Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe - Costello Sings Lowe - Nick Sings Elvis, Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, 10-1-2010

Here's a really fun concert with Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe taking turns performing songs. But there's a surprise twist that I've never seen in any other concert: instead of singing their own songs, they sang the other guy's songs! Meaning Costello exclusively sung songs written by Lowe, and Lowe exclusively sung songs written by Costello. 

I've known about this concert for a long time, but I avoided it due to merely okay sound quality. It comes from an audience boot instead of a soundboard or FM radio broadcast. But it was an unusually good audience boot. Furthermore, with the improvements in audio editing technology in recent years, I was able to make some changes to improve the sound quality. The main thing I did was I ran all the songs through the MVSEP program and got rid of the crowd noise during the songs while keeping the crowd noise at the starts and ends of songs. Now, in my opinion, this sounds just as good as most soundboard boots.

This unique format was only possible because Costello and Lowe have been friends and musical associates for a long, long time. Lowe found suggest first, in the early 1970s, as part of the band Brinsley Schwarz. That band was a big influence on Costello as he was starting out. One can see this in this concert, with Costello singing "Don't Lose Your Grip on Love," a relatively obscure Brinsley Schwarz song from 1972. A key early hit for Costello, "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding," was another Brinsley Schwarz song written by Lowe. Then, when Costello started releasing his own albums, he chose Lowe to be the producer. In fact, Costello's first five albums, from 1977 to 1981, were all produced by Lowe, as well as "Blood and Chocolate" in 1986.

I found a good quote from a Lowe interview, about his early connection to Costello: 

"When I was in Brinsley Schwarz, he used to come and see us all the time. He was always there, looking very intense. Even when he was with other people, he always seemed to he standing apart from them. The first time I actually spoke to him was in a pub in Liverpool. He was at the bar, and I thought, 'Well.., there he is again. I'd better buy him a drink.' Because I was famous then, you see. I was in the Brinsleys, man. We were pub rock legends, earning 175 pounds a night. We were big time. And I went over and he just glared at me. Damned unsettling. You know the way he is. Anyway, after that, whenever I saw him, we'd have a drink. I just thought he was a very intense fan. Then he moved to London and we lost touch. And then we started Stiff [Records] and one day I saw him at the local tube station." That renewed contact led to Costello getting his first record contract in 1977. 

Since those early days, their paths have crossed many times. For instance, they're frequently toured together, with Lowe usually being the opening act due to Costello being the more famous name. In fact, according to an Elvis Costello wiki I found, they toured together in 1977, 1978, 1981, 1984, 1986,  1987, 1989, 1991, 2000, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2022, and 2023! Lowe has also recorded the Costello songs "Indoor Fireworks" and "Poisoned Rose" on his albums. 

But this concert, which was a special charity benefit event, has been the one and only time they sang each other's songs like this. They actually did two shows that evening, and this is the early show. Apparently no recording has emerged of the late show.

Note that a couple of songs were mainly sung by members of the backing band. One such band member, keyboardist Bob Andrews, was actually a member of Brinsley Schwarz way back in the day.

This album is an hour and 25 minutes long. 

01 talk (Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
02 Here Comes the Weekend (Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
03 When I Write the Book (Elvis Costello)
04 Home Is Anywhere You Hang Your Head (Nick Lowe)
05 talk (Elvis Costello)
06 Don't Lose Your Grip on Love (Elvis Costello)
07 Mystery Dance (Nick Lowe)
08 talk (Elvis Costello)
09 I Trained Her to Love Me (Elvis Costello)
10 talk (Elvis Costello)
11 Poisoned Rose (Nick Lowe)
12 I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass (Bob Andrews)
13 Oliver's Army (Nick Lowe)
14 I'm a Mess (Elvis Costello)
15 talk (Nick Lowe)
16 Alison (Nick Lowe)
17 talk (Elvis Costello)
18 Harry Hippie - Cruel to Be Kind (Elvis Costello)
19 Accidents Will Happen [Instrumental] (Derek Huston with Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
20 talk (Austin de Lone with Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
21 Lover Don't Go (Austin de Lone with Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
22 Indoor Fireworks (Nick Lowe)
23 What's Shakin' on the Hill (Elvis Costello)
24 Gonna Love My Baby Now (Nick Lowe)
25 talk (Bill Kirchen with Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
26 Monkey to Man (Bill Kirchen with Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
27 Heart of the City (Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
28 [What's So Funny 'Bout] Peace, Love and Understanding (Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
29 talk (Elvis Costello)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/V7anEjmY

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/eTTF9VoRCKhqk1K/file

I'm happy to say the cover photo comes from this exact concert. It wasn't labeled as such, but I found another one from the concert that was blurry and not very good, and it showed them wearing the exact same clothes, same guitars, same hat, etc... For all the text, I copied and pasted from a poster for this concert. That includes the yellow text referring to them as "cracking good eggs."

Leon Russell, Nick Lowe, & Paul Brady - Songwriters' Circle, Porchester Hall, London, Britain, 10-7-2011

Recently, a musical friend named Peter sent me several episodes of the "Songwriters' Circle" BBC TV show. That inspired me to organize some that I had already. So while I didn't get this one from Peter, his sharing is responsible for me finishing getting it ready to be posted. This episode features the singer-songwriters Leon Russell, Nick Lowe, and Paul Brady taking turns performing their songs.

I've already posted a bunch of music by Nick Lowe, with more to come, so I don't feel the need to say much about him. Suffice to say that he's great.

I've also already posted a joint Leon Russell and Elton John concert. But I didn't say that much about him then, so I'll say a bit more now. Actually, to make it easy on myself, I'll just quote the introductory paragraph to his Wikipedia entry:

"[Russell] was an American musician and songwriter who was involved with numerous bestselling records during his 60-year career that spanned multiple genres, including rock and roll, country, gospel, bluegrass, rhythm and blues, southern rock, blues rock, folk, surf and the Tulsa sound. His recordings earned six gold records and he received two Grammy Awards from seven nominations. In 1973, Billboard named Russell the 'Top Concert Attraction in the World.' In 2011, he was inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame." He died in 2016. 

Here's the link if you want to read the rest of the very informative Wikipedia entry about him:

Leon Russell - Wikipedia 

So that leaves Paul Brady, who is the least well known of the three. The Wikipedia intro isn't so good for him, so I'll try to write something myself. Brady is a singer-songwriter from Northern Ireland. His career began in the late 1960s and 1970s when he concentrated on playing traditional Irish music. But starting in the early 1980s, he switched to doing his own songs, in pop and rock styles. He didn't have big commercial success on his own, but many musical acts covered his songs, including Bonnie Raitt, Santana, Dave Edmunds, and Tina Turner. 

Here's an interesting quote that Bob Dylan included in his "Biograph" box set, released in 1985, that names Brady:

"[P]eople get too famous too fast these days and it destroys them. Some guys got it down - Leonard Cohen, Paul Brady, Lou Reed, secret heroes, John Prine, David Allen Coe, Tom Waits. I listen more to that kind of stuff than whatever is popular at the moment. They're not just witchdoctoring up the planet, they don't set up barriers."

Here's his Wikipedia page if you want to know more:

Paul Brady - Wikipedia 

In terms of the musical content of this album, I don't have much to say. It follows the same format of other episodes of this TV series. Russell stuck to playing piano, while Lowe and Brady played acoustic guitars. They mostly just sang their own songs, but there are some backing vocals where they helped each other out, especially on the last couple of songs. 

The music here is unreleased, and the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 58 minutes long. 

