David Bowie - Under Pressure - Non-Album Tracks (1977-1982)

This album continues the Bowie stray tracks album series. But unlike in the early 1970s, when there was need for such an album every year or two, this album covers six years. Bowie put out some of the best albums of his career during that time, but there just don't seem to be as many non-album tracks as before, at least ones that have reached the public.

Furthermore, it's speculated that some of these many not fully date from this time period. What I mean is that "All Saints," "Some Are," "Abdulmajid," and "I Pray Ole" were all first released in the late 1990s as bonus tracks to late 1970s albums, and it's known that at least some overdubs were added at that time, but just how much is unclear. The very name of the song "Abdulmajid" is curious, since that the name of a woman Bowie was romantically involved with in the late 1990s (Iman, a.k.a. Zara Mohamed Abdulmajid), who he hadn't met yet in the 1970s. So it's similar to what the Rolling Stones did with some songs on their "Some Girls" and "Exile On Main St." deluxe versions, with some amount of long-after-the-fact tinkering. Anyway, they're good songs and at least the basics of them were recorded in the right time period, so I've included them.

I wasn't sure whether to include some or all of three other songs here: "The Man Who Sold the World," "Space Oddity," and "Panic in Detroit." The songs were originally done by Bowie in 1971, 1969, and 1973 respectively. For some reason, he revisited all three with new versions around 1979. I decided they're different enough, and enough time had passed from the original versions, to include them. Feel free to delete them from your versions of this album if you feel they aren't interesting enough.

For those who don't know, Bowie did two versions of the song "Cat People," one for the soundtrack to the movie of the same name, and one for his "Let's Dance" album in 1983. They're very different versions, mainly because the soundtrack version is done at a significantly slower pace, making it last over a minute longer.

I think this is going to be the last Bowie stray tracks album I'm going to make. I really like the "Let's Dance" album, but there are no stray tracks around it that I know of. Not only after that, in my opinion, the quality of his songwriting took a steep dive. For the rest of his career, I like the occasional song here and there instead of loving pretty much everything he did.

That said, I still have a lot of Bowie music to post. I have a whole series of albums based on his BBC performances, for instance (a lot more than what's been officially released). But that'll have to wait for another day.

01 Madman (David Bowie & Marc Bolan)
02 All Saints [Instrumental] (David Bowie)
03 Some Are (David Bowie)
04 Peace on Earth - Little Drummer Boy (David Bowie & Bing Crosby)
05 Abdulmajid [Instrumental] (David Bowie)
06 I Pray, Ole (David Bowie)
07 The Man Who Sold the World [Live] (David Bowie)
08 Space Oddity [1979 Version] (David Bowie)
09 Panic in Detroit [1979 Version] (David Bowie)
10 Crystal Japan [Instrumental] (David Bowie)
11 Alabama Song [Whisky Bar] (David Bowie)
12 Under Pressure (Queen & David Bowie)
13 Cat People [Putting Out Fire] [Soundtrack Version] (David Bowie)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15904884/DavidB_1977-1982_UndrPressure_atse.zip.html

I based the album cover on the cover of the "Under Pressure" single. That was all black, with the words of the artist and song title written in big white letters. Since the song was a collaboration between Queen and Bowie, I removed Queen from the text and recentered Bowie's name. Then I added a 1983 photo of Bowie on top, to fill up the vast black space.

Tom P*tty & the Heartbreakers - Live Cover Versions, 1981-1986

Yesterday, I posted the first of a bunch of albums of Tom P*tty and the Heartbreakers doing cover versions in concert. Here's the second in the series.

(Note that I'm not using the full name of this artist due to concerns about copyright issues.) 

As you can see from the song list, virtually all the songs are well known hits from the 1960s. The latest song is "I Can't Dance," written by country artist Tom T. Hall in 1970.  Two of the songs are soul classics, "Good Good Lovin'" by James Brown (not to be confused with "Good Lovin'" by the Rascals) and "I'm in Love" made famous by Wilson Pickett. Most of the rest are garage rock styled songs.

Four of the songs have been officially released, and six have not. Of the unreleased ones, some of them come from audience bootlegs, but the sound is generally very good to excellent.

There are two other songs with lower sound quality, so I've tacked them on as bonus tracks.

This album is 39 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks. 

I'm not including the track list due to copyright issues. But you can find it in the mp3 download file.  

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HQSDJGkX

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/l5CCLixA6mbMKJ2/file

I made the cover art from a concert poster.  I'm not sure what year it's from, but I'm guessing from the photo on it that it's from around this time. I had to make some major adjustments to get the rectangular shape into a square shape.

Tom P*tty & the Heartbreakers - Live Cover Versions, 1976-1980

Tom P*tty and the Heartbreakers loved to drop in cover songs in their concerts. I count well over 100 such songs. Usually, they were the classic songs they grew up with, mostly from the 1950s and 1960s. I've compiled a bunch of albums containing all of the live covered they did that I could find. After looking into this pretty closely, I think there are only about six cover versions I couldn't find, and most or all of those probably were never bootlegged. 

(Note that I'm not using the full name of this artist due to concerns about copyright issues.) 

I've organized this series of albums, and the songs within each album, chronologically. The sound quality is generally excellent. For two of the songs here, the sound quality wasn't as good as the others, so I've added those as bonus tracks. In some cases, such as the bonus tracks, we're lucky to have any recordings at all, because they were only played in concert once or twice.

I've been pretty aggressive in terms of removing all audience noise for the whole series. In retrospect, I kind of regret that, but it's too late to change now. (This grew out of me finding just the occasional cover song, which I added to compilations of his stuff with mostly studio tracks.)

Note also that I'm including all the covers he did live, even in the rare cases where he put covers on his studio albums. There aren't very many of those. ("I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better" from "Full Moon Fever" is one well-known example.) However, I didn't include cover songs if they were only done in the studio, since I put those on my Tom P*tty stray studio tracks albums already.

This album is 42 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks. 

I'm not including the track list due to copyright issues. But you can find it in the mp3 download file.  

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Bfib5RSf

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/80xtIEyQSU0IuDG/file 

For the cover art, I used a concert poster from 1978. I had to make some adjustments to get the rectangular shape to fit the square shape of covers.

Belle & Sebastian - Bird's Eye View - Non-Album Tracks (2011-2015)

This is the last of my Belle and Sebastian stray studio tracks albums. This only goes to 2015, but I haven't come across much at all in the way of stray studio tracks from them in the years since.

(I consider their three EPs called "How to Solve Our Human Problems" released in 2017 and 2018 as a de facto album and thus not eligible for this series. By the way, I suggest pretending the first EP doesn't exist and enjoy the other two. The first one is disco/dance music and is a failed experiment, in my opinion.)

