Sly & the Family Stone - The Midnight Special, NBC Studios, Burbank, CA, 8-9-1974

Here's a short concert by Sly and the Family Stone from "The Midnight Special" NBC TV show.

Recently, I've discovered so much music worth posting that I'd never come across before that I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. Just last week, I found most of the episodes of the "Old Grey Whistle Test" BBC TV show (as I write this in late October 2025). And a couple of days ago, I found out that all the episodes of "The Midnight Special" TV show from 1973 to 1975 have been posted on YouTube, with more being released every month. 

In 1972, there were no TV shows in the U.S. consisting of actual live performances. But producer Burt Sugarman had an idea. He knew that the three big TV networks at the time (ABC, NBC, and CBS) went off the air at 1:00 A.M. There was nothing but static for several hours after that. He suggested young people would stay up past one o'clock for a rock music show. None of the networks believed this idea would work. So Sugarman bought an hour and half of TV time from NBC, from 1:00 until 2:30, using his own money. He signed up a bunch of stars to perform on it, and got some sponsors to pay for the commercials. This pilot episode was shown in late 1972, and got enough viewers for NBC to make it a weekly show at that time slot in 1973.

The show was a big success for many years, running from 1973 to 1981. ABC quickly made their version, called "In Concert," which only lasted two years. But the CBS version, "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert," also went from 1973 to 1981. All three shows put on lots of good music. But most of the music seems to be lost, except for the occasional performances that stood out in some special way and were widely bootlegged. It's only starting in 2023 that episodes of "The Midnight Special" has started to get released on YouTube, and I only just discovered what a musical treasure trove that is.

Here's a link to the Wikipedia page for the "Midnight Special," if you want to know more:

The Midnight Special (TV series) - Wikipedia 

Most episodes were hosted by DJ Wolfman Jack. But it seems he didn't actually say that much, and each episode was also hosted by one of the musical acts performing in that show. The host act would get to perform more songs than the other acts. This album comes from an episode hosted by Sly and the Family Stone. Also on the show were Little Feat, Roger McGuinn, Elvin Bishop, and Henry Gross.

Looking to the future, I want to post a lot of music from these Midnight Special episodes. But I don't want to just post whole episodes. A lot of the musical acts that happen to be on the same show don't make for good stylistic matches. So instead I'm going to try to gather up enough songs from one particular act, even getting them from multiple episodes of the show, and lump them together into a single album. 

In this case, everything is from this one show. Sly and the Family Stone actually hosted another episode of the show, in 1973. But they played a smaller number of songs then, and all of them were the best known ones, like "Dance to the Music" and "I Want to Take You Higher." I find this 1974 episode much more interesting, because they played some different songs. There aren't a lot of live recordings from this band, and most of them contain the same few songs, generally from 1969 and 1970. The band had declined in popularity by 1974, but this performance showed they could still impress.

I don't know the name of the instrumental that starts the concert. If anyone knows the name, please let me know so I can fix that. Also, "Loose Booty" abruptly after less than two minutes, due to the show ending. The chorus was just starting when it was cut off. So I patched in the chorus from earlier, extending it by about half a minute. Then I added in some applause to give it a proper sounding ending. I also sometimes patched in applause between songs to smooth transitions. In reality, there were performances by other musical acts between nearly all of the songs here.

The music is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

As an aside, it turns out I had already posted two albums from "The Midnight Special," ones by Al Green and Marvin Gaye. I just added a label for the show to make it easier to find them as I post more. 

This album is 29 minutes long. 

01 Instrumental (Sly & the Family Stone)
02 Thank You [Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin] (Sly & the Family Stone)
03 Time for Livin' (Sly & the Family Stone)
04 Family Affair (Sly & the Family Stone)
05 Dance to the Music - Music Lover - I Want to Take You Higher (Sly & the Family Stone)
06 If You Want Me to Stay (Sly & the Family Stone)
07 Stand (Sly & the Family Stone)
08 Loose Booty [Edit] (Sly & the Family Stone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/33DMJGwG

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/DC8HeURsd83rFpT/file

The cover image of Sly Stone is a screenshot I took from a video of this exact concert. Also, in the bottom left corner is a logo from the TV show that I plan to include for all the albums I post from the show.

McGuinness Flint - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 2-7-1975

Normally, when I ask if anyone has a certain music recording, I can't find, I don't get any takers. That's probably because the things I ask for are very hard to find. But here's a case where someone came through for me. A week or so ago, I posted an album of BBC studio sessions by the band McGuinness Flint. I noted that there was a 1975 BBC concert I couldn't find. A person going by the on-line name Progsprog sent me not one, but two different versions of the concert. So now I'm posting it. As a result, I've changed the name of the album I already posted, calling it "BBC Sessions, Volume 1."

The reason I was sent two recordings instead of one is because the BBC broadcast somewhat different versions at different times. The two versions were almost the same, but one of them had banter by BBC DJ Bob Harris, and other did not. And each version had one unique song. So I used the version with Harris for most of this, since his comments were from the actual concert (which I like) as opposed to later overdubs (which I don't). The one unique song from the other version of concert is "Catfish," at the end. That's why that one doesn't have a comment by Harris before it.

McGuinness Flint would break up later in 1975. According to the banter between songs, they were planning to release another album later that year. But due to the break-up, that album never came out. A couple of the songs here would have come out on that album: "Ain't No Sense," "Hey Woman," and "Mr. Money." They seem to be unreleased by the band, with their only known appearance here. 

This album is 31 minutes long. 

01 talk by Bob Harris (McGuinness Flint)
02 Ain't No Sense (McGuinness Flint)
03 talk by Bob Harris (McGuinness Flint)
04 [I Don't Like Your] Country Music (McGuinness Flint)
05 talk by Bob Harris (McGuinness Flint)
06 Siren Sadie (McGuinness Flint)
07 talk by Bob Harris (McGuinness Flint)
08 Hey Woman (McGuinness Flint)
09 talk by Bob Harris (McGuinness Flint)
10 Mr. Money (McGuinness Flint)
11 Catfish (McGuinness Flint)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Y1LfaWLM

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/FU6m56bgUG8q2xW/file

The cover photo shows the band in concert in 1973. I don't know other details.

Don McLean with the Persuasions - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 2-18-1975

I'm very psyched to be posting this album. This was on my list of "PBS Soundstage" episodes that I wanted but couldn't find. Happily, an anonymous helper who is a big Don McLean fan sent this to me. So hats to that person! So here it is, Don McLean with the Persuasions. 

I had only been able to find videos of a couple of songs on YouTube. But this version is complete. The visual quality of the file sent to me was very poor, but luckily the audio quality is pretty good, though not great.

I've already posted several albums by McLean, so I don't need to say a lot more about him. The Persuasions were one of the most popular mainly acappella musical acts, existing from 1962 until 2020. PBS Soundstage had a tradition of having a second act for many concerts. But McLean gave them a larger role than most second acts. They played four songs of their own in the middle of the concert, and then joined McLean for three songs at the end.

Here's their Wikipedia page:

The Persuasions - Wikipedia 

This album is not only unreleased, it's been extremely hard to find! So thanks again to the person who sent me a copy. As mentioned above, the sound quality is pretty good, but not great. There was some extra crackling on the first song that I got rid of using the Izotope 10 program. And there was a really bad glitch in the middle of "Vincent" where the entire recording went way out of key for a couple of seconds. Luckily, it was between vocal lines. I fixed it by patching in some music from elsewhere in the song. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title.    

This album is 58 minutes long.

