Larkin Poe - Tip O' the Hat - Various Cover Versions (2017)

I'm a very big fan of Larkin Poe. They should be hugely popular. They're good songwriters, musically talented, young, and beautiful. I've already posted one album of theirs, which contains acoustic versions of some of their recent songs.

As good as their own songs are, it also is a treat for them to perform covers. Since June 2017, they've had a feature on their YouTube channel called "Tip O' the Hat." Here's how they describe it on their channel:

"To build a fire of creativity, you need fuel. As artists, we aspire to keep learning the songs that move and inspire us. Art begets art. While we’re at it, we want you to share in the experience — these are some of the songs that have shaped us."

To that end, they release steady series of videos of them performing cover songs, about once a week. The recordings are spontaneous and lo-fi - they just sit down in front of a webcam and play the songs without any overdubs or assistance, just the two of them and a guitar or two. They have very wide ranging musical tastes which happen to overlap closely with mine. Most of the songs they choose have been hits, except that the blues are a big part of their sound so they often play blues classics, sometimes fairly obscure ones.

I've gathered up all the Tip O' the Hat performances and made albums out of them, of about 45 minutes each. This one is just the first. I haven't included most of the songs they've done, but not all of them. Sometimes, I don't include the song because they've done it in better sound quality elsewhere. But sometimes i just wasn't that impressed by their performance, and I want to keep the quality level high.

If you want to hear some of the best songs of all time played acoustically by two kickass female musicians, this is the album for you!

01 War Pigs (Larkin Poe)
02 Little Wing (Larkin Poe)
03 Short Skirt, Long Jacket (Larkin Poe)
04 I Am the Highway (Larkin Poe)
05 Fly Away (Larkin Poe)
06 One Way Out (Larkin Poe)
07 Within You, Without You (Larkin Poe)
08 Nessun Dorma (Larkin Poe)
09 Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground (Larkin Poe)
10 Old Time Rock N' Roll (Larkin Poe)
11 Dream a Little Dream of Me (Larkin Poe)
12 Soul of a Man (Larkin Poe)
13 Fortunate Son (Larkin Poe)
14 Dazed and Confused (Larkin Poe)
15 The Thrill Is Gone (Larkin Poe)
16 Mary Had a Little Lamb (Larkin Poe)
17 Wildflowers (Larkin Poe)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15262016/LarkinP_2017_TpOtheHat_atse.zip.html

The cover was made by Peter from his Albums I Wish Existed blog.

Norah Jones - Deceptively Yours - Non-Album Tracks (2001)

Norah Jones is a curious case for me. I don't actually like many of her official studio albums that much. Too often, she sounds like "easy listening" or "adult contemporary," with the songs fading into forgettable background music. That said, she has one of those special, distinctive voices. I don't know what it is about that voice, but I really enjoy hearing her sing, as long as she sings good songs. Unfortunately, as a songwriter, she's hit or miss, with a lot of misses.

Luckily, it turns out that Jones's career as represented by her studio albums are just one part of her overall career. She seems willing to play and sing with just about anybody. As a result, her stray track album material is MUCH more varied and interesting than what she puts on her albums. She covers songs by everyone from AC/DC to the Kinks to Soundgarden to Nick Drake, in just about every genre. Not content to coast on her huge fame and fortune, she's taken part in all sorts of side projects, from country, folk, jazz, electronica, and even something close to punk rock!

So my point is, don't dismiss Jones based on a surface impression of her big hits. She has a much more interesting career than that.

The first six songs all come from an album she did with the Peter Malick Group. It was recorded in late 2000 and should have been released in 2001, which is why I've included it with other 2001 songs. But it didn't actually get released until 2003, after Norah Jones hit it big, selling over 10 million albums. However, the album didn't have her face or name on it, so it remained fairly obscure.

Most of the rest of the songs are outtakes from her first album, the one that would go on to sell all those millions. Although most of them are unreleased, you'd never know it, since they sound just as good as any other studio tracks. One of them did get released years later, "Picture in a Frame." I'd had that on a much later stray tracks album (and I'd even used the song title for the album title!). But I've moved it here after finding out it was an outtake from the first album. 

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 New York City (Peter Malick Group with Norah Jones)
02 Strange Transmissions (Peter Malick Group with Norah Jones)
03 Deceptively Yours (Peter Malick Group with Norah Jones)
04 All Your Love (Peter Malick Group with Norah Jones)
05 Heart of Mine (Peter Malick Group with Norah Jones)
06 Things You Don't Have to Do (Peter Malick Group with Norah Jones)
07 Picture in a Frame (Norah Jones)
08 When Sunny Gets Blue (Norah Jones)
09 Daydream (Norah Jones)
10 Hallelujah, I Love Him So (Norah Jones)
11 The Only Time (Norah Jones)
12 A Dream Today (Norah Jones)
13 I Didn't Know about You (Norah Jones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15848378/NorahJ_2001_DeceptivelyYurs_atse.zip.html

I'm not sure when the photo I used for the cover art was taken, but her haircut matches the one she had in these early years of her career.

Paul Weller - Talisman - Non-Album Tracks (2002-2003)

Oops! I messed up and posted the wrong Paul Weller album, in terms of chronological order. I want to keep things in order, so I'm posting two, and changing the order of my posts.

This is nearly all from 2002, with only the last song from 2003.

The songs here come from a wide variety of sources. Five of the songs are live versions of songs from Weller's first band, The Jam. Three are bonus tracks from his "Illumination" album. Three are collaborations with other musicians. There are two other cover songs. But all of it sounds like classic Paul Weller.

By the way, I'm putting all of his acoustic stray tracks on other albums. An acoustic album from roughly this time period will be the next Weller album I post here. 

This album is 43 minutes long. 

01 Town Called Malice (Paul Weller)
02 A Man of Great Promise (Paul Weller)
03 Thunder Park (Noonday Underground & Paul Weller)
04 Brother to Brother (Terry Callier & Paul Weller)
05 Instant Karma [We All Shine On] (Paul Weller)
06 Monday (Paul Weller)
07 So You Say You Lost Your Baby (Death in Vegas & Paul Weller)
08 Push Button, Automatic (Paul Weller)
09 Horseshoe Drama (Paul Weller)
10 Talisman (Paul Weller)
11 Pretty Green (Paul Weller)
12 I Forgot to Be Your Lover (Paul Weller)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376655/PAULWLLR2002-2003Talismn_atse.zip.html

I made the cover art from a 2002 concert poster which already had the text at the top. I added the text at the bottom.

Paul Weller - Circles - Non-Album Tracks (1999-2001)

A new Paul Weller studio album, "True Meanings," has been released today. I've only heard it once so far, but I already can tell it's one of his better ones. I hope you support good musicians and buy it.

To celebrate, it's time to post more from my long series of Weller's stray tracks. This covers studio songs from 1999 to 2001.

The songs are the usual grab bag of covers, B-sides, and other. The first song, funnily enough, is from a tribute album to his first group, The Jam, despite the fact that he was the main singer and songwriter in that band. The last two songs are from a Steve Marriott tribute concert.

The album is from the time he released his official album "Heliocentric." Three of the songs are B-sides from singles off that album. That album wasn't that well received. I think this album is about as good, if not better.

01 All You Need Is Love (Paul Weller)
02 No One in the World (Paul Weller)
03 Back in the Fire (Paul Weller)
04 There's No Drinking After You're Dead ['Noonday Underground' Remix] (Paul Weller)
05 Bang Bang [My Baby Shot Me Down] (Paul Weller)
06 Helioscentric [Instrumental] (Paul Weller)
07 Circles [Instant Party] (Paul Weller)
08 Better [Demo] [Early Version of Rip the Pages Up] (Paul Weller)
09 Become like You (Paul Weller)
10 I'm Only Dreaming (Paul Weller)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376648/PAULWLLR1999-2001Circls_atse.zip.html

I made the cover art from a 2001 Weller bootleg.

Richard & Linda Thompson - Shady Lies - Non-Album Tracks (1971-1972)

Today (as I write this in September 2018) is the release date for "13 Rivers," a new studio album by Richard Thompson.

In celebration of that, I want to post more of his stuff. I posted one album of his a while back, but I want to start posting things systematically. That means going back to the start of his solo career around 1971, when he left Fairport Convention. (I'm dealing with that band separately.)

In 1971, Richard Thompson was only casual acquaintances with the singer Linda Peters. (They'd met in 1969.) But by 1972, they would link up musically and romantically. They would get married that same year and she would change her name to Linda Thompson. That's the name she's used ever since. (To be consistent, I'm using her "Thompson" name instead of her "Peters" name in all of the mp3 tags.) This album covers the two years of them musically joining forces. 

In 1972 Richard Thompson, put out his first solo album, "Henry the Human Fly." Only after that did he begin putting out albums with Linda. So some of the songs here are outtakes from that album, or other random projects he was a part of at the time.

Seven songs come from the 1972 "Rock On" album, by the Bunch. (The last one here is a bonus track.) This was a diverse group of British folk rock musicians. The album was all cover songs of rock and roll classics. There were four lead singers on the album. The album is a mixed bag overall, but I've selected the best songs that are sung by either Richard or Linda. I guess working on the album together was the opportunity that kindled their romance and led to them getting married later that year. One song, "When Will You Be Loved," is a duet between Linda and the legendary folk singer Sandy Denny.

The next album in this series will feature all Richard & Linda Thompson material from 1972 and into 1973. But even though the songs of this album come from different sources and many don't feature them together, it's all good music and important in showing how Richard Thompson's long, great solo career got started.

01 Albion Sunrise (Richard Thompson)
02 You Got What You Wanted (Richard Thompson)
03 Someone Else’s Fancy (Richard Thompson)
04 Bad News Is All the Wind Can Carry (Richard Thompson)
05 Amazon Queen (Richard Thompson)
06 Restless Boy (Richard & Linda Thompson)
07 Sweet Little Rock and Roller (Bunch)
08 The Loco-Motion (Bunch)
09 Crazy Arms (Bunch)
10 My Girl in the Month of May (Bunch)
11 Jambalaya [On the Bayou] (Bunch)
12 When Will I Be Loved (Bunch)
13 High School Confidential (Bunch)
14 Shady Lies (Richard & Linda Thompson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Kuy1uKfb

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/dmf6pdMbvV9HDo6/file

Re: the cover art, I originally used a black and white photo that I tinted. I found very few good photos of this duo in their early years together, and pretty much all of them lack color. Many months later, I found a different black and white photo I liked more, and colorized it. It's from 1974. I later used the Krea AI program to improve the image.

Van Morrison - Manchild - Non-Album Tracks (1974)

I've still got a lot of great Van Morrison 1970s material to release. This album takes us through 1974.

Why did I call this album "Manchild?" Because that was one possible name Morrison mentioned starting around this time for an upcoming album. I have no idea what it means exactly, or how far along such an album might have been, or what the songs on it could have been. I just figure it's better to use an album title he was actually considering than making something up from scratch.

If you've been following my series of Morrison's stray tracks albums, this is more of the same. In my opinion, all of this stuff is excellent and should have been released at the time. I've seen some quote from Morrison that his record company was "minimalist" and only wanted him to release one single album a year. But he was clearly coming up with more than that, and often the songs that didn't get released were as good or better than the ones that did.

A couple of the songs here actually were released at the time. "Caldonia" and "What's Up, Crazy Pup?" were the A- and B-sides to a single that virtually nobody noticed and failed to make the charts. The second and third songs here have been officially released on "The Philospher's Stone" rarities collection. The rest of the songs are all still unreleased.

Note that I've only included the song "Naked in the Jungle" as a bonus track. It's a great song and should have been a hit, but it never even got released at the time. The reason it's only a bonus track is because there are two known and somewhat different versions from the 1970s. I consider this the (slightly) inferior one. The other version will appear on the next Morrison album I'll be posting.

01 Caldonia (Van Morrison)
02 It's Not the Twilight Zone (Van Morrison)
03 Flamingos Fly [First Version] (Van Morrison)
04 Foggy Mountain Top [T for Texas] (Van Morrison)
05 Much Binding in the March [Instrumental] (Van Morrison)
06 What's Up, Crazy Pup (Van Morrison)
07 I Like It like That (Van Morrison)
08 Street Theory [First Version] (Van Morrison)
09 Heathrow Shuffle [Instrumental] (Van Morrison)

Naked in the Jungle [First Version] (Van Morrison)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16067928/VanMrsn_1974_Mnchld_atse.zip.html

Thanks to Mike for the album cover art. He also made a back side for a CD, so I've included that here too.

Lou Reed - Solo Acoustic, Radio 3, Madrid, Spain, 6-5-1998

I just posted some acoustic demos by the Velvet Underground, at the start of Lou Reed's musical career. Here's something acoustic by him nearer to the end of his career.

In the late 1990s, Reed, finally caught the "unplugged" bug, a few years after the acoustic concert trend had peaked. This show was done before a studio audience in Spain. The audience was remarkably polite and hardly ever clapped or hollered during his songs. In a few cases, there was some clapping for the first few seconds of a song, but I got rid of that by patching in the strumming of the same chords from later in the song. The result is that it sounds exactly like Reed playing an acoustic guitar alone in your living room.

The show is on the short side. I found an extra song to make it a bit longer. Reed played a solo acoustic version of "Heroin" for a TV documentary the same year as the concert. You'd never know it wasn't part of the concert, based on the sound.

With the extra song, this still is only 27 minutes. It's short, but sweet.

01 I'll Be Your Mirror (Lou Reed)
02 Dirty Blvd. (Lou Reed)
03 Talking Book (Lou Reed)
04 Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed)
05 Pale Blue Eyes (Lou Reed)
06 Sweet Jane (Lou Reed)
07 Heroin (Lou Reed)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16695493/LOURED1998_SloAcustcRdio3MdridSpin__6-5-1998_atse.zip.html

The cover is from a video of Reed playing this concert in 1998.

The Velvet Underground - Prominent Men - Early Demos (1965)

I've got some really good Velvet Underground albums to post. It makes sense to start at the beginning, with their 1965 acoustic demo recordings.

Most of these songs were included on the "Peel Slowly and See" box set. However, I thought they were presented in a really dumb way. For the first six songs here (all acoustic demos recorded in July 1965), multiple takes were included, but in each case they were lumped together as one track. So, for instance, you couldn't just hear a demo of "All Tomorrow's Parties," you had to hear five versions of the song, each version almost exactly the same as the last. I grow very tired of bootlegs that have the same song repeated over and over. So I picked the best version of each song and only included that.

The next five songs are more acoustic demos, from a December 1965 session. These also are from the box set, but they were put on another disc. I think it's better having all these demos together. Finally, there's an unreleased instrumental from very early January 1966 as the last song. It fits the acoustic sound of the rest of the album, because it's just a guitar and bass playing.

This makes up a nice 44 minute long album. Seven of the 12 songs would never be done by the Velvet Underground again (with the partial exception of "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams" - Nico did it for her 1967 solo album, and the rest of the Velvet Underground backed her on that recording.)

01 Venus in Furs (Velvet Underground)
02 Prominent Men (Velvet Underground)
03 Heroin (Velvet Underground)
04 I'm Waiting for the Man (Velvet Underground)
05 Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams (Velvet Underground)
06 All Tomorrow's Parties (Velvet Underground)
07 There Is No Reason (Velvet Underground)
08 Sheltered Life (Velvet Underground)
09 It's All Right [The Way that You Live] (Velvet Underground)
10 I'm Not Too Sorry [Now that You're Gone] (Velvet Underground)
11 Here She Comes Now (Velvet Underground)
12 Green Onions [Instrumental] (Velvet Underground)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701104/TVELVTUNDRGRND1965_PrminntMnErlyDmos_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used the cover of the recording tape box for some of the demos on this album. It comes from the "Peel Slowly and See" box set.

Led Zeppelin - Born in Darkness - Non-Album Tracks (1969-1970)

I must say, out of the five stray tracks Led Zeppelin albums I've made, I'm happiest with this one. I think it holds up very well as an album. It mostly covers 1969, with the last two songs from 1970. If you're a Led Zeppelin fan and you don't have this, you're missing out.

The centerpiece to this album has to be the lead song, "As Long as I Have You." This requires some explanation. The song was a minor soul hit originally written and performed by Garnet Mimms. Led Zeppelin played it in concert at least 80 times (only in 1968 and 1969), which makes it one of their most frequently performed covers in their career. They totally transformed the song, turning it from a light soul song to a heavy rocker, and using it to go into a long medley of other songs.

As chance has it, most of the performances of the song were never bootlegged, or were only recorded poorly. But luckily, there's one pristine soundboard recording of it from April 1969 that's extraordinary. The song is 18 minutes long, and it's a medley with "As Long as I Have You" for a few minutes at the start and about a minute at the end. Unfortunately, I felt the medley was so long that it loses coherence as an actual song. So I decided to split it in two.

I did some editing, and created a ten minute version of "As Long as I Have You" with the start and the end parts joined together, while also including some other parts of the medley, namely instrumental versions of "Fresh Garbage" by Spirit and "Bag's Groove" by Miles Davis. I think this now holds together as a very solid song. Then, what remains becomes another solid song of the blues classic "I'm a Man" in a medley with the Chuck Berry hit "No Money Down." It too is done in a very different and interesting way, so much so that the "I'm a Man" part is almost unrecognizable.

Maybe it's a sacrilege to break the song in two like that, but I think it works better musically that way. I've inserted a cover of the blues song "Sittin' and Thinkin'" - from the same soundboard concert - between the two songs to help make them sound like individual entities.

By the way, it's incredible to me that no version of Led Zeppelin's "As Long as I Have You" has been officially released. The bonus tracks that have been added to deluxe editions of their official albums in recent years make it seem like they're scraping the bottom of the barrel, with most of them the same songs on those albums but with some minor differences. Meanwhile, some of the band's greatest musical performances remain unreleased and obscure. It's very strange.

The rest of this album contains quality songs too. All the songs are in chronological order. The next three songs are from "BBC Sessions." "La La" is an instrumental which is an officially released bonus track. The last three songs are solid cover versions done live in concert with the audience noise removed.

I was tempted to call this album "Led Zeppelin II and a Half," because if you like "Led Zeppelin II," you should like this. It has a very similar sound, and it's a few minutes longer. The sound quality is top notch all the way through.

01 As Long as I Have You - Fresh Garbage - Bag's Groove - As Long as I Have You (Led Zeppelin)
02 Sittin' and Thinkin' (Led Zeppelin)
03 I'm a Man - No Money Down - I'm a Man (Led Zeppelin)
04 The Girl I Love She Got Long Black Wavy Hair (Led Zeppelin)
05 Somethin' Else (Led Zeppelin)
06 Travelling Riverside Blues (Led Zeppelin)
07 La La [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
08 The Train Kept a-Rollin' (Led Zeppelin)
09 Long Tall Sally (Led Zeppelin)
10 C'mon Everybody (Led Zeppelin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693535/LEDZPPLN1969g-1970_BrninDrknss_atse.zip.html

By the way, I normally use a song title for the album title if no other obvious title presents itself. But in this case I used "Born in Darkness," which is the starting lyric of "As Long as I Have You," because I thought it sounds better as an album title than any of the song titles do.

Peter from the Albums I Wish Existed blog made the cover art.

Led Zeppelin - Sunshine Woman - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1969)

It's time for me to tackle the great Led Zeppelin with my usual approach of gathering all the quality stray tracks I can find from the group's career. I was surprised at just how much I could find - this is the first of five albums I've made, each of them about 40 to 50 minutes long.

As I usually do, my approach is to find songs not done on their official albums. But I considered anything on the rarities album "Coda" fair game, since those songs need to be reordered and fit in chronologically with other rarities. I also considered songs on "BBC Sessions" fair game if they weren't on any of the studio albums.

I started this album with four songs that aren't Led Zeppelin songs at all. Robert Plant didn't have much of a recording career before joining the group, and much of what is available from that time sounds very dated now. But I've found four quality songs that all sound very Led Zeppelin-esque to me. The three of them recorded with the Band of Joy actually have future Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham on them as well. The first three of these four songs are found on a popular retrospective of Plant's solo career, but the fourth one is just as good and remains officially unreleased.

Note the song "Sunshine Woman" was released on "BBC Sessions," and this is that performance. However, the officially released recording sounded strangely muffled and hissy. Some Zeppelin fans tweaked with the sound to fix it, and I've used their version, because to my ears it sounds noticeably better.

The last song on this album, "Pat's Delight," needs some explanation. From the very start of Led Zeppelin's live shows, they played this song, which is mostly a Bonham drum solo with some guitar riffing at the beginning and end. This would later turn into "Moby Dick" on the "Led Zeppelin II" album, at which point "Pat's Delight" was retired. The intro and closing guitar work would be totally changed.  However, I'm no drumming expert, but I'm told the drum soloing was basically the same.

I found a well-recorded live version of "Pat's Delight" that was 15 minutes long. I didn't want to bog down this album with a super long drum solo, especially because I hear it's virtually the same as live versions of "Moby Dick." So I cut the drumming way down, allowing one to hear the guitar parts that make this song unique. Note that the drumming fades out into a brief silence after the intro guitar ends. That's not an edit by me - that's how it is on the actual recording. But then I cut out about ten minutes of drumming after that point and have the drumming come back in from a quiet point near the end of all the drum soloing.

I'm excited about this series of Led Zeppelin stray tracks, because I've looked high and low for bootlegs that do the same thing, and I haven't found any that really get the job done. I've seen one or two things that boiled the best rarities down to an album or two, but there actually are about five albums' worth, as I've said. I think that's because the band did a lot of unique songs only in concert, usually cover versions, and I'm including those in this series too. You can see one example on this album, a live cover of the Yardbirds' hit song "For Your Love."

By the way, I'm not quite sure what the title to the seventh song here is. It's an instrumental outtake from the band's first album. Some people claim it's called "Do What Thou Wilt," but other people dispute that. It's most commonly known on bootlegs as"Pipes and Flamenco," but that appears to just be a creative name given to it by bootlegger many years later. I've included both of the known names.

01 Operator (Robert Plant)
02 Hey Joe (Robert Plant & the Band of Joy)
03 For What It's Worth (Robert Plant & the Band of Joy)
04 I Gotta Find My Baby (Robert Plant & the Band of Joy)
05 Baby Come On Home (Led Zeppelin)
06 Sugar Mama (Led Zeppelin)
07 Do What Thou Wilt [Pipes and Flamenco] [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)
08 For Your Love (Led Zeppelin)
09 Sunshine Woman (Led Zeppelin)
10 Pat's Delight [Instrumental] (Led Zeppelin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693857/LEDZPPLN1968-1969_SnshneWomn_atse.zip.html

Peter from the Albums I Wish Existed blog made the cover art.

Paul Simon - The African Concert, Harare, Zimbabwe, 2-14-1987

If you enjoy Paul Simon's "Graceland" album, you should enjoy this. 

Not long after that album came out in 1986, Simon wanted to put on a concert for the black South African community that musically inspired him. However, he wasn't allowed to perform in the country of South Africa. So he held a concert as close as he could get, in the neighboring country of Zimbabwe. Naturally, he plays all the songs from "Graceland." But instead of fleshing out the concert with songs from earlier in his career, he gives spots to the musicians who helped him out on the album and inspired him, like Miriam Makeba, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and Hugh Masekela. So this is a deeper dive into the South African music that lead to the "Graceland" album.

This came out as a DVD, but never a CD or album. But here it is, taken from the DVD audio.

01 Township Jive (Paul Simon with Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
02 Boy in the Bubble (Paul Simon)
03 Gumboots (Paul Simon)
04 Whispering Bells (Paul Simon)
05 Bring Him Back Home [Nelson Mandela] (Hugh Masekela)
06 Crazy Love, Vol. II (Paul Simon)
07 I Know What I Know (Paul Simon)
08 Jinkel E Maweni (Miriam Makeba)
09 Soweto Blues (Miriam Makeba)
10 Under African Skies (Paul Simon with Miriam Makeba)
11 Nomathemba [Mother of Hope] (Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
12 Hello My Baby (Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
13 Homeless (Paul Simon with Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
14 Graceland (Paul Simon)
15 You Can Call Me Al (Paul Simon)
16 Stimela (Hugh Masekela)
17 Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes (Paul Simon with Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
18 Nkosi Sikeleli Africa (Paul Simon, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Hugh Masekela & Miriam Makeba)
19 Shaka Zulu [King of Kings] (Ladysmith Black Mambazo)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vH2BPoGJ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/alQWMt7Ui1HCAZf/file

Thanks to Peter at the Albums I Wish Existed blog for the cover art.

Paul McCartney - Mull of Kintyre - Non-Album Tracks (1977-1978)

Today is the day Paul McCartney released his latest album "Egypt Station." It's been six years since his last studio album. In cerebration of that, here's the next in my series of albums collecting his best stray tracks from his long solo career.

The last album in this series covered the years 1973 to 1975. I couldn't find anything good from 1976, so this covers 1977 and 1978. The song "Mull of Kintyre" was released as a single in 1977 and went on to become one of the biggest hits of all time in Britain. Yet it wasn't even released as an A-side in the US, due to it sounding like a Scottish folk song. The B-side "Girls' School" was flipped to the A-side instead, and was a minor US hit.

Those are the only two officially released songs on this album. Some of the others were going to be released on a rarities compilation called "Cold Cuts," but that never got released, even though it came close several times.

There's one song here by Wings band member Denny Laine, "Find a Way Somehow." That song was released on a Laine solo album in 1973, but I don't like that version, mostly due to a cheesy spoken word segment in the middle of it. This is a longer unreleased version recorded in 1977 that has more musical involvement by McCartney.

Personally, I don't think this is as strong a bunch of songs are the three earlier stray tracks collections I've posted here. I think he just wasn't as musically inspired at the time, as can be seen with the relative disappointments of the "Wings at the Speed of Sound" and "London Town" albums. But it's still 1970s McCartney, which means it's pretty darn good.

01 Mull of Kintyre (Paul McCartney)
02 After You've Gone (Paul McCartney)
03 Find a Way Somehow (Denny Laine with Paul McCartney)
04 Waterspout (Paul McCartney)
05 Cage (Paul McCartney)
06 Girls' School (Paul McCartney)
07 Robber's Ball (Paul McCartney)
08 Rupert Song (Paul McCartney)
09 Sunshine Sometime (Paul McCartney)
10 Did We Meet Somewhere Before (Paul McCartney)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15259157/PaulMcC_1977-1978_MllofKntyre_atse.zip.html

The cover is the cover to the "Mull of Kintrye" single, except "Wings" has been replaced with McCartney's name.

Robyn Hitchcock - Element of Light - Acoustic Versions (1986)

Still more Robyn Hitchcock! I'm generally trying to simultaneously post two companion albums for each of his official albums, so here's the second stray tracks album that goes with 1986's "Element of Light."

This one contains all of the acoustic versions of the songs from that album I could find. I was able to find eight out of ten songs, which is a pretty good ratio compared to some of his other albums. In addition, I was able to find three acoustic versions of the songs from the stray tracks studio album I just posted, "The Leopard."

All of these songs are written by Hitchcock. Five of the eleven songs are officially released demos, put out as bonus tracks. The rest are from concert bootlegs, with the audience noise removed.

01 If You Were a Priest [Demo] (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Winchester [Acoustic with Drums Version] (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Somewhere Apart (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Ted, Woody and Junior (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 The President [Demo] (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Raymond Chandler Evening [Demo] (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Bass (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Airscape (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 Never Stop Bleeding (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Lady Waters and the Hooded One [Demo] (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 The Leopard [Demo] (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15179084/RobynH_1986_ElementofLiAcousticVersions_atse.zip.html

The cover uses a painting made by Hitchcock and put on his website. I don't know the name of the painting or when it was done.

Robyn Hitchcock - The Leopard - Non-Album Tracks (1986)

Here's the next in my long series of Robyn Hitchcock stray tracks albums. As usual, I made two albums for one of his official studio albums, which in this case is 1986's "Element of Light." This first companion album contains stray studio tracks he did that same year.

There's not much to say that I haven't said already, if you've been following this series of albums. This is a relatively short album, just 32 minutes long. Most of the songs come from bonus tracks to "Element of Light." In addition, there are two B-sides. Plus there's one unreleased track, a live version of "The Calvary Cross" by Richard and Linda Thompson. One of the B-sides is a cover also, the classic Byrds hit "Eight Miles High."

If you like the general kind of music posted on this blog and you haven't given Hitchcock a try, you're really missing out! Literally everything he does is interesting.

01 The Calvary Cross (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 The Crawling (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Eight Miles High (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 The Black Crow Knows (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 The Leopard (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Tell Me about Your Drugs (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Sprinkling Dots (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Upside-Down Church Blues (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 Into It (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Neck (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 The Can Opener (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15122110/RobynH_1986_TheLeoprd_atse.zip.html

I couldn't come up with any good ideas for an album called "The Leopard" except for a picture of a leopard. So I Googled abstract art on leopards and came up with the picture here. I don't know who made it.

Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs - Under the Covers, Volume 2.5 (2009)

A few days ago, I posted my companion album to "Under the Covers, Volume 1," by Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs. I called it "Under the Covers, Volume 1.5," because it covered the same 1960s material. Here's the exact same thing, except this is "Under the Covers, Volume 2.5," covering 1970s material.

For "Volume 1," Sweet and Hoffs officially released three bonus tracks. For "Volume 2," they released an entire bonus disc that contains ten songs. So my work is done already, right? Not exactly, because there are plenty of other occasions when Sweet and/or Hoffs recorded 1970s songs. That's especially true for Sweet.

Most of the songs on this album are from the 2000s, but two of the Sweet songs are from the 1990s. Plus, for one Hoffs song, I had to reach all the way back to 1991 and her cover of "Feel like Makin' Love." This cover deserves special mention. For one thing, her version is great musically. But I highly, highly recommend you watch the YouTube video, because it's a real hoot. Here's the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol4MaEPayv0

As a male, I must say, this is one of the sexiest and most arousing music videos I've ever seen! Hoffs gets so into grooving to the song that I think she would make most professional pole dancers envious of her moves!

A couple other songs deserve special mention. I found a live version of Sweet and Hoffs doing "In the Long Run" together, which seems to be the only time they did this song. Note that this isn't the Eagles song "The Long Run," but instead is a song from the soundtrack to the 1970 cult classic movie "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls."

One song here, the "I've Seen All Good People - Your Move" medley, is merely a bonus track. That's because it also appears on "Volume 2." But this version is worthy of inclusion at least as a bonus track because it's done in a very different style, with just Sweet and Hoffs on acoustic guitars. (Plus, it's really just the "Your Move" part of the medley, while the official version has the full medley.) Additionally, the recording of this version (done for rollingstone.com) was poorly miked, with Sweet's vocals much, much louder than Hoff's. So, using a music editor, I carefully lowered all of Sweet's vocals so they wouldn't stand out. I think it worked. You can find the unedited version at YouTube if you're curious to see the difference.

When I first posted this in 2018, I decided there wasn't enough material to make a "3.5" album to complement the "Under the Covers, Volume 3" album that consists of 1980s covers. There just weren't enough extra 1980s songs, so I put everything here. But I decided that if I move all the songs from 1977 and after to the 3.5 album, that would split the material nicely. 

Thus, all the originals here date from 1970 to 1976. I found a couple more that fit, "Let Me Be the One" and "Do Ya." That means there's more Sweet-led songs than Hoffs-led ones, but so be it. There are a couple of Hoffs songs I could have included that fit the format, but I'm saving those for some solo albums I plan on posting later.

01 [What's So Funny 'Bout] Peace, Love & Understanding (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)
02 You Can Close Your Eyes (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)
03 Melissa (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)
04 A Song for You (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)
05 Killer Queen (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)
06 Baby Blue (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)
07 Livin' Thing (Matthew Sweet)
08 Let Me Be the One (Matthew Sweet)
09 In the Long Run (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)
10 The Ballad of El Goodo (Matthew Sweet)
11 Every Night (Matthew Sweet)
12 Feel like Making Love (Susanna Hoffs)
13 It Don't Matter to Me (Matthew Sweet)
14 Do Ya (Matthew Sweet)

I've Seen All Good People - Your Move [Acoustic Version] (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15263891/MattSwtSusH_2009_UndrCovrsVolme2.5_atse.zip.html

I made the cover using a photo of Sweet and Hoffs, but I don't know what year it's from. I copied and pasted the text from one of the official albums to keep that distinctive font, then I changed the numbering.

The Who - 6 ft. Wide Garage, 7 ft. Wide Car - Non-Album Tracks (1970)

The last album I posted from the Who was "Who's for Tennis," a stray tracks album from 1968. For the Who, 1969 was consumed by the "Tommy" album, so that brings us to 1970. That year, the Who released the classic "Live at Leeds" live album, and the hit single "The Seeker." They also almost released a four-song EP as well, which probably was going to have the title "6 ft. Wide Garage, 7 ft. Wide Car" based on a joke by drummer Keith Moon. So that's why I've given this album that title. But ultimately, the group decided the EP wouldn't be an impressive enough follow-up to "Tommy."

In fact, just considering studio material, the Who had enough material for a solid album, not just an EP, so that's what I've made here. My challenge was to not include any songs from the group's next big concept album project, "Lifehouse," which eventually became the "Who's Next" album. The song "Naked Eye" was incorporated into some versions of "Lifehouse," but it actually was written by Pete Townshend in 1970 before he started to conceive of "Lifehouse," so I figure it's fair game here.

"I Don't Even Know Myself" is a 1970 B-side that also got retconned into "Lifehouse." But in this case there are two studio versions. So I've used the hard-to-find EP version here, allowing me to use the other version later. I also used the similarly rare EP version of "Postcard." But it doesn't actually matter much, since both of these versions are quite similar to their more well known versions (which can be found on the expanded version of "Odds and Sods.")

It turns out there's just enough material for a 36-minute long 1970 album, which is a decent album length for that year. In order to get that much, I had to use a couple of "Tommy" outtakes that didn't fit the plot. Luckily, the Who was firing on all cylinders in those years, so even their outtakes were quality songs.

01 The Seeker (Who)
02 Heaven and Hell (Who)
03 Here for More (Who)
04 Naked Eye (Who)
05 Young Man Blues (Who)
06 Trying to Get Through (Who)
07 I Don't Even Know Myself [EP Version] (Who)
08 Postcard [EP Version] (Who)
09 Now I'm a Farmer (Who)
10 Water (Who)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5e3v6ZYP

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/HlPSd2nAyYvGz7M/file

I originally used cover art made by the music blogger "The Reconstructor." That blog also has a slightly different song list for this album, as well as a more detailed explanation of what the Who did that year. (I differed mainly in not wanting to include "Behind Blue Eyes" or "Drowned" on a 1970 album, even though they both were written in 1970.) I recommend you give it a read here:

http://the-reconstructor.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-who-7ft-wide-car-6ft-wide-garage.html

However, in 2025, I changed the cover to one made by Guy E (which I found at the Steve Hoffman music forum), since it better represents the situation described in the album title, of a car too big for its garage.

Fritz - Fritz (Stevie Nicks & Lindsey Buckingham) (1968-1971)

Here's a very special share, of something so rare that I don't believe it's even ever been bootlegged. It's an album of the best of Fritz, the band Fleetwood Mac stars Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham were in back in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

I've started posting various stray tracks albums of Fleetwood Mac, moving forward chronologically through the band's long career. I plan to keep doing that. But I also need to begin posting about the early career of Nicks and Buckingham, until they join Fleetwood Mac in 1975. Some people know about the official "Buckingham Nicks" album from 1973, but there's more than that, including this.

I'm not going to go through a long explanation about the story of Fritz. If you're interested in that, Google it. Here's one article that gives a good summary:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/30-fascinating-early-bands-of-future-music-legends-200891/stevie-nicks-and-lindsey-buckinghams-psychedelic-rock-band-fritz-203670/

The short version is that the band began in the Bay Area of California in 1966. In 1967, Nicks and Buckingham joined. The band got popular enough for them to open for many big name artists, including Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Nicks and Buckingham stayed in the band until it broke up in 1971, when those two moved to Los Angeles to try to make it big in the music business. But even though Nicks and/or Buckingham were the lead singers on all of Fritz's songs, there were three other band members, including Brian Kane on lead guitar and Bob Aguirre on drums. But the creative heart of the band was keyboardist Javier Pacheco, because he wrote nearly all the songs. (One exception here is the first song, "Where Was I," written by Nicks.)

As far as I can tell, absolutely none of Fritz's music has ever been officially released. And that's not likely to change any time soon, since neither Nicks nor Buckingham seem interested in uncovering the early part of their career. For instance, the 1973 "Buckingham Nicks" album is beloved by many Fleetwood Mac fans, but it has remained out of print ever since its first release. Only a couple of songs from it have come out on career spanning box sets, and nothing from any time before it.

Luckily, Pacheco has kept many recordings of Fritz, and in recent years he's released a lot of them through YouTube videos. I went through all the videos I could find and put together the best ones for this album. Unfortunately, that didn't mean including all the best songs, because I had to take into account two factors: song quality and recording quality. There were many more songs I didn't include, some of them quite good, because I deemed the recording quality too poor. For instance, there was at least an album's worth of songs performed live, but all of those recordings just weren't good enough for repeat listenings. (If you're interested though, just search for "Fritz" and "Pacheco" on YouTube.)

Thankfully, Fritz did go into professional recording studios several times to record some of their songs, even though they never got a record company to sign them. So pretty much all the songs here are good songs that are well recorded. If you like the "Buckingham Nicks" album, this is much like discovering a very similar album, of comparable musical talent. Despite the fact that nearly all the songs are written by Pacheco, they're probably as good as if they'd been written by Nicks or Buckingham in their pre-Fleetwood Mac days. (Pacheco has gone on to have a long musical career, but in other musical areas, mostly in the Spanish language.)

The last three songs on this album aren't quite Fritz recordings, but I figure they belong here because they fit in the general Fritz time frame. "Anybody Out There" is a demo by Nicks, apparently of a song she wrote. The last two songs, "Next Time Around" and "Time Ago" are more Pacheco songs. Fritz had broken up by then, but he still was able to get Nicks to sing one of them and Buckingham to sing the other.

By the way, I did make a significant edit for one song, "Reconsider." I don't know why, but for that song Pacheco has only made available a snippet of the song that's about a minute and twenty seconds long. That snippet ends with the exact same riff that starts it. So I repeated the entire song, and then added another copy of the intro riff at the end to allow a good fade out. Hopefully, the rest of the original recording will be made public one day. But until then, this can give you some idea of how the song goes.

This makes up a nice 44 minute album that I think any big fan of the "Rumours" era Fleetwood Mac would be interested in. Basically, if you hear a female voice on any of these songs, assume it belongs to Nicks, and if you hear a lead male voice, assume it's Buckingham.

01 Where Was I (Fritz)
02 Up to Fate (Fritz)
03 You Don't Get Young Anymore (Fritz)
04 Reconsider (Fritz)
05 Take Advantage of Me (Fritz)
06 Whirlpool (Fritz)
07 A Million Ways (Fritz)
08 Wondering Why (Fritz)
09 Good Old Fritz (Fritz)
10 In the Dawn (Fritz)
11 Pollyanna Louise (Fritz)
12 Anybody Out There [Demo] (Stevie Nicks)
13 Next Time Around (Lindsey Buckingham & Stevie Nicks)
14 Time Ago (Lindsey Buckingham & Stevie Nicks)

UPDATE: After a request from Pacheco to stop sharing this music, I've taken down the link. Some of this has now been officially released, with more coming soon. Here's a link if you want to buy the official album:

https://fritzrmb.com/music/

I'm still unable to do much photo editing, but I figured it was important to show a picture of Fritz, since so few people are familiar with anything about the early careers of Nicks and Buckingham, including how they look. In this photo used for the cover, taken around 1968, the sole female is Nicks. The male in the middle is Buckingham, and the male on the right is Pacheco. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a good color photo of all five band members, so I cropped this one to highlight the three key people.

Jimi Hendrix - Cherokee Mist - Non-Album Tracks (1969)

Like I do with many important musicians, my plan is to make a series of albums covering Jimi Hendrix's studio stray tracks. It's been a while, but I've already posted two such albums, covering Hendrix's time with the Experience, from 1967 to early 1969.

This covers the next phase of Hendrix's career, after he broke up the Experience in early 1969 but before he got together with the Band of Gypsys in late 1969. Some songs on my previous Hendrix album with the Experience were recorded as late as April 1969. But before that group broke up he was already occasionally playing with other musicians, so the first songs on this album come from February 1969. I found so much good music from his time before the Band of Gypys that this is the first of two albums from that era, covering the spring and summer of 1969

For most of 1969, Hendrix was somewhat musically lost and looking for a new direction, as well as a new band worthy of him. Nothing from this time period would be officially released until long after his death. He recorded in the studio fairly frequently, but it was more experimenting than aiming to put up a new album.

In two cases, I made some drastic edits that serious Hendrix fans might object to. The first is the song "World Traveler." This song has never been officially released, but the one version known to bootleggers is eight minutes long. For most of the song, Hendrix mostly just played little fills and rhythm guitar while organist Duane Hitchings played riffs and rhythm on his organ without ever really breaking into a solo. There was just one section of the song where Hendrix sang, and two other sections where he played some nice solo guitar work. So I edited the song down to just those three parts, which made it only three minute long.

I did a similar thing with the song "Blue Window." This has been officially released, on the relatively obscure album "Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues - Jimi Hendrix." Unfortunately, that version is 13 minutes long, and most of it was aimless noodling without vocals or impressive instrumental work. So I edited it down to the best six minutes. (By contrast, another song, "It's Too Bad," is also quite long at nine minutes, but I felt the full length was justified.)

The rest of the album comes from various posthumous releases, such as "Blues," "People, Hell and Angels" and "Both Sides of the Sky." In one case ("Things I Used to Do") I used a longer and better version than the officially released one. In order to keep Hendrix's very complicated recording history straight, I've included the dates of each recording and the recording studio used, and added that information to the mp3 tags. All the songs are in chronological order.

By the way, the song "Crash Landing" was the title song of an 1970s Hendrix album produced by Alan Douglas. Rest assured that I've avoided Douglas's misguided production on this version of "Crash Landing" and all other songs on my Hendrix albums. (He had a habit of erasing all instrumentation except Hendrix's and then fleshing the songs out with his own musicians and back-up singers, who had never even met Hendrix.) 

01 World Traveler [Edit] (Jimi Hendrix with Duane Hitchings)
02 It's Too Bad (Jimi Hendrix)
03 Blue Window [Edit] (Jimi Hendrix with Buddy Miles)
04 Cherokee Mist [Instrumental, Sitar Version] (Jimi Hendrix)
05 Mannish Boy - I'm a Man (Jimi Hendrix)
06 Crash Landing [Early Version of Freedom] (Jimi Hendrix)
07 The Things I Used to Do (Jimi Hendrix, Stephen Stills & Johnny Winter)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15119365/JimiH_1967-1968_CherokeeMst_atse.zip.html

I made the cover from a  1968 concert poster designed by Rick Griffin.

Aretha Franklin - Love Letters - Non-Album Tracks (1973-1974)

Here's the last in my series of albums gathering up Aretha Franklin's stray tracks from her golden era, 1967 to 1974. This covers 1973 to 1974.

Like the other albums in this series, I rely on the rarities compilation "Rare and Unreleased Recordings from the Golden Reign of the Queen of Soul." Four of the songs are from that.

Two others are from Franklin's acclaimed 1972 gospel album "Amazing Grace." A lot of people consider that one of the best albums of her career. But it's a very religious album, and I'm not a religious person. Furthermore, most of it doesn't appeal to me musically, with a lot of slow songs, including long call and response sections, talking and preaching sections, and so on.

However, there are two songs from that album I do like, that show how soul music evolved from gospel: "How I Got Over" and "Old Landmark." You may remember James Brown doing "Old Landmark" in a great church scene in the 1980 "Blues Brothers" movie. If you're like me and you only dabble in gospel music, you'll like these two songs. 

As for the remaining songs, "Just a Lucky So and So" is unreleased and was performed for a TV special celebrating jazz great Duke Ellington. "The Boy from Bombay" and "Til It's Over" come from the 2021 box set "Aretha." "Master of Eyes (The Deepness of Your Eyes)" was released as a single in 1973. "Feel a Little Love" and "Springtime in New York" are both unreleased studio takes, but have very good sound quality.

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 The Boy from Bombay (Aretha Franklin)
02 Just a Lucky So and So (Aretha Franklin)
03 At Last (Aretha Franklin)
04 Love Letters (Aretha Franklin)
05 Master of Eyes [The Deepness of Your Eyes] (Aretha Franklin)
06 Ain't but the One (Aretha Franklin & Ray Charles)
07 Are You Leaving Me (Aretha Franklin)
08 Til It's Over (Aretha Franklin)
09 Feel a Little Love (Aretha Franklin)
10 Springtime in New York (Aretha Franklin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ukMD71Ax

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/zHhIh98VJLxsHOn/file

I made the cover based on a concert photo from the Muhammad Ali Variety Special, on May 16, 1975. In March 2025, I upgraded the cover image with the use of the Krea AI program.

David Bowie - Shadow Man - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1971)

As I said in a previous post, I've got a lot of Davie Bowie material to post, most of it from the late 1960s and early 1970s. There's BBC performances, acoustic versions, and more. But first, I want to post the stray track studio albums. The last one I posted covered 1968 to 1969; this one covers 1970 to 1971.

My two previous Bowie stray tracks albums covered early time periods when Bowie was still finding his style and his voice. But this one, in my opinion, covers some of the very best Bowie years, so it's not surprising that even his unreleased songs are still good. Most of the 12 songs on this album were written or co-written by Bowie. ("Buzz the Fuzz" is a cover.) Yet, surprisingly, only three of the songs here have been officially released

I don't know why, since I think this makes a solid album. Take, for instance, the song "Shadow Man." Bowie never allowed it to be included on any box set or bonus track. Yet, in 2001, he made a new version of the song for his album "Toy" (which wasn't released at the time due to problems at his record company.)

If you've a Bowie fan, don't miss this!

By the way, I've included one song, "Tired of My Life," only as a bonus track. There's two reasons for that. For one, it's just not that good of a song. But also, Bowie revamped it and greatly improved it, turning it into "It's No Game" for his 1980 album "Scary Monsters." I much prefer hearing that.

Also by the way, the first song, "London Bye Ta-Ta," is a remake of a song he released in 1967. But this version is included because it's significantly different, and, in my opinion, better. Oh, and the lead vocals for the song "Man in the Middle" are mostly sung by someone else, but Bowie apparently wrote it and he joins in the singing, so I figure it's worthy of inclusion.

01 London Bye Ta-Ta [1970 Version] (David Bowie)
02 Conversation Piece (David Bowie)
03 The Mirror (David Bowie)
04 Looking for a Friend (David Bowie)
05 Buzz the Fuzz (David Bowie)
06 Columbine (David Bowie)
07 Right on Mother (David Bowie)
08 Lightning Frightening (David Bowie)
09 Rupert the Riley (David Bowie)
10 Man in the Middle (Freddi Buretti & David Bowie)
11 How Lucky You Are [Miss Peculiar] (David Bowie)
12 Shadow Man (David Bowie)

Tired of My Life [It's No Game] (David Bowie)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17362465/DAVDBWE1970-1971ShadwMan_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ioGj4QMA

Thanks to Peter at the Albums I Wish Existed blog for the cover art. I enhanced it a bit with the Krea AI program.

George Harrison - Fear of Flying - Non-Album Acoustic Tracks (1971-1982)

Here's something I'm excited to post, because I've taken two snippets of unreleased George Harrison songs and improved them into full songs.

First, let me explain that this album gathers up all the acoustic Harrison performances that don't easily fit anywhere else. I posted one album like this already, covering the years 1969 and 1970. You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/05/george-harrison-acoustic-versions-1969.html

This is the sequel, covering 1971 to 1982. Mostly, it contains acoustic demos that were included as bonus tracks to various official studio albums. But there are some unreleased performances too, especially four songs Harrison did with Paul Simon for Saturday Night Live in 1976.

Additionally, two songs I found for this album were good, but too short. One is the song "Deep Blue" done for rehearsals for the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971. The audio comes from video footage (which can be found on YouTube), but apparently the recording only started in the middle of the song, for a total of a little over a minute. I decided to do some tinkering to flesh it out. This version began with the last line of the chorus, then goes through one verse and a chorus before coming to an end. I put another copy of the verse and the chorus at the start, matching it up with that last line of the chorus. Then I took some of the instrumental music near the end and put it at the very beginning, to imitate how the song begins on the studio version. The result is two minutes of the song instead of just over one minute. I think it now sounds like a proper song instead of just a snippet.

I did a very similar thing with the song "Fear of Flying." In 2014, Harrison's wife Olivia played a one minute long snippet of a demo of the song, which was originally done by Charlie Dore in 1979, and then done by Harrison not long after that. The snippet contained all of two verses and a chorus, plus a one line of another verse, which starts out the same as the first verse. So I replaced that one lats line with a repeat of the entire thing, and then repeated just the first verse once more. Finally, using a few seconds of strumming from the middle of the song, I constructed an instrumental fade out. Now, instead of one minute, the song lasts two minutes and 17 seconds. It sounds like a real song to me, not just a snippet.

Hopefully, someday the Harrison estate will finally get around to officially releasing all of the "Fear of Flying" demo as well as many, many more demos by him that are said to exist. Until then, hopefully this edit will allow you to enjoy the song. If you're more of a purist and just want to hear the one minute version, it can be found on YouTube.

On a different note, while checking to make sure I had all the acoustic Harrison performances available for this album, I came across a great performance from 1997 that I'd missed. That's a solo acoustic version of the Traveling Wilburys song "If You Belonged to Me." There isn't enough material for a third acoustic album after 1982, so I've updated my "Portraits of a Leg End" album and added that song to it. You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/05/george-harrison-portrait-of-leg-end.html

Oh, by the way, I also edited the song "Bye Bye Love." There was some annoying buzzing and crackling during the first chorus. I was able to remove it by patching in parts of the second chorus. I also removed some crowd noise during the first chorus using the same method.  

01 The Light that Has Lighted the World [Demo] (George Harrison)
02 Deep Blue [Edit] (George Harrison)
03 If Not for You (Bob Dylan & George Harrison)
04 Sue Me, Sue You Blues (George Harrison)
05 I Don't Care Anymore (George Harrison)
06 Dark Horse (George Harrison)
07 Bye Bye Love [Live] (George Harrison & Paul Simon)
08 Rock Island Line [Live] (George Harrison & Paul Simon)
09 Homeward Bound [Live] (George Harrison & Paul Simon)
10 Here Comes the Sun [Live] (George Harrison & Paul Simon)
11 Let It Be Me [Demo] (George Harrison)
12 Here Comes the Moon [Demo] (George Harrison)
13 Life Itself [Demo] (George Harrison)
14 Blow Away [Demo] (George Harrison)
15 Fear of Flying [Edit] (George Harrison)
16 Save the World [Demo] (George Harrison)
17 Mystical One [Demo] (George Harrison)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15119279/GeorgeH_1971-1982_FrofFlying_atse.zip.html

I made the cover art, using the cover of Harrison's 1980 book "I Me Mine" as the basis.

Aretha Franklin - Spanish Harlem - Non-Album Tracks (1971)

Here's the next of my stray tracks albums from Aretha Franklin's golden age, 1967 to 1974.

Normally, Franklin was pretty consistent in including her hit singles on her albums. But for whatever the reason, that wasn't the case in 1971.  In that year, she put out three songs as singles that didn't go onto her latest studio album of new material: "You're All I Need to Get By," "Bridge Over Troubled Water," and "Spanish Harlem." Instead, they would go onto a greatest hits album released later that year.

Naturally, the three hit songs I've mentioned plus a B-side make up four tracks here. To fill out the rest of the album, I used four live songs that never appeared on any of her studio albums, and removed the audience noise. The live album is "Don't Fight the Feeling: The Complete Aretha Franklin & King Curtis Live at Fillmore West." Note this is NOT the same as her popular 1971 album "Aretha Live at Fillmore West," but a recent four CD version of all the soundboard recordings that were used to make that 1971 live album. I was careful to only use versions that weren't on the 1971 album.

Some of the live songs were of recent hit songs like "Love the One You're With" by Stephen Stills and "Make It With You" by Bread that got the Aretha soul treatment. In my opinion, these easily could have been hit songs too. So this is an unusually strong collection, with about half of the songs either hits or should-have-been hits.

01 You're All I Need to Get By (Aretha Franklin)
02 I Need a Strong Man [The To-To Song] (Aretha Franklin)
03 Spanish Harlem (Aretha Franklin)
04 Lean On Me (Aretha Franklin)
05 Heavenly Father (Aretha Franklin)
06 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Aretha Franklin)
07 Love the One You're With (Aretha Franklin)
08 Make It with You (Aretha Franklin)
09 Mixed-Up Girl (Aretha Franklin)
10 Reach Out and Touch [Somebody's Hand] (Aretha Franklin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/U1dqfcfA

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/JTsPld92OaXrO9l/file

I made the cover art based on a 1972 concert photo.In March 2025, I upgraded the cover image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs - Under the Covers, Volume 1.5 (2006)

A few days ago, someone asked me if I was familiar with the three "Under the Covers"albums by Hoffs and Matthew Sweet. This is my way of replying yes, yes, I am. :) