Northern California Folk-Rock Festival, Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, San Jose, CA, 5-18-1968, Part 5 - Jefferson Airplane

This is the fifth album out of seven albums I'm posting from the 1968 Northern California Folk-Rock Festival. This set features Jefferson Airplane.

I said quite a lot in my write-up for the first album I posted from this festival, the Youngbloods set. I recommend you read that, because most of that applies to this set too. Most importantly, note that this is sourced from an audience bootleg, so the sound quality isn't up to my usual standards. I had to do a lot of work to fix all sorts of flaws. The final results sounds pretty decent for a 1968 concert, in my opinion, but you need to be tolerant about the flaws that still remain.

Jefferson Airplane was the headlining act of the first day of the festival, and thus were given the most covered final set of the day. As you can see from the cover photo and text, the festival was scheduled to go each day from 11 A.M. to 6 P.M., and it seems the kept that schedule fairly well because it was still light outside at the time of this set. 

It makes sense that Jefferson Airplane was one of the headliners, along with the Doors being the headliners for the second day. Out of all the musical acts performing at the festival, those two had had the biggest commercial success at this point, by far. Jefferson Airplane had two Top Ten hits in the U.S. in 1967 with "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit." And the Doors went all the way to Number One with "Light My Fire" in 1967.

At this point in 1968, the band was already moving towards their fourth album, "Crown of Creation." It wouldn't be released until September. But they played two songs from it in this concert, "Greasy Heart" and "Star Track."

I mentioned previously that some of these recordings were bedeviled by a high buzzing noise. Unfortunately, this set suffers from that probably the most. I especially had a hard time with the song "Today." Since it's a quiet, acoustic song, the buzz is particularly noticeable. I tried my best to reduce that, but I couldn't completely get rid of it.   

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane)
02 Plastic Fantastic Lover (Jefferson Airplane)
03 talk (Jefferson Airplane)
04 Watch Her Ride (Jefferson Airplane)
05 talk (Jefferson Airplane)
06 Today (Jefferson Airplane)
07 The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil (Jefferson Airplane)
08 talk (Jefferson Airplane)
09 Greasy Heart (Jefferson Airplane)
10 Fat Angel (Jefferson Airplane)
11 Star Track (Jefferson Airplane)
12 Won't You Try - Saturday Afternoon (Jefferson Airplane)
13 Somebody to Love (Jefferson Airplane)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qsCMiLYg

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/wEZI5zoxZcpJbE5/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From right to left: Paul Kantner (he appears small and near the bottom of the image, on guitar), Marty Balin (holding the tambourine), Jorma Kaukonen (on lead guitar), and Grace Slick (holding maracas and wearing a pink top).

The original was in black and white. However, I was able to find some color images of the band at this concert. It's just that they had problems, so I preferred to use this one. But because I saw some color ones, I was able to get the colors correct. For instance, I was able to get the color of Slick's top correct, as well as other colors. 

Jorma Kaukonen - Shelter Coffee House, San Jose, CA, 6-25-1964

Occasionally, I'm amazed that a bootleg of a concert from a certain era of an artist's career exists at all, then I'm doubly amazed that the sound quality is so good. The 1963 Jackie deShannon concert I've posted here is one example, and the 1967 Grass Roots concert I've posted here is another. This concert also falls into that category.

I mean, who would expect to find a Jorma Kaukonen concert bootleg from all way back to 1964?! I didn't even know what he was doing musically prior to joining Jefferson Airplane in 1965. It turns out he played acoustic blues in folk clubs for a few years, starting in 1962 or earlier. He doesn't seem to have been very popular at that time. I found a couple of playbills with his name on it from those pre-Jefferson Airplane years on a Hot Tuna website. His name was way down in importance, in small letters. (By the way, at that time he was going by the name Jerry Kaukonen.) 

Yet here we have a full concert recording from him, an apparent soundboard in excellent sound quality! I just happened to stumble across it a couple of days ago. I consider myself quite lucky, because it's an extremely obscure bootleg. I literally only found three or four Google search results, but one of them had a link to download the full show. Hopefully by posting this, I'll help to give it more prominence. I figure few Jorma/ Hot Tuna fans have ever even thought to search for bootlegs from before his Jefferson Airplane days.

What I find most interesting about this is how fully formed his musical vision was then. Many of these songs were later done by him as part of Hot Tuna or as a solo artist, often in very similar versions. You also get the future Jefferson Airplane song "Good Shepherd." He already had an obsession with the music of the Reverend Gary Davis, something that's continued for the rest of his career. Virtually all of the song are blues or gospel covers ("Mann's Fate" is an original), and a handful were written by Davis.

The bootleg I took this from is over half an hour longer. This comes from two sets, and I removed all the duplicates: "Hesitation Blues," "San Francisco Bay Blues," "Follow the Drinking Gourd," "Death Don't Have No Mercy," and two versions of "Candy Man." I also cut out most of the guitar tuning between songs, of which there was quite a lot.

Unlike many bootlegs from the 1960s where the tape recorder was turned off between songs to save tape, this appears to be the full show of two sets. The best evidence of that is all the guitar tuning (that I often removed). So although there isn't much banter between songs, I think it's safe to say that's because he simply didn't talk much instead of those bits getting lost. Whenever he did talk, his voice was rather quiet, so I boosted the volume on those parts to help you hear what he was saying.

This album is an hour and 16 minutes long. If you're a fan of his music, I highly recommend you get this. It's interesting to hear the early versions of songs he would often play later. But I think it's even more interesting that about half of these songs are ones he apparently permanently dropped from his repertoire once he joined Jefferson Airplane.

01 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
02 Come Back Baby (Jorma Kaukonen)
03 Move to Kansas City (Jorma Kaukonen)
04 Worry No More (Jorma Kaukonen)
05 Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning (Jorma Kaukonen)
06 Follow the Drinking Gourd (Jorma Kaukonen)
07 Keep On Truckin' (Jorma Kaukonen)
08 Always (Jorma Kaukonen)
09 Nine Pound Hammer (Jorma Kaukonen)
10 Search My Heart (Jorma Kaukonen)
11 Mann's Fate [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
12 Good Shepherd (Jorma Kaukonen)
13 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
14 That'll Never Happen No More (Jorma Kaukonen)
15 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
16 Death Don't Have No Mercy (Jorma Kaukonen)
17 San Francisco Bay Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
18 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
19 Lullaby [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
20 Late in the Evening Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
21 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
22 Hesitation Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
23 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
24 True Religion (Jorma Kaukonen)
25 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
26 Candy Man (Jorma Kaukonen)
27 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
28 Trouble in Mind (Jorma Kaukonen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15292183/JormaK_1964_SheltrCoffeeHouseSnJoseCA__6-25-1964_atse.zip.html

When I decided to make this an album I would post on my blog, I went looking for a photo of Kaukonen from 1964. I must say I thought the odds of actually finding one were between slim and none, but I felt I had to at least look. To my surprise, I actually found a photo of him playing in a club in 1964! The only snag was that it was in black and white, so I colorized it.

Between this music and the photo, I'm quite amazed at what one can find on the Internet these days. :)

Jefferson Airplane - High Flying Bird - Non-Album Tracks (1962-1966)

A year or two ago, I posted a Jefferson Airplane album with this exact name and cover art. Today, I'm deleting that and replacing it with this album and one other. Basically, I found enough material to make two stray tracks albums of this band's beginnings instead of one. So you should delete that earlier album if you downloaded this, and replace it with this one and the new one I'll be posting.

I know these changes must be confusing. In terms of content, this album is almost entirely different from the previous "High Flying Bird" album. That one dealt with the years 1966 to 1967. This one deals with 1962 to 1966. There's only a little overlap, but one of the songs here is the song "High Flying Bird." That's why I've moved the album title and the associated cover art.

With that out of the way, let's get to the music. The band released their first album, "Jefferson Airplane Takes Off," in 1966. But there was a long musical journey getting there, given all the talented people in the band. 

I've found some early recordings Marty Balin made that go back to 1962, including a song where he sang lead vocals for the folk music group the Town Criers. There are some more early songs he did both with solo singles and with the Town Criers, but most of them frankly aren't very good so I haven't included them.