Anyway, back to the music here. Belle and Sebastian had their heyday in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when they put out about an album a year (or the equivalent in EPs and singles and such). They've gradually slowed down since then, and lately only put out a new album about every four years or so. Partially, this is due to them spending more creative energies on solo projects. (That's reflected here, with eight of the 13 tracks not being credited to the band.) But they still put out very good music when they put their mind to it, either solo or as a band.

Surprisingly, a good portion of this album stars Stevie Jackson. He generally has only written and sung the occasional song. But this time period includes the release of his one and only solo album so far, and it's a very good one. So I've included a few songs from it, but also a couple of songs he performed around that time but strangely didn't include on the album.

Unfortunately, the amount of Isobel Campbell I've included has gone way down. From 2007 to 2013, most of her recorded music has been in the form of duets with Mark Lanegan. While interesting, I find it's vocally dominated by Lanegan, and too far from the Belle and Sebastian sound to merit inclusion, aside from the occasional track without Lanegan. Since 2013, she apparently ended her musical collaboration with Lanegan, but hasn't really released any new music at all.

Belle and Sebastian leader Stuart Murdoch has much less of a presence on this album than on previous compilations. He only sings lead on five of the songs here.

By the way, I do have more material from the band to post, in the form of live music and other things. That'll come later.

01 Pure of Heart (Stevie Jackson)
02 Richie Now (Stevie Jackson)
03 Bird's Eye View (Stevie Jackson)
04 Crash (Belle & Sebastian)
05 Try Me (Stevie Jackson)
06 Walk Away (Isobel Campbell)
07 Don't Hang That Picture on Me (Stevie Jackson)
08 Paper Laced with Gold (Stevie Jackson)
09 Invisible [Instrumental] (Stuart Murdoch & Isobel Campbell)
10 Born to Act (Belle & Sebastian)
11 Two Birds (Belle & Sebastian)
12 Piggy in the Middle (Belle & Sebastian)
13 A Politician’s Silence (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15602489/BellenS_2011-2015_BrdsEyeView_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I used a poster from Belle and Sebastian's 2015 tour. Since the poster is rectangular, I shortened the height of the flowers.

The Zombies - R.I.P. - Non-Album Tracks (1969)

The Zombies are still going strong, and just a few days ago they were inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In celebration of that, I've been rush releasing the stray tracks albums I've made of their 1960s career.

That career ended very strangely. Their classic album "Odessey and Oracle" was released in April 1968, but very few people paid attention, since the Zombies had pretty much faded into obscurity by then. The first two singles flopped. In March 1968, a third single, "Time of the Season," was released, and it too flopped. But then somehow in early 1969 it caught fire in the Us and Canada, going all the way to number one! (Strangely, it didn't make the charts in Britain at all).

The success of the song caused a lot of people to take a look at the album it was on, and realize how great that was too. Seemingly overnight, the Zombies became very popular. But unfortunately, the album was all recorded in 1967, and the band had broken up shortly thereafter. All the band members moved on to other things. As a result, there was no real band to tour, so a fake one went on the road pretending to be them for a while.

More importantly, there was a demand for a new Zombies album. Even though the band had broken up, they got back together just long enough to record a few songs. In addition, they took some unreleased songs from the 1964 to 1966 period and overdubbed more instruments on them to make them sound more up to date. I'm ignoring all of these overdubbed versions, because I generally prefer the originals, and the songs aren't changed that much anyway. They planned to call the album "R.I.P.", meaning "Rest in Peace," a reference to the fact the group was effectively dead and gone already.

Around the same time, Zombies lead singer Colin Blunstone was trying to get a solo career going. Starting out, he relied on the help of some of his former Zombies band mates. He even had a minor hit with a new version of the 1964 Zombies hit "She's Not There." I have included that, because I think it's different and interesting. Arguably, these Blunstone tracks were just as much Zombies songs as the other new songs the band was recording around the same time. So this album is a mix of both of those things.

As it so happened, record companies screwed with the Zombies again. The last album they had ready to go never did get released. (A version of it did come out in Japan, but decades later.) That version would have been very different to this one, since half of it would have been the overdubbed unreleased songs, which I didn't include at all. Personally, I think this is a much stronger album, and a worthy successor to "Odessey and Oracle."

It's also rather short, at 33 minutes. So I've added my three favorite Argent songs at the end as quasi-bonus tracks. Argent was the successor to the Zombies, because it was headed by Zombies keyboardist Rod Argent, while Zombies bassist Chris White didn't join the band, but he co-write a majority of their songs with Argent. The three extra songs make the album 45 minutes long in total.

This concludes all my albums of the 1960s Zombies. But note that I didn't post "Odessey and Oracle," and that's their best material of all, so if you like these, please get that one too.

01 She Loves the Way They Love Her (Zombies)
02 Imagine the Swan (Zombies)
03 Smokey Day (Zombies)
04 Girl Help Me (Zombies)
05 I Could Spend the Day (Zombies)
06 Conversation Off Floral Street [Instrumental] (Zombies)
07 She's Not There [1969 Version] (Zombies)
08 Without Her (Zombies)
09 Twelve Twenty Nine (Zombies)
10 It Never Fails to Please Me (Zombies)
11 Telescope [Mr. Galileo] (Zombies)
12 World of Glass (Zombies)
13 Liar (Argent)
14 Pleasure (Argent)
15 Hold Your Head Up (Argent)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701166/TZOMBIS1969_RIPAlbum_atse.zip.html

The album cover here was designed by someone named "idesignalbumcovers." It's not what the cover was supposed to look like at all, but a recent creative invention. Still, I thought it looks pretty cool, so I decided to use it.

Bob Dylan & the Band - More Basement Tapes - Non-Album Tracks (1967)

In 1967, Bob Dylan and the Band recorded a huge amount of music that would become known as "The Basement Tapes." None of it was released at the time. But a two album compilation was released in 1975, and is included on many best albums of all time lists. A few songs were released here and there, such as "The Mighty Quinn" or "I'm Not There," but only a few.

Then, in 2014, the archival box set "The Bootleg Series Vol. 11: The Basement Tapes Complete" came out. It's huge! It contains 138 recordings of 115 different songs, the vast majority of them previously unreleased. That totals over six and a half hours of music. All that is great, but it's actually too much of a good thing for me, unless I'm in a rare mood to take a really deep dive into this phase of Dylan's career.

A much shorter two CD version was released as well. But the problem with that is that there's a big overlap between the music on that and the 1975 version. I grew up on that 1975 album and I know all those songs really well. What I wanted was a compilation containing the best songs of everything NOT on that album (including the few that did get released here and there on other albums over the decades), with an emphasis on Dylan's original songs. Frankly, most of those six and a half hours are Dylan and the Band running through cover versions without knowing them well. It's for serious fans only.

Since I didn't see any collection like that, I made my own, which is this one. It turns out it's nearly exactly the same length as the 1975 "Basement Tapes" double album, except it's all different songs. (Almost: I included an early version of "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" because the lyrics are almost entirely different. Plus, I included "Don't Ya Tell Henry," but this version of a Dylan original is sung by Dylan, whereas the 1975 version is sung by the Band.)

All but a few of the songs are Dylan originals. I believe the only cover versions are: "I Don't Hurt Anymore," "All American Boy," and "900 Miles from My Home." I ordered the songs in the order they were recorded, just as the box set did.

In my opinion, this album isn't as good as the 1975 "Basement Tapes," but it's a damn good album nonetheless. There are lots of songs here that could and should have been included on the 1975 one but weren't because Band guitarist Robbie Robertson put that album together and he didn't happen to fancy them. Then the songs languished in obscurity for decades, except for a lucky few. Although the 2014 box set helped, many have continued to be obscure because they were buried in a mountain of music that only serious Dylan fans have gone through carefully. This album should be as well known as Dylan's other 1960s albums.

By the way, this album is an hour and 23 minutes long, whereas the 1975 album is an hour and 17 minutes long.

01 Under Control (Bob Dylan & the Band)
02 I'm Your Teenage Prayer (Bob Dylan & the Band)
03 I Don't Hurt Anymore (Bob Dylan & the Band)
04 Baby, Won't You Be My Baby (Bob Dylan & the Band)
05 I Can't Make It Alone (Bob Dylan & the Band)
06 One for the Road (Bob Dylan & the Band)
07 I'm Alright (Bob Dylan & the Band)
08 I'm Not There (Bob Dylan & the Band)
09 You Ain't Goin' Nowhere [Take 1] (Bob Dylan & the Band)
10 I Shall Be Released (Bob Dylan & the Band)
11 The Mighty Quinn [Quinn the Eskimo] (Bob Dylan & the Band)
12 All-American Boy (Bob Dylan & the Band)
13 Sign on the Cross (Bob Dylan & the Band)
14 Get Your Rocks Off (Bob Dylan & the Band)
15 Don't Ya Tell Henry [Dylan Vocal] (Bob Dylan & the Band)
16 My Woman She's A-Leavin' (Bob Dylan & the Band)
17 Santa Fe (Bob Dylan & the Band)
18 Dress It Up, Better Have It All (Bob Dylan & the Band)
19 Minstrel Boy (Bob Dylan & the Band)
20 Silent Weekend (Bob Dylan & the Band)
21 What's It Gonna Be When It Comes Up (Bob Dylan & the Band)
22 900 Miles from My Home (Bob Dylan & the Band)
23 Wild Wolf (Bob Dylan & the Band)
24 Gonna Get You Now (Bob Dylan & the Band)
25 All You Have to Do Is Dream (Bob Dylan & the Band)
26 Any Time (Bob Dylan & the Band)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15105790/BobD_1967b_MoreBasemntTapes_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I got lucky. It appears an alternate photo of the cover art for the 1975 "Basement Tapes" album was taken at the same photo session, and then never used. So that's what I have here, with some text added. It was a wide rectangular photo, so I had to crop some of it in order to fit it in a square space.

Bobbie Gentry - Thunder in the Afternoon - Non-Album Tracks (1972-1978)

Bobbie Gentry has had a severely underestimated musical career. Most people probably think of her as a one hit wonder if they know of her at all, due to her 1967 number one smash "Ode to Billie Joe." But she had a lot more success than that, including another number one hit in Britain, and she wrote most of her own songs. That was highly unusual for a female single back in the 1960s (or for a long time after that).

I think a big reason she's underestimated is because what happened to her career after 1971. From 1967 to 1971, she released at least one album a year. But then she turn to producing and starring in her own Las Vegas stage shows for the rest of the 1970s, and almost entirely stopped writing or recording new music. Then, stranger still, in 1981 she quit show business entirely. She's lived in seclusion ever since, to the point that she hasn't even given a single interview since then!

In 2018, a big box set called "The Girl from Chickasaw County" was released. It's received a lot of praise and awards as the best archival release of the year, and it's caused many to take Gentry's career more seriously. But unfortunately, it includes most, but not all of her recorded output. The biggest problem is she switched record companies in 1972, and only recorded a little bit after that. So those post-1972 recordings aren't included.

That's what this album is for. I've included the A- and B-sides of a 1972 single that has been included on the box set, because those songs didn't come out on any albums otherwise. Then I have two songs recorded in 1974 and 1975 respectively. Tracks 5 and 6 are from a 1977 appearance on the TV show "Des O'Connor Tonight," which includes a duet with Des O'Connor on the song "Until It's Time for You to Go." But the remainder of this album, tracks 7 through 11, comes from an album session she had in 1978. It's generally known as the "Thunder in the Afternoon" session, which is why I gave this album that title. Unfortunately, only two songs were released at the time, as the A- and B-sides of a flop single. Three more were released on compilations many years later. Whatever else was recorded then has stayed in the vaults.

I wouldn't have bothered with this album if the songs were bad or only okay, but I think this is some of Gentry's best stuff! Some songs suffer a bit from dated late 1970s production values, but not too much, and the quality of the songs shine through.

UPDATE: On August 12, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. I added two songs I'd missed, "Until It's Time for You to Go," and "What'll I Do," after randomly stumbling across them on YouTube.

01 The Girl from Cincinnati (Bobbie Gentry)
02 You and Me Together (Bobbie Gentry)
03 Another Place, Another Time (Bobbie Gentry)
04 Salome Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear (Bobbie Gentry)
05 Until It's Time for You to Go (Bobbie Gentry & Des O’Connor)
06 What'll I Do (Bobbie Gentry)
07 Steal Away (Bobbie Gentry)
08 He Did Me Wrong, but He Did Right (Bobbie Gentry)
09 Slow Cookin' (Bobbie Gentry)
10 Sweet Country (Bobbie Gentry)
11 Thunder in the Afternoon (Bobbie Gentry)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/shU9CUwV

alternate:

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

In putting this album together, I stumbled across the official Bobbie Gentry website (http://bobbiegentry.org.uk). I really liked the main background photo they used there, including a green coloring they added to it. So I decided to use that as the cover of this album. I even kept the coloring and font of her name.

Brinsley Schwarz - Got to Be Real - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1972)

Who or what the heck is "Brinsley Schwarz" you may ask. They're not a very well known band. But I'm big fan of Nick Lowe's career, especially his work both solo and as part of Rockpile in the late 1970s. I plan on posting a lot of that. But before I do that, I think it makes sense to move chronologically, starting with his role in Brinsley Schwarz.