01 Castles in the Air (Don McLean)
02 talk (Don McLean)
03 Homeless Brother (Don McLean)
04 talk (Don McLean)
05 All I Have to Do Is Dream (Persuasions)
06 talk (Persuasions)
07 Did You Stop to Pray (Persuasions)
08 Oh What a Night (Persuasions)
09 Lean on Me (Persuasions)
10 talk (Don McLean)
11 Vincent [Edit] (Don McLean)
12 American Pie (Don McLean)
13 Dreidel (Don McLean)
14 The Legend of Andrew McCrew (Don McLean)
15 talk (Don McLean)
16 Crying in the Chapel (Don McLean & the Persuasions)
17 Midnight Special (Don McLean & the Persuasions)
18 Happy Trails (Don McLean & the Persuasions)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/3MdPDWh2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/uI3CY17E6DD3ku8/file 

As I mentioned above, the image quality of the video was quite low. But I wanted an image of McLean with the Persuasions for the cover, so I took a screenshot from one of the last songs here. It's not great, but I think it gets the job done. It was helped a lot by the Krea AI program.

The Kinks - BBC Sessions, Volume 8: Old Grey Whistle Test, Shepherd's Bush Empire, London, Britain, 3-28-1977

I just posted a 1973 BBC concert by the Kinks. Now, I'm posting this 1977 BBC concert they did. These are the key parts of an overhaul of all the Kinks' BBC albums I've posted. All the volume numbers after the 1973 concert went up by one, and the volume numbers after this one went up by two. So, for instance, the last volume had been "Volume 10," but now that one is "Volume 12."

The reason for the change is that I wanted to post everything the Kinks did for the BBC, not just most of it. I had previously skipped this concert because I had already posted a concert they performed the previous month, in San Francisco. Being so close in time, all the songs here were performed in that one, plus that one is much longer, nearly two hours in length. So, if I were to pick just one, I'd pick that one. But this was a major TV appearance in Britain for the band, on the popular "Old Grey Whistle Test" BBC TV show, so it's worthy of inclusion in their BBC album series.

The first song, a medley of "You Really Got Me - All Day and All of the Night," was not actually broadcast as part of the TV show. Instead, it was just a warm-up number to help the band and the crowd get into a good mood. But somehow the recording of that survived, so it's included here.

Everything here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent.

As mentioned above, I highly recommend you redownload all the other albums in this series. Not only is there a lot of renumbering of the volume numbers in the titles, but I also made changes and improvements to all the album covers. Furthermore, I made some sonic improvements, such as getting rid of crowd noise on live songs that were included on mostly studio session albums.

This album is 46 minutes long. 

01 talk by Bob Harris (Kinks)
02 You Really Got Me - All Day and All of the Night (Kinks)
03 talk by Bob Harris (Kinks)
04 Sleepwalker (Kinks)
05 Life Goes On (Kinks)
06 talk (Kinks)
07 Stormy Sky (Kinks)
08 talk (Kinks)
09 Celluloid Heroes (Kinks)
10 talk (Kinks)
11 Muswell Hillbilly (Kinks)
12 talk (Kinks)
13 Full Moon (Kinks)
14 talk (Kinks)
15 Life on the Road (Kinks)
16 talk (Kinks)
17 Juke Box Music (Kinks)
18 talk (Kinks)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cy7T9ke2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/TGW8Poyvnhe8Lto/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

The Kinks - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Shepherd's Bush Empire, London, Britain, 1-24-1973

I'm doing an overhaul of all the BBC albums by the Kinks. For one thing, I redid all the album covers, making improvements. But also, I'm adding two albums I've previously missed, which means lots of renumbering. Here's the first added album. Obviously, the volume numbers of all the albums after this go up by one.

This is an appearance on the BBC TV show "In Concert." That's not to be confused with the many BBC radio shows also called "In Concert." I've posted lots of albums from this show. One thing about it is that it's only half an hour long. So this is a pretty short album.

Previously, I included four of the songs here on "Volume 3" in the Kinks' BBC album series. But I decided I should post the whole show. So I removed those songs from "Volume 3." Instead, I largely replaced them with other songs from the same time, from the German "Beat Club" TV show. So if you're downloading this, you probably will want to redownload "Volume 3" to avoid duplication of the same versions of some songs.

Here's a link to that:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-kinks-at-bbc-alternate-version-1970.html 

For the last song, an instrumental version of "Village Green" was being performed while a BBC announcer described upcoming programs. I used the MVSEP program to remove the announcer's voice. But there was a little bit of sound loss in taking that out. Plus, the song faded out after less than a minute. But I salvaged what I could from it. That's why that one has "[Edit]" in its title.

Curiously, everything here is unreleased, which means the box set of the Kinks's BBC material, "At the BBC," skipped it. But the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 30 minutes long.

01 Victoria (Kinks)
02 Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues (Kinks)
03 talk (Kinks)
04 Dedicated Follower of Fashion (Kinks)
05 talk (Kinks)
06 Lola (Kinks)
07 Holiday (Kinks)
08 Good Golly, Miss Molly (Kinks)
09 You Really Got Me (Kinks)
10 All Day and All of the Night (Kinks)
11 Waterloo Sunset (Kinks)
12 talk (Kinks)
13 Village Green Preservation Society (Kinks)
14 Village Green [Instrumental Version] [Edit] (Kinks)

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

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/c5xcBWB0SXMlYaX/file

The cover image is from the exact concert. 

Jim Capaldi - Old Grey Whistle Test, New Victoria Theatre, London, Britain, 3-30-1976

Here's another album I recently discovered from the "Old Grey Whistle Test" BBC TV show. This is a concert by Jim Capaldi.

The British band Traffic was dominated by Steve Winwood, who did nearly all of the lead vocals, and cowrote most of the songs. But Jim Capaldi played a key role too, cowriting those songs with Winwood. When Traffic broke up in the early 1970s, Capaldi transitioned to a fairly successful solo career, showing himself to be a very capable lead singer as well.

At this point, his biggest success as a solo artist was a cover of the Everly Brothers classic "Love Hurts." Released in late 1975, his version made it all the way to Number Four in the British singles chart. That single also made his 1975 album, "Short Cut Draw Blood," a success. The songs "Goodbye Love," "Boy with a Problem," "Talkin' about My Baby," and "Keep On Trying" also come from that album. (Note that "Boy with a Problem" is about the drug problems of Traffic band member Chris Wood.)

Unfortunately for Capaldi, his solo career would be derailed by problems with his record company. Due to these problems, his next album wouldn't be released until 1978, which was an eternity in that era. Two of the songs here, "Short Ends" and "Elixir of Life," would eventually appear on that album, or the next one. Note that he didn't perform any Traffic songs here, though he usually did in his concerts. Probably that was because this was a relatively short concert, so some things had to be cut out.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. I found a video file of this concert, converted it to audio, and broke it into mp3s.

This album is 50 minutes long. 

01 talk by Bob Harris (Jim Capaldi)
02 Low Rider (Jim Capaldi)
03 talk (Jim Capaldi)
04 Love Hurts (Jim Capaldi)
05 talk (Jim Capaldi)
06 Goodbye Love (Jim Capaldi)
07 talk (Jim Capaldi)
08 Elixir of Life (Jim Capaldi)
09 talk (Jim Capaldi)
10 Boy with a Problem (Jim Capaldi)
11 talk (Jim Capaldi)
12 Short Ends (Jim Capaldi)
13 talk (Jim Capaldi)
14 Talkin' about My Baby (Jim Capaldi)
15 talk (Jim Capaldi)
16 Keep On Trying (Jim Capaldi)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/KCtgsrGB

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/NIxwqK01xdI2eTI/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took from this exact concert. I used the Krea AI program to improve the detail. 

Dickey Betts & Great Southern - Old Grey Whistle Test, BBC Television Theatre, London, Britain, 2-21-1978

Here's another album from a big number of recordings I recently discovered of the "Old Grey Whistle Test" BBC TV show. This one stars Dickey Betts, one of the main singer-songwriters and lead guitarists for the Allman Brothers Band.

