Various Artists - Songwriters Special, Austin City Limits, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 9-11-1991

I recently stumbled across this on YouTube. I thought it was pretty interesting, so I decided to post it straight away. It's a special episode of the Austin City Limits TV show from 1991, called "Songwriters Special." It's basically a songwriters' circle, with four different musical acts taking turns: Nanci Griffith, Mary Chapin Carpenter, the Indigo Girls, and Julie Gold.

I found a blog post by Julie Gold about this concert. She said that Nanci Griffith was selected as the host, and Griffith got to pick the other musical acts. However, each of the acts played the same number of songs (three), and then everyone joined in on the finale, a cover of "No Expectations" by the Rolling Stones.

Chances are you haven't heard of Julie Gold, because her music career has been very low profile. However, she was chosen because she was the songwriter behind Griffith's biggest hit, "From a Distance," which she performed here. She also wrote a song appearing on Griffith's next album at the time, called "Heaven." She would go on to write several more songs covered by Griffith.

Here's the Wikipedia entry about her:

Julie Gold - Wikipedia 

This album remains unreleased. The sound quality is pretty good. I downloaded the YouTube video, converted it to audio format, and broke it into mp3s. 

This album is 55 minutes long. 

01 It's a Hard Life Wherever You Go (Nanci Griffith)
02 talk (Nanci Griffith)
03 You've Never Had It So Good (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 talk (Nanci Griffith)
05 talk (Indigo Girls)
06 Hammer and a Nail (Indigo Girls)
07 talk (Nanci Griffith)
08 From a Distance (Julie Gold)
09 talk (Nanci Griffith)
10 Late Night Grande Hotel (Nanci Griffith)
11 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 I Am a Town (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 talk (Indigo Girls)
14 Fare Thee Well (Indigo Girls)
15 Heaven (Julie Gold)
16 talk (Nanci Griffith)
17 Listen to the Radio (Nanci Griffith)
18 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
19 I Feel Lucky (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
20 talk (Indigo Girls)
21 Jonas and Ezekiel (Indigo Girls)
22 talk (Julie Gold)
23 Temporary Worker (Julie Gold)
24 talk (Nanci Griffith)
25 No Expectations (Nanci Griffith, Mary Chapin Carpenter, the Indigo Girls & Julie Gold)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/CR4CKJX5

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/sAVcPay4fNv5Hl8/file

I got lucky with the cover art. I found a photo taken backstage of all the musical acts at this concert. The original version of the photo was black and white, but I found a colorized version. It had issues though, so I recolorized it. I looked at the YouTube video of the concert to get in the general ballpark of the colors of the clothes they were wearing. 

From left to right, that's Amy Ray, Emily Saliers, Julie Gold, Nanci Griffith, and Mary Chapin Carpenter.

The Indigo Girls - The ArtsCenter, Carrboro, NC, 3-19-1988

A few days ago, I posted a 1991 concert by the Indigo Girls. In my opinion, this female duo peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but there's very little in the way of good concert recordings from them (other than their 1995 live album "1200 Curfews," but that's a mixed bag of all sorts of things, including some studio tracks). The fan website https://lifeblood.net/ has an incredible selection of hundreds of Indigo Girls bootlegs. Looking through their early years though, I only saw two that stood out in terms of sound quality: the 1991 one I posted, and this one.

This one is a soundboard bootleg. Unfortunately, soundboards can vary in quality, and this one sounded merely good, not excellent. So I passed it on to my musical associate MZ. I had the feeling he could make improvements to it that were beyond my limited skills. It turns out I was right. He made several tweaks across all the songs that significantly improved the sound quality. I still wouldn't say this has great sound quality, but it's very listenable now, and above all other Indigo Girls concert recordings from this time period.

This concert is drastically different from the 1991 one I recently posted. In 1988, the Indigo Girls were just starting to get famous. They hadn't even signed a major record label deal yet (although they had released one album independently in 1987, "Strange Fire). Whereas by 1991, they'd released two more albums, one of which had gone platinum twice. So perhaps it's not surprising that in this show they played just as an acoustic duo, because that was probably all they could afford at the time, while they played with a full band in the 1991 show.

The song list in this concert is very interesting, in my opinion. Between their 1987 album "Strange Fire" and their breakthrough hit album in 1989, "Indigo Girls," they wrote a lot of new songs. There were enough unreleased songs for them to put out another album, and in fact I've posted a version of this album that could have been, which I've called "Thin Line." You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-indigo-girls-thin-line-various.html

Many of the songs performed here are ones I've put on that album: "Cold as Ice,"  "Life's So Strange," "Up in Smoke," "I Should Have Never Crossed Your Path," and "The Ballad of Squeaky Fromme." Plus, they did two other unreleased rarities, "Peace Song" and "White House Blues." They also did some covers: "Summertime," "All Along the Watchtower," "American Tune," and "Love of the Common People." So this represents a kind of forgotten chapter in their career, with about half of the songs unknown even to fans who have all of their official albums.

There also is a lot of interesting banter, with talking before every song. This took place at an interesting time for them, right as they were transitioning from playing small clubs. They mostly still sound like they're talking to friends in a very small venue.

There were no big sonic flaws. However, I edited the song "All Along the Watchtower" because I felt the vocals were low in the mix. I used the X-Minus audio editing program to boost them. Also, I suspect the very end of that song got cut off. I tried to make it sound like it had a proper ending, especially by adding some audience applause.

This concert is an hour and 53 minutes long.

01 talk (Indigo Girls)
02 Prince of Darkness (Indigo Girls)
03 talk (Indigo Girls)
04 Cold as Ice (Indigo Girls)
05 talk (Indigo Girls)
06 Lifeblood (Indigo Girls)
07 talk (Indigo Girls)
08 Crazy Game (Indigo Girls)
09 talk (Indigo Girls)
10 Secure Yourself (Indigo Girls)
11 talk (Indigo Girls)
12 Up in Smoke (Indigo Girls)
13 talk (Indigo Girls)
14 Nashville (Indigo Girls)
15 talk (Indigo Girls)
16 Left Me a Fool (Indigo Girls)
17 talk (Indigo Girls)
18 White House Blues (Indigo Girls)
19 talk (Indigo Girls)
20 Center Stage (Indigo Girls)
21 talk (Indigo Girls)
22 Make It Easier (Indigo Girls)
23 talk (Indigo Girls)
24 Strange Fire (Indigo Girls)
25 talk (Indigo Girls)
26 Never Stop (Indigo Girls)
27 talk (Indigo Girls)
28 Pushing the Needle Too Far (Indigo Girls)
29 talk (Indigo Girls)
30 Summertime (Indigo Girls)
31 talk (Indigo Girls)
32 Walk Away (Indigo Girls)
33 talk (Indigo Girls)
34 I Should Have Never Crossed Your Path (Indigo Girls)
35 Peace Song (Indigo Girls)
36 The Ballad of Squeaky Fromme (Indigo Girls)
37 Life's So Strange (Indigo Girls)
38 talk (Indigo Girls)
39 All Along the Watchtower [Edit] (Indigo Girls)
40 American Tune (Indigo Girls)
41 talk (Indigo Girls)
42 Love of the Common People (Indigo Girls)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/9DYDk4Jc

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/T9cLzfBMp3JOmp7/file

The cover is a screenshot I took of the duo on the TV show "The David Sanborn Show" in 1989. I took the fancy lettering of the band's name from a concert poster.

The Indigo Girls - Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, CO, 6-21-1991

I continue to think that the Indigo Girls are underappreciated these days. I especially enjoy their music from the late 1980s and early 1990s. I wanted to hear something new (for me) from them, so I considered live recordings. There's a great 1995 official live album called "1200 curfews," so I went looking for something a little earlier than that. There are tons of bootlegs (which you can find at http://www.lifeblood.net), but I was surprised how few there are with excellent sound quality. Luckily, I found this one, which stands above the rest from that time period due to the fact that it was professionally recorded and broadcast on the radio.

That's the good news. The bad news, especially for me, is that whoever recorded it off the radio seems to have stopped the recording during the applause after every song. This was done way back in the day to save tape, though it's a bit strange to still be happening in the 1990s. Anyways, the good news is that whoever did that almost always recovered in time to record the banter between songs. But it was a pain for me because for virtually every song I had to find applause from other songs and patch that in at the end, to make the cheering long enough. The good news is that's done, and things should sound normal now.

There were a couple of additional problems though. For the songs "he History of Us" and "Closer to Fine," there were short sections in the middle that were missing. So I had to find other live versions of those songs and patch in the missing spots. That's why those two have "[Edit]" in their titles. (Although technically every song show have that since they all were edited for the applause problem.) 

The result is a really nice concert, in my opinion. This was a full band show, with some players coming and going, depending on the song, and some songs done just as an acoustic duo. All the expected well known songs were played, but also some interesting rarities, including a couple that were unreleased at the time, such as "No Way to Treat a Friend" and "The Ballad of Squeaky Fromme." 

The sound quality still isn't as good as "1200 Curfews," but that's a grab bag from all sorts of sources, including some studio tracks, whereas I prefer hearing a concert from start to finish.

This album is an hour and 42 minutes long.