"Brinsley Schwarz" is both the name of a band and one of the band members. But, much like "Manfred Mann," it's a bit odd that the band was named after him, because he wasn't the most important person in the band. He was a guitarist and did some songwriting and vocals, but most of the songwriting and lead vocals were done by Lowe. Brinsley Schwarz were one of the top "pub rock" bands in Britain in the 1970s, but that genre remained obscure outside of Britain, and they never had a hit anywhere, so they've remained pretty obscure until today. (They did record the first versions of the Nick Lowe originals "Cruel to Be Kind" and "(What's So Funny 'bout) Peace, Love and Understanding" though.)

If you like Lowe's earlier rocking style, this is basically more of the same thing, and it's just as good. On their studio albums, they mostly did originals. These stray tracks, however, are nearly all cover versions. But that's fine, because they had a knack for picking good obscure material and making it their own.

01 She's Got to Be Real (Brinsley Schwarz)
02 Having a Party (Brinsley Schwarz)
03 I'm Gonna Make You Love Me (Brinsley Schwarz)
04 Homework (Brinsley Schwarz)
05 Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad (Brinsley Schwarz)
06 Midnight Train (Brinsley Schwarz)
07 It's Just My Way of Saying Thank You (Brinsley Schwarz)
08 Wonder Woman (Brinsley Schwarz)
09 I'm Ahead If I Can Quit While I'm Behind (Brinsley Schwarz)
10 Run Rudolph Run (Brinsley Schwarz)
11 Hypocrite (Brinsley Schwarz)
12 You Got Me Hummin' (Brinsley Schwarz)
13 Mama Told Me Not to Come (Brinsley Schwarz)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17187634/BRINSLEYS1970-1972GttoBeRel_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/q8Xeuhvg

For the album cover, I used the cover of a Brinsley Schwarz bootleg, then changed the text.

UPDATE: On October 1, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

The Hollies - Wings - Non-Album Tracks (1968)

In the 1960s, the Hollies typically released at least one album of new studio material every year. They didn't release one in 1968, probably because key band member Graham Nash left the group at the end of that year to find bigger fame and fortune as part of Crosby, Stills and Nash (CSN). But they really should have, since they've released just enough material for such an album. Here's my version of it.

Most of the songs here are A- and B-sides, including two hit songs "Jennifer Eccles" and "Listen to Me." Another handful come from various rarities compilations. All of the songs are from when Nash was still in the band. One of the songs, "Blowin' in the Wind," would later appear in the 1969 album "Hollies Play Dylan," but ins an alternate version recorded with Nash.

I have some especially interesting and unreleased songs to end this album. One is a version of "Louisiana Rain" done with Bobbie Gentry for her BBC TV show. The song is written by Gentry and appears on one of her albums, but for this version, in my opinion, the Hollies actually do more of the singing.

The other unreleased song is the Hollie's version of Marrakesh Express. Nash would have a big hit with it with CSN in 1969, but he actually wrote it while he was still with the Hollies. The Hollies recorded a backing track for it, which has been bootlegged, but apparently never got around to adding vocals to it. Someone named "HolliesRareandUnreleased" has created a mash-up version using this Hollies backing track version with the vocals from an acoustic demo Nash made in 1968 that was released on the "Over the Years" archival collection in 2018.

The vocals and music match very well in my opinion, and it's mixed well. The only problems are that the drummer seems unsure about the best approach to take, so the rhythm isn't that great, and the usual Hollies backing vocals never got added. Still, it's pretty interesting to hear how the Hollies approached this song, which is fairly different from the CSN version.

By the way, squabbling over this song is one of the reasons Nash left the group, since the song has a hppie vibe to it (vacations to Morocco were very popular with hippie types back in those days) and Hollies were still square. Although they did wear hippie-style clothes sometimes, their hearts weren't in it and they still played cabarets in matching suits in 1968.

True, the Hollies were square and behind the times in 1968, but they still made great pop music, as this album shows.

This album is 41 minutes long.

UPDATE: On April 26, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file. I found a demo Graham Nash did in 1965 of a song the Hollies wrote for a different British band called the Mirage. This demo was recorded in 1965 to help the band learn the song. It actually was released on an archival Mirage album called "The World Goes On Around You." It doesn't fit in that well with the rest of this album chronologically, but I didn't have a better album to put it in.

I also added "Survival of the Fittest." This dates from a 1970 Hollies album of the same name, and it was recorded without Nash. But it's known there was a 1968 version done with Nash, but it's never been made publicly available. Surely song likely would have been included if the band released a 1968, so adding it here gives an idea what that might have sounded like.

01 Jennifer Eccles (Hollies)
02 Open Up Your Eyes (Hollies)
03 Listen to Me (Hollies)
04 Do the Best You Can (Hollies)
05 Blowin' in the Wind [Nash Version] (Hollies)
06 Like Every Time Before (Hollies)
07 Wings (Hollies)
08 Relax (Hollies)
09 Tomorrow When It Comes (Hollies)
10 Man with No Expression [Horses in a Rainstorm] (Hollies)
11 A Taste of Honey [Nash Version] (Hollies)
12 Louisiana Man (Bobbie Gentry & the Hollies)
13 Marrakesh Express [Edit] (Hollies)
14 Survival of the Fittest (Hollies)
15 Go Away [Demo] (Graham Nash)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15175575/THollis_1968_Wngs_atse.zip.html

I made the album cover from a publicity photo of the band dating to 1968.

The Zombies - I'll Call You Mine - Non-Album Tracks (1966-1967)

Here's the next in my series of stray tracks albums from the Zombies.

This album is very similar to the last one I posted in that it covers a time period in which the Zombies were failing to have much commercial success. In fact, as time passed and 1966 turned to 1967, their situation got worse and worse. Only one song here was recorded in 1967, a BBC performance of "The Look of Love," because the band pretty much dropped into total obscurity that year.

Luckily, a dramatic turnaround was just about to happen. In 1967, the Zombies changed record companies and scraped together enough money to record one final album, though they had to fund much of it out of their own pockets. That album, "Odessey and Oracle," would come out in early 1968 and would turn out to be an all-time classic. I'm not going to post that here, since any Zombies fan should have it already.

As with the last album in this series, in an alternate universe, the Zombies would have had much more success and at least a couple hit singles during this time. But only six out of the 15 songs here were released in the 1960s, and none of the songs even scraped the bottom of the charts. If you listen to this album and compare it to other albums other groups released at the time, you'll see how unfair their obscurity was. This is another solid album of mostly original material.

Oh, and by the way, although I won't post "Odessey and Oracle" here, I have one more stray tracks album to post that covers what they did after that album and before they broke up near the end of the 1960s.

