The B-52's - US Festival, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 9-2-1982

I like the B-52's a lot, but unfortunately there isn't an official concert album from their 1980s prime. (There is one from 1979.) I checked to see if they ever did any shows for the BBC. It appears they did not. There aren't even that many good bootlegs from the 1980s, though there are many from later years. The best one I could find was of a video of their performance for the 1982 US Festival. I split it up and converted it into mp3s.

I don't know where this video is from exactly. It's definitely professionally done (you can watch it on YouTube), with excellent sound. There are even about four instances between songs where there is a cutaway from the concert to interview the band members. I removed all of those, which were rather brief and not that interesting. There also were some occasions where the applause after the songs were cut short. I patched in applause from the ends of other songs to make sure all of the songs ended naturally.

There were two US Festivals, one in 1982 and the other in 1983. They were very big deals at the time, though they seem to have faded from memory, probably due to a lack of any movies or albums. Apple Computers co-founder Steve Wozniak was behind them. He paid big money for tons of top name acts to play at the festivals. He paid so much money that he lost millions of dollars each year, despite the fact that about half a million people showed up each time.

I would love to post more concert albums from both US Festivals, but the bootlegs I've heard tend to have sound quality that's good but not great. This is a rare exception, due to whatever professional video it comes from. If you know of more of the performances with excellent sound, please let me know.

As for the B-52's performance here, keep in mind that they were playing to an audience of hundreds of thousands of people! But they clearly had become a tight, professional band by this time, because you can't tell. The same goes for the sound quality. This doesn't sound boomy and echoy, like many shows recorded in massive spaces. There's a popular bootleg of the band playing in Jamaica in 1982, but I like this better, in part because this one is longer.

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 Planet Claire Intro [Instrumental] (B-52's)
02 Party Out of Bounds (B-52's)
03 Give Me Back My Man (B-52's)
04 Planet Claire (B-52's)
05 talk (B-52's)
06 Throw That Beat in the Garbage Can (B-52's)
07 talk (B-52's)
08 Lava (B-52's)
09 talk (B-52's)
10 Mesopotamia (B-52's)
11 6060-842 (B-52's)
12 talk (B-52's)
13 Big Bird (B-52's)
14 talk (B-52's)
15 52 Girls (B-52's)
16 talk (B-52's)
17 Dance This Mess Around (B-52's)
18 talk (B-52's)
19 Private Idaho (B-52's)
20 Rock Lobster (B-52's)
21 talk (B-52's)
22 Strobe Light (B-52's)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15277941/TB5Twos_1982_USFestvalGlenHelenRegionalPark__9-2-1982_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

Cliff Richard - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1966-1968

Here's the third album featuring Cliff Richard perform for the BBC.

This is as pure as it gets when it comes to BBC albums, because every song was done in a BBC studio. All of them come from "Top of the Pops" transcription discs, which means the sound quality is consistently excellent. All of them remain unreleased.

Unfortunately, the usual problem with BBC studio sessions from this time period pops up: BBC DJs talking over the music. That affected about half of the songs, the ones with "[Edit]" in their names. But I applied my usual technique of using the X-Minus audio editing program to wipe out the vocals while keeping the underlying music.

Richard continued his hit making ways through this time period. (Heck, for him, that's practically every time period!) Again, not all of his big hits (such as his Top Ten hits in Britain) are included here. But his biggest one is, "Congratulations," which was Number One in Britain and many other countries, but largely ignored in the US.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 Time Drags By (Cliff Richard)
02 In the Country (Cliff Richard)
03 Finders Keepers [Edit] (Cliff Richard)
04 Baby, It’s You [Edit] (Cliff Richard)
05 Move It (Cliff Richard)
06 Hang On to a Dream (Cliff Richard)
07 Shout (Cliff Richard)
08 The Day I Met Marie [Edit] (Cliff Richard)
09 All My Love (Cliff Richard)
10 The Girl Can’t Help It [Edit] (Cliff Richard)
11 Congratulations (Cliff Richard)
12 Dizzie Miss Lizzy [Edit] (Cliff Richard)
13 Marianne [Edit] (Cliff Richard)
14 Don’t Forget to Catch Me (Cliff Richard)
15 When I’m 64 [Edit] (Cliff Richard)
16 Something Good - If Ever I Should Leave you (Cliff Richard)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16066370/CliffR_1966-1968_BBSessionsVolume3_atse.zip.html

The cover photo was taken in 1966. I don't know any more than that.

Belle & Sebastian - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1996

Good grief, Belle and Sebastian has a lot of BBC material! As part of my larger BBC project, I decided to turn my attention to them. I've made nearly 20 albums so far, and I could end up with even more. Admittedly, that includes some non-BBC radio shows, but the vast majority is from the BBC. Here's Volume 1, from the year the band put out their first two studio albums, "Tigermilk" and "If You're Feeling Sinister."

Belle and Sebastian has released an official BBC album called "The BBC Sessions." But it only consists of two albums, so it's woefully incomplete. It includes all of their first BBC session, the first four songs here. But of their second session, tracks six through nine, it only includes track 6. Between those two sessions, I've included an acoustic "Fox in the Snow" done for a different London radio station.

This album is 39 minutes long.

01 The State I Am In (Belle & Sebastian)
02 Like Dylan in the Movies (Belle & Sebastian)
03 Judy and the Dream of Horses (Belle & Sebastian)
04 The Stars of Track and Field (Belle & Sebastian)
05 Fox in the Snow (Belle & Sebastian)
06 I Could Be Dreaming (Belle & Sebastian)
07 Seeing Other People [Slow Version] (Belle & Sebastian)
08 This Is Just a Modern Rock Song (Belle & Sebastian)
09 We Rule the School (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15602022/BellenS_1996_BBSessionsVolume1_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find a good photo of the band from 1996. So instead here's the band's main singer and songwriter Stuart Murdoch in concert in 1997.

Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi - Timothy White's Rock Stars, Emerald Sound Studios, Nashville, TN, 11-1990

Here's an extra cool treat, in my opinion. If you're a fan of Steve Winwood and/or Traffic, you should give this a listen. That's doubly so if you're into acoustic music as I am, because this features just ex-Traffic members Steve Winwood or guitar or piano, and Jim Capaldi on (light) drums.

In 1990, Winwood released the solo studio album "Refugees of the Heart." It wasn't one of his better efforts. But it led to a reunion of Winwood with Capaldi, who had a moderately successful solo career until this point. Winwood and Capaldi wrote most Traffic songs together. For "Refugees of the Heart," they co-wrote one song, "One and Only Man," and Capaldi played drums on a few others.

Once the album was released, the two of them continued writing songs together. This eventually morphed into the release of the 1994 Traffic album "Far from Home," though they were the only two members of Traffic on it. By the way, I considered whether I should bill this as "Traffic" or not, since this is the exact same line-up as that album. But for this show they were billed just as Winwood and Capaldi, so I went with that. They wouldn't decide to bill themselves as Traffic again until 1992, after the suggestion of a fan.

This is very much like an episode of "VH-1 Storytellers," because there was a lot of talking between songs. There was more, but I edited a lot of it out. Mainly, I cut out most of the vocals of DJ Timothy White. Also, songwriter Will Jennings stopped by halfway through the show. He spoke a little bit, but I cut out virtually everything from him. What I kept were the parts of the discussions that related to the songs they were playing. I tried to make it similar to a concert experience where performers often explain some about the songs they're about to play.

Ironically, even though this radio appearance was supposed to promote the album "Refugees of the Heart," there is only one song here from that album, "I Will Be Here." They played two songs that were still unreleased, "Here Comes a Man" and "Nowhere Is Their Freedom." Both of those would appear on the 1994 Traffic album "Far from Home." Instead, they mostly played and talked about old Traffic songs, as well as a few others from various points in Winwood's career, including "Presence of the Lord," a Blind Faith song written by Eric Clapton. Musically, this is dominated by Winwood, with all of the lead vocals by him, and Capaldi often on backing vocals. But both of them talked a lot between songs.

I did a fair amount of creative editing here, due to the way I cut the talking down to make the whole thing better for repeat listenings. I moved some of the talking bits, and also moved some of the songs, for various reasons, such as not wanting there to be too long of a stretch of talking between songs. I also figured out there were a couple of songs here that weren't on the usual bootlegs. Instead, they appeared on a DVD released years later called "From the Archives." The reason I know they're from here is because a couple of songs on that are exactly the same as the bootleg versions. Plus, all of them featured Winwood and Capaldi in an acoustic context, and this was the only time that seemed to have been recorded.

Capaldi died of cancer in 2005 at the age of 60. He and Winwood were starting to work on another album together, but that effort had to stop due to Capaldi's health rapidly declining. It seems this is the one and only time they did an extensive acoustic session like this that was recorded for posterity. It really is a unique find for fans of this music.

This album is 55 minutes long.

01 talk (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
02 Valerie [Edit] (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
03 talk (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
04 I'm a Man (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
05 talk (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
06 Here Comes a Man (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
07 talk (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
08 Dear Mr. Fantasy (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
09 talk (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
10 No Face, No Name, No Number (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
11 talk (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
12 Empty Pages (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
13 talk (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
14 Nowhere Is Their Freedom (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
15 talk (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
16 I Will Be Here (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
17 talk (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
18 While You See a Chance (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
19 talk (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
20 Don't You Know What the Night Can Do (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
21 talk (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
22 Presence of the Lord (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
23 talk (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
24 John Barleycorn (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
25 talk (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
26 The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)
27 talk (Steve Winwood & Jim Capaldi)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700508/STEVWNWOD1990_TimthyWhitsRckStrsEmerldSundStdiosNshvlleTN__11-1990_atse.zip.html

The cover photo was taken somewhere in 1994. I adjusted Jim Capaldi's eyes (he's on the one with moustache and goatee) so they are looking at the camera like Steve Winwood's.

Elton John with Kiki Dee - BBC Sessions, Volume 11: Hammersmith Odeon, London, Britain, 12-24-1982

Personally, I think Elton John's best years were in the first half of the 1970s. I've posted a bunch of BBC albums from him that are all from that decade. However, he continued to have lots of success after that, and he certainly kept performing for the BBC frequently. Now that I'm posting so many BBC concerts, it doesn't seem fair to stop at the end of the 1970s. So here's the next one. I'll probably end up posting more BBC albums from him than any other artist.

The BBC portion of this concert is rather short as concerts go, at only 59 minutes. It so happens that I saw another soundboard bootleg concert of him from 1982 that has a few songs the other one does not, so I've added those to the beginning. (Those are from Landover, Maryland, on July 21, 1982.) That's why after those songs, Elton John gets introduced.

This concert ends with a nice surprise, as British singer Kiki Dee joined Elton John for the encore. They had a massive duet hit in 1976 with "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," and they performed that here, along with a covers medley of oldies.

As mentioned above, the BBC portion is 59 minutes long. The whole album is an hour and 27 minutes long.

01 All the Girls Love Alice (Elton John)
02 Where to Now St. Peter (Elton John)
03 Empty Garden [Hey Hey Johnny] (Elton John)
04 Rocket Man (Elton John)
05 Someone Saved My Life Tonight (Elton John)
06 talk (Elton John)
07 The Bitch Is Back (Elton John)
08 Pinball Wizard (Elton John)
09 talk (Elton John)
10 Blue Eyes (Elton John)
11 Bennie and the Jets (Elton John)
12 talk (Elton John)
13 All Quiet on the Western Front (Elton John)
14 Your Song (Elton John)
15 Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting (Elton John)
16 Daniel (Elton John)
17 Crocodile Rock (Elton John)
18 Don't Go Breaking My Heart (Elton John & Kiki Dee)
19 Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On - Jingle Bells - I Saw Her Standing There - Twist and Shout (Elton John & Kiki Dee)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16658258/ELTONJHN1982BBSssonsVlum11HmmrsmthOdenLndnBrtin__12-24-1982_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from the same venue, but earlier in the month, on December 1, 1982.

Billy Joel - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: Old Grey Whistle Test, BBC TV Centre, London, Britain, 3-13-1978

I've got so many bootleg BBC concerts to post that it's crazy. I keep finding more and more. I'm sure I have over a hundred new ones to post. The thing is, it's often the case that they're both uncommon as bootlegs and have really excellent sound, so they need more attention. Here's a case in point. I already posted a Billy Joel BBC concert, from 1984, but I recently discovered this one from 1978, back when he was just starting to be a big star.

This concert was done for BBC TV show "The Old Grey Whistle Test." Usually, that show would have several different artists for each show, but occasionally they would use the entire show for just one. That's the case here. I was surprised that one of his biggest hits at the time, "Piano Man," wasn't played. But I discovered that he was on that show in 1975, for just two songs, and that was one of them. So I've added those two at the start. Note those two songs don't have any cheering after them, but the rest of them do.

This album is 53 minutes long. The 1978 concert, minus the two 1975 songs at the start, is 43 minutes long.

UPDATE: On December 4, 2023, I updated the cover art to match that of the other two covers in this BBC series.

01 Travelin' Prayer (Billy Joel)
02 Piano Man (Billy Joel)
03 Miami 2017 [Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway] (Billy Joel)
04 talk (Billy Joel)
05 Movin' Out [Anthony's Song] (Billy Joel)
06 talk (Billy Joel)
07 New York State of Mind (Billy Joel)
08 talk (Billy Joel)
09 The Entertainer (Billy Joel)
10 She's Always a Woman (Billy Joel)
11 Root Beer Rag (Billy Joel)
12 talk (Billy Joel)
13 Just the Way You Are (Billy Joel)
14 Souvenir (Billy Joel)
15 Ain't No Crime (Billy Joel)
16 talk (Billy Joel)
17 Only the Good Die Young (Billy Joel)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16020623/BillyJ_1978_BBSessionsVolume1OldGryWhistleTest__3-13-1978_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a screenshot I took from this exact concert. The video of it can be seen at YouTube.

Madness - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1979-1985

Now that I've posted two stray tracks albums from Madness, I can post what they did for the BBC. I actually have four albums of BBC material, all from their early 1980s commercial peak. This one contains all of their studio BBC sessions. The other three are full length concerts.

Madness had a couple dozen hits in Britain from 1979 to 1986 (when the band broke up for the first time). Unfortunately, they didn't perform in the BBC studios that much, so this is a rather odd collection of songs. It includes some of their hits, but misses just as many, even some of their biggest ones, such as "House of Fun" and "Our House." 

That said, the sound quality here is excellent. All but three of the songs were released as bonus tracks to various albums. The other three, "Night Boat to Cairo," "Burning the Boats," and "Time," come from appearances on the BBC TV show "Old Grey Whistle Test." They sound very good too, although they remain unreleased.

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 The Prince (Madness)
02 Bed and Breakfast Man (Madness)
03 Land of Hope and Glory (Madness)
04 Stepping into Line (Madness)
05 Night Boat to Cairo (Madness)
06 Razor Blade Alley (Madness)
07 One Step Beyond (Madness)
08 Grey Day (Madness)
09 Missing You (Madness)
10 Sign of the Times (Madness)
11 Tiptoes (Madness)
12 Rise and Fall (Madness)
13 Tomorrow's [Just Another Day] (Madness)
14 Calling Cards (Madness)
15 Are You Coming [With Me] (Madness)
16 Burning the Boats (Madness)
17 Time (Madness)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16695550/MADNSS1979-1985_BBSssonsVolum1_atse.zip.html

The cover photo was taken in Liverpool in 1980.

UB40 - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: Sight and Sound, Regal Theatre, Hitchin, Britain, 1-19-1983

It's hard to believe now, but there was a time when UB40 was a edgy and cool reggae band. They started out as a bunch of working class lads railing against poverty and injustice. But after they hit in big in 1983, they moved increasingly to a safe, pop direction, until they eventually became more of an adult contemporary group with reggae flavor. This BBC concert captures them right around their peak, in my opinion.

In late 1983, UB40 would find massive success with their "Labour of Love" album consisting entirely of covers, including their big hit "Red, Red Wine." This is from earlier in the year, and doesn't contain any of those songs. Up until this point, the band did virtually all their own material, and had three hit albums in Britain. 

I do like "Labour of Love," and it turns out they did another concert for the BBC just after the release of that album which I can post later. But this just focuses on their early stuff. I particularly appreciate the inclusion of "Dubmobile" and "I've Got Mine," neither of which appeared on any of their studio albums.

This album is 44 minutes long.

UPDATE: On February 25, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is the same, but I renamed the album title, adding "BBC Sessions, Volume 3" to it. That meant I changed the cover art and mp3 tags as well.

01 Tyler (UB40)
02 Present Arms (UB40)
03 talk (UB40)
04 Love Is All Is Alright (UB40)
05 talk (UB40)
06 Don't Do the Crime (UB40)
07 talk (UB40)
08 Dubmobile (UB40)
09 I've Got Mine (UB40)
10 Folitician (UB40)
11 One in Ten (UB40)
12 talk (UB40)
13 Roots and Culture (UB40 with Mikey Dread)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/yG6WZDqa

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/IeyLPd4X3KN4yJP/file

The cover photo is a screenshot I took of a YouTube video of this exact concert. I found the font of the band name on the Internet as well. In February 2025, I upgraded the image slightly with the help of the Krea AI program.

Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas - BBC Sessions, Volume 2 (1965-1967)

Here's the second and last BBC album from British Invasion band Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas.

This band had lots of success at the height of the British Invasion, which was roughly from 1963 to 1965. But musical tastes were changing rapidly and drastically. Some musical artists kept up and prospered, and others didn't. These guys did not. By 1967, they were far out of step with the times. Only the last two songs are from that year. Kramer broke up with the Dakotas that year. He tried to have a solo career, but didn't have success with it.

That said, the songs that are here are solid if you're into this style of music. Everything here remains unreleased. Many of the songs here were never officially released by the band in any form, such as "It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue," "Milk Cow Blues," "Bony Moronie," and "If I Were a Carpenter."

Everything here comes from "Top of the Pops" BBC studio sessions. That show was broadcast all over the world (mostly current and former British empire countries). Transcription discs were shipped out all over, allowing these recordings to survive in pristine condition.

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 I’ll Be Doggone [Edit] (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
02 Let It Be Me (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
03 We Didn’t Ask to Be Brought Here [Edit] (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
04 Neon City (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
05 Treat Her Right (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
06 It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue [Edit] (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
07 We’re Doing Fine (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
08 Forgive Me (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
09 Lovin' Up a Storm [Edit] (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
10 End of My World [Edit] (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
11 You Make Me Feel like Someone (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
12 Milk Cow Blues [Edit] (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
13 Bony Moronie [Edit] (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
14 Land of a 1000 Dances [Edit] (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
15 If I Were a Carpenter (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
16 Poor Loser [Edit] (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
17 Town of Tuxley Toy Maker, Part 1 (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16373062/BILLYJKRMR1965-1967BBSssonsVlum2_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from 1965. I don't know any other details.

Cliff Richard - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1961-1966

This is the second of six albums of Cliff Richard at the BBC that I plan to post.  

This one was tricky to make because Richard was a big star in Britain all through this time period, with many hits, but it seems that there are very few BBC recordings. That's not surprising, since not many BBC recordings from 1964 or earlier have surprised, with a few exceptions, such as recordings by the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. The only ones here that are BBC studio sessions are tracks 9, and 13 through 17. 

So I've added in some TV performances I found on YouTube. These help fill in the missing gaps somewhat, although there are many more hits from the time period not included here. Note that all the performances here are officially unreleased. I could have included others, but I wanted to keep the sound quality level high.

Richard was such a big star in 1961 that he hosted his own TV show, simply called "Cliff!" The first seven tracks are taken from that show. Some of the songs were never released by him in any form, such as "Fever," "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening," and "Goodness Gracious Me." 

"Do You Want to Dance" is taken from an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Tracks 10 through 12 come from an unknown TV show in Belgium in 1964. There are a few other songs from that show that I didn't include (you can watch the whole thing on YouTube) because I have them in other versions in this series.

Note that two of the actual BBC sessions songs have "[Edit]" in their names. This is due to the usual problem of BBC DJs talking over the music. I applied the usual solution, using the X-Minus audio editing program to wipe out the talking but keep the music.

This album is 39 minutes long.

01 King Creole (Cliff Richard)
02 Almost like Being in Love (Cliff Richard)
03 Travellin' Light (Cliff Richard)
04 I Wish I Were in Love Again (Cliff Richard & Petula Clark)
05 Fever (Cliff Richard)
06 In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening (Cliff Richard)
07 Goodness Gracious Me (Cliff Richard & Jill Browne)
08 Do You Want to Dance (Cliff Richard)
09 Living Doll (Cliff Richard)
10 Constantly (Cliff Richard)
11 I Got a Woman (Cliff Richard)
12 I'm the Lonely One (Cliff Richard)
13 I Could Easily Fall (Cliff Richard)
14 Wind Me Up [Let Me Go] (Cliff Richard)
15 Angel [Edit] (Cliff Richard)
16 Blue Turns to Grey (Cliff Richard)
17 Bachelor Boy [Edit] (Cliff Richard)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16373095/CLIFFR1961-1966BBSssonsVlum2_atse.zip.html

The cover photo dates to 1960.

The English Beat - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: BBC College Concert, Hammersmith Palais, London, Britain, 10-3-1982

I thought I was done with the English Beat and the BBC. But I recently came across this short concert they did for the BBC, so here you go.

This concert took place the same week the band released their third and last studio album, "Special Beat Service," so it has a few songs from that. But the songs are pretty much evenly split between their three albums, making this a good live best of collection.

As usual with the BBC, the sound quality is excellent. The only editing I had to do was remove some BBC DJ talking between songs a couple of times.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Big Shot (English Beat)
02 Doors of Your Heart (English Beat)
03 talk (English Beat)
04 Jeanette (English Beat)
05 talk (English Beat)
06 I Confess (English Beat)
07 Spar Wid Me (English Beat)
08 talk (English Beat)
09 Get a Job - Stand Down Margaret (English Beat)
10 Tears of a Clown (English Beat)
11 Drowning (English Beat)
12 Twist and Crawl (English Beat)
13 Walk Away (English Beat)
14 talk (English Beat)
15 Save It for Later (English Beat)
16 Ranking Full Stop (English Beat)
17 Mirror in the Bathroom (English Beat)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15112218/TEnglishB_1982c_BBSessionsVolume3CollegeConcert__10-3-1982_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from an appearance on the US TV show "American Bandstand" near the end of 1982. Only five of the seven band members are pictured.

Bobbie Gentry - Acoustic Demos (1967-1971)

Bobbie Gentry has a fairly small recorded legacy, consisting mainly of seven studio albums from 1967 to 1971. That was expanded significantly in 2018 with the release of "The Girl from Chickasaw County," a box set with lots of previously unreleased material. Scattered across the many discs of the box set are some acoustic demos. I prefer having them all together, since they fit well musically. So here it is. One can think of it as her "unplugged" album, since most of the songs are usually just Gentry's voice and her acoustic guitar.

All but one of the songs comes from that box set. The sole exception is the song "The Way I Do." That comes from the deluxe edition of the album "The Delta Sweete."

This album is 56 minutes long.

By the way, at the same time I posted this, I updated her other albums I've posted here. I improved the volume balance between songs and fixed the mp3 tags.

01 The Seventh Son [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)
02 I Saw an Angel Die [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)
03 Papa, Won't You Let Me Go to Town with You [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)
04 Hurry, Tuesday Child [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)
05 Niki Hoeky [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)
06 The Way I Do [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)
07 Morning to Midnight [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)
08 Feelin' Good [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)
09 I Didn't Know [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)
10 Refractions [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)
11 Louisiana Man [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)
12 Sermon [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)
13 Mornin' Glory [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)
14 Jessye 'Lisabeth [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)
15 Courtyard [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)
16 Cotton Candy Sandman [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)
17 Hushabye Mountain [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)
18 Seasons Come, Seasons Go [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)
19 Smoke [Demo] (Bobbie Gentry)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15117223/BobbieGen_1967-1971_AcoustcDemos_atse.zip.html

The album cover photo comes from a TV special in April 1969 called "Spring Thing."

Paul McCartney - Soundcheck Songs, Volume 4: Tokyo Dome, Tokyo, Japan, 11-15-1993

I've posted three albums containing songs Paul McCartney sung during soundchecks for his 1993 world tour. As I've explained previously, there's a plethora of this material because McCartney made a bunch of it available for a later radio show. This is the fourth and last such album. I've put it as the fourth, even after a volume of unknown dates, because it happened near the tail end of that tour.

This volume is unusual because all of the performances come from a single soundcheck. The idea of a soundcheck is just to warm up and test the equipment. Typically, that's done with a few of songs at most. But on this day, McCartney put on a mini-concert that practically nobody saw or heard! 

And, in my opinion, this was a much more interesting concert than the one he did later that evening. I checked the set list for that concert, and it's what one would expect: solo hits, Beatles hits, and songs from his latest album. The only two covers were "Good Rockin' Tonight" and "Ain't No Sunshine." By contrast, this soundcheck was made up of only four originals ("Every Night," "C Moon," "The Long and Winding Road," and "Get Out of My Way") and 11 covers. It seems he was in a nostalgic mood, mostly doing covers of songs he knew when he was growing up.

Although everything here is officially unreleased, the sound quality is excellent. And the fact that there's no audience cheering makes this sound more like studio outtakes.

This album is 55 minutes long.

01 Just Because (Paul McCartney)
02 Every Night (Paul McCartney)
03 C Moon (Paul McCartney)
04 Matchbox (Paul McCartney)
05 No Other Baby (Paul McCartney)
06 Bring It on Home to Me (Paul McCartney)
07 Good Rockin' Tonight (Paul McCartney)
08 Be-Bop-A-Lula (Paul McCartney)
09 Midnight Special (Paul McCartney)
10 Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying (Paul McCartney)
11 Ain't That a Shame (Paul McCartney)
12 The Long and Winding Road (Paul McCartney)
13 Get Out of My Way (Paul McCartney)
14 Linda Lu (Paul McCartney)
15 Twenty Flight Rock (Paul McCartney)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376656/PAULMCCRTNY1993fSoundchckSngsVlume4TokyoDme__11-15-1993_atse.zip.html

The cover photo almost comes from this exact concert, but not quite. It's from the same venue, but he performed several nights there and it's from two days earlier.

Van Morrison - The Bottom Line, New York City, 11-1-1978, Late Show

Is it possible to separate a musician from the music he or she makes? That's a problem I've been facing when it comes to Van Morrison. He's always had a reputation as an asshole. I even have a friend who worked in a record store and encountered Morrison there decades ago. He said it was by far the most unpleasant interaction he ever had with a famous person (and lots of them came to this particular store). But Morrison has gone even further during the recent Covid pandemic, putting out albums with anti-vaccine and even antisemetic rants. (For the latter, check out the lyrics to his song "They Control the Media.") In a way, I'm kind of glad that he's had a slow and steady decline musically too, so I don't have to feel bad about missing out on his latest albums.

That said, he had a great run for a long time. I think his older music can still be celebrated. His musical output from the mid-1960s until about 1980 is great, and he had some worthy periods after that. Today, I just updated the links to all of his albums I'd previously posted. Many of them had gone dead. I also redid the volume balance between songs, and updated the mp3 tags to the new format. Rather than make an announcement just about that, I figured I'd post something else by him at the same time.

This concert is from 1978, after the release of his "Wavelength" album. He burned out a bit in the mid-1970s, waiting three years between releasing studio albums, which felt like eons back in those busy years, and he rarely performed concerts during that time as well. But this concert shows that he still had that magical "it" factor. Both the early and late shows were broadcast on the radio, so the sound quality is excellent. I've only included the late show because it contains all the songs from the early show plus a few more, and the performance is slightly better. He was in a rocking mood, and his new songs held up with his older ones. In particular, I've always felt the song "Wavelength" should have been a big hit.

This album is an hour and twenty minutes long.

01 Moondance (Van Morrison with Katie Kissoon)
02 Wavelength (Van Morrison)
03 Into the Mystic (Van Morrison)
04 Checkin' It Out (Van Morrison)
05 Hungry for Your Love (Van Morrison)
06 Brown Eyed Girl (Van Morrison)
07 Crazy Love (Van Morrison with Katie Kissoon)
08 Kingdom Hall (Van Morrison)
09 Tupelo Honey (Van Morrison)
10 Natalia (Van Morrison)
11 Help Me (Van Morrison)
12 Wild Night (Van Morrison)
13 Joyous Sound (Van Morrison)
14 Caravan (Van Morrison)
15 Cyprus Avenue (Van Morrison)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701218/VANMRRSN1978_BottmLneNwYorkCty__11-1-1978__LatShw_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from 1978, but it's not clear exactly when or where it was taken beyond that.

Imelda May - Festival Luna Lunera, Sos del Rey Catolico, Spain, 7-23-2010

Irish singer-songwriter Imelda May has changed and diversified her musical styles over the years. But in the early part of her career, she was all about rockabilly. Imagine the stray cats fronted by an exceptional female vocalist. This live bootleg captures her and her band when they were rocking hard, performing mostly originals but in that 1950s rockabilly style.

Unfortunately, there are very few excellent sounding Imelda May bootleg recordings out there, and she has yet to release an official live album. Luckily, I was able to find this one as a YouTube video. I converted it into individual mp3 tracks. It was professionally filmed and recorded (you can watch the whole thing on YouTube still), so the sound quality is excellent. It sounds better than virtually all the other bootlegs I've found of her music.

Most of this comes from a festival that took place in a village in Spain of less than a 1,000 people. The festival was an annual tradition for many years, but unfortunately this was the last year it was held. The concert recording is rather short as concerts go, with a length of 59 minutes long. I happened to have a few bonus tracks of different live songs from that same time period, so I added those on to the end. Thus, the songs from "My Babe" to the end are made up of these bonus tracks. I don't know where or when they were recorded, except they're bonus tracks to the 2008 album "Love Tattoo."

The entire album, including the extra songs at the end, is an hour and 14 minutes long.

01 Feel Me (Imelda May)
02 Love Tattoo (Imelda May)
03 Big Bad Handsome Man (Imelda May)
04 talk (Imelda May)
05 Proud and Humble (Imelda May)
06 All for You (Imelda May)
07 talk (Imelda May)
08 Falling in Love with You Again (Imelda May)
09 Smokers' Song (Imelda May)
10 talk (Imelda May)
11 Pulling the Rug (Imelda May)
12 Smotherin' Me (Imelda May)
13 talk (Imelda May)
14 Watcha Gonna Do (Imelda May)
15 Psycho (Imelda May)
16 Mayhem (Imelda May)
17 talk (Imelda May)
18 Johnny Got a Boom Boom (Imelda May)
19 talk (Imelda May)
20 Tainted Love (Imelda May)
21 talk (Imelda May)
22 My Baby Left Me (Imelda May)
23 talk (Imelda May)
24 My Babe (Imelda May)
25 Don't Do Me No Wrong (Imelda May)
26 Rollin' and Tumblin' (Imelda May)
27 Wild about My Lovin' (Imelda May)
28 talk (Imelda May)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693317/IMELDMY2010_FestivalLnaLuneraSpin__7-23-2010_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a screenshot taken from the YouTube video of this exact concert.

Madness - Wings of a Dove - Non-Album Tracks (1983-1985)

A few days ago, I posted an album of stray tracks from Madness. This is the second such album, finishing off most of the rest of their first era, prior to their first break up in 1986. I do have something different for 1986 tracks, however, so this only goes to 1985.

During this time period, Madness was still commercially successful (though mainly just in Britain). There are two hit A-sides here, "Wings of a Dove," and "The Sun and the Rain." Additionally, two more songs ("Yesterday's Men" and "Uncle Sam") were hits but were included on the band's 1985 album "Mad Not Mad." However, I was able to include interesting alternate demos of those that were later released as bonus tracks.

Nearly all of the other songs are B-sides. The only exceptions are the last two tracks. "Shop Around" comes from a bootleg, and is a cover of the famous Motown classic. "Jennie (A Portrait Of)" wasn't released at the time, but later was released as a bonus track.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Wings of a Dove (Madness)
02 Behind the 8 Ball [Instrumental] (Madness)
03 One Second's Thoughtlessness (Madness)
04 The Sun and the Rain (Madness)
05 Fireball XL5 (Madness)
06 If You Think There's Something (Madness)
07 Guns (Madness)
08 Yesterday's Men [Demo] (Madness)
09 All I Knew (Madness)
10 Uncle Sam [Demo] (Madness)
11 Please Don't Go (Madness)
12 Call Me (Madness)
13 Shop Around (Madness)
14 Jennie [A Portrait Of] (Madness)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15603329/Madns_1983-1985_WngsofaDve_atse.zip.html

The album cover is the exact cover for the "Wings of a Dove" single with no changes.

Steve Winwood - Tour Rehearsal, Wimbledon, Britain, 5-20-1983

The other day, I wanted to listen to something from Steve Winwood that I hadn't heard before. I thought a concert would be good, since I don't have much live music from his solo career. But many songs from his hit 1986 album "Back in the High Life" are overplayed, and I haven't heard much of his solo stuff from prior to that. So I looked for something earlier. It turns out he only did one solo tour prior to that, in 1983. Unfortunately, there seem to be no really excellent sounding bootleg recordings of that tour... except for this one.

However, this isn't exactly a concert recording. Instead, it's taken from a rehearsal right before the tour began. Winwood and his band ran through most of the songs they would play on the tour just as if an audience was there. But since there was no audience, the already very good sound quality is improved by the lack of any cheering and clapping. 

Sometimes, these sorts of rehearsals can be poor, with the musicians fumbling their way through songs they're still trying to figure out. But this must have been a final run through, because the songs sound as sharp and good as if they were played in concert, with no flubs at all. 

Already by 1983, Winwood had three successful solo albums, and a couple of big hits with "While You See a Chance" and "Valerie." So, not surprisingly, most of the songs here are from those three albums. Due to the massive success of his 1986 album "Back in the High Life," most of these songs would be retired from later concert tours. Thus I'd suspect these are the only good recordings of many of them, other than the album versions.

In the actual 1983 concerts, Winwood would play more songs from his time with Traffic and the Spencer Davis Group, namely, "Somebody Help Me," "Dear Mr. Fantasy," "Gimme Some Lovin'," "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys," and "Keep on Running." Unfortunately, none of those are included. Probably that's because he could do a song like "Gimme Some Lovin'" in his sleep by this time, so there wasn't much need to rehearse it. The only oldies are "I'm a Man" and a cover of "(I'm A) Road Runner." Note that "Your Silence Is Your Song" is a rarity that only appeared on a 1982 movie soundtrack.

All of these performances were taken from YouTube videos. I couldn't find them anywhere else. I didn't see any mention of what order the songs were played. So I looked at the set lists of his 1983 concerts. Most of them had the songs in the same order every night, with a few additions or subtractions here and there. Thus I used that order. I couldn't find any reference to two of the songs being played in concert at all, "There's a River" and "While There Is a Candle Burning," so I put those two in front.

Note that there was a fair amount of dead air at the starts and ends of songs. I never heard any talking, so I didn't delete that. But there was some tuning or putzing around with the instruments. I think it makes a stronger listen with all that cut out.

This album is an hour and 27 minutes long.

01 There's a River (Steve Winwood)
02 While There Is a Candle Burning (Steve Winwood)
03 Your Silence is Your Song (Steve Winwood)
04 [I'm A] Road Runner (Steve Winwood)
05 Help Me Angel (Steve Winwood)
06 Arc of a Diver (Steve Winwood)
07 Valerie (Steve Winwood)
08 Second-Hand Woman (Steve Winwood)
09 Vacant Chair (Steve Winwood)
10 Slowdown Sundown (Steve Winwood)
11 Dust (Steve Winwood)
12 I'm a Man (Steve Winwood)
13 Big Girls Walk Away (Steve Winwood)
14 And I Go (Steve Winwood)
15 While You See a Chance (Steve Winwood)
16 Still in the Game (Steve Winwood)
17 Spanish Dancer (Steve Winwood)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15274860/SteveWnwd_1983_TourRehearslWimbldonBritain__5-20-1983_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from his 1983 concert tour, but I don't know the details.

Pete Townshend - Who Demos, Volume 3: 1967-1968

Back in 2019, I posted a "Volume 2" consisting of Pete Townshend demos of what would later be songs by the Who. I've found a bunch of additional demos, allowing me to split that album in two. "Volume 2" previously dealt with the years 1966 to 1968. Now it just deals with 1966, and this one is from 1967 and 1968. I had already posted an album of demos for the 1969 album "Tommy." That had been called "Volume 3," but it's been renamed to "Volume 4."

Thus, if you're interested in this kind of thing, I strongly you suggest you redownload "Volume 2" and what is now "Volume 4." I also plan to keep going with "Volume 5" and beyond.

The reason I have enough material for this is due to the release of a super deluxe edition of the Who's 1967 album "The Who Sell Out." That came out in 2021, but I'm only getting to it now. Although that is a Who release, it contained a bunch of Pete Townshend solo demos of songs slated for that album. I've used six of those here.

One more song came out on the official demo collection "Scoop" ("Melancholia") and another one came out on the similar demo collection "Another Scoop" ("Pictures of Lily"). That leaves four songs that are still officially unreleased: "Relax (Version 2)," "Rael, Parts 1-9," "Dogs," and  "Sensation (Early Demo)." That last one is a song from the Who's 1969 album "Tommy." But this demo was done in 1968, so it fits this time frame. And it's different than another demo of the same song on "Volume 4."

A version of the song "Rael" appeared on "The Who Sell Out," but this demo is significantly different, being three minutes long. The song is a strange one. Townshend summarized it in a 1967 interview: "It takes place in the year 1999 when China is breaking out and is about to take over the world. The hero, or at least, central character, loses his wife and decides to go live in this tiny country which is about to be overrun by the Chinese. The hero goes through hundreds of different situations and there is music for each. He goes out in a boat and gets shipwrecked, he has a bad nightmare, and so on."

This album is 42 minutes long.

By the way, I also have just redone all the links for all the other Pete Townshend albums I've posted. I fixed the volume balance and updated the mp3 tags to a new format. Many of the links were dead, but they're not any more. I also recently did the same for most Beck and Richard Thompson albums.

01 Relax [Version 2] (Pete Townshend)
02 Pictures of Lily (Pete Townshend)
03 Jaguar (Pete Townshend)
04 Odorono (Pete Townshend)
05 Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand (Pete Townshend)
06 I Can See for Miles (Pete Townshend)
07 Rael, Parts 1-9 (Pete Townshend)
08 Little Billy (Pete Townshend)
09 Dogs (Pete Townshend)
10 Melancholia (Pete Townshend)
11 Glow Girl (Pete Townshend)
12 Sensation [Early Demo] (Pete Townshend)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rN3p6fbr

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/byDFKvMmT51NUuB/file

The cover photo of Townshend is was taken in a recording studio in 1968. It was black and white originally, but I colorized it. In January 2025, I improved it with the Krea AI program.

Madness - House of Fun - Non-Album Tracks (1979-1982)

Madness was one of the most successful bands in Britain in the 1980s. They broke up for a while. But they're still going strong as I write this, releasing some acclaimed albums in the 2000s and still having six of their seven original members.

In the US these days, unfortunately, it seems they're mainly known for their one big US hit, "Our House," which reached Number 7 in 1983. They had one other Top 40 hit in the US, "It Must Be Love." But in Britain, they've had 26 Top 40 hits. Many of their singles contained A- and/or B-sides that weren't included on their studio albums. As a result, there's enough material for two albums of stray track materials for the years 1979 to 1986, when the band broke up for the first time.

All the songs here have been officially released. Four of them are A-sides: "In the City," "It Must Be Love," "House of Fun," and "Driving in My Car." Three more, tracks three through five, come from an EP. The rest are B-sides.

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 Nutty Theme (Madness)
02 Stepping into Line (Madness)
03 Deceives the Eye (Madness)
04 The Young and the Old (Madness)
05 Don't Quote Me on That (Madness)
06 Crying Shame (Madness)
07 In the City (Madness)
08 That's the Way to Do It (Madness)
09 Memories (Madness)
10 Never Ask Twice (Madness)
11 A Town with No Name [Instrumental] (Madness)
12 It Must Be Love (Madness)
13 Shadow on the House (Madness)
14 House of Fun (Madness)
15 Don't Look Back (Madness)
16 Driving in My Car (Madness)
17 Walking with Mr. Wheeze [Instrumental] (Madness)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15603349/Madns_1979-1982_HouseofFn_atse.zip.html

The album cover is simply the cover of the "House of Fun" single, without any significant changes. (I cropped it a bit.)

Bob Dylan with Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison & Chrissie Hynde - Wembley Stadium, London, Britain, 7-7-1984

I've been working my way through Bob Dylan's music career chronologically. So far, as I write this in November 2022, I've made it to about 1976. But I recently came across this excellent concert from 1984, so it goes to the top of the pile of things to post.

In 1984, returned to commercial and critical success after a few controversial years with very religious albums. This concert must have been a symbolic triumph for him, playing before over 70,000 people in Wembley Stadium in London on a bill that included opening acts Nick Lowe, UB40, and Santana.

Dylan put on a long show, 2 hours and 31 minutes, with lots of special guests (who I will explain in a minute). He was in a very rocking mood, playing even some sedate songs like "Every Grain of Sand" and "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" in a lively style. His band included lead guitarist Mick Taylor, formerly of the Rolling Stones, who ripped many excellent solos throughout the show.

Here's a review from the time in Rolling Stone Magazine. The article title says it all: "Bob Dylan Back in Peak Form." The article calls it one of the concert highlights of Dylan's career, and I would agree.

Bob Dylan performs epic concert at Wembley Stadium – Rolling Stone

Dylan must have liked this show because he released a live album late in 1984, "Real Live," with six of the ten songs coming from this exact concert. Personally, I must prefer hearing a full concert like this one to a live album with songs chosen from different concerts. Besides, this is two and half hours long and "Real Live" is only 50 minutes long.

The sound quality of this bootleg is excellent. I found different versions of this concert on the Internet, and most of them are merely okay sounding audience bootlegs. But this version comes from a soundboard. It sounds just as good as the versions of the songs on the "Real Live" album, in my opinion.

There was only one sonic flaw. On four of the songs, there were some very small silent gaps, each of them only a second or less. But it was enough to be noticeable and annoying. I carefully edited those songs to remove the gaps, and when I did I found there wasn't any music missing. Those four have "[Edit]" in their names. 

Now, let me discuss the many special guests on this show. Dylan played two hours, mostly with a full band, but some songs done solo acoustic. Then he came back for what turned out to be a very unusual encore that lasted 35 minutes. For the whole encore, he was joined by Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton & Chrissie Hynde. Santana and Clapton often played guitar solos. Right before the song "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat," Dylan joked, "There's too many guitar players up here. I may just sing the first verse and leave." It would be good if someone could watch the video of this concert on YouTube and figure out who played which solo in the encores (with Mick Taylor presumably playing some too).

Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders mostly sang backing vocals, though apparently she also played a harmonica solo on one song. This was not her finest hour - it's very challenging to sing harmony with Dylan, since he changes how he sings the lyrics in unpredictable ways. 

On top of that, Van Morrison made a brief but important appearance in the encore too. He only showed up for the song "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." That was a Dylan song he sang on a Them album back in 1966, and he's revisited in concert from time to time ever since. He sang the lead vocals for it here. I think Hynde also sang a verse, but unfortunately wasn't turned on because one can barely hear just a few traces of her voice in the middle of the song.

This concert shows Dylan swinging for the fences, trying to please a huge crowd, and hitting a home run. Look at the set list below. Almost every song is a well known classic, and he performed most of them in a rocking style. So if I were to present just one Dylan concert to someone not that familiar with his music, I probably would choose this one.

01 Highway 61 Revisited (Bob Dylan)
02 Jokerman (Bob Dylan)
03 All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan)
04 Just like a Woman (Bob Dylan)
05 Maggie's Farm (Bob Dylan)
06 I and I (Bob Dylan)
07 License to Kill (Bob Dylan)
08 talk (Bob Dylan)
09 I've Got to Use My Imagination (Bob Dylan & Greg Sutton)
10 A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (Bob Dylan)
11 Tangled Up in Blue (Bob Dylan)
12 It's Alright, Ma [I'm Only Bleeding] (Bob Dylan)
13 Simple Twist of Fate (Bob Dylan)
14 Masters of War (Bob Dylan)
15 Ballad of a Thin Man (Bob Dylan)
16 Enough Is Enough [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
17 Every Grain of Sand [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
18 Like a Rolling Stone [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
19 Mr. Tambourine Man (Bob Dylan)
20 Girl from the North Country [Edit] (Bob Dylan)
21 It Ain't Me, Babe (Bob Dylan)
22 talk (Bob Dylan)
23 Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (Bob Dylan with Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton & Chrissie Hynde)
24 talk (Bob Dylan)
25 It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bob Dylan & Van Morrison with Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton & Chrissie Hynde)
26 Tombstone Blues (Bob Dylan with Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton & Chrissie Hynde)
27 Senor [Tales of Yankee Power] (Bob Dylan with Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton & Chrissie Hynde)
28 The Times They Are A-Changin' (Bob Dylan with Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton & Chrissie Hynde)
29 Blowin' in the Wind (Bob Dylan with Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton & Chrissie Hynde)
30 Knockin' on Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan with Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton & Chrissie Hynde)
31 talk (Bob Dylan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KhBmeEi6

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/KjYCMNSw8z0s3rz/file

The cover photo is from the exact concert featured here. I'm pretty sure that's Chrissie Hynde in the white shirt with her back to the camera, and Eric Clapton standing next to her.

Procol Harum - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: Sight and Sound, Golders Green Hippodrome, London, Britain, 3-12-1977

This is the fifth and last of Procol Harum BBC albums I'm posting. If you were to only download one, I would suggest this one. The sound quality is excellent, a notch above some of the others. The song selection is well done as well, including some of their earlier classics they'd sometimes missed on their last few BBC albums, especially their signature song "A Whiter Shade of Pale," but also including some of their later good songs not on the earlier volumes, such as their 1975 Top Twenty hit "Pandora's Box."

The band broke up later in 1977. They didn't release another studio album until 1991, so this effectively comes at the end of their classic period.

The first track consists of a BBC DJ introducing the band. I cut it down, because much of it was the DJ talking about different BBC stations and programs, which isn't relevant anymore. That's why there's an "[Edit]" in the title. 

All of the performances here come from the deluxe version of the band's 1977 album "Something Magic." Except, strangely, for one: "A Salty Dog" wasn't included on that release. So that song comes from a bootleg of the show.

This concert is an hour and three minutes long. I would imagine their concerts were usually longer than that, but they had to cut them down for BBC programming purposes.

01 talk [Edit] (Procol Harum)
02 Something Magic (Procol Harum)
03 Conquistador (Procol Harum)
04 Nothing but the Truth (Procol Harum)
05 Strangers in Space (Procol Harum)
06 Grand Hotel (Procol Harum)
07 Pandora's Box (Procol Harum)
08 talk (Procol Harum)
09 Skating on Thin Ice (Procol Harum)
10 talk (Procol Harum)
11 The Mark of the Claw (Procol Harum)
12 A Salty Dog (Procol Harum)
13 Wizard Man (Procol Harum)
14 talk (Procol Harum)
15 This Old Dog (Procol Harum)
16 A Whiter Shade of Pale (Procol Harum)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697029/PROCLHRM1977BBSessonsVolum5SghtSundGoldrsGrenHippdrme__3-12-1977_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from an appearance on a Dutch TV show in 1976.

Joan Armatrading - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: In Concert, Hammersmith Odeon, London, Britain, 12-12-1981

Here's a 1981 BBC concert performed by British singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading.

Armatrading has only had a few significant hits, mostly in Britain only, mainly "Love and Affection," "My Myself I" and "Drop the Pilot." But she's been a steady success since the 1970s, and is still going as I write this in 2022. However, her most commercially successful records came between 1976 and 1983. So 1981 is a pretty good time for a live concert from her.

The concert is unreleased, but it is up to the usual high BBC standards of sound quality. The only gripe I have with it is that it doesn't include my favorite song from her, "Drop the Pilot," which was a hit in 1983. (Fun fact: the chorus of that song mentions the very obscure word "mahout," which is what one calls a person who rides and trains an elephant!) So I found a soundboard bootleg of that song and another popular one from 1983, "(I Love It When You) Call Me Names," and added those two to the end. 

The concert was a little short at only 58 minutes, compared to the usual concert length of about an hour an a half. With the two extra songs, that stretches it to an hour and seven minutes.

UPDATE: On April 25, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is the same, but I changed the album title, after making an earlier volume of BBC music by her that I'd missed.

01 I'm Lucky (Joan Armatrading)
02 Down to Zero (Joan Armatrading)
03 talk (Joan Armatrading)
04 I Wanna Hold You (Joan Armatrading)
05 Rosie (Joan Armatrading)
06 Cool Blue Stole My Heart (Joan Armatrading)
07 Love and Affection (Joan Armatrading)
08 talk (Joan Armatrading)
09 Eating the Bear (Joan Armatrading)
10 talk (Joan Armatrading)
11 When I Get It Right (Joan Armatrading)
12 I Can't Lie to Myself (Joan Armatrading)
13 Me Myself I (Joan Armatrading)
14 talk (Joan Armatrading)
15 The Weakness in Me (Joan Armatrading)
16 Tall in the Saddle (Joan Armatrading)
17 [I Love It When You] Call Me Names (Joan Armatrading)
18 Drop the Pilot (Joan Armatrading)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xAt47Ntn

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/MAmJ65hcG9AwCaO/file

The cover art comes from an appearance on the Midnight Special TV show in late 1980. I improved it a bit with the use of the Krea AI program.

Paul Weller - Nobody's Fool - Non-Album Tracks (2019-2022)

I started posting Paul Weller stray tracks albums in July 2018. He's so prolific that I've posted 13 of them. It's now November 2022, and I've finally caught up to the current year. Phew!

Only three of the songs are unreleased: the first two, and "The Harder They Come," a cover of the classic Jimmy Cliff song. It's from an in person radio show appearance, and the instrumental intro had a DJ talking over it. Worse, the volume of the music for that intro was turned down to nearly nothing. Luckily, the intro was repeated later in the song, so I patched that in. That's why it has "[Edit]" in the title.

Most of the remaining songs are A-sides, B-sides, or bonus tracks, as well as an EP track.  "Deeper Love" is from an album by the band Stone Foundation.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Nobody's Fool (Suggs & Paul Weller)
02 Precious - Move On Up (Paul Weller & Stone Foundation)
03 On Sunset [Orchestral Mix] (Paul Weller)
04 Crowboy (Paul Weller)
05 Going to a Go Go (Paul Weller)
06 Deeper Love (Stone Foundation & Paul Weller)
07 I'm a Road Runner (Paul Weller)
08 What Does It Take [To Win Your Love] (Paul Weller)
09 Round the Floor (Paul Weller)
10 Pure Sound (Paul Weller)
11 Into the Sea (Paul Weller)
12 Serafina (Paul Weller)
13 The Harder They Come [Edit] (Paul Weller & Madness)
14 Room 309 (Paul Weller)
15 Ooh Do U Fink U R (Suggs & Paul Weller)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15849591/PaulW_2019-2022_NobdysFool_atse.zip.html

The cover photo of Weller was taken in April 2022 in a London concert.

Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas - BBC Sessions, Volume 1 (1964-1965)

Next up in my BBC project is the British Invasion band Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas.I'm trying to get through most of the 1960s BBC stuff before getting more heavily into the 1970s stuff. There's enough material for two BBC volumes.

These days, Kramer and the Dakotas don't have that good of a reputation. Admittedly, they were a lower tier British Invasion band. They were managed by Brian Epstein, the same as the Beatles, and so they benefited by having hits with some Beatles leftovers. (The Beatles were so good that even their rejects almost always were hits for others.) That said, they did have talent, and they had a lot of hits for a couple of years, before musical tastes changed. It helps that they generally played their better songs for the BBC, so this is much like a two volume best of.

All but the first four songs here are unreleased and come from BBC transcription discs. That means the sound quality is excellent. I added the first four before the BBC recordings missed some of their biggest hits. It seemed that not many BBC recordings have survived from about the middle of 1964 and earlier, unless it's a big artist like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, and this fits the pattern. So the first two songs are unreleased and come from an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. The third and fourth are released, but only on a box set of the band's complete works. They come from live concerts in 1964.

This album is 40 minutes long.

01 Bad to Me (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
02 Pride [It's Such a Little Word] (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
03 I Call Your Name (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
04 I'll Keep You Satisfied (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
05 Little Chidren (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
06 From a Window (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
07 Irresistable You (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
08 Love's Made a Fool of You (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
09 When You Ask about Love [Edit] (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
10 Sneakin' Around [Edit] (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
11 It's Got to Last Forever (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
12 Under the Boardwalk [Edit] (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
13 Don't You Do It No More [Edit] (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
14 Hello Josephine [Edit] (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
15 My Babe [Edit] (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
16 Trains and Boats and Planes (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)
17 Today’s Teardrops [Edit] (Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15832942/BillyJK_1964-1965_BBSessionsVolume1_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from a concert in London in 1964.

Fred Neil & John Sebastian - Rolling Coconut Revue, Harumi Dome, Tokyo, Japan. 4-8-1977

Here's an amazing find, in my opinion. Fred Neil was a legendary folk singer and songwriter. His musical discography is scanty, because his music career only went from the early 1960s to 1971, despite the fact that he lived until 2001. In 1970, he co-founded the Dolphin Research Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to stopping the killing and exploitation of dolphins around the world. He spent most of the rest of his life focused on that. He only played a few concerts in the 1970s, all of them benefits for dolphin-related causes. The last concert he played was a benefit show in Tokyo, Japan, in 1977.

Luckily, it turns out that concert was professionally recorded, and released around the year 2020. Unfortunately though, it's only been released in Japan as part of a 12 disc box set. His concert was part of a festival that lasted three days, and featured many big names in Western folk rock music, such as Jackson Browne, John Sebastian, J. D. Souther, Country Joe McDonald, Richie Haven, Odetta, Warren Zevon, and Eric Andersen, plus more Japanese artists singing in Japanese. The rest of the box set includes some of the other performances, but apparently only those they got the rights to, because some big names like Browne and Zevon are missing.

Anyway, in March 2021, a commenter here named Mystic pointed out to me that a recording of this Fred Neil concert exists. I started looking for it, but I couldn't find it anywhere. Even mentions of it are very few and far between. I put it on my wanted list through the SoulseekQT program. Yesterday, over a year and a half later, I finally got a positive hit and downloaded it! I'm sharing it here because it's so exceedingly rare.

It turns out this concert exceeded my expectations, especially in terms of sound quality, which is fantastic. The recording actually features two acts, John Sebastian, lead singer and main songwriter of the Lovin' Spoonful, and Neil. The Sebastian set is longer, at 38 minutes, while Neil's set is 29 minutes long. The two sets are linked because Sebastian and Neil were long-time musical associates and Sebastian is an excellent harmonica player. So after Sebastian's set ended, he stayed on stage, introduced Neil, and then played harmonica all through Neil's set.

Fred Neil led a troubled life. Apparently, he was hooked on heroin and other drugs from at least the mid-1960s onwards. Besides that, he was a stubborn and difficult guy to deal with, playing concerts rarely, often not showing up for them, or leaving in the middle of them. By 1977, he hadn't recorded any music in six years, and had only played a couple of short sets on stage since then. So one might have thought he was washed up, especially given the stories about his heavy drug use. But he's in very fine form here; he sounds just as good as ever. It's hard to believe this would be his last concert performance. (Although he got up on stage in a club once in the early 1980s and played a couple of songs.)

As for John Sebastian, he did very well with his set too. I find it ironic that in 1976, he had a Number One hit in the U.S. with "Welcome Back," the theme song to the "Welcome Back, Kotter" TV show, and yet his record company thought that was a fluke and dropped him. Then he couldn't get a new record contract (with disco being all the rage at the time), so he didn't put out another record until the 1990s. This is despite the fact that he had many previous hits, including three Number One or Number Two hits with the Lovin' Spoonful, so he was far from a one-hit wonder. But that's the music business for you. Sigh! Anyway, in this concert, he played "Welcome Back," but the rest consists mostly of Lovin' Spoonful songs.

This album is an hour and seven minutes long.

01 talk (John Sebastian)
02 Lovin' You (John Sebastian)
03 Link in the Chain (John Sebastian)
04 Someone Standin' in Your Door (John Sebastian)
05 talk (John Sebastian)
06 Welcome Back (John Sebastian)
07 Gas Man Blues (John Sebastian)
08 Fishin' Blues (John Sebastian)
09 Nashville Cats (John Sebastian)
10 talk (John Sebastian)
11 She's Funny (John Sebastian)
12 She's a Lady (John Sebastian)
13 Daydream (John Sebastian)
14 Darlin' Be Home Soon (John Sebastian)
15 Blues for Dad and JB's Happy Harmonica [Instrumental] (John Sebastian)
16 talk (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
17 Everybody's Talkin' (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
18 Roll on Rosie (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
19 Blues on the Ceiling (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
20 talk (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
21 I Gotta Have My Baby Back (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
22 The Other Side of This Life (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
23 The Dolphins (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)
24 Goodnight, Irene (Fred Neil with John Sebastian)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Lm9taBo4

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/Rmrti490Bll28PO/file

The cover photo is not from this exact concert. But in August 1976, Neil and Sebastian played another dolphin benefit concert in Florida, and there's a clip of one song from that on YouTube. So I took a screenshot of that. Neil is the one on guitar and Sebastian is the one on harmonica.