01 talk (Indigo Girls)
02 Secure Yourself (Indigo Girls)
03 World Falls (Indigo Girls)
04 talk (Indigo Girls)
05 Hammer and a Nail (Indigo Girls)
06 talk (Indigo Girls)
07 Love's Recovery (Indigo Girls)
08 Pushing the Needle Too Far (Indigo Girls)
09 talk (Indigo Girls)
10 Crazy Game (Indigo Girls)
11 talk (Indigo Girls)
12 No Way to Treat a Friend (Indigo Girls)
13 talk (Indigo Girls)
14 Southland in the Springtime (Indigo Girls)
15 talk (Indigo Girls)
16 Watershed (Indigo Girls)
17 The Ballad of Squeaky Fromme (Indigo Girls)
18 talk (Indigo Girls)
19 The History of Us [Edit] (Indigo Girls)
20 Land of Canaan (Indigo Girls)
21 talk (Indigo Girls)
22 Center Stage (Indigo Girls)
23 talk (Indigo Girls)
24 Tried to Be True (Indigo Girls)
25 1 2 3 (Indigo Girls)
26 talk (Indigo Girls)
27 You and Me of the 10,000 Wars (Indigo Girls)
28 Kid Fears (Indigo Girls)
29 Prince of Darkness (Indigo Girls)
30 Welcome Me (Indigo Girls)
31 talk (Indigo Girls)
32 Left Me a Fool (Indigo Girls)
33 Closer to Fine [Edit] (Indigo Girls)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/U3LiuGNZ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/8iZFAidoVpZg73l/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/kxk7f

The cover photo was taken in Spain in October 1991. In the original photo, Amy Ray (dark hair) and Emily Saliers (light hair) were standing at least ten feet apart. I used Photoshop to bring Saliers much closer.

The Indigo Girls - Most Requested Songs - Home Concert, Dahlonega, GA, 5-21-2020

I'm glad to include another artist in the 2020 home concert trend. This time, it's the Indigo Girls.

The Indigo Girls actually have done several home concerts already. However, two of them were plagued by bad sound quality issues, so I'm not going to post those. For another, they performed the entire "Rites of Passage" album. I could post that if there's interest, but I figure that's of limited appeal.

I'm most interested in this concert, because it has a nice theme. The duo polled their fans to determine the most requested songs. I believe they played them from least requested to most requested. The song selection has some surprises, with expected hits like "Closer to Fine" and "Galileo" not being at the end, and some less well known songs in there, including two cover versions ("Tangled Up in Blue" and "Romeo and Juliet").

Unfortunately, the sound quality is just good, not great. I think that's mostly due to the microphone set up and other aspects of how they recorded it. At times, one or the other voice is a bit low in the mix, probably due to one of them leaning too far from their microphone. There also was some crackling noises on some of the tracks. Happily though, I passed the relevant music files on to my musical associate MZ, and he ran them through a decrackling filter. So that's pretty much gone. But if you hear any remaining crackling that I missed, let me know and I can probably get that removed in the same way.

Mind you, the sound isn't bad at all. It's just that it could have been better, and many of the other home concerts I've posted here sound better. But it's still perfectly acceptable, or I wouldn't be posting it.

The album is an hour and 13 minutes long. Note that it originally was at least 10 minutes longer, but I removed a fair amount of the talking between songs. The show was a benefit for a local non-profit, and there was a lot of telethon-type talk, encouraging people to donate. There even were long sections where big donators were thanked by name. Furthermore, there was a prerecorded section with Georgia politician Stacey Abrams encouraging people to donate. I'm all in favor of the cause, but that sort of talking isn't the sort of thing one would want to listen to repeatedly, so I cut most of it out, including Abrams's plea.

01 talk (Indigo Girls)
02 Hammer and a Nail (Indigo Girls)
03 talk (Indigo Girls)
04 Tangled Up in Blue (Indigo Girls)
05 talk (Indigo Girls)
06 Get Out the Map (Indigo Girls)
07 talk (Indigo Girls)
08 Share the Moon (Indigo Girls)
09 talk (Indigo Girls)
10 Power of Two (Indigo Girls)
11 talk (Indigo Girls)
12 Shit Kickin' (Indigo Girls)
13 talk (Indigo Girls)
14 Least Complicated (Indigo Girls)
15 talk (Indigo Girls)
16 Secure Yourself (Indigo Girls)
17 talk (Indigo Girls)
18 Galileo (Indigo Girls)
19 talk (Indigo Girls)
20 Kid Fears (Indigo Girls)
21 talk (Indigo Girls)
22 Closer to Fine (Indigo Girls)
23 talk (Indigo Girls)
24 Romeo and Juliet (Indigo Girls)
25 talk (Indigo Girls)
26 Ghost (Indigo Girls)
27 talk (Indigo Girls)
28 The Wood Song (Indigo Girls)
29 talk (Indigo Girls)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15271277/TIngidoGs_2020_MostRequestedSongsHomeConcertDahlonegaGA__5-21-2020_atse.zip.html

The album cover is a screenshot from the concert in question. Note how Amy Ray (left) and Emily Saliers (right) are keeping six feet away from each other, since they're not in the same social distancing bubble.

Various Artists - Can't Be Here Now - Mother's Day Special Home Concert, 5-10-2020

In late March 2020, singer songwriter Billy Bragg wrote a song about the difficulty of being separated from loved ones during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown. He called it "Can't Be There Today," and posted it on YouTube. From that, he came up with the idea to have a special home concert on Mother's Day, May 10, 2020, to help people celebrate that day in these weird times. The concert is named "Can't Be Here Now" as a play on that song title.