I also found a couple of bootleg recordings of Jorma Kaukonen playing solo acoustic in night clubs in 1964. Most of what he did was exactly what he'd play solo and as part of Hot Tuna in later years, such as lots of Reverend Gary Davis tunes. I picked out a couple of the songs I liked the best, including "Good Shepherd," a cover song Jefferson Airplane would record in a very different arrangement in 1969.

Paul Kantner was one of the main singers and songwriters for the band, but I didn't find anything he recorded before joining the band.

Grace Slick only joined Jefferson Airplane after the band's first album, replacing another female vocalist, Signe Anderson. Prior to that, she was in the band the Great Society for about a year. They were surprisingly good in my opinion, and I've already posted a bootleg of one of their concerts on this blog. I decided not to include any of their live material here, but to include the best of their limited studio work. They never put out a studio album, but they did release two singles, plus they recorded some demos. I've included the best of all that, mainly the songs where Slick sang lead vocals.

That leaves six songs on this album that were actually recorded by Jefferson Airplane. They all were done in 1966, mostly as outtakes or B-sides from the "Jefferson Airplane Takes Off" album. Note that I think these Jefferson Airplane songs have Signe Anderson singing the female vocals if there are any, since Slick didn't replace her until towards the end of the year. (I believe the last song, "Kansas City Blues," is from Slick's very first concert with the band in mid-October 1966, but it's pretty much a moot point since there's no female vocals on that particular song.)

This album is something of a mixed bag, since it's got a number of different lead vocalists singing different styles of music over a several year period. But Jefferson Airplane was very much like that in general, so I don't think this sounds that different from their early stuff.

The sound quality is generally excellent. Everything here has been officially released except for the two Jorma Kaukonen solo songs, plus a cover of a Bob Dylan song, "Lay Down Your Weary Tune." That Dylan song probably sounds the worst, but I made some edits to fix some rough parts of the song. The band did a few more cover songs in their early years, such as "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better" by the Byrds and the blues song "Baby What You Want Me to Do." But I didn't include them either due to poor bootleg recordings, or poor performances, or both. 

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 I Specialize in Love (Marty Balin)
02 900 Miles (Town Criers with Marty Balin)
03 Pawnshop Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
04 Good Shepherd (Jorma Kaukonen)
05 Born to Be Burned (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
06 Father Bruce (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
07 Heads Up (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
08 Lay Down Your Weary Tune [Edit] (Jefferson Airplane)
09 Free Advice (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
10 Someone to Love [Somebody to Love] (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
11 Go to Her (Jefferson Airplane)
12 High Flying Bird (Jefferson Airplane)
13 It's Alright (Jefferson Airplane)
14 Runnin' 'Round This World (Jefferson Airplane)
15 Sally Go 'Round the Roses (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
16 Kansas City Blues (Jefferson Airplane)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15906032/JeffersonA_1962-1966_HghFlyingBird_atse.zip.html

I really like the album cover I chose here. In fact, I used to have a poster of it. It's based on a concert poster from the era, but I cropped it and added some words at the bottom.

Jefferson Airplane - The Other Side of This Life - Non-Album Tracks (1967)

I just posted a Jefferson Airplane stray tracks album dealing with the years 1962 to 1966, called "High Flying Bird." This continues from that, dealing with the year 1967. Together, these two albums expand upon and replace a stray tracks album I'd posted a year or two ago that had the same "High Flying Bird" title and cover art. I'm deleting that previous version now.

The band's 1967 album "Surrealistic Pillow" is a classic. Most of the songs here are outtakes from that album. The band was peaking creatively, so it's not too surprising that the outtakes are solid too. In my opinion, had this album been released, it would hold up with their other 1960s albums. Most of the songs are originals, though "The Fat Angel" is a Donovan song, "The Other Side of This Life" is a Fred Neil song, and "In the Midnight Hour" was a hit for Wilson Pickett. 

The last song is an outtake from their next album, "After Bathing at Baxter's" released near the end of 1967. Surprisingly, there aren't really any good stray tracks from 1968, though there are some weird studio experiments a la the Beatles' "Revolution 9."