01 A Song for You (Leon Russell)
02 I Live on a Battlefield (Nick Lowe)
03 Smile (Paul Brady)
04 Tightrope (Leon Russell)
05 talk (Nick Lowe)
06 Cruel to Be Kind (Nick Lowe)
07 talk (Paul Brady)
08 Nobody Knows (Paul Brady)
09 Hummingbird (Leon Russell)
10 talk (Nick Lowe)
11 The Beast in Me (Nick Lowe)
12 talk (Paul Brady)
13 Crazy Dreams (Paul Brady)
14 Delta Lady (Leon Russell)
15 talk (Nick Lowe)
16 I Read a Lot (Nick Lowe)
17 talk (Paul Brady)
18 Luck of the Draw (Paul Brady)
19 This Masquerade (Leon Russell)
20 talk (Nick Lowe)
21 [What's So Funny 'Bout] Peace, Love and Understanding (Nick Lowe)
22 talk (Paul Brady)
23 The World Is What You Make It (Paul Brady) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/p4Rb21Ce

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/xjPlM2YBOzIA7Sw/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from a video of this exact concert. From right to left: Leon Russell, Nick Lowe, and Paul Brady.

Brinsley Schwarz - BBC Sessions, Volume 7: 1973-1975

Over the last week or so, I've posted a complete overhaul of the music the British band Brinsley Schwarz performed for the BBC. Previously, I'd posted three such albums. Now, I've posted seven. This is the seventh and last. So if you downloaded the earlier three albums I made, I recommend you delete them and replace them with these albums. Not only are they more complete, but the sound quality is often improved as well.

Like Volumes One and Five in this revamped series, this is a collection of studio sessions. The first two songs are from an appearance on the BBC TV show "Old Grey Whistle Test" in 1973. Tracks 3 through 5 are from a BBC session in 1974. Tracks 6 through 9 are from another 1974 BBC session. Tracks 10 through 13 are from a BBC session in early 1975.

"Hooked on Love" has been released on an "Old Grey Whistle Test" compilation. Tracks 6 through 13 have been released on either "Cruel to Be Kind" or "What IS So Funny about Peace, Love and Understanding," the two official BBC albums. That leaves four songs that remain unreleased. A couple of songs have "[Edit]" in their titles due to BBC DJs talking over the music. As usual, I fixed that with the help of the MVSEP audio editing program.

Note that I was going to post a few songs from the band's appearance on the German TV show "Rockpalast" in 1975. But it turns out the entire performance was officially released in 2025 under the title "Live at Rockpalast." So you should check that out if you're a fan of the band. It was one of their last concerts before they broke up.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Surrender to the Rhythm (Brinsley Schwarz)
02 Hooked on Love (Brinsley Schwarz)
03 [What's So Funny 'Bout] Peace, Love and Understanding [Edit] (Brinsley Schwarz)
04 You Ain't Living Till You're Loving (Brinsley Schwarz)
05 The Ugly Things [Edit] (Brinsley Schwarz)
06 Ju Ju Man (Brinsley Schwarz)
07 Small Town, Big City (Brinsley Schwarz)
08 I Got the Real Thing (Brinsley Schwarz)
09 [What's So Funny 'Bout] Peace, Love and Understanding (Brinsley Schwarz)
10 Everybody (Brinsley Schwarz)
11 We Can Mess Around [Mess with Love] (Brinsley Schwarz)
12 Cruel to Be Kind (Brinsley Schwarz)
13 Give Me Back My Love (Brinsley Schwarz)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/EPTrEu7w

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/JUmaIr8ljS0wgQa/file

I don't know when or where the cover photo was taken. But I found very, very few good color photos of the band, and I thought this one of the band members with their wives and children was a nice one.

Brinsley Schwarz - BBC Sessions, Volume 6: In Concert, London, Britain, 3-30-1973

Here's another BBC album by the British band Brinsley Schwarz. This time, it's a short concert from 1973.

In 1973, the band released the studio album "Please Don't Ever Change." But that was in October 1973, six months after this concert. Still, they played two songs that would appear on that album, "Hooked on Love," and "Why Do We Hurt the One We Love." 

Many of the other songs wouldn't be released on album at all, at least not until archival albums decades later. For instance, "Do the Cod (The Thirty Pounder)" was an original instrumental that wouldn't get released until the "Thinking Back" box set in 2023. "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" is a soul music classic. This version of it would eventually be released on the "Cruel to Be Kind" collection of BBC performances. They never did a studio version, it seems. That's the exact situation with "Wait" (this performance being the only one released, on the "Cruel to Be Kind album). Note that's the same song done by the J. Geils Band, not the Beatles song.

This album was quite short, only 24 minutes long. So I decided to add two songs at the end. It so happens I found two songs the band performed on an unknown French TV show in 1973. Since they were different songs from all the other ones on this album, they made an ideal fit. They, like most of the rest of this album, remain officially unreleased. 

This album is 32 minutes long.

01 Do the Cod [The Thirty Pounder] [Instrumental] (Brinsley Schwarz)
02 Hooked on Love (Brinsley Schwarz)
03 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
04 It's Been So Long (Brinsley Schwarz)
05 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
06 Why Do We Hurt the One We Love (Brinsley Schwarz)
07 I'm Gonna Make You Love Me (Brinsley Schwarz)
08 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
09 Wait (Brinsley Schwarz)
10 Ju Ju Man (Brinsley Schwarz)
11 Wonder Woman (Brinsley Schwarz)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/meK8xc7V

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/XN5smRd9bgTLomS/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took of an appearance on a French TV show in 1973.

Brinsley Schwarz - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: 1972-1973

Here's another volume of the British band Brinsley Schwarz performing for the BBC. This is a collection of studio sessions.

As I mentioned in earlier write-ups in this series, I previously posted three BBC albums from this band, only to completely overhaul the series and turn it into a seven album series instead. This largely corresponds to what used to be "Volume 2." However, there are additions, deletions, and changes. 

For instance, the first five songs are ones I only recently found. They come from archival album "Last Orders." That album has very sketchy notes, and didn't reveal the source, except that it was from an "obscure radio show." (I suspect the people who put the album together were deliberately vague so they wouldn't have to pay more royalties to the sources.) However, I found an Internet mention of those exact songs in that exact order coming from an Irish TV show in 1972. So the details are still sketchy, but at least we know something.

The next four songs, tracks 6 through 9, come from a BBC session in late 1972. All of them were released on the official album "What IS So Funny about Peace, Love and Understanding." The five songs after that, tracks 10 through 14, come from a 1973 BBC session. Two of those were also released on the "What IS So Funny" album, two more were from the "Cruel to Be Kind" official album, and one, "I Worry ['Bout You Baby]," remains unreleased. The last song, "Murder on My Mind," is from a different BBC session later in 1973, and came out on the "Last Orders" album. As always, you can find more details in the mp3 tags.

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 Unknown Number (Brinsley Schwarz)
02 Silver Pistol (Brinsley Schwarz)
03 She's Got to Be Real (Brinsley Schwarz)
04 Country Girl (Brinsley Schwarz)
05 Range War (Brinsley Schwarz)
06 Nervous on the Road [But Can't Stay at Home] (Brinsley Schwarz)
07 It's Been So Long (Brinsley Schwarz)
08 Having a Party (Brinsley Schwarz)
09 You Got Me Hummin' (Brinsley Schwarz)
10 Mama Told Me Not to Come (Brinsley Schwarz)
11 You Never Can Tell (Brinsley Schwarz)
12 Play That Fast Thing [One More Time] (Brinsley Schwarz)
13 I've Cried My Last Tear (Brinsley Schwarz)
14 I Worry ['Bout You Baby] (Brinsley Schwarz)
15 Murder on My Mind (Brinsley Schwarz)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/4mbw8TWD

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/3rPJn3cPJP7NbQn/file

I don't know any details of the cover photo. But it was one of a very few that showed all the band members and was in color. I used Krea AI to improve the image detail.