A lot of the best singer songwriter types joined in, recording one or two songs from wherever they happened to be hunkered down, and then sending in their videos. So I think this is unique in my music collection in that this "concert" has no fixed single location. Some of the musicians spoke a little bit before or after their songs, and others didn't. Most of the songs have some connection to a mother's day or at least a mother theme, but a few do not. It's a pretty loose gathering of performances, with no fixed rules.

No less than seven of the artists are ones that I've posted albums of here at this blog: Mary Chapin Carpenter, Rosanne Cash, the Indigo Girls, Jorma Kaukonen, Joan Osborne, KT Tunstall, and Loudon Wainwright III. There are some other big names for this type of music as well, such as Bragg, Steve Earle, Rufus Wainwright, and Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields. I have to confess that I wasn't that familiar with the others, but hopefully if you listen to this you'll discover some new artists, just as I have.

Since this is a collection of home recorded videos, the audio quality is variable. I did my best to adjust the volume and improve the mix whenever I could. The result is pretty good overall. But there were a couple of significant problems I couldn't fix. Valerie June recorded her song in the great outdoors. That looked nice on video, but late in the song a big gust of wind came along and blew on the microphone for about thirty seconds, rendering that part of the song unlistenable. Luckily, it was just a repeat of the chorus, so I was able to salvage the song by editing that part out. Some of her talking had to be cut out due to more wind.

Also, the Indigo Girls played their best known song "Closer to Fine." But the vocals of the lead vocalist Emily Saliers was way down in the mix compared to the guitar and the other vocalist Amy Ray. I couldn't do anything to fix that, so it's a rather unusual version.

The concert is nearly two hours long. If you don't like some of the artists and/or songs, you can edit your version down to just the ones you do like, and you'll probably still have a fairly lengthy album.

Oh, and by the way, I just posted the fourth of Norah Jones's home concert albums a day ago. It turns out I missed including one song and got the name of another song wrong. So if you've downloaded that one, I recommend you do it again, now that I've fixed those things.

01 Can't Be There Today (Billy Bragg)
02 The Sunken Lands (Rosanne Cash)
03 talk (Fink)
04 My Love's Already There (Fink)
05 Buckets of Rain (Joan Osborne)
06 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
07 White Winos (Loudon Wainwright III)
08 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
09 Oedipus Rex (Loudon Wainwright III)
10 talk (Loudon Wainwright III)
11 talk (Todd Snider)
12 Enjoy Yourself (Todd Snider)
13 talk (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 Late for Your Life (Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
16 A Heart Needs a Home (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
17 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
18 talk (Andrew Bird)
19 What Shall I Feel My Love (Andrew Bird)
20 talk (KT Tunstall)
21 I Want You Back (KT Tunstall)
22 talk (KT Tunstall)
23 Black Horse and the Cherry Tree (KT Tunstall)
24 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
25 I Am the Light of This World (Jorma Kaukonen)
26 talk (Amy Helm)
27 Sing to Me (Amy Helm)
28 talk (Amy Helm)
29 Yakety Yak (Amy Helm)
30 talk (Mountain Goats)
31 Love Cuts the Strings (Mountain Goats)
32 talk (Mountain Goats)
33 talk (Steve Earle)
34 Devil's Right Hand (Steve Earle)
35 talk (Stella Donnelly)
36 Season's Greetings (Stella Donnelly)
37 Hammer (Shovels & Rope)
38 This Ride (Shovels & Rope)
39 talk (Joseph Arthur)
40 The Movies (Joseph Arthur)
41 The Day the Politicians Died (Stephin Merritt)
42 talk (Rufus Wainwright)
43 Peaceful Afternoon (Rufus Wainwright)
44 talk (Rufus Wainwright)
45 Tired of America (Rufus Wainwright)
46 talk (Rufus Wainwright)
47 talk (Valerie June)
48 Sadie [Edit] (Valerie June)
49 talk (Valerie June)
50 talk (Hamilton Leithauser)
51 The Garbage Men (Hamilton Leithauser)
52 talk (Indigo Girls)
53 Closer to Fine (Indigo Girls)
54 talk (Billy Bragg)
55 I Keep Faith (Billy Bragg)
56 talk (Billy Bragg)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/iRd7bh6y

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/DKNPmhRGcnJp6vL/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/eB76H

The video of the entire concert is on YouTube, if you want to watch it as well as hear it. (Just search for key words in the title.) So I could have used screenshots from that. However, if I did that, I would have to favor some artists over others, since there's no way I could fit them all in without having them look tiny. So instead I used the playbill that was promote the show. I made some changes, including squishing the entire thing horizontally to make it fit into a square space. I also redid the names of the artists, since there were about four of them that joined in late and so didn't get mentioned. But there's all mentioned here.

The Indigo Girls - Let Me Go Easy - Acoustic Versions (1998-2003)

I've said here previously that I enjoy the Indigo Girls' material in the 1980s and 1990s, but around the turn of the millennium I feel their songwriting hasn't maintained their previous high standards. I still believe that. That said, I think all the songs here are solid, or I wouldn't bother with them.

