this if it was just an exact copy of the recently released album, but I've added to it by including all the unique songs I had on my live album compilation that isn't on the official one. That means four songs from 1972: "Help Me," "Cotton Fields," "Say You Don't Mind," and "Sometimes I Can't Keep from Crying." I added those to the middle of the official album, since they aren't the kinds of songs that would either start or end a concert. (Three out of the four feature lead vocals by someone other than Paul McCartney, since Wings were almost a real band, and not just Paul's backing band, for a couple of years in the early 1970s.)

Additionally, I've added five songs from 1973: "When the Night," "Little Woman Love," C Moon," "Go Now," and "Live and Let Die." The official album only has one song that dates from 1973, "Big Barn Red." I generally kept the order of the official album, except I moved that one from being the very first song to putting it in a section at the end with all the other 1973 songs. Generally speaking, McCartney toured a lot in 1972 and played a wide variety of songs. (There are more I wouldn't or couldn't include because they either are only on poorly recorded audience bootlegs or they didn't get put on any bootlegs at all.) In 1973, he toured less, and only played a handful of new songs, which I have included here.

In 1972 and the first half of 1973, McCartney was trying to get his solo career started, generally by playing small venues at colleges in Britain and Europe without any advanced notice. In late 1973, he reestablished his critical and commercial reputation in a big way with the "Band on the Run" album, but he didn't tour for two solid years, until the second half of 1975. By then, everything had changed. He was huge, such as being on the cover of Time Magazine, and his concert tour was huge. So his 1972 and 1973 concerts occupy a unique and important part of his musical history.

The official "Wings Over Europe" album was already long, and with the nine extra songs I've added, it's even longer, at almost two hours. So enjoy all this high quality live music.

01 Eat at Home (Paul McCartney)
02 Smile Away (Paul McCartney)
03 Bip Bop (Paul McCartney)
04 Mumbo (Paul McCartney)
05 Blue Moon of Kentucky (Paul McCartney)
06 1882 (Paul McCartney)
07 I Would Only Smile (Denny Laine & Paul McCartney)
08 Give Ireland Back to the Irish (Paul McCartney)
09 The Mess (Paul McCartney)
10 Best Friend (Paul McCartney)
11 Help Me (Henry McCullough & Paul McCartney)
12 Soily (Paul McCartney)
13 I Am Your Singer (Paul McCartney)
14 Seaside Woman (Linda McCartney & Paul McCartney)
15 Wild Life (Paul McCartney)
16 Cotton Fields [The Cotton Song] (Paul McCartney)
17 Say You Don't Mind (Denny Laine & Paul McCartney)
18 Sometimes I Just Can’t Keep from Crying (Henry McCullough & Paul McCartney)
19 My Love (Paul McCartney)
20 Mary Had a Little Lamb (Paul McCartney)
21 Maybe I'm Amazed (Paul McCartney)
22 Hi, Hi, Hi (Paul McCartney)
23 Long Tall Sally (Paul McCartney)
24 Big Barn Bed (Paul McCartney)
25 When the Night (Paul McCartney)
26 Little Woman Love (Paul McCartney)
27 C Moon (Paul McCartney)
28 Little Woman Love [Reprise] (Paul McCartney)
29 Go Now (Denny Laine & Paul McCartney)
30 Live and Let Die (Paul McCartney)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xR4Y18XW

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/MgLY3W9BHhZEm9D/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/f23uE

The main image for the cover art comes from a painting on the side of the tour bus the band used during this time frame - it's just a section of a larger work. Additionally, the writing also comes from a different part of the tour bus. I copied and pasted that to fit it over the painting.

Also, by the way, I still don't like to call these recordings "Wings" recordings, since I like keeping all my Paul McCartney music in one folder with his name, and I don't consider Wings to be a real band, just a backing band. But in the song list above, for the few songs where Paul is not the lead singer, I've added in the name of the lead singer first.

Rockpile - Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds Sing the Everly Brothers - Expanded Version (1979)

This is a fun little thing. In August 1979, Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds of Rockpile played an session for the BBC with just the two of them and their acoustic guitars. They must have been in a big Everly Brothers mood, because they played five Everly Brothers songs in a row, then two of their own songs, then two other old cover songs. They jokingly called themselves the "Beverly Brothers."

A year later, Rockpile finally released a studio album (Seconds of Pleasure) after backing each other's solo albums for a few years, and they included four of the Everly Brothers covers from this session as a bonus EP. But the other songs were never released, except on a bootleg that didn't include the released songs. Here are all of the songs, together and in the order they were performed. They're short songs, so it's only a 22 minute album, but it's a fun one.

01 Problems, Problems (Rockpile)
02 Take a Message to Mary (Rockpile)
03 Crying in the Rain (Rockpile)
04 Poor Jenny (Rockpile)
05 When Will I Be Loved (Rockpile)
06 What Looks Best on You (Rockpile)
07 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Rockpile)
08 Blue Moon of Kentucky (Rockpile)
09 The Race Is On (Rockpile)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15266508/Rockpl_1979_SingEvrlyBrthersExpnded_atse.zip.html

The cover art is based on the EP cover, but I made some changes. (The original specifically mentioned four song titles, but that doesn't work anymore when there's nine songs.)