At the time of this concert, the Allman Brothers Band had broken up. They'd hit the big time by 1973, and then they were overwhelmed by the usual problems of drugs and ego. They broke up in 1976, and stayed that way until about the summer of 1978. In the meantime, Dickey Betts formed the band Great Southern (after already putting out a solo album in 1974), and released new albums in 1977 and 1978. This concert took place about a month before the release of their 1978 album, "Atlanta's Burning Down," and featured three songs from it, "Leaving Me Again," "Back on the Road," and "Good Time Feeling." The other songs here are songs Betts first did as part of the Allman Brothers Band.

The music is unreleased, and the sound quality is excellent. I converted a video file to audio, then broke it into mp3s. The only problem is that the last song, "High Falls," cuts out after only about four minutes. This is a very long song, with the album version being 14 minutes long, so it was just getting started when it ended. 

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 talk by Bob Harris (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)
02 talk (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)
03 Leaving Me Again (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)
04 Back on the Road (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)
05 Good Time Feeling (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)
06 Jessica [Instrumental] (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)
07 Ramblin' Man (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)
08 talk by Bob Harris (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)
09 Southbound (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)
10 High Falls [Instrumental] (Dickey Betts & Great Southern)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hBGUtQyz

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/4pqjdfX6pnLlzWT/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. 

Randy Newman - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: Old Grey Whistle Test, BBC Television Theatre, London, Britain, 6-6-1978

Here's a short BBC concert by American singer-songwriter Randy Newman, from 1978. He performed this with a small band.

The Old Grey Whistle Test (OGWT) was a BBC TV show that ran from 1971 until 1987. It featured a lot of live music, especially rock and roll. Usually, each episode featured a couple of songs from several musical acts, but sometimes an entire episode would be devoted to a single act, like this concert I'm presenting here. I've previously posted some OGWT concerts here. I've just created a new label for OGWT, and I count 12 episode-length concerts, plus other songs from the show here and there. I've wanted to post more, but many of the ones I had been looking for I was unable to find.

However, a couple of days ago, I found a person on SoulseekQT who is sharing virtually all the available OGWT episodes from 1971 to 1980. (A small number appear to be lost, and even the official website for the show doesn't know the details for those.) I'm pretty happy about this. Expect me to celebrate by posting a bunch of OGWT-sourced albums in the coming days. The only snag is that these come as a single video file, so I have to concert them to audio and then cut them into mp3s, as I did with this one.

I'm starting posting these recently discovered OGWT concerts with this one, because it's one that I had been looking for for a long time. Randy Newman had been critically acclaimed since he released his first album in 1968. But his first wider commercial success happened in 1977, with the song "Short People." It went all the way to Number Two in the U.S. singles chart, held back from the top spot only by the mega-hit "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees. Curiously, the song didn't chart in Britain whatsoever. But it seems it still gave him enough fame to merit his first BBC concert. 

(And by the way, note that "Short People" was supposed to make fun of people making fun of short people, but a lot of people didn't understand his sarcasm. He has a lot of other sarcastic songs, such as "Political Science," performed here, which basically advocates global nuclear war.)

The music is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent.  

This album is 39 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On October 5, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I found a 1974 concert by him I'd previously missed, so I renamed the album to "Volume 2." 

01 talk by Bob Harris (Randy Newman)
02 Birmingham (Randy Newman)
03 talk (Randy Newman)
04 Leave Your Hat On (Randy Newman)
05 Texas Girl at the Funeral of Her Father (Randy Newman)
06 talk (Randy Newman)
07 Short People (Randy Newman)
08 Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear (Randy Newman)
09 talk (Randy Newman)
10 In Germany Before the War (Randy Newman)
11 talk (Randy Newman)
12 Political Science (Randy Newman)
13 talk (Randy Newman)
14 Rider in the Rain (Randy Newman)
15 I Think It's Gonna Rain Today (Randy Newman)
16 Rednecks (Randy Newman)
17 Guilty (Randy Newman)
18 Sail Away (Randy Newman)
19 It's Lonely at the Top (Randy Newman)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/tqsmQtMw

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/urJF9l92ZnuH3Wf/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. I took it from a BBC website page describing this concert (though the link the music is dead). The top of his head was cropped out, but I used Photoshop to extend the image.

Various Artists - MusiCares Tribute to Paul Simon, Century Plaza Hotel, Los Angeles, CA, 2-15-2001

The good news is, I have another MusiCares tribute concert to post. The bad news is, this is the last one I can find. Hopefully, some others will show up eventually. But in the meantime, here's a tribute to Paul Simon, from 2001.

Before I say anything about this album, I want to mention the MusiCares tributes I still can't find (or don't exist). With this one included, I've posted nine of them. But there are 23 more that I would still love to hear. Here's the list of the missing ones:

2025: Grateful Dead    
2023: Berry Gordy & Smokey Robinson
2022: Joni Mitchell
2020: Aerosmith
2018: Fleetwood Mac    
2017: Tom Petty    
2015: Bob Dylan
2009: Neil Diamond    
2008: Aretha Franklin
2007: Don Henley    
2004: Sting    
2003: Bono
2002: Billy Joel    
2000: Elton John
1999: Stevie Wonder
1998: Luciano Pavarotti
1997: Phil Collins
1996: Quincy Jones    
1995: Tony Bennett
1994: Gloria Estefan
1993: Natalie Cole
1992: Bonnie Raitt
1991: David Crosby 

Getting back to this concert, this actually has an audience bootleg source. All the other MusiCares concerts I've posted come from DVDs or TV. But don't worry much about the source issue. This is an unusually good sounding audience boot. Plus, I made some big improvements. I used the MVSEP program to get rid of all the audience noise during songs while keeping the audience cheering at the ends of songs. Then I ran all the songs through MVSEP again, boosting the lead vocals relative to the instruments. In my opinion, the end result is this sounds nearly as good as the other MusiCares concerts.

This followed the same formula as typical tribute concerts, with various guest stars singing cover versions, then an acceptance speech by Simon, and finally Simon played a couple of songs. But one thing that's a bit different is that Simon is friends with some professional comedians, so there was more comedy than normal for this kind of concert. In addition to Chevy Chase and Michael McKean acting as emcees, Steve Martin did about a five minute comedy routine while introducing Simon.

This unreleased album is an hour and 11 minutes long. 

01 talk (Chevy Chase)
02 You Can Call Me Al (Macy Gray)
03 talk (Chevy Chase)
04 Born in Puerto Rico (Ruben Blades & Danny Rivera)
05 talk (Chevy Chase & Gloria Estefan)
06 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Gloria Estefan)
07 talk (Chevy Chase)
08 Mother and Child Reunion (Ziggy Marley)
09 talk (Chevy Chase)
10 American Tune (Shawn Colvin)
11 talk (Chevy Chase & Stevie Wonder)
12 Loves Me like a Rock (Stevie Wonder & the Dixie Hummingbirds)
13 talk (Michael McKean)
14 Tenderness (Shelby Lynne)
15 talk (Michael McKean & Brian Wilson)
16 The Sound of Silence (Brian Wilson)
17 talk (Michael McKean)
18 Homeward Bound (Joan Osborne & the Chieftans)
19 talk (Steve Martin)
20 Graceland (Paul Simon)
21 Late in the Evening (Paul Simon)
22 talk (Paul Simon)
23 The Boxer (Paul Simon)
24 talk (Paul Simon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/LydU3Q4g

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/EE3jBlACedR3V1o/file

The cover photo is from this exact event, though I think it was from backstage before or after the concert. There was some distracting stuff in the background, so I replaced that with blackness in Photoshop. From right to left: Tony Bennett, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Brian Wilson, and Shelby Lynne.

McGuinness Flint - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1970-1974

I'm continuing my effort to post BBC sessions of lesser known musical acts. Here's a BBC album by the British band McGuinness Flint. This consists entirely of studio sessions.

This also continues my efforts to post "Top of the Pops" sessions. (As usual, note that's a reference to the BBC radio show, not the BBC TV show of the same name. Note that every single song here is sourced from Top of the Pops sessions. However, the vast majority of these have been officially released on the album "Malt and Barley Blues." It's a pretty damn hard to find album, but it does exist. However, three of the songs are unreleased. Those are tracks 15, 16, and 17. I figure the reason they're unreleased is because they come from a short time when then band was actually called "Coulson, Dean, McGuinness & Flint," so one might argue they technically didn't belong on a McGuinness Flint album. Anyway, those three come from my great unknown source of Top of the Pops sessions. I believe those three haven't been available to the public until now.

McGuinness Flint was formed in 1970 by Tom McGuinness, a bassist and guitarist with Manfred Mann, and Hughie Flint, a drummer with John Mayall's band. It also included vocalist and keyboard player Dennis Coulson, and multi-instrumentalists and singer-songwriters Benny Gallagher and Graham Lyle. 

This caused a problem, because the band was named "McGuinness Flint," but in my opinion the main reason for their success was the songwriting of Gallagher and Lyle. The band had a big hit with their very first release in 1970, "When I'm Dead and Gone," which went all the way to Number Two in the British singles chart. The next year, they had another hit with "Malt and Barley Blues," which also made the Top Five in Britain. Both of those songs, plus most of their other songs from those years, were written by Gallagher and Lyle. So it wasn't surprise that Gallagher and Lyle left the band by the end of 1971 to start their own career as a duo. They would have a lot of success, though they didn't have more hit singles until 1976. They also would have success writing songs for each other. For instance, Lyle co-wrote "What's Love Got to Do with It," which was a Number One hit in the U.S. for Tina Turner in 1984.

After Gallagher and Lyle left, the band had trouble coming up with new material. For their next album, released in 1972, they had the smart idea of releasing an album, "Lo and Behold," consisting entirely of Bob Dylan songs that hadn't been released by Dylan yet at that time. That is represented by the three unreleased songs I mentioned above, when the band was briefly known as Coulson, Dean, McGuinness & Flint. The band then resumed as McGuinness Flint for two more albums, released in 1973 and 1974. But those flatlined with the public, not making the albums chart at all. The band then broke up in 1975.

Here's the Wikipedia page on the band:

McGuinness Flint - Wikipedia 

This album is an hour and six minutes long. 

UPDATE: On October 22, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same, but I changed the title (and cover art) to "Volume 1" after a second volume was found. 

01 When I'm Dead and Gone (McGuinness Flint)
02 Mister Mister (McGuinness Flint)
03 Bodang Buck (McGuinness Flint)
04 Dream Darlin' Dream (McGuinness Flint)
05 I'm Letting You Know (McGuinness Flint)
06 Heritage (McGuinness Flint)
07 Malt and Barley Blues (McGuinness Flint)
08 Conversation (McGuinness Flint)
09 Rock On (McGuinness Flint)
10 Who You Got to Love (McGuinness Flint)
11 Happy Birthday Ruthy Baby (McGuinness Flint)
12 Faith and Gravy (McGuinness Flint)
13 Mama Mine (McGuinness Flint)
14 Oh My Love (McGuinness Flint)
15 Get Your Rocks Off (Coulson, Dean, McGuinness & Flint)
16 Lo and Behold (Coulson, Dean, McGuinness & Flint)
17 Odd and Ends (Coulson, Dean, McGuinness & Flint)
18 Ride on My Rainbow (McGuinness Flint)
19 Rocking Chair (McGuinness Flint)
20 [I Don't Like Your] Country Music (McGuinness Flint)
21 Siren Sadie (McGuinness Flint) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2dNUn3e4

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/sMW5z4CDC6ESjMN/file

The cover photo is from a photo shoot taken at Manchester Square, in London, in December 1970. From left to right: Tom McGuinness, Graham Lyle (sitting in blue shirt), Hughie Flint, Benny Gallagher, and Dennis Coulson (sitting in brown jacket).

Robyn Hitchcock - Dylan's Royal Albert Hall 1966 Concert, The Borderline, London, Britain, 5-25-1996

On May 26, 1966, Bob Dylan gave a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London that became legendary. (Mostly that was due to a popular bootleg that actually turned out to be from a concert in Manchester a few days earlier, but the set list was the same.) Thirty years to the day (well, one day off), Robyn Hitchcock gave a concert in London with the exact same set list. So it was all Dylan covers. He later released much of this concert as the official album "Robyn Sings," but that had some problems I will explain shortly. This, in my opinion, is much better than the official album.

Before I go any further, I want to say this album posting wouldn't have happened without the editing work of musical associate Lil Panda. A couple of weeks ago, he emailed me and told me he'd made a bunch of improvements to this concert. Then I got his permission to post it here. I asked him to summarize what he did, and this was his response: "I separated the ambient audience from the music, left only the applause. Then did azimuth, phase correction, voice de-click, and a slight EQ boost." So kudos to him, because he's far better at that stuff than I am. Hell, I barely even know what azimuth is, much less how to fix it.

Now, let me explain how this compares to the official live album "Robyn Sings." In fact, only half of that album was taken from this concert at the Borderline, specifically, the second half. The first half was taken from a variety of concerts in 1999 and 2000, and consisted of all Dylan covers. In terms of exact overlap, the songs on both "Robyn Sings" and this album are tracks 12 to 24. That makes up about half of the total run time.

As I've said before, I much prefer full concerts to those taken from lots of different sources. I think that's a more honest live album. So just having the full concert here is a big improvement over the official album, in my opinion. But it also turns out the official album had numerous problems. Oddly for an official release, it clearly was taken from an audience bootleg type source. One can tell because of a constant background noise of the crowd all through the songs, as well as other problems. Lil Panda fixed most of those, as mentioned above. I also took the extra step of running all the songs through the UVR5 editing program, to get rid of the lingering ambient crowd noise that Lil Panda missed. So, in addition to this being more complete than the official album, it also sounds better. 

To quote Wikipedia, Dylan's 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert (which, as mentioned above, actually took place in Manchester) "is famous for Dylan's confrontational stance against a heckling audience who objected to his electric instrumentation." Hitchcock didn't talk much during this concert, as he usually does, to stick closer to the original comment. But some of his banter between songs actually repeat what Dylan said in the 1966 concert. For instance, at one point Dylan muttered incoherently until the unruly crowd quieted enough to try to make out what he was saying, and Hitchcock repeated that exactly.

Let's just say Hitchcock is an extremely big Dylan fan!

Oh, by the way, the last two songs, "Dignity" and "Queen Jane Approximately," are the only two songs not played in Dylan's 1966 concert, though they are Dylan covers as well. "Queen Jane Approximately" had been written at the time and could have been performed, but "Dignity" is a song Dylan wrote in the late 1980s.

Anyway, thanks again to Lil Panda for his work on this. Enjoy.  

This album is an hour and 30 minutes long. 

01 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 She Belongs to Me (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Visions of Johanna (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 4th Time Around (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Desolation Row (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 Tell Me, Momma (Robyn Hitchcock)
13 I Don't Believe You [She Acts like We Never Have Met] (Robyn Hitchcock)
14 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
15 Baby, Let Me Follow You Down (Robyn Hitchcock)
16 Just like Tom Thumb's Blues (Robyn Hitchcock)
17 Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat (Robyn Hitchcock)
18 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
19 One Too Many Mornings (Robyn Hitchcock)
20 Ballad of a Thin Man (Robyn Hitchcock)
21 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
22 Like a Rolling Stone (Robyn Hitchcock)
23 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
24 Dignity (Robyn Hitchcock)
25 Queen Jane Approximately (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/57SVUW36

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/6NXYau3lI9pt6uV/file

The cover photo is a still taken from the movie "Storefront Hitchcock," which was recorded in 1996. 

The O'Jays - BBC In Concert, Hammersmith Odeon, London, Britain, 2-5-1988

I didn't think I'd find any BBC concerts by the O'Jays, since the BBC isn't strong with American soul music. But I happened to come across this one, so here it is.