This is the fourth (and likely last) of my albums collecting acoustic versions of the best Indigo Girls songs. Of course, they had a acoustic song in general, but this strips them back to just their voices and acoustic guitars. As with the previous albums in this series, it uses unreleased recordings of in-person radio station appearances. That means the sound is pretty much studio quality.

In short, if you enjoyed the previous three albums in this series, you should enjoy this one too. I'm a pretty tough critic of latter-day Indigo Girls music, which means I only complied the songs I felt were really good, and not all the songs that fit the format.

Once again, thanks to the website www.lifeblood.net, which collected all the performances used here and makes them easily available for anyone.

01 Gone Again (Indigo Girls)
02 Go (Indigo Girls)
03 Peace Tonight (Indigo Girls)
04 Cold Beer and Remote Control (Indigo Girls)
05 Ozilline (Indigo Girls)
06 Soon Be to Nothing (Indigo Girls)
07 Moment of Forgiveness (Indigo Girls)
08 Become You (Indigo Girls)
09 Our Deliverance (Indigo Girls)
10 Deconstruction (Indigo Girls)
11 Let Me Go Easy (Indigo Girls)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15634983/TIngidoGs_1998-2003_LtMeGoEsyAcoustcVrsions_atse.zip.html

I really like the cover art I use here. I randomly stumbled across a photo of some stained glass, or at least what looks like stained glass, announcing a 2018 Indigo Girls concert. I removed some text and replaced it with my own text. I wish most album covers could look this classy.

The Indigo Girls - Shame on You - Acoustic Versions (1994-1998)

My series of albums with acoustic versions of the Indigo Girls' most beloved songs continues.

The album covers the time period in which the studio albums "Swamp Ophelia" (1994) and "Shaming of the Sun" (1997) were released. Four of the songs were officially released, mostly as B-sides. But it doesn't matter much if it was officially released or not, because the unreleased songs all come from in-person radio appearances, with pristine sound. In fact, two of the unreleased songs come from the same exact radio appearance as one of the officially released ones, and you can't tell the difference in sound quality.

There's not much else to say here except if you like the Indigo Girls when they're stripped down to just their great vocal harmonies and their acoustic guitars, as I do, you should enjoy this.

By the way, I've got one more album in this series to post eventually. It covers 1997 to 2003. (My interest in the duo drops significantly after that.)

01 Reunion [Acoustic Mix] (Indigo Girls)
02 Dead Man's Hill [Acoustic Mix] (Indigo Girls)
03 Mystery [Acoustic Mix] (Indigo Girls)
04 The Wood Song (Indigo Girls)
05 Three Hits (Indigo Girls)
06 Power of Two (Indigo Girls)
07 Least Complicated (Indigo Girls)
08 Get Out the Map (Indigo Girls)
09 Shame on You (Indigo Girls)
10 It's Alright (Indigo Girls)
11 Everything in Its Own Time (Indigo Girls)
12 Shed Your Skin (Indigo Girls)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15853450/TIngidoGs_1994-1998_ShameonYouAcousticVersions_atse.zip.html

I chose to call this album "Shame on You" mainly so I could use this album cover and not have to make my own. This is the cover to the "Shame on You" single, with some extra text added by me at the bottom.

The Indigo Girls - Closer to Fine - Acoustic Versions (1990-1993)

Here's the second in a series of albums of all acoustic versions of the Indigo Girls' best songs. Of course, their music is generally acoustic-based to begin with, but they generally have had full-band arrangements on their albums. This strips them all the way down to just their voices and acoustic guitars.

I've posted one album in this series already, which covers the years 1988 to 1989. That was the time when they released their breakthrough album simply called "Indigo Girls." That had the hit song "Closer to Fine" on it, but I didn't put that song on my first acoustic album, because I couldn't find an excellent sounding all-acoustic version. It's here instead, because I found the version I was looking for, from 1990.

Virtually all the other songs here are acoustic versions of songs from their next two albums, "Nomads, Indians, Saints" in 1990 and "Rites of Passage" in 1992. Personally, I think the late 1980s and early 1990s were their creative peak, and there's no doubt that was their peak of commercial success.

Thanks again to the lifeblood.net website, for making available all the unreleased material that allowed me to find the best sounding acoustic recordings, usually from in-studio radio appearances.

01 Watershed (Indigo Girls)
02 Closer to Fine (Indigo Girls)
03 Hammer and a Nail (Indigo Girls)
04 World Falls (Indigo Girls)
05 Joking (Indigo Girls)
06 Cedar Tree (Indigo Girls)
07 Love Will Come to You (Indigo Girls)
08 Ghost (Indigo Girls)
09 Jonas and Ezekial (Indigo Girls)
10 Galileo (Indigo Girls)
11 Romeo and Juliet (Indigo Girls)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15852889/TIngidoGs_1990-1993_ClosetoFineAcousticVersions_atse.zip.html

I named this album "Closer to Fine" mainly so I could use this cover, which is a little known cover, based on the "maxi-single" version of their hit single. I added some text at the bottom. The original photo on it was black and white, so I colorized it.