01 Is This the Dream (Zombies)
02 Going to a Go Go [Live] (Zombies)
03 Gotta Get a Hold of Myself (Zombies)
04 Indication (Zombies)
05 She Does Everything for Me (Zombies)
06 Sitting in the Park (Zombies)
07 I'll Call You Mine (Zombies)
08 One Day I'll Say Goodbye [Home Demo] (Zombies)
09 I Don't Want to Worry [Home Demo] (Zombies)
10 Goin' Out of My Head (Zombies)
11 A Love that Never Was [Demo] (Zombies)
12 This Old Heart of Mine (Zombies)
13 Call of the Night [Girl Help Me] [Demo] (Zombies)
14 Out of the Day [Demo] (Zombies)
15 The Look of Love (Zombies)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701167/TZOMBIS1966-1967_IllCllYuMne_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I once again used the cover of a Zombies single from the time, "Gotta Get a Hold of Myself." Unfortunately, that cover had a lot of issues. Frankly, it looked cheap and quickly thrown together. So I made a lot of changes while keeping the overall look, such as totally changing the font and text, and swapping a black and white photo of the band with a color one.

(Belle & Sebastian) God Help the Girl - Stills - Non-Album Tracks (2009-2014)

Before I continue posting more Belle and Sebastian, I have to make this minor detour. I put both Belle and Sebastian and God Help the Girl in the post title, because God Help the Girl is Belle and Sebastian in all but name. Band leader Stuart Murdoch came up with the idea, wrote all the songs, and picked various female singers to sing the songs. The rest of Belle and Sebastian play all the instruments. The only difference from their usual work is that outside female singers do most of the singing.

God Help the Girl released a self-titled album in 2009. But they easily could have put out a second album, since they released a five song EP, "Stills," and some other songs on singles around the same time. Then, in 2014, a movie also called "God Help the Girl" was released, directed by Murdoch, with three more new songs. Compiling all the songs together results in an album that's 37 minutes long. (Note though that one of the songs, "A Down and Dusky Blonde" appears here as well as on the "God Help the Girl" album, but in different versions.)

Murdoch's hand is all over this. He even sings lead on two of the songs, "Mary's Market" and "He's a Loving Kind of Boy." He picked relatively unknown singers to sing the other songs, including Catherine Irton, who sings most of them, as well as Kim Moore, Alex Klobouk, Celia Garcia, and Dina Bankole.

In my opinion, this is a Belle and Sebastian album, just with a bunch of female vocalists, and it's as good as most of their other albums. Ditto with the released "God Help the Girl" album. If you don't have it, you should get it.

By the way, there was a soundtrack album released in time with the movie's release in 2014. It mostly contains remakes of songs from this album and the official album, except sung by the actors and actresses in the movie. I may post my version of that eventually.

01 Mary's Market (God Help the Girl)
02 Howard Jones Is My Mozart (God Help the Girl)
03 I'm in Love with the City (God Help the Girl)
04 He's a Loving Kind of Boy (God Help the Girl)
05 Stills (God Help the Girl)
06 Baby's Just Waiting (God Help the Girl)
07 The Psychiatrist Is In (God Help the Girl)
08 Baby, You're Blind (God Help the Girl)
09 A Down and Dusky Blonde [Single Version] (God Help the Girl)
10 I Dumped You First (God Help the Girl)
11 I'm Not Rich (God Help the Girl)
12 Pretty When the Wind Blows (God Help the Girl)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15602425/BellenS_2009-2014_GodHlptheGirlStills_atse.zip.html

I named this album "Stills" in part so I could use the cover of the "Stills" EP. This is that cover, except I removed some text that listed all the song titles.

The Rolling Stones - Plundered My Soul - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1972)

I've been meaning to post more Rolling Stones for a long time. I wanted to make a few final adjustments first, but I finally have, so here we go.

Previously, I was able to post about one album of stray tracks for each official studio album as I moved chronologically through the band's discography. But I couldn't do that for their 1971 album "Sticky Fingers." The reason is that the Stones took nearly all of the good outtakes from that album and used them on their next album, 1972's "Exile on Main St." So this album covers the time period of both of those albums.

In 2010, the Stones released a deluxe version of "Exile on Main St." with an entire bonus album of songs. I've only included six of these 11 bonus songs. Four of them are alternates, and I'm only interested in different songs, or significantly different versions of songs. One of the takes is significantly different: "Good Time Women," an early version of "Tumbling Dice." But in my opinion it's not nearly as good as "Tumbling Dice," so I don't see much point to it.

Oddly, one other song on the bonus disc, "Title 5" is an instrumental that dates to 1967. I have no idea why the Stones thought it was fitting to include this on a deluxe version of "Exile on Main St." since it has no connection to it whatsoever. Months ago, I put that on my alternate version of "Flowers," putting it where it belongs with other songs from 1967.

That leaves the six deluxe version songs I have included. These have faced some controversy, because the Stones overdubbed a lot of changes to them in 2010. The basic tracks were recorded in 1971 or 1972, but Mick Jagger rerecorded his vocals to all but one of the songs, two guitar solos were redone, and some extra harmonica and backing vocals were added to a few of the songs. I would go with the raw, unchanged versions if good versions of them existed, but as far as I know, these songs didn't get bootlegged at all.

In addition, I've found seven other songs to fill out the rest of this album. One is a live version of the Chuck Berry song "Let It Rock" that was recorded and released in 1971 as a B-side. The rest all remain officially unreleased. "Bluesberry Jam" is an instrumental the band played for a TV show.

"Exile on Main St. Blues" is an original acoustic blues song done as a lark to promote the release of the "Exile" album. The lyrics name-check a bunch song titles from the album. When I first posted this album, the version I had was incomplete. I have since replaced that was a complete version. It's still short, only a minute and a half, but it sounds finished.

I made a significant edit to the song "Travelin' Man." In my opinion, it was too long. I have no problem with a long song if there's something interesting going on. But the song went on for over six minutes with a section of about a minute and a half towards the end where there's no soloing, no singing, just playing the chords over and over again. After that long boring stretch, guitarist Mick Taylor finally stepped up and soloed for about a minute before the song comes to an end. So I edited the song to remove the boring stretch but keep all of Taylor's solo.

Add it all up, and this makes a 51 minute long album. Personally, I think it holds up very well with the great "Exile" double album, almost as if it could be the third album of a triple album version.