Brinsley Schwarz - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 11-18-1971

Here's another BBC concert album by the British band Brinsley Schwarz. 

As I mentioned previously, I'm reorganizing and reposting my BBC material by this band, after finding some things I'd previously missed. Mostly, it's a case of finding full concerts like this one. 

At the time of this concert, the band was still about three months away from releasing their third album, "Silver Pistol." But they already were playing some songs from it. In fact, every song here but two are from that album. Those two are "Country Girl," from a previous album, and "Nervous on the Road (But Can't Stay at Home)," which actually wouldn't be released until the next album after "Silver Pistol," called "Nervous on the Road." So while they played a BBC concert earlier in 1971, every single song here is different.

Five of the tracks here were released on the official BBC album "Cruel to Be Kind" (tracks 7, 8, 10, 12 and 14). The rest are unreleased, I'm pretty sure. The sound quality is excellent overall. 

This album is 29 minutes long.

01 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
02 Country Girl (Brinsley Schwarz)
03 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
04 Dry Land (Brinsley Schwarz)
05 Unknown Number (Brinsley Schwarz)
06 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
07 Silver Pistol (Brinsley Schwarz)
08 Range War (Brinsley Schwarz)
09 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
10 Egypt (Brinsley Schwarz)
11 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
12 Nervous on the Road [But Can't Stay at Home] (Brinsley Schwarz)
13 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
14 Rockin' Chair [Instrumental] (Brinsley Schwarz)

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

alternate:

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

I don't know when or where the cover art photo is from. Also, the colors are kind of messed up. But given the rarity of good color photos of the band, I felt obliged to use it. I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Brinsley Schwarz - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, London, Britain, 3-25-1971

Here's the second of seven BBC albums for the band Brinsley Schwarz. This one is a short concert.

Back in 2021, I posted only three BBC albums. At that time, I couldn't find their full BBC concerts. Two official BBC albums were released for the band, "Cruel to Be Kind" and "What IS So Funny about Peace, Love and Understanding." But both of them only presented selected songs from both studio sessions and concerts. As far as I know, none of the band's BBC concerts have been released in full. Many of the songs have been released on those two official albums, plus other archival releases. So I've gathered what I could from the best sounding sources. Then I added material from bootlegs to fill in the gaps, such as the banter between songs.

In 1970, the band put out two studio albums, and then put out another in 1972, but they didn't put out an album in 1971. Perhaps they were planning to but then it got delayed and changed or something, because there are a bunch of unreleased-at-the-time songs from that year, more than any other year for the band. Three out of the five songs performed here were unreleased: "Crime of Passion," "Rock and Roll Station," and "Motorway Madness." Versions only were released decades later, on the "Thinking Back" box set. They actually are taken from this BBC concert, and had most of the audience noise removed. The scanty information from the box set doesn't mention this, but I compared the versions to make sure. 

Note that I've also posted some stray tracks albums for the band. Where there are rarities like those three songs I just mentioned, I've included those on a stray tracks album as well, even when the only version is from a BBC source. 

This album is 27 minutes long. 

01 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
02 Crime of Passion (Brinsley Schwarz)
03 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
04 Rock and Roll Station (Brinsley Schwarz)
05 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
06 Ju Ju Man (Brinsley Schwarz)
07 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
08 The Slow One (Brinsley Schwarz)
09 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
10 Motorway Madness (Brinsley Schwarz)
11 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/oWbwNMR3

alternate:

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

It's really damn hard finding good color photos of this band. The good news is that I found one for the cover here. The bad news is that it only clearly shows Nick Lowe and Ian Gomm (with the ginger hair). Also, I don't know when it was taken, although I do know it's from the Newlands Tavern in London. I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Brinsley Schwarz - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1970-1972

In 2021, I posted three albums of the British band Brinsley Schwarz performing for the BBC. At the time, that was the best I thought I could do, since it was hard to find a lot of their BBC recordings. But since then, I've found more. Most importantly, I've found four short but (probably) complete BBC concerts. So I decided to completely redo my Brinsley Schwarz BBC albums. Now, instead of three, I have seven. I find it easier to just start from scratch. So I've deleted the three albums I previously posted, and I'll be replacing them with seven new ones. Starting with this one, "Volume 1."

 Weirdly, Brinsley Schwarz was the name of the band and a member of the band, but not the most important or most visible member. Brinsley Schwarz was the lead guitarist. But the member who sang and wrote most of the songs was Nick Lowe. He would later go on to have a long and successful solo career. Another key member was Ian Gomm, who also sang and wrote some songs, and also would have a hit as a solo artist. (Gomm isn't on this album though, since he joined the band in 1971.)

Here's the band's Wikipedia entry, if you want to know more:

Brinsley Schwarz - Wikipedia 

In April 1970, the band released their debut album, simply titled "Brinsley Schwarz." Then, in December 1970, they released their second album, "Despite It All." This album consists entirely of radio appearances in 1970 when they were promoting those two albums, with one exception. 

The first three songs come from an appearance on the German TV show "Beat Club" in June 1970. True, that's not a BBC thing, but I'm including it anyway. It's one of very few TV or radio appearances they did (and survived) that wasn't for the BBC.

"Love Song" is from a BBC concert in September 1970. Unfortunately, it seems no recordings of this concert are known except for this one song. I found two versions of it. Both had issues. For instance, one version was missing the beginning. But I was able to combine them to create a decent version. So that's why this song has "[Edit]" in its title. I also removed the audience noise at the end.

The next four songs, tracks 5 through 8, come from an appearance on the "Top Gear" radio show in November 1970. 

The last song, "She's Got to Be Real" is from an appearance on the Bob Harris BBC radio show in early 1972. 

Most of the songs performed here were from the band's first two albums. However, "Indian Woman" and "Seymour (I Love You)" were unreleased at the time. Eventually, versions were released on archival albums in the 2020s. "Indian Woman" came out on the "Last Orders" album, and it's this version. However, that version, and all versions I found, have the beginning cut off, with the song beginning in mid-verse. But I managed to fix it by patching in some music from later in the song. That's why it has "[Edit]" in its title. 

"Seymour (I Love You)" and "Funk Angel" came out on the "Thinking Back" box set. "She's Got to Be Real" came out on the official BBC album "What IS So Funny about Peace, Love and Understanding." All the other performances are unreleased. However, they generally have sound quality similar to the officially released ones.

This album is 52 minutes long.

01 Ebury Down (Brinsley Schwarz)
02 Ballad of a Has-Been Beauty Queen (Brinsley Schwarz)
03 Indian Woman [Edit] (Brinsley Schwarz)
04 Love Song [Edit] (Brinsley Schwarz)
05 Seymour [I Love You] [Instrumental] (Brinsley Schwarz)
06 Funk Angel (Brinsley Schwarz)
07 The Slow One (Brinsley Schwarz)
08 Rock and Roll Station (Brinsley Schwarz)
09 She's Got to Be Real (Brinsley Schwarz)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/DBWw4shB

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/849iAbTbA8CQRMq/file

The cover art photo comes from a concert in Tunbridge Wells, Britain, in 1973. The original was in black and white, but due to the severe lack of good color photos of the band, I went through some trouble to colorize it. I later improved the image detail with the Krea AI program.

Nick Lowe - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: BBC Four Sessions, LSO St. Luke's, London, Britain, 6-7-2007

Here's another BBC concert by Nick Lowe. This one is from 2007. It was shown on BBC TV, so you can find a video of it on YouTube (at least when I checked recently).