The Indigo Girls - Center Stage - Acoustic Versions (1988-1989)

I like the Indigo Girls a lot, and I've already posted some albums of their stray tracks, with some being all original material and some being all cover versions. This starts a series of four albums that is different. It generally includes their most well-known songs, but in all acoustic versions, just Emily Saliers, Amy Ray, and two guitars.

Personally, although I enjoy hearing them rock out sometimes (the song "Land of Canaan" being a good example), I think they're usually at their best when they go the totally acoustic route. So consider this the first of a series of greatest hits albums, except with the songs stripped way back.

These albums wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for the Lifeblood website (www.lifeblood.net), which collects and makes easily available just about every Indigo Girls bootleg recording out there. I went through that website very carefully and focused on the in-person radio show appearances to make this album. Those can be a gold mine because they're recorded just about as well as any studio session. But often just the two Indigo Girls showed up at the radio stations with their acoustic guitars, rather than getting their entire band to come along and set up all their equipment. So these recordings allow one to hear the songs in a different way.

All the songs here date from 1988 and 1989, which was right when the Indigo Girls hit it big with their album "Indigo Girls." Most of the songs here are from that, although there are a few from elsewhere, including some early looks at a few songs from what would be their next album in 1990, "Nomads Indians Saints." There also are two songs here, "Cold as Ice" and "No Way to Treat a Friend," that remain officially unreleased to this day. (I have different versions of both on one of the stray tracks albums I've posted here already.)

Note that this album does not include their most well known song "Closer to Fine," even though it was released on their 1989. That's because the best all acoustic version of this I could find dates to 1990, so it will appear on the next album in this series.

01 Love's Recovery (Indigo Girls)
02 Cold as Ice (Indigo Girls)
03 Center Stage (Indigo Girls)
04 No Way to Treat a Friend (Indigo Girls)
05 Prince of Darkness (Indigo Girls)
06 Hand Me Downs (Indigo Girls)
07 Southland in the Springtime (Indigo Girls)
08 Welcome Me (Indigo Girls)
09 Secure Yourself (Indigo Girls)
10 Land of Canaan (Indigo Girls)
11 Kid Fears (Indigo Girls)
12 Crazy Game (Indigo Girls)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15852919/TIngidoGs_1988-1989_CenterStageAcousticVersions_atse.zip.html

The photo for the cover art is a publicity photo from 1989. I colorized it red and added the text.

The Indigo Girls - It Won't Take Long - Non-Album Tracks (1991-1996)

I've already posted four albums of stray tracks from the Indigo Girls, covering their 1980s and early 1990s material. Two of those contained all original songs, and two of those contained all covers. By the time covered here, the mid-1990s, the amount of non-album material that interests me declines, so this contains both original and cover songs.

Most of these are from a variety of studio sources, such as soundtracks, tribute albums, B-sides, and the like. Two of them are from concert bootlegs, because they're of original songs that don't seem the exist in any other format.

Unfortunately, my interest in the Indigo Girls declines around the end of the 1990s. For whatever reason, I don't think they maintained their songwriting at their previous high levels. However, I still have four more Indigo Girls albums to post, that are all acoustic versions of their best songs, generally taken from in-person radio station performances.

01 Uncle John's Band (Indigo Girls)
02 I'll Give You My Skin (Indigo Girls with Michael Stipe)
03 Play It Again Sam (Indigo Girls)
04 I Don't Want to Talk about It (Indigo Girls)
05 Wild Wild Party at the Loquat Tree (Indigo Girls)
06 Rockin' in the Free World (Indigo Girls)
07 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (Indigo Girls)
08 What's the Buzz (Indigo Girls)
09 I Don't Know How to Love Him (Indigo Girls)
10 It Won't Take Long (Indigo Girls)
11 Chiapas Bound (Indigo Girls)
12 Blood Quantum (Indigo Girls)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15634948/TIngidoGs_1991-1996_ItWntTkeLng_atse.zip.html

The cover art comes straight from the cover for the "Power of Two" single, from 1994. All I did was change the text at the bottom.

The Indigo Girls - Love by You - Various Cover Versions (1988-1994)

Here's a companion to the Indigo Girls album I posted last week. That one covered mostly original songs done in the studio from 1988 to 1990. This is all live performances, from concerts, TV, or radio show appearances, and all cover versions. It also covers a longer time period, from 1988 to 1994.

I like the Indigo Girls both because of their songwriting and their musical talent, especially their intertwining harmonies and Emily Salier's tasteful lead guitar playing. Unfortunately, their songwriting can be hit or miss, in my opinion. But when they cover great songs, you can't go wrong with their performances, especially since they usually play the songs in the acoustic style that they excel in. This is mostly an acoustic album, with a few exceptions, like their rocking version of Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer."