 01 Pass the Wine [Sophia Loren] (Rolling Stones)
02 Plundered My Soul (Rolling Stones)
03 I'm Not Signifying (Rolling Stones)
04 Following the River (Rolling Stones)
05 Dancing in the Light (Rolling Stones)
06 So Divine [Aladdin Story] (Rolling Stones)
07 Exile on Main St. Blues (Rolling Stones)
08 Leather Jacket [Instrumental] (Rolling Stones)
09 Let It Rock [Live] (Rolling Stones)
10 Travelin' Man [Edit] (Rolling Stones)
11 Tell Her How It Is [Potted Shrimps] (Rolling Stones)
12 Key to the Highway (Rolling Stones)
13 32-20 Blues (Rolling Stones)
14 Bluesberry Jam [Instrumental] (Rolling Stones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16224553/TROLLNGSTNES1970-1972_PlndredMySul_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used a concert poster from the Stones' 1972 tour. Obviously, the picture depicts tumbling dice in reference to that song, and that song isn't on this album. But I just thought it was a really great image, so I had to use it. I made some adjustments to make the rectangular art of the poster fit in the square album cover shape, as well as adding in the album title.

Robyn Hitchcock - Mossy Liquor - Alternate Version (1996)

In the early 1990s, Robyn Hitchcock's father died. That put Robyn in a funk that resulted in him not recording much for all of 1994 and 1995. But he came back in 1996 with the acoustic album "Moss Elixir."

This album is not that one. Note the album title is similar but not the same. Within weeks of "Moss Elixir" getting released, he released "Mossy Liquor." It contains a bunch of songs that didn't make the other album, as well as some demos and alternate versions.

This isn't quite that album either, because I made some significant changes. For starters, I got rid of all of the demos and alternate versions. (There actually is a version of one of the songs sung in Swedish, which seems pointless to me unless you speak Swedish.) I replaced those with some other songs from the same year that happen to be acoustic too, and come from the same year. Plus, all but one of them are studio recordings. It's a lucky break how well these other songs fit in.

The result, in my opinion, is an album that's much stronger than the official version. And while it's not quite as good as "Moss Elixir," I think it's close.

By the way, one song here is kind of odd in that it may not be an actual song at all. One of the songs I removed is a demo version of "Heliotrope." It comes to an end and then after a long gap there's a minute and a half long instrumental. The Wikipedia page on "Mossy Liquor" considers this a separate unnamed song. I've included it and chosen the name "Heliotrope Coda," since it may well be a musical variant from "Heliotrope."

"I Stayed Too Long" was newly uncovered in a bootleg that has just come to light and was posted at this blog for the first time anywhere. It seems like a fully formed song, but perhaps it was only played once in concert, or a few times at most.

01 Shuffling Over the Flagstones [Instrumental] (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Cool Bug Rumble (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Wide Open Star (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Each of Her Silver Wands (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 As Lemons Chop (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Trilobite (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Caroline Says II [Demo] (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Creatures of Light [Demo] (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 Dr. Lucy [Demo] (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 The Feelers Was Everywhere (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 I Stayed Too Long (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 Heliotrope Coda [Instrumental] (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15122242/RobynH_1996_MossyLiqAlternate_atse.zip.html

The album cover is the exact official cover. There's no text whatsoever on the official version, so I've kept it that way.

The Grateful Dead - The Seven - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1969)

So far, I've posted a few Grateful Dead albums here and there, mostly from their earliest era (1965 to 1966). I've got a lot more from them to post, and I'm going to try to move forward more chronologically from here on out. There isn't much in the way of stray tracks from 1967, so this is what comes next.

This album is a mix of studio and live material, with nearly all of the performances being unreleased, despite the band having a seemingly infinite number of official albums, the vast majority of them live. The first song here, "Clementine," is an obscure Phil Lesh/Robert Hunter original that was released on the "So Many Roads" box set. The second song, "Dark Star," is of course very well known to any Deadhead, but this is the studio B-side version. It's less than three minutes long, which sounds absurd for that song, but this version has its charm.

Another highlight is "The Eleven," a Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter original that only appeared on the live album "Live/Dead." But this is an unreleased studio version. "The Seven" is an even rarer original instrumental. Both it and "The Eleven" are named after the unusual time signatures the songs are played in.

The rest of the songs are cover versions. Since the songs are ordered chronologically, one can see a shift over the course of the album from psychedelic music to country and folky music. So this mirrors the dramatic shift in styles from the album "Aoxomoxoa" in 1969 to "Workingman's Dead" in 1970.

By the way, I named this album "The Seven" since that's the title of one of the songs. But I chose that song title because I thought it has a nice double meaning: for most of the 1960s, the Grateful Dead has six band members, but from November 1968 to January 1970, which covers most of the time of this album, they had seven, thanks to the addition of Tom Constanten. 

Note that this version of the blues classic "Big Boss Man" wasn't exactly performed by the Grateful Dead, but it sure sounds like it because the lead vocals and lead guitar were done by Jerry Garcia. It was recorded at the San Francisco home where most of the members of the Jefferson Airplane lived. Garcia was joined by fellow Dead member drummer Mickey Hart, as well as Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady from the Jefferson Airplane. The Dead played this song from time to time, but the lead vocalist always was Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. This is an interesting version because Garcia sang it.

This album is 54 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

Speaking of the bonus track, "What's Become of the Baby" was included on the band's 1969 studio album "Aoxomoxoa." But that version is so distorted with studio effects that it's kind of a mess. The song was only done live once, in 1969. That version is more interesting, in my opinion, so that's the bonus track version here.

01 Clementine (Grateful Dead)
02 Dark Star (Grateful Dead)
03 Death Letter Blues (Grateful Dead)
04 The Eleven (Grateful Dead)
05 Who's Lovin' You Tonight (Grateful Dead)
07 Seasons of My Heart (Grateful Dead)
08 The Seven [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
09 Big Boss Man (Jerry Garcia with Mickey Hart, Jorma Kaukonen & Jack Casady)
10 I'm a Lovin' Man (Grateful Dead)
11 He Was a Friend of Mine (Grateful Dead)

What's Become of the Baby (Grateful Dead)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15118720/TGratefulD_1968-1969_The_Sevn_atse.zip.html

I made the cover from a 2015 Grateful Dead concert poster. I made some significant changes, especially squishing the entire image vertically to get a rectangular poster into a square frame. I also changed the coloring of certain parts, and of course changed the text.

Imelda May - Why Don't You Do Right - Non-Album Tracks (2009-2010)

First off, I've already posted a couple of Imelda May albums, but I've gotta say that if you don't know her music, you really need to check her out. I gather that she's big in Britain and Ireland, where her albums regularly reach the top five in the charts, but she's very little known everywhere else, where her albums rarely even make the charts.

In addition to having a great voice, May also is a talented songwriter. Her official albums are mostly filled with songs she wrote. But this stray tracks album is mainly composed of cover versions. She does everything from a Beatles song ("Oh Darling") to a song associated with Elvis Presley ("My Baby Left Me") to some classic blues songs. There also are a couple of nice collaborations with Jeff Beck.

May released her first album in 2003. But her career languished in obscurity until late 2008, when she released her album "Love Tattoo," which hit number one in Ireland and went gold in Britain. In the wake of that success she had more opportunities to record music and to perform on TV and such. Five of the songs here are officially unreleased. 

The song quality is excellent most of the way through this album. The first two songs are from an audience bootleg, and the song quality is less than the rest of the album. If you're a stickler for sound quality, you can just delete those. They date from 2008.

01 On Revival Day (Imelda May)
02 Pink Champagne (Imelda May)
03 Why Don't You Do Right (Imelda May)
04 Go Tell the Devil (Imelda May & Sharon Shannon)
05 Oh Darling (Imelda May)
06 Wexford Carol (Imelda May)
07 My Babe (Imelda May)
08 Rollin' and Tumblin' (Imelda May)
09 Rogue Melody (Jerry Fish & the Mudbug Club with Imelda May)
10 Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (Royal Air Force Squadronaires with Imelda May)
11 Going Up the Country (Imelda May)
12 Lilac Wine (Jeff Beck & Imelda May)
13 Poor Boy (Jeff Beck & Imelda May)
14 My Baby Left Me (Imelda May)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15602706/ImeldaM_2009-2010_WhyDontYouDRght_atse.zip.html

I made the cover art using a photo of May from a 2008 concert.

The Zombies - Whenever You're Ready - Non-Album Tracks (1965)

Here's the next in my series of stray tracks albums from the Zombies.

During the 1960s, the Zombies were surprisingly unsuccessful commercially. They had one big hit in Britain - "She's Not There" - and three big hits in the US - "She's Not There" plus "Tell Her No" and "Time of the Season." "She's Not There" and "Tell Her No" came early on for the group, and "Time of the Season" wasn't a hit until 1968, after the group broke up. In between, they had a long series of singles that barely hit the charts or didn't chart at all.

This album covers part of that era of commercial failure. But in retrospect, it's clear that the band should have done much better and there was a failure of promotion as well as poor decision making. After all, Zombies are getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for more than just three songs.

The failure of promotion can be obviously seen by the fact that their record company thought so little of them that they only let them release one album between 1964 and 1967. Mind you, this was at a time when tons of no-hit acts were able to release albums. Here's a clear act of poor decision making as well: the single "Whenever You're Ready" should have been a hit in my opinion. But the B-side, "I Love You," had even more potential. Even though it was only a B-side, it became so popular in the Philippines that the band was able to sell out big arenas there when they couldn't get arrested anywhere else. Then, in early 1968, an obscure group called "People!" did a nearly identical cover version and had a hit with it all over the world, including a number one hit in Japan.

So imagine this album comes from an alternate universe where the Zombies were better managed and promoted, and continued to have hits. Remarkably, only four of the 15 songs on this album were released in the 1960s. Four others were performed by the band at the BBC, and the rest would only come out in the archival box set "Zombie Heaven."

01 Whenever You're Ready (Zombies)
02 Nothing's Changed (Zombies)
03 Come On Time (Zombies)
04 You Must Believe Me (Zombies)
05 Don't Go Away (Zombies)
06 I'll Keep Trying (Zombies)
07 You'll Go from Me [Don't Go Away] [Demo] (Zombies)
08 I Love You (Zombies)
09 How We Were Before (Zombies)
10 I Know She Will (Zombies)
11 Don't Cry for Me (Zombies)
12 If It Don't Work Out (Zombies)
13 When the Lovelight Starts Shining through Her Eyes (Zombies)
14 It's All Right (Zombies)
15 Will You Love Me Tomorrow (Zombies)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701162/TZOMBIS1965_WhnevrYureRady_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used the cover art for the "Whenever You're Ready" single. However, I had some problems with that cover, so I made some tweaks. One tweak was that I thought the font used was boring. So I erased the text and replaced, enlarged, and repositioned it.

Paul Weller - The Piper - Non-Album Tracks (2012-2013)

I'm doggedly determined to finish off posting all the stray tracks albums from Paul Weller. This is the 18th of the series, not counting four of his work with the Jam, with two more to go. If you've been following these posts, I generally have been posting two kinds of albums from him: the normal non-album tracks and the all-acoustic kind. This is another album of the former.

This follows the pattern of other such albums. It's got some revivals of songs by the Jam ("Running on the Spot" and "My Ever Changing Moods") some cover versions ("Riverman," "Birthday," and "Shame, Shame, Shame"), and collaborations ("Something Soon" and "Shame, Shame, Shame" again). But it has a higher percentage of exclusive original songs, and they're a pretty good bunch. Three of the songs actually are A-sides to singles (as well as a bunch of B-sides). So if you're a fan of Weller's music at all, you should enjoy this.

This album is 40 minutes long.

UPDATE: On October 31, 2022, I updated the mp3 download file. I added two songs I'd previously missed: "Be Happy Children" and "Shame, Shame, Shame." I also moved two songs, "My Ever Changing Moods" and "Birthday," to here from the previous stray tracks album in this series, "Devotion." But to make room for all those songs, I moved five other songs to the next album in this series, "Open Road." Those songs are: "Start," Brand New Toy," "I Take What I Want," "Things Get Better," and "Landslide."

01 Portal to the Past (Paul Weller)
02 Something Soon (Paul Weller & the Moons)
03 Running on the Spot (Paul Weller)
04 The Piper (Paul Weller)
05 We Got a Lot (Paul Weller)
06 Riverman (Paul Weller)
07 Birthday (Paul Weller)
08 My Ever Changing Moods (Paul Weller)
09 Be Happy Children [Demo] (Paul Weller)
10 Flame-Out (Paul Weller)
11 The Olde Original (Paul Weller)
12 Shame, Shame, Shame (Ronnie Wood with Paul Weller & Mick Taylor)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15849570/PaulW_2012-2013_ThePipr_atse.zip.html

I made the cover art from a photo of Weller on the cover of Q magazine from 2012.

Neil Young - Silver and Gold - Acoustic Version (1999)

I've been in a big Neil Young listening mood lately, so here's another one from him. It's not in chronological order with the other albums I've posted, but I just finished making it, so I feel like sharing it anyway.

If you've been following this blog for a while, you've probably noticed that I have a special love for acoustic music. I think if a musician can strip his or her music down to just a single guitar or piano as backing and the music still holds up, that's really saying something.

So sometimes I like to create alternate versions of albums that are just acoustic versions of all the songs. The problem is, most of the time, the raw material to do that right just doesn't exist. But with this Neil Young album, I got lucky.

His 2000 album "Silver and Gold" doesn't get the praise I think it deserves. At least two of the songs on it are all time Neil classics in my book ("Silver and Gold" and "Razor Love") and the rest are all at least solid. The studio album has a general acoustic vibe, but most of the songs have drums, bass, backing vocals, and the like. What if he went all the way with the acoustic idea, recording the album with nothing but his voice plus either guitar or piano?

Now, you can find out. It turns out that in 1999, prior to the album being released, Young went on a solo acoustic tour and played all the songs from the album. Then, after it was released, he put out a DVD containing solo acoustic performances for seven of the ten songs. I was able to find high quality sounding versions of the other three.

I removed all the audience noise, as I often do, in order to make it sound like a studio performance. But it wasn't just a matter of removing the clapping at the end. I wanted this to sound really great, since I had such pristine sounding source material, mostly thanks to the DVD. So I tried to patch up all the stray audience noises within the songs too. For instance, on the song "Buffalo Springfield Again," when he sang the title phrase for the first time, the audience hadn't heard the song before and there was a lot of hollering and cheering in appreciation for Buffalo Springfield. I took an identical portion of the song from later on and replaced it.

So now you can hear this version of the album. Is it better or worse? I don't know; your opinions may vary. But I do like having the option to hear it this way.

01 Good to See You (Neil Young)
02 Silver and Gold (Neil Young)
03 Daddy Went Walkin' (Neil Young)
04 Buffalo Springfield Again (Neil Young)
05 The Great Divide (Neil Young)
06 Red Sun (Neil Young)
07 Distant Camera (Neil Young)
08 Horseshoe Man (Neil Young)
09 Razor Love (Neil Young)
10 Without Rings (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15258873/NeilY_1999_SilvrGldAcoustc_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I didn't think I was going to be able to replicate the weird pixelated style of the official cover. But it turns out the back cover has a different photo that's pixelated and colored in the same way. So I used that, but cropped it to remove some text that was near the edges. Then I added in the text in the same style as in the original, but with different colors and different locations. By the way, I don't know what the photo is about exactly, but I'm guessing it's from when Neil Young was a teenager.

Neil Young - Citizen Kane Junior Blues - The Bottom Line, New York City, 5-16-1974

I have a lot more in the way of Neil Young stray tracks albums to post. But before I get to that, I want to help make sure that every Neil Young fan has a copy of this concert.

This concert is merely an audience bootleg, but it's one of the most treasured Young concert recordings of all time, if not THE most, for several reasons. For one, the sound is very good for an audience bootleg. But more importantly, the setlist is incredible. Consider that at the time, only ONE ("Helpless") of the 11 songs he played at this show had been officially released! (Four of the songs would appear on his "On the Beach" album two months later.) On top of that, he was in a particularly talkative mood, speaking at length between nearly all the songs.

The concert was definitely an oddity. In 1974, Young was peaking as a songwriter, writing more songs than he knew what to do with. But the only concert tour he did that year was the massive summer tour as part of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Aside from that, he only performed two concerts, with this being one. (The other one unfortunately never was bootlegged at all, which is a real shame, since he did two cover songs, "Carol" by Chuck Berry and "Chug All Night" by the Eagles, that he never did before or since.)

From what I understand, Young wasn't billed to perform. Instead, Ry Cooder put on a concert that night, and when his show finished, Young came on stage by himself for a bonus hour-long set. Apparently, he just wanted to try out some of his new songs prior to the big CSNY tour to see how they'd go over with an audience. A couple of the songs, like "Pardon My Heart" and a cover of "Greensleeves," he only ever played in concert once or twice in his entire career. For many of the others, especially the epic "Pushed It Over the End," this was the only time he would ever play them in a solo acoustic format.

So the concert truly is unique. Download it already! ;)

By the way, if you're wondering about the album title "Citizen Kane Junior Blues," that's how this concert is commonly known, since that's what he called "Pushed It Over the End" just before he played it, even though that title had nothing to do with the lyrics. It would take many years before the song's true name became known. (A live CSNY version of it would be released decades later.)

01 Pushed It Over the End (Neil Young)
02 talk (Neil Young)
03 Long May You Run (Neil Young)
04 Greensleeves (Neil Young)
05 talk (Neil Young)
06 Ambulance Blues (Neil Young)
07 talk (Neil Young)
08 Helpless (Neil Young)
09 talk (Neil Young)
10 Revolution Blues (Neil Young)
11 On the Beach (Neil Young)
12 talk (Neil Young)
13 Roll Another Number [For the Road] (Neil Young)
14 talk (Neil Young)
15 Motion Pictures (Neil Young)
16 talk (Neil Young)
17 Pardon My Heart (Neil Young)
18 talk (Neil Young)
19 Dance, Dance, Dance (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15258878/NeilY_1974a_CitiznKneJrBluesBottmLneNYC__5-16-1974_atse.zip.html

The cover art is taken from a bootleg of the show. I didn't change the partial sepia colorization at all because I think it looks good. I'm hoping that the photo is from the actual show, but I'm not sure. I merely changed some of the text under Young's name.

Norah Jones & Marian McPartland - Tanglewood Jazz Festival, Tanglewood, Lenox, MA, 8-30-2003

Here, I continue my campaign to show that Norah Jones's musical career is much more interesting than her hit singles and albums would indicate. This shows her getting much more acoustic and jazzy than usual, as she plays songs from the Great American Songbook with a piano as the only musical backing.

This technically is a concert recording, but you'd never know it. The audience noise has been removed so thoroughly, and the sound quality is so excellent, that it should be considered more like a long in studio radio performance. Also technically, Jones plays all the songs with famed pianist Marian McPartland, but it's hard to tell. McPartland certainly never sings, and since they're both playing pianos, it's hard to tell who is playing what. The bottom line is it sounds like Jones plus a piano to me.

I've added five bonus tracks at the end, but it would be impossible to tell unless you closely examine the mp3 tags (or read this). The bonus tracks come from around the same time, and also were done just with Jones and McPartland on piano, so the sound is exactly the same. The only difference is that on the main recording, Jones does all standards from the pre-rock and roll era, while on the bonus tracks she does a couple of the songs she made famous, including her big hit "Don't Know Why."

It's interesting to hear her do her songs in such a stripped down fashion, but mainly this is about hearing Jones perform the standards in her unique style. It's a mystery to me why she hasn't actually released an album like this yet.

This album is 57 minutes long.

01 Mean to Me (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
02 Lover Man (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
03 Walking My Baby (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
04 Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
05 Melancholia (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
06 Tenderly (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
07 Summertime (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
08 Easy Living (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
09 A Foggy Day in London Town (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
10 In the Dark (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
11 Comes Love (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
12 Don't Know Why (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
13 Peace (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)
14 The Nearness of You (Norah Jones & Marian McPartland)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15603480/NorahJ_2003_TnglewoodJazzFestivl__8-30-2003_atse.zip.html

The cover shows McPartland and Jones over a piano. But I don't know where and when it was taken. But it's most likely from 2002 or 2003, since that's when they collaborated.