All the songs here are officially released except for "The Fat Angel," "Leave You Alone," "The Other Side of This Life," and "In the Midnight Hour." But those are from soundboard bootlegs, so the sound quality is generally excellent. "Leave You Alone" seems to be a Marty Balin original. I'm surprised it hasn't been released, since it's a fine song. The sound quality is little bit poorer on that one.

This album is 47 minutes long.

UPDATE: On June 2, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file. I added the song "In the Midnight Hour." And I replaced a version of "The Fat Angel" from 1966 with one from 1967.

01 The Fat Angel (Jefferson Airplane)
02 In the Morning (Jefferson Airplane)
03 J. P. P. McStep B. Blues (Jefferson Airplane)
04 In the Midnight Hour (Jefferson Airplane)
05 Come Back Baby (Jefferson Airplane)
06 Don't Let Me Down (Jefferson Airplane)
07 Leave You Alone (Jefferson Airplane)
08 The Other Side of This Life (Jefferson Airplane)
09 Things Are Better in the East (Jefferson Airplane)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15301591/JeffersonA_1967_TheOthrSideofThisLife_atse.zip.html

The cover art is based on a 1966 concert poster from when the band played the Fillmore in San Francisco. I made three big changes to it. First, I had to crop a lot of it out, to get a rectangular poster shape to fit into the square album shape. Second, I replaced some text at the bottom, which I believe was the name of one of the support acts, with the album title. Third, the band name and the woman in the middle were colored a boring shade of brown. I changed that to a blue that I liked better.

Jorma Kaukonen - Home Concerts 4, Fur Peace Ranch, Pomeroy, OH, 5-23-2020 to 11-21-2020

I still have quite a backlog of home concerts from 2020 to post. So here's one more. 

This is the last one of Jorma Kaukonen. Unfortunately, even though he's been playing home concerts pretty much every week from the start of the pandemic until now (sometimes alone and sometimes as part of Hot Tuna), he tends to play the same songs over and over again. For the three previous volumes, I avoided repeating songs. With this one, the unique songs basically ran out. These are the songs he didn't play in a few months of previous home concerts, so they're generally his rarities. As such, I find this volume the most interesting one.

There isn't much else to say. He's been very consistent with playing at the same place using the same set up for all his home concerts, so the sound quality is uniformly excellent. Also, as I did with previous volumes, I've cut out most of the between song banter except for the bits that are directly relevant to the songs he played. He's typically done long question and answer sessions with questions sent in by fans, so if I included that it would be a totally different thing, with tons more talking.

I don't know why, but I've made the albums in this series rather long, at over an hour apiece. This one is especially long, at an hour and forty minutes. If he ends up doing a handful of unique songs in 2021 home concerts, I'll probably add those and break this in two. But, for now, it is what it is.

I've added one song as a bonus track, "Yes Blues." This cover of the Beatles song was done for a John Lennon tribute concert in October 2020, so it doesn't exactly fit the home concert format. But it's a performance in the same solo acoustic blues style as most of the other songs, so I figure it fits enough to be a bonus track.

01 Broken Highway (Jorma Kaukonen)
02 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
03 A Walk with Friends [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
04 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
05 Corners without Exits (Jorma Kaukonen)
06 Roads and Roads and (Jorma Kaukonen)
07 Izze's Lullaby [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
08 Ode for Billy Dean (Jorma Kaukonen)
09 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
10 Song from the Stainless Cymbal (Jorma Kaukonen)
11 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
12 What Are They Doing in Heaven Today (Jorma Kaukonen)
13 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
14 Blues Stay Away from Me (Jorma Kaukonen)
15 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
16 Follow the Drinking Gourd [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
17 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
18 That'll Never Happen No More (Jorma Kaukonen)
19 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
20 Folsom Prison Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
21 Great Divide Revisited (Jorma Kaukonen)
22 Soliloquy for 2 (Jorma Kaukonen)
23 Uncle Sam Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
24 Serpent of Dreams (Jorma Kaukonen)
25 Second Chances (Jorma Kaukonen)
26 Blue Railroad Train (Jorma Kaukonen)
27 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
28 West Coast Blues [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
29 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
30 I'm Free from the Chain Gang Now (Jorma Kaukonen)
31 You and My Old Guitar (Jorma Kaukonen)
32 Vampire Women (Jorma Kaukonen)
33 Yer Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Lxoqo4H2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/1kfsUUnjrQTSGAz/file

The cover art photo is a screen shot from one of the home concerts during this time period. I don't recall which one.

Jorma Kaukonen - Home Concerts 3, Fur Peace Ranch, Pomeroy, OH, 5-2-2020 to 5-16-2020

It's already 2021 as I write this, but I still have some 2020 home concerts to post. So here's another from Jorma Kaukonen of both Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna fame. Since the pandemic began, he's been holding a concert at his home once a week, sometimes solo and sometimes as part of Hot Tuna. He continues to do that most weeks.

I think Kaukonen is underrated as a songwriter. I also think he relies too much on a small number of blues songs by others that he plays over and over again, especially those by Rev. Gary Davis. So this contains the songs he hadn't played in previous home concerts up till this point, minus those overplayed blues covers. The result is mostly originals, though there are a few covers here, such as "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" and "Nine Pound Hammer."

Also, note that his home concerts have often had as much talking as music. Typically, his wife has asked him questions from fans, and he would answer them at length. I've removed pretty much all of that. However, I've kept the comments he made that are relevant to the songs he's playing, so there's still a decent amount of between song banter.

I think the songs here are particularly interesting, because the songs he plays the most generally appeared on the first two albums in this series. These are the lesser known ones. But in my opinion they're generally very good just the same.

01 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
02 Letter to the North Star (Jorma Kaukonen)
03 Do Not Go Gentle [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
04 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
05 From the Land of Heroes (Jorma Kaukonen)
06 Mann's Fate [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
07 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
08 Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out (Jorma Kaukonen)
09 In My Dreams (Jorma Kaukonen)
10 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
11 River of Time (Jorma Kaukonen)
12 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
13 Living Just for You (Jorma Kaukonen)
14 Song for the High Mountain (Jorma Kaukonen)
15 Trial by Fire (Jorma Kaukonen)
16 Song for the North Star (Jorma Kaukonen)
17 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
18 Another Man Done a Full Go Round (Jorma Kaukonen)
19 A Life Well Lived (Jorma Kaukonen)
20 Day to Day Out the Window Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
21 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
22 I'll Let You Know Before I Leave [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
23 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
24 Hamar Promenade (Jorma Kaukonen)
25 Nine Pound Hammer (Jorma Kaukonen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15292229/JormaK_2020_HomeConcrts3FurPeaceRanch_5-2-2020_to_5-16-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover art is a screenshot taken from one of the YouTube videos of the songs on this album.

Jorma Kaukonen - Home Concerts 2, Fur Peace Ranch, Pomeroy, OH, 4-18-2020 to 4-25-2020

As I posted yesterday, I had a hard drive crash and a lot of data I had is now permanently lost. Thankfully, my music collection is stored on a different hard drive. This close call has given me a new appreciation for my music blog. If I did have a disaster and lose my music collection, at least a good portion of the unique parts of it would be here on this blog. So I'm going to focus even more on trying to post the music that hasn't been collected in the way I've collected it elsewhere.

This album is a case in point. Jorma Kaukonen has done a ton of home concerts since the pandemic began, usually once a week, sometimes solo and sometimes as part of Hot Tuna. He's still at it. But those concerts have included long question and answer sessions, as well as guest spotlights, neither of which I'm interested in. Plus, he tends to play a lot of the same songs. So this blog is probably the only place were you can find his home concerts boiled down to just the essential music and banter, without song repeats.

As a personal quirk, I've gotten bored with many of the covers he does, especially his covers of religious Rev. Gary Davis songs. So I've cut way down on those, and focused more on his original songs. I think he's underappreciated as a songwriter. There is the occasional cover song here, such as "Parchman Farm" and "I Know You Rider," but the vast majority are originals.

I have a few more in this series to post, especially if he continues to play more home concerts. This album is an hour and nine minutes long. I'm not sure why I made all the albums in this series over an hour long, but I did. It's been months since I made these albums, so I forget my reasoning, but I must have had some reason for it. ;)

01 Too Many Years (Jorma Kaukonen)
02 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
03 Parchman Farm (Jorma Kaukonen)
04 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
05 The Terrible Operation (Jorma Kaukonen)
06 Flying Clouds (Jorma Kaukonen)
07 Watch the North Wind Rise (Jorma Kaukonen)
08 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
09 Reenlistment Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
10 New Song [For the Morning] (Jorma Kaukonen)
11 I See the Light (Jorma Kaukonen)
12 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
13 Ain't in No Hurry (Jorma Kaukonen)
14 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
15 Third Week in the Chelsea (Jorma Kaukonen)
16 Bar Room Crystal Ball (Jorma Kaukonen)
17 Wolves and Lambs (Jorma Kaukonen)
18 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
19 Things That Might Have Been (Jorma Kaukonen)
20 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
21 I Know You Rider (Jorma Kaukonen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15292182/JormaK_2020_HomeConcrts2FurPeaceRanch_4-18-2020_to_4-25-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a screenshot taken from one of the YouTube videos of the home concerts contained here.

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.

Jorma Kaukonen - Home Concerts 1, Fur Peace Ranch, Pomeroy, OH, 4-4-2020 to 4-11-2020

Some musician have been quiet in terms of public musical activity during the coronavirus lockdown, and others have been very active. Jorma Kaukonen has definitely been one of the active ones, putting on one lengthy home concert a week since the lockdown began. In case you don't know who he is, he was the lead guitarist for Jefferson Airplane in the 1960s, then has been part of the blues-based duo Hot Tuna ever since then, along with bassist Jack Cassady, also formerly of Jefferson Airplane. Since the 1970s, he's put out a mix of solo albums and Hot Tuna. Frankly, they don't sound that different to me, because he's the sole songwriter and lead vocalist on both.

Ever since leaving Jefferson Airplane, Kaukonen's recordings have been heavily influenced by the blues, most especially the acoustic blues of the Reverend Gary Davis. Since that time, he's done a lot of covers of blues classics, especially Gary Davis songs. But he's also written many of his own songs. And although they're informed by the blues, they have a distinctive style of their own.

This is the first of several albums of his 2020 home concerts that I plan on posting here. But I have to admit I've done something you might consider unexpected, if you're familiar with his music. To be frank, I'm kind of burned out on his covers of blues classics, especially his covers of Gary Davis songs. I feel like I've heard him do songs like "Death Don't Have No Mercy," "Candy Man," and "True Religion" a million times. I much more interested in his original songs. So, for these albums, I've pretty much just selected his originals (with occasional exceptions).

I've made some other significant omissions. For his home concerts, he typically has his wife select questions that have been asked by fans, and then he answers them between songs. I cut all of that out, and lots of talking besides. If I didn't, it would be nearly as much talking as music, and it's not the kind that lends itself to repeated listenings. If you want to hear all that, check out the YouTube videos of the full concerts. I did keep some between song banter, but generally just the bits that relate to the songs being played.

Furthermore, for each of his concerts, he typically has some guest musicians who sing their own songs. They're usually Myron Hart and/or John Hurlbut, neither of whom I'd heard of before. I'm not really interested in their stuff, and I want to keep the focus on Kaukonen and his original songs, so I've cut all their songs out as well, even though Kaukonen joins them on guitar.

Because I've cut out a bunch of stuff, this comes from two concerts instead of just one. It's an hour and seven minutes long. I hope this helps people appreciate what a talented songwriter he is, as well as being well known for his guitar playing. I could be wrong, but I think the only songs here he didn't write are "Good Shepherd" (which he did with Jefferson Airplane) and "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime."

01 Heart Temporary (Jorma Kaukonen)
02 Been So Long (Jorma Kaukonen)
03 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
04 Barbeque King (Jorma Kaukonen)
05 Sea Child (Jorma Kaukonen)
06 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
07 In the Kingdom (Jorma Kaukonen)
08 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
09 Good Shepherd (Jorma Kaukonen)
10 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
11 Brother, Can You Spare a Dime (Jorma Kaukonen)
12 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
13 Water Song [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
14 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
15 Ice Age (Jorma Kaukonen)
16 Living in the Moment [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
17 Sleep Song (Jorma Kaukonen)
18 Genesis (Jorma Kaukonen)
19 What Are They Doing in Heaven Today (Jorma Kaukonen)
20 Embryonic Journey [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15292176/JormaK_2020_HomeConcrts1FurPeaceRanch_4-4-2020_to_4-11-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover art is a screenshot from the first concert featured here.

Jefferson Airplane - Frozen Noses - Non-Album Tracks (1970)

Nearly all of that albums I post here are ones I created for myself a long time ago. That's how I'm able to post a lot of them in a short time. But today I made a new one. I was listening to some Jefferson Airplane and it occurred to me that it was odd how the group never released an album in 1970, even though they released at least one album a year for every other year of their existence. So I decided to try to see if I could come up with one.

I'm glad I did. At first, all I had was the one single they released that year ("Mexico" backed with "Have You Seen the Saucers"). But it turns out they had a lot more material, and that's not even including any of the songs on the "Blows Against the Empire" album released by an offshoot of the group that year.

They actually did a lot of work on an album in 1970.  But the band had split into three camps (Grace Slick and Paul Kantner in one, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Cassady in another, and Marty Balin in the third), and tensions got so bad that the band was barely functional. Balin effectively quit the band by the end of the year, even though it wasn't official until midway through 1971.

As a result, the planned album, "Bark," didn't come out until 1971, and when it did come out it was very different than how it would have been if it had come out in 1970. Most notably, all of Balin's contributions were dropped. He had four good songs, yet he wouldn't release any new music until 1973, and by then only one of those songs would be included.

I made sure to include songs by all three factions of the group at the time. However, there was a fourth songwriting effort I avoided, that of band drummer Joey Covington. He wrote and sang a number of songs that the band played live at the time, such as "Whatever the Old Man Does Is Always Right," "Bludgeon of a Bluecoat" and "I Can Tell," but I found all of them not good enough to include. It seems the rest of the band felt the same way, since they were never released then or on any later archival releases. (Yet the next year he would be a key participant in coming up with and singing the excellent song "Pretty as You Feel," which would be the last hit by the group.)

The biggest surprise for me was the song "Frozen Noses," which I didn't know about until stumbling on it today. It's a nice song written by Grace Slick and recorded by the band, by it has never been officially released in any form. I liked it so much that I decided to name the album after it. It's a fitting title, because most or all of the band members were said to be heavily into cocaine by 1970.

For the last song on this album, I broke my usual rule of not including the exact versions of songs on official albums released around the same time. The song, "New Song (For the Morning)," technically isn't even a Jefferson Airplane song at all, since it was released on the 1970 album "Hot Tuna," the first album by the Kaukonen-Cassady spinoff group of the same name. But I've always felt that song didn't belong on the album it wound up on and should have been on a Jefferson Airplane album instead. The first Hot Tuna album is basically all covers of old blues songs except for that original song by Kaukonen, which is done in a very different songwriting style. It also is one of my favorite songs written by Kaukonen, yet it's overlooked because he's only rarely played it in concert in all the years since. So I indulged myself by sticking it on this album instead, where it would make an ideal last song.

("True Religion" did come out on a 1972 Hot Tuna album, but this is a version done in a Jefferson Airplane concert, with significantly different instrumentation.)

01 Mexico (Jefferson Airplane)
02 You Wear Your Dresses Too Short (Jefferson Airplane)
03 Uncle Sam Blues (Jefferson Airplane)
04 Emergency (Jefferson Airplane)
05 Have You Seen the Saucers (Jefferson Airplane)
06 Up or Down (Jefferson Airplane)
07 True Religion (Jefferson Airplane)
08 Frozen Noses (Jefferson Airplane)
09 Drifting (Jefferson Airplane)
10 New Song [For the Morning] (Jefferson Airplane)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15906150/JeffersonA_1969-1970_FrozenNses_atse.zip.html

I had a hard time coming up with a good cover for this album. Frankly, I'm not sure where this cover image I chose comes from. I think it's fan art, but I could be wrong. In any case, I think it looks great. I just cropped it some the avoid some text and then added new text at the bottom.