This album has two types of cover songs, in my opinion. Mostly, they do famous, classic songs, such as "Summertime," "American Tune," and "Melissa." But they also do a lot of covers of much less well known songs, often by artists from Georgia that they know personally.  This includes "White House Blues," "Love by You," and "Tired of Talking."

The sound quality is generally excellent, even though all of the songs come from bootlegs. One partial exception is their version of "Good Times (Let the Good Times Roll)." Since it's a bit rough, I've included it as a bonus track.

01 Summertime (Indigo Girls)
02 White House Blues (Indigo Girls)
03 Love by You (Indigo Girls)
04 Love of the Common People (Indigo Girls)
05 American Tune (Indigo Girls)
06 Melissa (Indigo Girls)
07 In the Bleak Midwinter (Indigo Girls)
08 Daddy's All Gone (Indigo Girls)
09 Bartender's Blues (Indigo Girls)
10 The Water Is Wide (Indigo Girls)
11 Cortez the Killer (Indigo Girls)
12 Tired of Talking (Indigo Girls)
13 Duncan (Indigo Girls)

Good Times [Let the Good Times Roll] (Indigo Girls)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15271273/TIngidoGs_1988-1994_LovebyYouCoverVersions_atse.zip.html

I have no idea when or where this photo for the cover art is from, but I'm guessing it fits the time frame of this album.

The Indigo Girls - Thin Line - Non-Album Tracks (1988-1990)

I've posted two albums by the Indigo Girls, covering their years in the early to mid-1980s, before they hit it big. This album deals with their unreleased studio outtakes right around they hit it big, with their 1989 album "Indigo Girls." Nearly all the songs here are outtakes from that album.

As I mentioned in those previous posts, I really like the Indigo Girls' music in the 1980s and through most of the 1990s, but I'm much less impressed by what they've done since. I'm not sure why, but in my opinion, they peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s - right when these songs were recorded. I'd rather hear their unreleased songs from this time period that most of what they've done since about 2000 or so.

Even though none of the songs here have been officially released, not even on their "Rarities" album (except for a different version of "Thin Line" on the "1200 Curfews" live album), I think this makes up one of their strongest albums. All of the songs are original, except for "Thin Line" and "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters."

By the way, I consider this a 1989 album. It contains one song, "The Ballad of Squeaky Fromme," from 1990, but that song was written a couple of years earlier and I only picked that version due to sound quality.

01 I Should Have Never Crossed Your Path (Indigo Girls)
02 Cold as Ice (Indigo Girls)
03 Draw the Line (Indigo Girls)
04 Life's So Strange (Indigo Girls)
05 Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters (Indigo Girls)
06 Half Moon Cafe (Indigo Girls)
07 Thin Line (Indigo Girls)
08 No Way to Treat a Friend (Indigo Girls)
09 Up in Smoke (Indigo Girls)
10 The Ballad of Squeaky Fromme (Indigo Girls)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15271241/TIngidoGs_1988-1990_ThinLineVariousSongs_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used the cover of the 1988 "Land of Canaan" single. I merely changed the text.

The Indigo Girls - Heartache Central Time - Various Cover Versions (1982-1987)

A couple of days ago, I posted an album containing the best Indigo Girls original songs from 1982 to 1987, the years before they hit it big. This album spans those exact same years, except all the song are cover versions. And, like that other album, all the songs are performed acoustically.

The two Indigo Girls Emily Saliers and Amy Ray are excellent singers and harmonizers, and I love Emily's tasteful lead guitar work. So it's no surprise that their cover versions are always excellent. The problem I had with making this album is audio quality. Neither this nor the other album I've posted would have been remotely possible had it not been for the website www.lifeblood.net, which is an incredible repository of Indigo Girls music, all free for download. But even with that site, there are only a limited number of bootlegs from before the duo hit it big in 1989, and nearly all of them are middling audience concert recordings.

The first five songs here come from a homemade cassette called "Tuesday's Children" the Indigo Girls made back in 1982, when they were still in high school. It's basically an entire album of cover songs, with only two originals. However, the sound quality is merely good, not excellent, and the duo was still growing into their musical talent, so I only picked what I considered the best performances. I also tried to pick lesser known songs. The covers I left behind are: "Carolina on My Mind," "Her Town Too," "Rock Me on the Water," "Father and Son," "Come Down in Time," "It's Too Late," "You've Got a Friend," and "A Heart in New York." IF you like the music on this album and want more along similar lines, then consider getting the rest of that album from the Lifeblood website.

The rest of the songs here are from concert bootlegs. Luckily, there were a couple of early concerts recorded in soundboard quality, incredibly enough, and i used those as much as I could. I would have been able to make this a double album of covers, except there were many songs I had to let go because the only recordings of them were dodgy sounding audience bootlegs.

However, from time to time, I got lucky. A few of the songs here, such as "Girls Talk," "Love the One You're With," and "Drift Away" do come from dodgy sounding bootlegs, but for whatever reason, on those particular songs the sound quality was better. For instance with "Girls Talk," that particular bootleg was marred by a constant murmur of people talking over the music, but that talking pretty much disappeared for the duration of that one song. Perhaps it was a case that the more lively strummed songs quieted the crowd some, and also ended up being recorded better than the more quiet, fingerpicking-styled songs.