As I've mentioned in my write-up for "Volume 1," Lowe changed his style in the early 1990s, going from a lively rocking style to more of a mellow one, based more on rootsy soul and country sounds. This volume comes six years after "Volume 1," and shows Lowe two albums deeper into his new sound. His most recent album at the time was "At My Age," released not long prior to this concert.

This concert is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. I didn't have to do any editing or remixing.

This album is 59 minutes long.

01 Heart (Nick Lowe)
02 talk (Nick Lowe)
03 What's Shakin' on the Hill (Nick Lowe)
04 Without Love (Nick Lowe)
05 Lately I've Let Things Slide (Nick Lowe)
06 Has She Got a Friend (Nick Lowe)
07 I Trained Her to Love Me (Nick Lowe)
08 talk (Nick Lowe)
09 Indian Queens (Nick Lowe)
10 Cruel to Be Kind (Nick Lowe)
11 You Inspire Me (Nick Lowe)
12 talk (Nick Lowe)
13 Long Limbed Girl (Nick Lowe)
14 Hope for Us All (Nick Lowe)
15 The Other Side of the Coin (Nick Lowe)
16 Shting Shtang (Nick Lowe)
17 A Man in Love (Nick Lowe)
18 [What's So Funny 'Bout] Peace, Love and Understanding (Nick Lowe)
19 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Nick Lowe)
20 The Beast in Me (Nick Lowe)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Yzphc8qi

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/uzTPjmEhZXSC8vf/file

The cover photo is a screenshot I took of a YouTube video of this exact concert.

Nick Lowe - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, The Palladium, London, Britain, 10-14-2001

Here's a 2001 concert by Nick Lowe. After finding two BBC concerts from the 1980s featuring him and Paul Carrack, I was only able to find two BBC solo concerts of him, both from the 2000s. This is the first one.

I previously posted a non-BBC concert by Lowe from 1995. That happened just after his 1994 album "The Impossible Bird" which switched to a more mellow and mature sound. His next two albums, "Dig My Mood" in 1998, and "The Convincer" in 2001, very much continued that change in style. So by the time of this album, he had three albums of that style to draw from, all of them strong. He generally left his older music behind, with the exception of a couple classics, especially "Cruel to Be Kind" and "I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock and Roll)."

This album is unreleased. But you can expect the usual BBC high sound quality. Given that it's less than an hour long, it's very likely the BBC edited it down to fit into an hour-long radio time slot.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 talk (Nick Lowe)
02 Lately I've Let Things Slide (Nick Lowe)
03 talk (Nick Lowe)
04 What's Shaking on the Hill (Nick Lowe)
05 Half a Boy and Half a Man (Nick Lowe)
06 Has She Got a Friend (Nick Lowe)
07 Faithless Lover (Nick Lowe)
08 The Man I've Become (Nick Lowe)
09 talk (Nick Lowe)
10 True Love Travels on a Gravel Road (Nick Lowe)
11 talk (Nick Lowe)
12 I Live on a Battlefield (Nick Lowe)
13 You Inspire Me (Nick Lowe)
14 Cruel to be Kind (Nick Lowe)
15 Indian Queens (Nick Lowe)
16 talk (Nick Lowe)
17 Let's Stay in and Make Love (Nick Lowe)
18 talk (Nick Lowe)
19 [You're My] Wildest Dream (Nick Lowe)
20 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Nick Lowe) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1p5PavPT

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Djc8hoxuiqtgAcx/file

The cover is from a concert at the Marktrock Festival, in Leuven, Belgium, on August 15, 1998.

Nick Lowe - Theatre of the Living Arts, Philadelphia, PA, 1-28-1995

Here's a great sounding Nick Lowe concert from 1995.

As part of my big BBC project, I'm still trying to finish off album series a started long ago before posting BBC albums from other musical acts. I already posted a couple of 1980s BBC concerts starring Nick Lowe and Paul Carrack, so I want to finish their BBC stuff off as well. I have a couple of Lowe BBC concerts from the 2000s, but nothing at all from the 1990s. According to setlist.fm, he just wasn't touring much that decade, so maybe that's why the BBC missed him. But to cover the gap, here's a soundboard bootleg of a full concert.

In the 1970s and 80s, Lowe was a rock and roller. But with his 1994 album "The Impossible Bird," his musical style changed, and he's stuck with the new style ever since. Rock critic Jim Farber later commented that this style change "moved him out of the realms of ironic pop and animated rock and into the role of a worldly balladeer, specializing in grave vocals and graceful tunes." So this concert, supporting "The Impossible Bird," finds him at a crossroads, moving into that new style while still playing some more rocking songs from earlier in his career.

This unreleased bootleg only had two problems. One is that the beginning of the first song, "12-Step Program (To Quit You Babe)," was cut off. The other is that there was about a five second section in "Without Love" that sounded muddy and bad. Lowe later released a live album called "Untouched Takeaway." Most of the songs on that were from 2001, but six were from this tour. Luckily, those included versions of those two songs. So I patched in bits from that live album to fix them. That's why those two songs have "[Edit]" in their titles.

Lowe sang most of the songs, but in a couple of songs he let members of his backing band, the Impossible Birds, sing lead.

This album is an hour and 26 minutes long.

01 12-Step Program [To Quit You Babe] [Edit] (Nick Lowe)
02 True Love Travels on a Gravel Road (Nick Lowe)
03 talk (Nick Lowe)
04 Without Love [Edit] (Nick Lowe)
05 Lover Don't Go (Nick Lowe)
06 The Rose of England (Nick Lowe)
07 Trail of Tears (Nick Lowe)
08 Dream Girl (Nick Lowe)
09 talk (Nick Lowe)
10 Cruel to Be Kind (Nick Lowe)
11 Where's My Everything (Nick Lowe)
12 I'm Coming Home (Nick Lowe)
13 Lonely Just like Me (Nick Lowe)
14 talk (Nick Lowe)
15 A Tombstone Every Mile (Nick Lowe)
16 Half a Boy and Half a Man (Nick Lowe)
17 Crying in My Sleep (Nick Lowe)
18 talk (Nick Lowe)
19 Soulful Wind (Nick Lowe)
20 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Nick Lowe)
21 Bo Bo Ska Diddle Daddle (Nick Lowe)
22 talk (Nick Lowe)
23 Raging Eyes (Nick Lowe)
24 talk (Nick Lowe) (Nick Lowe)
25 Shelley My Love (Nick Lowe)
26 talk (Nick Lowe)
27 Allons Rock and Roll (Nick Lowe)
28 [You're My] Wildest Dream (Nick Lowe)
29 talk (Nick Lowe) (Nick Lowe)
30 If You Ever Want Me by Your Side (Nick Lowe)
31 [What's So Funny 'Bout] Peace, Love and Understanding (Nick Lowe)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/irL4SdhH

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/tYf2p4PmUOpQw62/file

The cover photo is from a concert in Brussels, Belgium, on April 7, 1995.

Elvis Costello and Friends - Village Music Birthday Party, The Sweetwater, Mill Valley, CA, 4-24-1989

This is a very special Elvis Costello bootleg concert, due to the "and Friends" part of the title, plus the sound quality. In short, after an opening acoustic set by Nick Lowe, then a longer acoustic set by Elvis Costello, other musicians from the audience came to the stage and took the spotlight, including Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, Bob Weir, also of the Grateful Dead, blues legend Charles Brown, Kim Wilson of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Sammy Hagar of Van Halen, Commander Cody, James Burton (who was lead guitarist for Elvis Presley, Emmylou Harris, John Denver, and many more), and others. The concert went on and on, with lots of jamming and guest lead vocals. 

So that alone is pretty cool. But typically for this kind of thing, we're lucky to get only a bad audience bootleg, if there's any known recording at all. That's especially true in a venue like the Sweetwater where this took place, which only held a hundred or so people at the most. But somehow, for this concert, we have a perfect soundboard bootleg recording of the entire thing! There's also video of it all that you can find on YouTube.

From the 1940s until 2007, there was a very special record store in Mill Valley, California, north of San Francisco, called "Village Music." Wikipedia has an entry on it, which states, "It was nationally recognized for its extensive collection of old, rare and specialty records." Costello, in his liner notes for his album "Kojak Variety," called it "may be the greatest record collector store in the world." Right next door to this store was a small club called the Sweetwater, or the Sweetwater Saloon. Twice a year, John Goddard, the owner of Village Music, held private concerts at the Sweetwater. Famous musicians from the Bay Area and beyond attended, and the sort of guest star turns as happened in this concert was typical. But while bootleg recordings of most of those concerts aren't publicly available, somehow we got lucky with this one. (Note that although the Sweetwater closed in 2007, another one with the same name opened up nearby in 2012 and continues until today.)

Here's an interesting article about the club, with some photos from these private parties, including another one of Costello and Garcia from this concert:

'One of a Kind': Remembering Jeanie Patterson, Owner of Mill Valley's Sweetwater | KQED

Out of all the unusual guests in the concert, perhaps the most intriguing combination was several covers of country songs sung by Costello with Jerry Garcia assisting on lead guitar. It turns out both of them talked about this very concert in an interview with "Musician Magazine" about a year later. Here's the relevant section:

Costello: "Certainly a candidate for the world's greatest record store is Village Music, in Mill Valley. Every year John Goddard has a party for his friends and customers, and he always has a really good bill of people. So last year on the twenty-first anniversary, I did a show with Nick Lowe, and he invited James Burton and Jerry Scheff, who'd played with me on the road. I did my little set, Nick did his set, and then it was a free-for-all; Charles Brown did a piece, and people were getting summoned to the stage. I was standing in the corridor when I suddenly heard, 'Jerry Garcia to the stage!' And, emboldened by several margaritas, I decided to join him."

Garcia then explained: "Not only that, but it was one of those situations where I had the choice of playing either Elvis' guitar, which is low and it's stiff, and the strings are quite wide as well, and all this confusing script, or of playing Burton's guitar, which is strung with spider webs. I mean it's the absolutely lightest you can string a guitar and still get a sound out of it. I'd take Burton's and play a note on it and it goes "spack." So I opted to play Elvis' guitar as the lesser of two evils. [laughter] And I vowed I would never go to another one of those shows without my own."

Costello then continued: "It was a whole Three Stooges routine -- 'Here, you take my guitar,' 'No, I'll take your guitar.' I think I had Burton's old Telecaster for half a song, and James had my old Martin acoustic which wasn't cranked up so he couldn't solo - and Jerry's struggling with my guitar. But once everybody got settled, we managed to struggle through a couple of Hank Williams songs. Like any sort of jam thing it inevitably came to degenerate towards lots of blues. But we managed a few songs with changes."

Then Garcia concluded, "A pretty high level of jam-sessionry really, considering what it was. Really fun. And Elvis' solo set was phenomenal, I thought. That's one of those things that I can't do at all, just playing the guitar and singing. You're so solid with that, you don't miss a band. I always feel like I'm missing a band."

It's quite a challenge figuring out who was playing on what song, since there was an ever-changing line-up after the initial solo sets by Lowe and Costello. Luckily, there's the video footage of the entire concert which I mentioned above, and person named "grner1" went through the whole thing and carefully noted the exact musicians on each song. I've included the text file that person made if you want all the details. The song order is somewhat different in my song list since I put all the banter on individual tracks, but you can follow along by looking at the song titles. 

Because the bootleg already sounded excellent, I didn't have to do much. However, I did cut out some dead air between songs. I probably trimmed about ten minutes from the entire concert that way. And I boosted the vocals of some of the banter so it could be better heard. With my song list, I didn't attempt to list all the performers on each song, but just some of the more famous or prominent ones.

This album is two hours and 44 minutes long.

01 talk (Nick Lowe)
02 Without Love (Nick Lowe)
03 talk (Nick Lowe)
04 Refrigerator White (Nick Lowe)
05 Geisha Girl (Nick Lowe)
06 talk (Nick Lowe)
07 Rocky Road (Nick Lowe)
08 talk (Nick Lowe)
09 [I Wanna Build A] Jumbo Ark (Nick Lowe)
10 Bo Bo Skadiddle (Nick Lowe)
11 talk (Nick Lowe)
12 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Nick Lowe)
13 talk (Elvis Costello)
14 Accidents Will Happen (Elvis Costello)
15 Brilliant Mistake (Elvis Costello)
17 talk (Elvis Costello)
16 Deep Dark Truthful Mirror (Elvis Costello)
18 Mystery Dance (Elvis Costello)
19 talk (Elvis Costello)
20 Poisoned Rose (Elvis Costello)
21 God's Comic (Elvis Costello)
22 [The Angels Wanna Wear My] Red Shoes (Elvis Costello)
23 New Lace Sleeves (Elvis Costello)
24 Pads, Paws and Claws (Elvis Costello)
25 Radio Sweetheart (Elvis Costello)
27 talk (Elvis Costello)
26 Jackie Wilson Said [I'm in Heaven When You Smile] (Elvis Costello)
28 [What's So Funny 'Bout] Peace, Love and Understanding (Elvis Costello & Nick Lowe)
29 talk (Elvis Costello)
30 The Big Light (Elvis Costello with James Burton)
31 talk (Elvis Costello)
32 Pouring Water on a Drowning Man (Elvis Costello with James Burton)
33 talk (Elvis Costello)
34 Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line (Elvis Costello with James Burton)
35 talk (Elvis Costello)
36 Leave My Kitten Alone (Elvis Costello with James Burton)
37 talk (Elvis Costello & Charles Brown)
38 I Stepped in Quicksand (Charles Brown with Kim Wilson)
39 talk (Charles Brown)
40 Driftin' Blues (Charles Brown)
41 talk (Charles Brown)
42 All My Life (Charles Brown)
43 talk (Austin de Lone & Nick Lowe)
44 One's Too Many [And a Hundred Ain't Enough] (Kim Wilson & Nick Lowe with James Burton)
45 Real Gone Lover (Kim Wilson with James Burton)
46 talk (Austin de Lone)
47 You Win Again (Elvis Costello with Jerry Garcia & James Burton)
48 The Bottle Let Me Down (Elvis Costello with Jerry Garcia & James Burton)
49 Why Don't You Love Me (Elvis Costello with Jerry Garcia & James Burton)
50 talk (Austin de Lone & Commander Cody)
51 Riot in Cell Block No. 9 (Commander Cody with Sammy Hagar, Elvis Costello, Jerry Garcia & James Burton)
52 talk (Austin de Lone)
53 Going Down (Sammy Hagar with Jerry Garcia & James Burton)
54 talk (Austin de Lone)
55 C.C. Rider (Bob Weir with James Burton)
56 Turn On Your Lovelight (Bob Weir with Elvis Costello & James Burton)
57 talk (Austin de Lone)
58 Let the Good Times Roll (Elvis Costello with James Burton)
59 Loveable (Elvis Costello with James Burton)
60 talk (Elvis Costello)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/GHKigDxL

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Y6iW7I2AIpEdyVA/file

The cover photo of Costello and Garcia is from this exact concert.

Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 9-15-1984

Here's another BBC concert featuring Nick Lowe and Paul Carrack.

It's kind of crazy that I'm posting not just the first but the second BBC concert featuring Lowe and Carrack, because they never released and album together. But Lowe had been in Rockpile from 1977 to 1981, and shared the lead vocals duties with Dave Edmunds. After that band broke up, he kept the same basic formula going, but shared lead vocals duties with Paul Carrack instead, from 1982 to 1985.

At the time of this concert, Lowe was more prolific than Carrack. Lowe released solo albums in 1982, 1983, and 1984, with the most recent one being titled "Nick Lowe and His Cowboy Outfit." Only two songs were from that album: "Half a Boy and Half a Man" and "Maureen." Carrack's most recent solo album at the time had come out in 1982. But Carrack had been involved with more hits. He sang lead vocals on "Tempted" by Squeeze in 1981, which is probably their most popular song. And back in 1974, he wrote and sang "How Long" by the band Ace, which reached Number One in one U.S. singles chart.

This album is unreleased. Most of it sounds excellent. However, three songs are from a different source and don't sound as good: "Soul Cruisin'," "Switchboard Susan," and "How Long." I suspect what happened was the concert was significantly longer, but the BBC edited it down to fit an hour long time slot. But there were different edited versions, for instance this was also broadcast by the Westwood Radio One network in the U.S., so some of the other versions had different songs on it.

I tried my best to improve the three poorer sounding songs with some audio editing tricks, but I could only do so much. I also boosted the lead vocals relative to the instruments on most of the songs, since they seemed a bit low in the mix.

By the way, around 1982, the Lowe and Carrack band was called "Noise to Go." But by the time of this concert, the name was changed to "Nick Lowe and His Cowboy Outfit" (just like the title of his 1984 album), even though the personnel was basically the same. Carrack left in 1985 to become to lead singer for the Genesis side project band Mike + the Mechanics.

This album is one hour long.

01 Soul Cruisin' (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
02 Saint Beneath the Paint (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
03 talk (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
04 Tempted (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
05 Cruel to Be Kind (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
06 talk (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
07 Switchboard Susan (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
08 talk (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
09 Don't Give My Heart a Break (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
10 talk (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
11 Is It You (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
12 talk (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
13 Maureen (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
14 Little by Little (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
15 Raging Eyes (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
16 talk (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
17 Half a Boy and Half a Man (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
18 talk (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
19 Love in Vain (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
20 Marie Provost (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
21 Crackin' Up (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
22 I Need You (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
23 How Long (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
24 Burning (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16344939/NICKLWPULCRRCK1984BBSssonsVlum2InCncrtPrisThatrLndnBrtin__9-15-1984_atse.zip.html

These Lowe and Carrack concerts seem to have been mostly forgotten on the Internet, because I could barely find any photos of them. I did find a couple of videos of them playing together in the early 1980s though. So I took screenshots of that to make the cover. They always were on different parts of the stage, so I had to put two screenshots together.

Heatwave Festival, Mosport Park, Bowmanville, Canada, 8-23-1980, Part 2: Rockpile

The second set I have from the 1980 Heatwave Festival was performed by Rockpile, a rocking foursome led by both Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds.

Rockpile played many concerts from 1977 to 1981, but Lowe and Edmunds were on different record labels, so they were only able to release one studio album, "Seconds of Pleasure," in 1980. That album actually came out two months after this concert, so none of the songs here are from it. But there are some songs from the most recent solo albums by Edmunds ("Repeat When Necessary") and Lowe ("Labour of Lust").

This album perhaps is a bit redundant, because two official Rockpile live albums were eventually released that are from 1980 concerts, "Live at Montreux 1980" and "Live at Rockpalast." But in my opinion, it's hard to have too much live Rockpile, at least when it has this level of sound quality, since this unreleased concert is from a soundboard source. 

There was a problem with one song, "Sweet Little Lisa." The sound balance was really off for most of the song, with the overall volume fluctuating and different instruments out of whack. But I was able to fix that in Audacity, so it should sound pretty normal now. This kind of thing sometimes happens with the first songs of concerts, while the sound mix was being adjusted on the fly.

This album is 55 minutes long.

Note that the song numbering continues from where the last album in the festival left off, in case one wants to hear all the songs from it in a row. Also, I have zeroes at the start of the track numbers because there were over a 100 songs in the festival.

023 talk (Rockpile)
024 Sweet Little Lisa [Edit] (Rockpile)
025 So It Goes (Rockpile)
026 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Rockpile)
027 talk (Rockpile)
028 Queen of Hearts (Rockpile)
029 Switchboard Susan (Rockpile)
030 Trouble Boys (Rockpile)
031 Girls Talk (Rockpile)
032 Three Time Loser (Rockpile)
033 talk (Rockpile)
034 You Ain't Nothing but Fine (Rockpile)
035 Crawling from the Wreckage (Rockpile)
036 talk (Rockpile)
037 Let It Rock (Rockpile)
038 Singing the Blues (Rockpile)
039 I Hear You Knocking (Rockpile)
040 They Called It Rock (Rockpile)
041 Ju Ju Man (Rockpile)
042 Down Down Down (Rockpile)
043 Let's Talk about Us (Rockpile)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17315605/VA-HtwveFstivlMsprtPrkBwmnvlleCnda__8-23-1980_02Rckple.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/imXeAsYt

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. That's Edmunds on the left and Lowe on the right.

Little Village - Orpheum Theatre, Boston, MA, 4-26-1992

Little Village was a roots rock "supergroup." It consisted of John Hiatt on guitar, piano, and vocals, Nick Lowe on bass and vocals, Ry Cooder on lead guitar and vocals, and Jim Keltner on drums. They first got together to play all the songs on Hiatt's acclaimed 1987 album "Bring the Family." Then they got together again for Lowe's 1990 album "Party of One." The third and final got together, they released the Little Village album "Little Village" in 1992. Most of the songs were sung by Hiatt, but Lowe sang two and Cooder sang one.

You may not have heard of Little Village because they only stuck around for that album, and it was a disappointing one. Even Lowe later said about it, ""Little Village was really good fun. Unfortunately, the record we did was no good. I suppose on some level, it worked, but [our record company] kind of gave us too much time to do it." However, the band promoted the album with tours of the U.S. and Europe. And I repeatedly heard that they were much better live and on that album. For instance, if you read the write-up about the band at allmusic,com, it states, "Although the record was a bit of a disappointment, the live shows were superb."

So if you like the artists involved, you should listen to one of their concerts. There aren't that many bootlegs of their shows (and no official releases). This is the best sounding one I could find. It was professionally recorded and broadcast on the radio.

One reason the concerts were better than the album was because the album was dominated by Hiatt's songs, while the concerts were more evenly split between songs by Hiatt, Lowe, and Cooder. Naturally, they played most of the songs from the album, but also many songs from their various solo careers. They had to, since the album was 45 minutes long, and this concert was almost two hours long.

More specifically, this album is an hour and 56 minutes long.

01 talk (Little Village)
02 She Runs Hot (Little Village)
03 talk (Little Village)
04 The Action (Little Village)
05 talk (Little Village)
06 Fool Who Knows (Little Village)
07 Crazy about an Automobile (Little Village)
08 Inside Job (Little Village)
09 talk (Little Village)
10 Do You Want My Job (Little Village)
11 talk (Little Village)
12 Alone in the Dark (Little Village)
13 talk (Little Village)
14 Take Another Look (Little Village)
15 talk (Little Village)
16 Solar Sex Panel (Little Village)
17 Don't Think About Her When You're Trying To Drive (Little Village)
18 talk (Little Village)
19 Memphis in the Meantime (Little Village)
20 Crying in My Sleep (Little Village)
21 talk (Little Village)
22 Don't Go Away Mad (Little Village)
23 talk (Little Village)
24 Big Love (Little Village)
25 talk (Little Village)
26 Little Sister (Little Village)
27 talk (Little Village)
28 Across the Borderline (Little Village)
29 talk (Little Village)
30 Don't Bug Me When I'm Working (Little Village)
31 talk (Little Village)
32 Half a Boy and Half a Man (Little Village)
33 talk (Little Village)
34 Thing Called Love (Little Village)
35 Lipstick Sunset (Little Village)
36 talk (Little Village)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hogzyv9Q

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/wYTD4eIEw4oEWrX/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/a2cTy

The cover is from a concert in Brussels, Belgium, on July 2, 1992. Left to right: Lowe, Hiatt, and Cooder. In the original picture, there was a big gap between Cooder and the others, but I eliminated that gap in Photoshop.

Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: BBC Rock Hour, Hammersmith Palais, London, Britain, 3-15-1982

I've got many Nick Lowe-related many albums to post, but for some reason I've been slow to post them. I should try to post here. Here's something at least.

From 1977 to 1981, Lowe was a co-leader of the band Rockpile, along with Dave Edmunds. For a few years after that, he basically replicated that formula, but with Paul Carrack taking the place of Edmunds as the other lead singer and sometimes songwriter. I've already posted one album from this duo, an imagined studio album that smashed their two 1982 solo albums into one. You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/12/nick-lowe-paul-carrack-voodoo-knife.html

I also found not one but two BBC concerts of them playing together, so here's the first one. Many of Lowe's songs are from his Rockpile years. Meanwhile, Carrack had briefly been in the band Squeeze, but he'd only sung one song, which is possibly their best known song, "Tempted." Naturally, he sang that one. And they also sang lots of songs from their respective 1982 albums, "Nick the Knife" for Lowe and "Suburban Voodoo" for Carrack.

The sound quality is pretty good, though not as excellent as most BBC shows. There were no problems needing fixing.

This album is 55 minutes long. Based on that length, I suspect the concert was longer, but the BBC cut it down to fit it into an hour-long time slot.

01 I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
02 Stick It Where the Sun Don't Shine (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
03 talk (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
04 Tempted (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
05 talk (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
06 Always Better with You (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
07 Burning (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
08 Marie Provost (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
09 Cruel to Be Kind (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
10 talk (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
11 Lesson in Love (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
12 A Little Unkind (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
13 Wish You Were Here (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
14 Switchboard Susan (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
15 Cracking Up (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
16 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
17 Nutted by Reality (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
18 Heart of the City (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
19 One's Too Many (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)
20 [What's So Funny 'Bout] Peace, Love and Understanding (Nick Lowe & Paul Carrack)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17201063/NICKLWENPULCRRCK1982BBSssonsVolum1RckHourHmmrsmthPlaisLndnBitin__3-15-1982_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BDdNnzVb

Given that Lowe and Carrack toured together for about three years, I'm surprised that I've found almost no photos of them together. I did find this one, from 1982. But it was in black and white, so I colorized it.

UPDATE: On October e, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Jimmy Webb, Chip Taylor & Nick Lowe - Songwriters' Circle, Subterania Club, London, Britain, 7-16-1999

For a few years, the BBC had a musical TV show alternately called "Songwriters' Circle" or "In the Round." In it, they would bring three singer-songwriters together and have them take turns playing songs. I particularly like it because in most cases the artists would participate with each others' songs, creating some interesting moments.

I've posted some of these shows already. Use the "Songwriters' Circle" label on the side of the blog to find the others.

I hope to post more, when I find good versions. Unfortunately, I've found only a few, so if you have any, please let me know.

This particular show brought together Jimmy Webb, Chip Taylor and Nick Lowe. I'll bet you know Jimmy Webb, or at least know many of his songs. Although he never had a big commercially successful solo career, he wrote many classics, like "Up, Up and Away," "Wichita Lineman," "Galveston," and "MacArthur's Park." Chip Taylor is much less of a famous name. But he also wrote some classic songs, such as "Wild Thing," "Angel of the Morning," "I Can't Let Go," and "Any Way that You Want Me." Nick Lowe I consider a songwriter's songwriter. He hasn't had many big hits, but he seems incapable of writing a bad song. His hits include "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding," "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass," and "Cruel to Be Kind."

For the duration of this concert, Webb played the piano while Taylor and Lowe played guitar. Generally speaking, they played on each others' songs most of the time. For instance, Taylor commented how surprised and delighted he was to hear Webb play a piano solo to his song "Wild Thing." However, I've only included more than one name in the song credits when there was some shared lead vocals near the end of the show. 

One interesting facet of this show is that both Webb and Taylor played an original song that they apparently never have officially released. I'm pretty confident about the names of these songs because the YouTube video of this show has the names of the songs at the bottom of the video for a few seconds when they start. The original song by Webb is "Rich Kids Can't Play the Blues." The one by Taylor, "Talking the President," is commentary about US President Bill Clinton's sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky, which was very big news at the time the show was recorded.  

This concert is 48 minutes long.

01 Highwayman (Jimmy Webb)
02 talk (Chip Taylor)
03 I Can't Let Go (Chip Taylor)
04 talk (Nick Lowe)
05 What's Shakin' on the Hill (Nick Lowe)
06 talk (Jimmy Webb)
07 Galveston (Jimmy Webb)
08 talk (Chip Taylor)
09 Angel of the Morning (Chip Taylor)
10 talk (Nick Lowe)
11 Without Love (Nick Lowe)
12 talk (Jimmy Webb)
13 Rich Kids Can't Play the Blues (Jimmy Webb)
14 talk (Chip Taylor)
15 Talking the President (Chip Taylor)
16 Man That I've Become (Nick Lowe)
17 talk (Jimmy Webb)
18 Wichita Lineman (Jimmy Webb with Chip Taylor)
19 talk (Chip Taylor)
20 Wild Thing (Chip Taylor with Jimmy Webb & Nick Lowe)
21 talk (Nick Lowe)
22 [What's So Funny 'Bout] Peace, Love and Understanding (Nick Lowe with Chip Taylor & Jimmy Webb)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5Y4dPkRp

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/qJdb02zPDtMYB70/file

The cover is a screenshot I took from the video of this show. I actually put it together in Photoshop from three different shots, since they were rather far apart from each other. From left to right: Jimmy Webb, Chip Taylor, and Nick Lowe.

Brinsley Schwarz - You Got Me Hummin' - Non-Album Tracks (1972-1974)

Sometimes, when I post a stray tracks album here, I think I'm all done finding the rarities of a particular musical artist... and then later I find a bunch more. Occasionally, I find so many that two albums I made turn into three, with a "new" one in the middle. That's the case here, even though I only had a total of two Brinsley Schwarz stray tracks albums prior to this. So this isn't really a "new" Brinsley Schwarz collection so much as I have a bunch of new songs scattered through the three albums and you need to download or redownload all three to get them all.

To help you with that, here are the links to the other two:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/03/brinsley-schwarz-got-to-be-real-various.html

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/04/brinsley-schwarz-dont-lie-to-me-various.html

Brinsley Schwarz are not a well known band, since they only existed from 1970 to 1975 and never had a big hit. But if you like Nick Lowe's music as a solo artist or part of Rockpile you should like this, because Lowe was the main singer and songwriter for this band. Because this band's popularity is limited, it's really hard to find all their unreleased rarities. I've found a lot more than before, but there are still some that I've only heard of and apparently just exist in private collections. If you have some of those and want to share, please let me know.

I believe three of the songs here are new ("The Old Country," "That's What It Takes," and "Murder on My Mind"). But there are more on the other two volumes in this series, for instance, four new ones on the first album. So, again, make sure you get the latest versions of all three.

In any case, this is more fun and rocking music, and the sound quality is generally very good. I suspect the reason that more of these didn't get on the band's studio albums is because most of them are cover versions, whereas the albums are mostly filled with originals. But these guys had great taste in covers, especially obscure ones.

01 What Would You Do (Brinsley Schwarz)
02 The Old Country (Brinsley Schwarz)
03 That's What It Takes (Brinsley Schwarz)
04 Having a Party (Brinsley Schwarz)
05 You Got Me Hummin' (Brinsley Schwarz)
06 Mama Told Me Not to Come (Brinsley Schwarz)
07 I'm Gonna Make You Love Me (Brinsley Schwarz)
08 Hypocrite (Brinsley Schwarz)
09 You Never Can Tell (Brinsley Schwarz)
10 Wait (Brinsley Schwarz)
11 Run Rudolph Run (Brinsley Schwarz)
12 Murder on My Mind (Brinsley Schwarz)
13 [It's Gonna Be A] Bring Down (Brinsley Schwarz)
14 Love Is Gone (Brinsley Schwarz)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15904549/BrinsleyS_1972-1974_YouGotMeHummn_atse.zip.html

I'm not sure what the deal with the cover art is. It totally looks like an album cover from an earlier era in my opinion, but it wasn't. Instead, it seems to have been some kind of promo art put out by the record company. I cropped the image from a slightly larger picture and replaced some other text with the album name near the bottom. Otherwise, it's just like I found it.

Brinsley Schwarz - A. O. R., Tilburg, Netherlands, 5-18-1974

Brinsley Schwarz were one of the best and best known "pub rock" bands in the early 1970s. Their main singer and songwriter Nick Lowe would go on to greater fame with Rockpile and his solo career. (Strangely, Brinsley Schwarz was the name of one of the band members as well as the band as a whole.) I think they're very underappreciated. They wrote a lot of fun originals, and also had a habit of playing unjustly obscure songs.

I plan on posting a lot more from this band soon. But while I getting some other things ready, I decided to post this concert because I feel it's the best live recording of the band. There's one official live album called "Live Favorites," but this one is better, even though it's a bootleg. The sound quality is excellent, and it's a full show that's slightly shorter than two hours long. ("Live Favorites" by contrast is also from a single concert, but it's only 45 minutes long.)

I didn't have to do much to improve this recording, but I did do a couple of things. The main thing was that I broke the banter between songs into separate tracks and then boosted the volume of that banter. (Lowe does nearly all the talking.) Also, the last fifteen seconds or so of the song "(It's Gonna Be A) Bring Down" was missing. I restored much of that from a similar musical section earlier in the song, then finished it off with a bit of the same song from a bootleg of another concert. I also made a couple other fixes here and there, for instance getting rid of a squall of feedback in the middle of a song by patching in a bit of another part of the song.

This band was in its natural element playing live. The very name of the genre they're closely associated with, pub rock, is all about playing in pubs and other small clubs. If you've never heard this band before, this is a good place to start.

01 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
02 You Been Cheating (Brinsley Schwarz)
03 Small Town, Big City (Brinsley Schwarz)
04 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
05 I'll Be Doggone (Brinsley Schwarz)
06 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
07 Love Is Gone (Brinsley Schwarz)
08 It's Been So Long (Brinsley Schwarz)
09 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
10 I've Cried My Last Tear (Brinsley Schwarz)
11 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
12 Happy Doing What We're Doing (Brinsley Schwarz)
13 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
14 I'm Ahead If I Can Quit While I'm Behind (Brinsley Schwarz)
15 Don't Lie to Me (Brinsley Schwarz)
16 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
17 Surrender to the Rhythm (Brinsley Schwarz)
18 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
19 Country Girl (Brinsley Schwarz)
20 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
21 Range War (Brinsley Schwarz)
22 [It's Gonna Be A] Bring Down [Edit] (Brinsley Schwarz)
23 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
24 Save the Last Dance for Me (Brinsley Schwarz)
25 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
26 Down in the Dive (Brinsley Schwarz)
27 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
28 Down in Mexico (Brinsley Schwarz)
29 Ju Ju Man (Brinsley Schwarz)
30 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
31 Wonder Woman (Brinsley Schwarz)
32 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
33 Home in My Hand (Brinsley Schwarz)
34 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
35 Run Rudolph Run (Brinsley Schwarz)
36 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
37 Brown Sugar (Brinsley Schwarz)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15275556/BrinsleyS_1974_AORTilburg__5-18-1974_atse.zip.html

There are very few good color photos of this band, but I managed to find one of them in concert. This comes from an appearance at the Hammersmith Odeon in London in May 1973.

Rockpile - The Bottom Line, New York City, 10-24-1978

I love Rockpile, the late 1970s band with Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds. They had lots of great songs, and they could really rock. It's a shame they never got their due, in my opinion largely due to the fact that Lowe and Edmunds were on different record labels, so Rockpile was only ever able to record one studio album, right when they broke up.

Rockpile definitely excelled on stage. It's too bad they never released a live album while they were still together. One was released decades later, but that's a concert from 1980. This show is from 1978, with a significantly different song list. This concert from The Bottom Line in New York City is a great one. It was played live on the radio, so the sound quality is as good as a professionally recorded live album. Just listening to it, I can almost see and smell the sweat from a tightly packed crowd dancing to the relentlessly energetic songs. If you like good ol' rock and roll, give this a listen! 

There were some issues with the bootleg recording that I had to fix. The music was just fine, but sometimes things got a little problematic with the applause after some songs. In two cases, a DJ for the radio station recording and playing the concert over the radio spoke over the applause to remind listeners what station they were listening to. I removed those. In a few other cases, the applause at the ends of songs was missing or cut short. So I did my usual trick of patching in applause from the ends of other songs.

There are two notable things about the last song, "Let It Rock," a Chuck Berry number. First, it features Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones as an additional lead guitarist. Two, it's not actually from the concert in question. But, it's from the very next night, at the same venue. The recording of that night is also excellent. The set list was the same with the exception of this one song with Richards, so I've only included that song at the end.

By the way, Lowe once wrote an interesting account of Richards playing "Let It Rock." It's probably from the appearance that is included here, though it's possible he played with the band more than one. Lowe claims it was at the Bottom Line, but in 1979, but he could have the timing wrong. Anyway, here's the link to the short story:

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/keith-richards-meets-rockpile-1979.86634/

The concert is 59 minutes long, including the extra song with Richards. If you own listen to just one Rockpile concert, I recommend this one, even over their official album "Live at Montreux 1980."

01 Down, Down, Down (Rockpile)
02 So It Goes (Rockpile)
03 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Rockpile)
04 talk (Rockpile)
05 Deborah (Rockpile)
06 talk (Rockpile)
07 I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass (Rockpile)
08 talk (Rockpile)
09 No More Mr. Nice Guy (Rockpile)
10 Trouble Boys (Rockpile)
11 It's My Own Business (Rockpile)
12 talk (Rockpile)
13 Never Been in Love (Rockpile)
14 Love So Fine (Rockpile)
15 Promised Land (Rockpile)
16 talk (Rockpile)
17 I Hear You Knocking (Rockpile)
18 They Called It Rock (Rockpile)
19 Heart of the City (Rockpile)
20 Ju Ju Man (Rockpile)
21 Here Comes the Weekend (Rockpile)
22 Let It Rock (Rockpile with Keith Richards)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697075/ROCKPLE1978_BottmLneNwYrkC__10-24-1978_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo features just Nick Lowe (left) and Dave Edmunds (right). I could have used a photo with all four band members, but I liked this one the best. It's from a concert in New York City in August 1979, probably the Palladium.