The O'Jays had their commercial peak in the 1970s, when the had eight Gold or Platinum albums in the U.S., and big singles like "Back Stabbers" and "Love Train." This concert took place in 1988. That happened near the end of their hit making years, with a Number One soul hit, "Lovin' You," in 1987. Curiously, that song wasn't included here. 

Instead, it's pretty much all 1970s hits. The pace is pretty relentless. There was no banter between songs whatsoever, and also almost no time for applause, except at the very end.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is very good. 

This album is 43 minutes long. 

01 Sing a Happy Song (O'Jays)
02 Use ta Be My Girl (O'Jays)
03 Your Body's Here with Me (O'Jays)
04 Love Train (O'Jays)
05 Living for the Weekend (O'Jays)
06 Stairway to Heaven (O'Jays)
07 Cry Together (O'Jays)
08 Make a Joyful Noise (O'Jays)
09 Back Stabbers (O'Jays)
10 For the Love of Money (O'Jays) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/DCZeFh2K 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/HqDrgFQZ9rxOMkg/file

The cover image shows the O'Jays in a concert in 1989. I don't know the details. 

Various Artists - MusiCares Tribute to Dolly Parton, Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA, 2-8-2019

Here's another MusiCares tribute concert. This one honors Dolly Parton.

I'm running out of MusiCares concerts to post. (I only have one more after this.) The problem is, these annual concerts have small audiences who have to pay big donations to get in, plus there are metal detectors. So audience bootlegs are almost unheard of. The reason we have a worthy recording of this one is that it was broadcast as a one-hour special on Netflix. I streamed the audio from that, and cut it into mp3s. Let's hope this isn't a one-off and other MusiCares will come out in similar ways.

This concert followed the usual format: guest stars singing covers of songs by the person being honored, then that person giving an acceptance speech, then that person playing a couple of songs. In this case though, it seems Parton only sang one song at the end.

Unfortunately, this album is quite short for such concerts at less than an hour. That's because some songs were not included in the Netflix special, and I couldn't find them elsewhere. I know at least Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood sang a duet version of  "Old Flames Can't Hold a Candle to You." I'm not sure if there are others. (As usual, if anyone has any of the missing songs, please let me know so I can include them.)

I also found it a bit surprising that Emmylou Harris didn't sing a song, since she was there. She and Linda Ronstadt gave a short introduction speech for Parton. Perhaps she did sing, and that's another missing song. Or it could be she didn't sing out of respect for Linda Ronstadt, who gave the introduction speech with her, but can no longer sing due to troubles with her vocal chords. Since Parton, Harris, and Ronstadt recorded two "Trio" albums together, it might have been rough on Ronstadt seeing the other two sing but not her. I don't know, that's just a guess. 

At least what we have here has excellent sound quality.

UPDATE: On February 19, 2026, I updated the mp3 download file. When I first posted this, it was missing "Jolene," performed by Pink. In my original notes, I commented that this was a shame, because that's one of Parton's signature songs, along with "I Will Always Love You." But a kind person sent me this missing song. Unfortunately, the sound quality is rougher than the rest. Also, it got cut off at the end. The person who sent me the song said it was taped off the TV, and that's when the broadcast ended, so maybe that's all that's available. As a result, I put it at the end. I did my best to improve the sound quality. I used the MVSEP program to split the vocals from the rest and then I ran the vocal through a Reverb Removal filter. That helped a lot, but still, there was only so much I could do.  

This album is 50 minutes long. 

01 talk (emcee)
02 Islands in the Stream (Miley Cyrus & Shawn Mendes)
03 talk (Little Big Town)
04 Everything's Beautiful in Its Own Way (Brandi Carlile & Willie Nelson)
05 Here You Come Again (Katy Perry & Kacey Musgraves)
06 The Grass Is Blue (Norah Jones with Puss n Boots)
07 talk (Little Big Town)
08 9 to 5 (Chris Stapleton)
09 Not Enough (Mavis Staples & Leon Bridges)
10 Do I Ever Cross Your Mind (Cam, Jennifer Nettles & Margo Price)
11 The Seeker (Lauren Daigle)
12 talk (emcee)
13 I Will Always Love You (Yolanda Adams)
14 talk (emcee)
15 talk (Linda Ronstadt & Emmylou Harris)
16 talk (emcee)
17 talk (Dolly Parton)
18 talk (Miley Cyrus)
19 talk (Dolly Parton)
20 Coat of Many Colors (Dolly Parton with Linda Perry)
21 Jolene [Edit] (Pink)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/SnahZw7a

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Fty1I7Lp5donyob/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From right to left: Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, and Dolly Parton. 

Diana Krall - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, Mermaid Theatre, London, Britain, 4-19-2004

By looking at what music I post and don't post, you may have noticed I'm not a big jazz fan. However, I do like some vocal jazz. And lately, I've been posting a lot of "various artists" tribute concerts, and one name I keep seeing on those is Diana Krall. (Six such concert appearances in the albums I've posted so far, and more to come.) I don't know much about her, but I do know she's one of the best selling jazz artists in recent decades, selling 15 million albums so far. I also know she's the wife of Elvis Costello. So, when I came across a BBC concert she did in 2004, I was interested enough to listen to it, and liked it enough to post it. Here it is.

I only found this as a single mp3 file. I had to track down the song list elsewhere. Then I broke it into individual mp3s. So I don't think this has been shared much at all, until now.

This concert took place less than a year after her marriage to Elvis Costello (which continues until this day, as I write this in 2025). Up until that point, Krall had only performed cover versions. But for her album "The Girl in the Other Room," released a couple of weeks prior to this concert, she cowrote about half of the songs with Costello. Only one of those made it into this concert, "Narrow Daylight," though some other songs from that album that she didn't have a hand in writing did as well, including "Almost Blue" by Costello.

The music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent.

This album is an hour and 30 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On December 16, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I changed the title because I found an earlier volume in this series that I'd missed. That meant the cover art and mp3 tags changed too. 

01 I Love Being Here with You (Diana Krall)
02 Do It Again (Diana Krall)
03 Love Letters (Diana Krall)
04 talk (Diana Krall)
05 Let's Fall in Love (Diana Krall)
06 talk (Diana Krall)
07 I've Got You Under My Skin (Diana Krall)
08 talk (Diana Krall)
09 Devil May Care (Diana Krall)
10 talk (Diana Krall)
11 Stop This World (Diana Krall)
12 talk (Diana Krall)
13 Almost Blue (Diana Krall)
14 talk (Diana Krall)
15 Temptation (Diana Krall)
16 Narrow Daylight (Diana Krall)
17 talk (Diana Krall)
18 Let's Face the Music and Dance (Diana Krall)
19 talk (Diana Krall)
20 Cry Me a River (Diana Krall)
21 Love Me like a Man (Diana Krall)
22 S'Marvellous (Diana Krall)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/AUMzmHge

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/KNkj0Uinpvh9Efx/file

The cover photo is from a concert she did in London in 2004. But it's from the Royal Albert Hall in November.

The Posies - Black Session, La Maison de la Radio, Paris, France, 3-1-1994

The Posies are one of my favorite bands that had their best years in the 1990s. I keep wanting to post more music from them, but it never seems to get to the top of my "to do list." But here, finally, is a concert from 1994, which was right around their peak of popularity and creativity, in my opinion.

Note that I have posted a couple other Posies albums, including this 1996 acoustic concert, which I posted back in 2018:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-posies-acoustic-duo-99x-fm-atlanta.html

My favorite studio album by the Posies is "Frosting on the Beater," released in 1993. So I've been wanting to post an album from just after that. Unfortunately, Posies bootlegs are rare and hard to find, since they're not nearly as popular as they should be. (In my opinion, they would have been huge if they had their careers about 20 years earlier, because their style didn't really fit with what was popular at the time.) I came across this bootleg, liked the sound quality, and decided to post it.