Ultimately, the sound quality here is variable, but in my opinion, what I included is all very listenable. And all of it is unreleased, or very nearly so ("Finlandia" is from a 1985 EP that quickly went out of print). Covers of "Finlandia" and "All Along the Watchtower" have been released by the Indigo Girls, but those are different versions, performed years later.

01 The House at Pooh Corner (Indigo Girls)
02 Danny's Song (Indigo Girls)
03 Junkie's Lament (Indigo Girls)
04 Dancing Shoes (Indigo Girls)
05 Long Ago and Far Away (Indigo Girls)
06 Finlandia (Indigo Girls)
07 Drift Away (Indigo Girls)
08 The Weakness in Me (Indigo Girls)
09 Malachy's (Indigo Girls)
10 Girls Talk (Indigo Girls)
11 Heartache Central Time (Indigo Girls)
12 Love the One You're With (Indigo Girls)
13 Killing Time (Indigo Girls)
14 All Along the Watchtower (Indigo Girls)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15130026/TIngidoGs_1982-1987_HeartacheCentralTimeVariousCoverVersions_atse.zip.html

I've had a heck of a time finding good Indigo Girls photos for cover art. But I finally found a keeper. This one dates all the way back to 1982, back when they were briefly known as the "B" Band. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it.

The Indigo Girls - Lifeblood - Non-Album Tracks (1982-1987)

Once upon a time, the Indigo Girls were a very popular and critically acclaimed musical duo. Their mainstream debut album "Indigo Girls" sold a couple million copies, for instance. Their musical journey as a duo continues, but since the end of the 1990s, their popularity has gone down a lot. Unfortunately, I think that's because their first few albums were solid all the way through, with some really classic songs, whereas their more recent albums have been more hit and miss affairs.

That said, I'm still very fond of their music, and I'm going to use this blog especially to highlight their peak time in the 1980s and 1990s.

The music on this album goes back to their earliest years. When their mainstream album debut "Indigo Girls" album came out in 1989, it seemed to most people that that was the beginning of their career, but they actually had been playing and singing together since 1981, when they were still in high school. They put out an EP and a single in 1985, and an album, "Strange Fire," in 1987. But these all came out on minor labels, in limited numbers.

The "Strange Fire" album was re-released after their 1989 album hit it big, but their EP and other assorted early releases have remained obscure. Furthermore, it turns out they had a number of good, original songs that never have been officially released in any form. This album gathers up all their quality original songs from the start of their career up to, but not including, the 1987 "Strange Fire" album.

It seems the Indigo Girls have pretty much forgotten about or moved beyond this early part of their career. Only one song here, "Back Together Again," is widely available today, because that was included on the live album "1200 Curfews" (even though it's not a live recording). They put out an archival album called "Rarities" in 2005, and didn't include any of their early originals, so chances are these songs will never been officially released. That's a shame, because I think this album, and the 1987 "Strange Fire" album, are quite solid. Frankly, I'd rather listen to this early stuff than most of what they've put out in the last 20 or so years.

I was careful not to include any cover versions in this album, because they did many covers in the early part of their career, and I've made another album just of covers that covers the same time period. That'll be posted here soon.

By the way, these songs represent the best of their early original songs. There are even more songs I didn't include. For instance, Indigo Girl Amy Ray made an entire album's worth of original songs in 1982, but I didn't find any of them worthy of inclusion here. It took a few years before they mastered the art of songwriting, which is not surprising for anyone.

Some songs also weren't included due to sound quality issues. Generally speaking, I think these all have good to excellent audio quality, even though more than half of them are unreleased and sourced from concert bootlegs.

Also, by the way, as I mentioned above, I've avoided including any songs from the 1987 "Strange Fire" album, since you should own that album if you're an Indigo Girls fan. However, there's one song, "High Hopes," that only appeared on an early version of that album (before they hit it big and the album got rereleased). So I've included that here as a bonus track.

01 Back Together Again (Indigo Girls)
02 Everybody's Waiting [For Someone to Come Home] (Indigo Girls)
03 Lifeblood (Indigo Girls)
04 Never Stop (Indigo Girls)
05 If You Live like That (Indigo Girls)
06 Holy City (Indigo Girls)
07 Peace Song (Indigo Girls)
08 The Untitled Song (Indigo Girls)
09 Running from the Cold (Indigo Girls)
10 I Don't Know Your Name (Indigo Girls)
11 Emily's Song [Instrumental] (Indigo Girls)
12 Don't Give Up on Me, Baby (Indigo Girls)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15130024/TIngidoGs_1982-1987_LifebloodVariousSongs_atse.zip.html

I had a very hard time finding early photos of the Indigo Girls to use for an album cover. This cover is based on the 1985 "Crazy Game" single, so at least I know it's from the right time period. I added the blue blob and text at the bottom.