Unfortunately, I kind of regretted that decision, because I didn't realize how much work it would take to get it in good shape. The main problem is this was a broadcast from a French radio station. On the plus side, that meant soundboard level sound quality. But I've noticed that sometimes in continental Europe, DJs talk all over concerts like this to prevent them from becoming listenable bootlegs, and this was one such case. A DJ talked in French at every opportunity, including over the music, and sometimes even talking over the singing! Using the UVR5 audio editing program, I managed to get rid of his voice in most cases, although I had trouble with one instance of the talking over the singing. 

That's why I have "[Edit]" in the titles of three of the songs early on. Actually, I could have put that in the titles of most of the songs, but I only used it in the most egregious cases. This French DJ made the annoying BBC DJ Brian Matthew seemed restrained in comparison in the way he talked over the music. Ugh! 

But there was another big problem: about half of the song "How She Lied by Living" was missing. According to some notes about the bootleg I found, one source with the annoying talking French DJ ended right then, midway through the song. The rest of the concert is from a different source that had far less DJ talking for the remaining songs. But that second source didn't include the rest of this one song. So I found a different version from a concert in Toronto, Canada, in April 1995, and used that to patch in the missing part of the song.

Yet another problem was that the vocals were too low in the mix. So I fixed that for all the songs using the UVR5 audio editing program again. Furthermore, the applause after songs were often damaged as a result of the talking French DJ, or were sometimes missing altogether. I sometimes had to patch in good bits of cheering over bad or missing bits.

But, bottom line, the concert should be all fixed, and it makes for an excellent listen. This is the Posies in full band mode, when they were at their most rocking, as an effort to somewhat fit into the grunge sound of the time. (They were from Seattle, after all.) 

Note that four songs all covers: "I Am the Cosmos" by Chris Bell of Big Star, "Wiggly World" by Devo, "Song of a Baker" by the Small Faces, and "Black Night" by Deep Purple. (What diverse and good musical taste that shows, by the way.) All the others are originals, mostly from the "Frosting on the Beater" album.

This album is an hour and nine minutes long.

01 Definite Door [Edit] (Posies)
02 When Mute Tongues Can Speak [Edit] (Posies)
03 talk (Posies)
04 I Am the Cosmos (Posies)
05 Love Letter Boxes [Edit] (Posies)
06 Flavor of the Month (Posies)
07 talk (Posies)
08 Earlier than Expected (Posies)
09 Solar Sister (Posies)
10 Dream All Day (Posies)
11 Any Other Day (Posies)
12 talk (Posies)
13 Burn and Shine (Posies)
14 How She Lied by Living [Edit] (Posies)
15 talk (Posies)
16 Coming Right Along (Posies)
17 talk (Posies)
18 Lights Out (Posies)
19 Wiggly World (Posies)
20 Song of a Baker (Posies)
21 Black Night (Posies)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QUnzTUL8

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/uif1oYWJDoz9Lrs/file

The cover image of Jon Auer is from a concert at the Phoenix Festival in Stratford-upon-Avon, Britain, in July 1994. I wanted to use a photo showing both Ken Stingfellow and Auer, the band's two lead singers and songwriters, but this was the best image I found from 1994. It's a screenshot I took from a YouTube video.

Traffic - Fillmore East, New York City, 11-18-1970

Back in 2018, I posted an album of Traffic in concert from 1970, which I called "BBC Sessions, Volume 3." I included the four songs from this concert that weren't performed at that concert. But recently, I decided to post this concert in full. So here it is.

I suggest you download the latest version of that other 1970 concert I just mentioned. I updated it today. I didn't just remove the four songs at the end. I also added all the banter tracks between songs, which had been missing. Here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/04/traffic-paris-theatre-london-britain-4.html

Anyway, getting back to this concert, it's the one other great Traffic concert from 1970, in terms of sound quality. They are the only two soundboard recordings from that year, I believe. But there were some problems with this one, which is a reason why I didn't post it previously. However, I now have fixed those problems.

The main problem was that while the music was all there (with one exception, which I'll get to), the banter between songs was missing, and often even the cheering at the ends of songs were missing. However, it turns out the band performed at the Fillmore East the next day as well, and six songs from that were included on the 2011 deluxe edition of the "John Barleycorn Must Die" album. So I used those songs to get the banter and applause whenever possible. For instance, I used the November 18th version of "Medicated Goo," but pasted in the applause from the November 19th version at the end. For some songs that otherwise didn't have applause (since only a few of the November 19th versions have been released), I just recycled and patched in what applause there was in ways that you hopefully won't notice.

So that was one problem licked. Another problem is that a big chunk of the song "Glad" was missing - about six minutes. Luckily, the November 19th version was one of the released bonus tracks, so I used that version to patch it in. Frankly, you can hear this November 18th version has better sound quality than the patched in November 19th section in the middle, so I wonder why they didn't release November 18th tracks instead. But I digress.

There was yet another problem. While the recording quality was excellent, to be sure, worthy of an official live album, the vocals were low in the mix. I used the UVR5 audio editing program to bring those up.

The end result is that this sounds better than ever before, perhaps making it the best live Traffic concert recording out there. Many of the same songs were played as on the BBC concert from earlier in the year, but this has four more songs. Plus, that concert took place over six months earlier. In the meantime, Traffic went from a trio to a quartet, thanks to the addition of Ric Grech on bass. That allowed the others to be freer with their soloing, when they didn't have to do the work of the bass player as well.

The songs here are generally unreleased. But note there are bits and pieces that come from the November 19th versions, as mentioned above. The sound quality is truly excellent now.   

This album is an hour and 11 minutes long. 

01 talk by Bill Graham (Traffic)
02 Medicated Goo (Traffic)
03 Pearly Queen (Traffic)
04 talk (Traffic)
05 Empty Pages (Traffic)
06 Heaven Is in Your Mind (Traffic)
07 talk (Traffic)
08 [Roamin' thro' the Gloamin' With] 40,000 Headmen (Traffic)
09 John Barleycorn [Edit] (Traffic)
10 Who Knows What Tomorrow May Bring (Traffic)
11 talk (Traffic)
12 Every Mother's Son (Traffic)
13 Glad - Freedom Rider [Edit] (Traffic)
14 Means to an End (Traffic)
15 Dear Mr. Fantasy (Traffic)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MVr3WG5P

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/UcfuG3VuBpSWbsu/file

The cover photo shows Steve Winwood at a concert at the Bristol University Students Union, in Bristol, Britain, on April 25, 1970. The original was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

John Sebastian & David Bromberg - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 12-9-1974

I recently posted a "PBS Soundstage" episode starring Donovan. I noted that another episode recorded that same day at the same location jointly starred John Sebastian and David Bromberg, which allowed Donovan to have them as guests on one of his songs. A commenter noticed that and asked me to post the Sebastian and Bromberg show sooner rather than later. So here it is.

Sebastian and Bromberg are singer-songwriters. (Both are still alive as I write this in 2025.) Sebastian had a lot more success than Bromberg, first with his band the Lovin' Spoonful in the 1960s, and then with his Number One smash "Welcome Back" in 1976. Bromberg did a lot more work as a session musician in the 1970s, while also releasing a series of solo albums.

At first glance, there doesn't appear to have been much connection between these two. For instance, they never put out an album together, or were in a band together. According to their banter between songs in this concert, they were working on a studio album, said to be called "Fish and Fire." I don't know if that was supposed to be a Sebastian album or Bromberg album or what, but no such album ever came to be. However, I did notice that in later years, meaning 1980s and after, they did tour together sometimes.

In any case, they were very collaborative in the concert. The first half was dominated by Bromberg and the second half by Sebastian, but both of them generally played on all the songs.

Generally speaking, the sound quality is pretty good, though not great. The only major problem I had was the last song, "Summer in the City," which was a Number One hit by the Lovin' Spoonful in the 1960s. Unfortunately, it got cut off before the song ended. I couldn't find another version from around this time. But I patched in a part from earlier to at least give it a better sounding ending.

This album is 48 minutes long. 

01 Hard Working John [Instrumental] (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
02 talk (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
03 Don't Put That Thing on Me (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
04 talk (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
05 Si Bheag, Si Mhor [Instrumental] (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
06 Nobody's (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
07 talk (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
08 I'm a Hog for Ya Baby (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
09 Stealin' (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
10 Guitar and Harmonica Duet [Instrumental] (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
11 talk (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
12 Friends Again (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
13 Harmonica Song [Instrumental] (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
14 Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
15 You Didn't Have to Be So Nice (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
16 Do You Believe in Magic (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
17 talk (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)
18 Summer in the City [Edit] (John Sebastian & David Bromberg)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xv13TJvj

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/hrzGeMuWIm5iie4/file

I couldn't find any photos or video footage from this exact concert. But I as I mentioned above, Sebastian and Bromberg guested on a song in a Donovan concert recorded that same day. I managed to find a moment in it showing just Sebastian (playing harmonica) and Bromberg (playing guitar). So I took a screenshot of that. It was pretty low-res and blurry video footage though, so I ran the image through the Krea AI program. 

Suzanne Vega - Close-Up on Suzanne Vega Album (2012) (A MIKE SOLOF GUEST POST)

This was an idea of guest poster Mike Solof. Between 2010 and 2012, Suzanne Vega rerecorded many of her earlier songs in acoustic mode, and then released them as four albums, each with different themes. Mike noticed that all of the songs from her 1985 self-titled debut album were included. So he gathered them all, then reordered them to the same order as the original album. Finally, he added "Left of Center," which was only released on a movie soundtrack in 1986.

The result is an alternate version of her 1985, with a more acoustic sound. So it's just a nice option if you want to hear that album in a different way sometimes. 

As usual, Mike has more info (and photos) in the PDF file included with the download. 

This album is 42 minutes long. 

01 Cracking (Suzanne Vega)
02 Freeze Tag (Suzanne Vega)
03 Marlene on the Wall (Suzanne Vega)
04 Small Blue Thing (Suzanne Vega)
05 Straight Lines (Suzanne Vega)
06 Undertow (Suzanne Vega)
07 Some Journey (Suzanne Vega)
08 The Queen and the Soldier (Suzanne Vega)
09 Knight Moves (Suzanne Vega)
10 Neighborhood Girls (Suzanne Vega)
11 Left of Center (Suzanne Vega)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/oJ5agEih 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/devWB7lK6MqdMWd/file

For the album cover, Mike and I wanted something similar to the original album cover, but different. That one had a black and white photo of Vega in the middle, with the names of the songs on the sides. I colorized the photo, using the Kolorize program. Then I enlarged it instead of keeping the song titles. Finally, I made some changes to the text.

Richard Thompson Album Updated

A week ago as I write this, I posted a "BBC Sessions, Volume 6" album for Richard Thompson, which you can find here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2025/10/richard-thompson-bbc-sessions-volume-6.html 

A couple of days ago, an anonymous commenter said they had a different version that was missing two songs, but also had two other songs. They kindly sent that version to me, and sure enough, it was the same concert. I went through that version and added the two extra songs, plus some other banter, and reordered the songs a bit, and so forth. So if you downloaded the album already, I suggest you do it again to get this improved version. 

Various Artists - A Celebration of Townes Van Zandt, University of Texas at Austin, Austin City Limits, Austin, TX, 12-7-1997

Here's something I only recently discovered, so it went to the top of my pile of albums to post, while it was still fresh in my mind. It's a tribute to singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt, from 1997.

Van Zandt died on January 1, 1997 from heart failure. That wasn't that surprising, since he fit the profile of a "live hard and die young" kind of person. He had addictions with alcohol and heroin pretty much is entire adult life, and was manic depressive as well. But he was a much beloved figure in the Texas country music community. So most of his musical friends took part in this concert, put on by the "Austin City Limits" TV show, to honor his legacy.

As you can see from the cover photo, all the various singers were arranged in a large semi-circle facing the audience. There was a largely unseen band in the background supporting them. Each performer generally got one song, though Guy Clark got two, and sometimes there were duets or backing vocals.

If you're not familiar with the songwriting of Van Zandt, this is a good way to learn his best known songs. He didn't write many hit songs (with "Pancho and Lefty" being a big exception), but his songs were often covered by other country artists due to their quality.

As far as I know, everything here is unreleased. I found this on YouTube, converted it to audio, and broke it into mp3s. The sound quality is very good.  

This album is 51 minutes long. 

01 To Live Is to Fly (Guy Clark)
02 talk (Guy Clark)
03 talk (Peter Roman)
04 No Lonesome Tune (Peter Roman with Nanci Griffith)
05 talk (Steve Earle)
06 Ft. Worth Blues (Steve Earle)
07 talk (Steve Earle)
08 talk (Nanci Griffith)
09 Tecumseh Valley (Nanci Griffith)
10 talk (John T. Van Zandt)
11 Highway Kind (John T. Van Zandt)
12 talk (John T. Van Zandt)
13 talk (Willie Nelson)
14 Pancho and Lefty [Edit] (Willie Nelson & Emmylou Harris)
15 talk (Emmylou Harris)
16 If I Needed You [Edit] (Emmylou Harris with Steve Earle)
17 talk (Rodney Crowell)
18 Heavenly Houseboat (Rodney Crowell with Emmylou Harris)
19 talk (Lyle Lovett)
20 Lungs (Lyle Lovett with Steve Earle)
21 talk (Lyle Lovett)
22 talk (Jack Clement)
23 For the Sake of the Song (Jack Clement)
24 talk (Guy Clark)
25 Don't Take It Too Bad (Guy Clark)
26 talk (Guy Clark & Susanna Clark)
27 White Freightliner (Everybody)
28 talk (Guy Clark)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/peaMv6Ki 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/fAfL3f83E5vmOhc/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From right to left: Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Guy Clark, John T. Van Zandt, Nanci Griffith, Steve Earle, and Peter Rowan. The others were part of the circle (on the other side of Harris). But I chose not to fit them in, because if I did, everyone would have looked significantly smaller.

Farm Aid, Huntington Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, MN, 9-20-2025, Part 12: Willie Nelson and Family

Here's the 12th and final album I'm posting from the 2025 Farm Aid benefit concert. This is a set by country legend Willie Nelson. 

I credited it to "Willie Nelson and Family" in part because that's how he was actually billed as, but also because it fits. Not only did family members like his songs Micah and Lukas Nelson play on all the songs, but Micah Nelson sang lead on one of the songs ("Everything Is Bullshit") and band member Waylon Payne sang lead on another ("Help Me Make It through the Night"). 

At the time of this concert, Nelson was a remarkable 92 years old! It's pretty amazing to be that damn old and still be headlining a concert with lots of big names like this one. Unfortunately, I have to say that age has been affecting his voice. He largely dodged this issue by singing songs that didn't challenge his vocal range, but still, sometimes it was hard not to notice as I listened to this.

This set was the longest one from the concert by about ten minutes. For the last three songs, Nelson was joined on stage by most of the other stars from the concert (other than the elusive Bob Dylan), though it isn't that obvious on the song performances.

For some reason, the YouTube feed that I recorded of the entire concert went silent about 2/3rds into Nelson's set. That delayed my posting of the entire concert. Just when I was starting to worry that I'd have to only post part of this set, the whole set finally showed up on bootleg sites. So all's well that ends well. 

This was a particularly impressive Farm Aid, in my opinion, in terms of the quality of the musical acts that performed in it. Let's hope they raised a lot of money to help farmers, and that next year's concert will be as good, or better. 

This album is 53 minutes long. 

01 Whiskey River (Willie Nelson & Family)
02 talk (Willie Nelson & Family)
03 I Never Cared for You (Willie Nelson & Family)
04 Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground (Willie Nelson & Family)
05 talk (Willie Nelson & Family)
06 Will You Remember Mine (Willie Nelson & Family & Lily Meola)
07 On the Road Again (Willie Nelson & Family)
08 talk (Willie Nelson & Family)
09 Just Breathe (Willie Nelson & Family)
10 Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys (Willie Nelson & Family)
11 Georgia on My Mind (Willie Nelson & Family)
12 Help Me Make It through the Night (Willie Nelson & Family)
13 talk (Willie Nelson & Family)
14 Everything Is Bullshit (Willie Nelson & Family)
15 Last Leaf (Willie Nelson & Family)
16 Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die (Willie Nelson & Family)
17 Will the Circle Be Unbroken - I'll Fly Away (Willie Nelson & Family)
18 It's Hard to Be Humble (Willie Nelson & Family)
19 talk (Willie Nelson & Family)
20 I Saw the Light (Willie Nelson & Family)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/v6T9ow9c

alternate:

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

The cover image is from this exact concert.

Farm Aid, Huntington Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, MN, 9-20-2025, Part 11: Neil Young

We're getting near the end of the albums I'm posting from the 2025 Farm Aid benefit concert. This is the 11th out of 12 albums I'm posting from it. This one is a set by Neil Young, backed by his latest band, the Chrome Hearts.

Young was 79 years old at the time of this concert, and frankly he was looking it, but he was still singing and playing lead guitar very capably. Most of the songs were older classics. However, he played one new song, "Big Crime," which was released in a live version earlier in September 2025. It is a scathing criticism of President Trump's many illegal actions.

This album is 38 minutes long. 

01 talk by emcee (Neil Young)
02 Big Crime (Neil Young)
03 Rockin' in the Free World (Neil Young)
04 Long Walk Home (Neil Young)
05 talk (Neil Young)
06 Be the Rain (Neil Young)
07 talk (Neil Young)
08 Southern Man (Neil Young)
09 Hey Hey, My My [Into the Black] (Neil Young)
10 Old Man (Neil Young)
11 talk (Neil Young)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/aHFCtB3s

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/xqiq9XCMK5KsHct/file 

The cover photo is from this exact concert. 

Boz Scaggs - Live at the Record Plant, Paramount Theater, Oakland, CA, 3-10-1974

Here's another episode of the "Live at the Record Plant" radio show, starring Boz Scaggs in 1974 (with a guest appearance on lead guitar by Steve Miller on the last song). But note this is an actual concert from a concert venue, not the usual show recorded in a recording studio before little to no audience.

I've done some digging about this radio show, and I found that, sometimes, it had a mobile recording unit that recorded concerts in Bay Area concert venues. Apparently, this became more common after 1975, when the host of the show, Tom Donahue, died of a heart attack. However, it's been very hard for me to figure out which concerts were broadcast as part of this show, versus other ones broadcast by the same radio station in that era, KSAN, that weren't part of the show. This is just about the only concert I've found so far where I found a mention that confirmed it was part of the "Record Plant" radio series. If anyone has any further information about this, please let me know. Then I could post more such concerts, and properly label them.

At the time of this concert, Scaggs was only moderately popular. His most recent studio album, "Slow Dancer" in 1974, was his first one to go Gold in the U.S. (meaning sales topping 500,000). But the next album he'd released in 1976, "Silk Degrees," would go to Number One in the U.S. and sell over 5 million copies, turning him into a big star. So this is a good long look at his concerts before "Silk Degrees."

The sound quality here is fantastic for a bootleg from this era, easily good enough for an official live album. One can tell this isn't just a soundboard, but a professionally recorded one. The lead vocals were low on a few songs, but I fixed that with the UVR5 audio editing program.

This album is an hour and 41 minutes long. 

01 talk by emcee (Boz Scaggs)
02 Near You (Boz Scaggs)
03 Just Don't Want to Be Lonely (Boz Scaggs)
04 Runnin' Blue (Boz Scaggs)
05 Painted Bells (Boz Scaggs)
06 Moments (Boz Scaggs)
07 Monkey Time (Boz Scaggs)
08 Downright Women (Boz Scaggs)
09 Might Have to Cry (Boz Scaggs)
10 Dinah Flo (Boz Scaggs)
11 talk (Boz Scaggs)
12 You Make It So Hard [To Say No] (Boz Scaggs)
13 Sail On White Moon (Boz Scaggs)
14 Angel Lady [Come Just in Time] (Boz Scaggs)
15 There Is Someone Else (Boz Scaggs)
16 Pain of Love (Boz Scaggs)
17 Take It for Granted (Boz Scaggs)
18 Let It Happen (Boz Scaggs)
19 Hercules (Boz Scaggs)
20 Slow Dancer (Boz Scaggs)
21 talk (Boz Scaggs)
22 I'll Be Long Gone (Boz Scaggs)
23 talk (Boz Scaggs with Steve Miller)
24 I'm Easy (Boz Scaggs with Steve Miller)

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

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/j4mxDpr57PxGGAz/file

The cover photo is from an appearance on the "Midnight Special" TV show in 1974. 

Farm Aid, Huntington Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, MN, 9-20-2025, Part 10: Bob Dylan

This is the tenth album I'm posting from the 2025 Farm Aid benefit concert. This is a set by Bob Dylan, with his band.

It seems Dylan has become increasingly reclusive as he gets older, for instance wearing hoodies at all his concerts. He's gotten particularly annoyed at people taking pictures with their cell phones, and generally being so focused on their phones that they don't pay much attention to the actual concert. In his own concerts, he has security carefully enforce a policy of not using cell phones. In an appearance at the Outlaw Music Festival earlier in the year, where he couldn't control cell phone use, he all but made himself invisible, hiding behind a piano and other equipment, and shining lights in a way so that he basically couldn't be seen.

Here's an article about his appearance at the Farm Aid concert by Rolling Stone Magazine: 

Watch Pro-Shot Footage of Bob Dylan's Masterful Farm Aid Set 

The article says: "He wound up wearing the hoodie, though not pulled as tightly around his face as it has been at recent shows, and he agreed to both the projection screens and the livestream. There weren’t closeups, the stage was pretty dark, and much of the stadium audience had a hard time seeing him clearly, but these were major concessions given his history. Very few Never Ending Tour shows have been professionally filmed like this, let alone broadcast on the Internet."

In terms of his performance, I was a bit disappointed that it was rather short, shorter than all the other major acts. And his song selection was pretty conservative, all 1960s classics plus "I Can Tell," a cover of a Bo Diddley song. Still, some Dylan is better than no Dylan, and the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is 23 minutes long. 

01 talk by John Mellencamp (Bob Dylan)
02 All Along the Watchtower (Bob Dylan)
03 I Can Tell (Bob Dylan)
04 To Ramona (Bob Dylan)
05 Highway 61 Revisited (Bob Dylan)
06 Don't Think Twice, It's All Right (Bob Dylan)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/CDHup6V1

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/G3rSkqbJ1kYm6UH/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. Note how Dylan is wearing a hoodie and generally shrouded in darkness. It took me a while before I could even find a decent photo showing this much of him.

Farm Aid, Huntington Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, MN, 9-20-2025, Part 9: John Mellencamp

Here's the ninth album from the 2025 Farm Aid benefit concert. It's a set by John Mellencamp.

I'm getting close to the end posting all the sets from the concert that got enough votes in the poll I made. The later the festival, the bigger the names of the stars, and sometimes the longer the sets.

Like Dave Matthews, who was the star of the set just before this one, Mellencamp hadn't released an album for the two years prior to the concert. He mostly stuck to older hits, with the most recent song being "Lawless Times," released in 2014 on the album  "Plain Spoken."

This album is 38 minutes long. 

01 talk by Dave Matthews (John Mellencamp)
02 Lawless Times (John Mellencamp)
03 Small Town (John Mellencamp)
04 Paper in Fire (John Mellencamp)
05 talk (John Mellencamp)
06 Longest Days (John Mellencamp)
07 Jack and Diane (John Mellencamp)
08 Rain on the Scarecrow (John Mellencamp)
09 Pink Houses (John Mellencamp)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/yNFYvjtu

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/7hkPw3vVmDYXsrM/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.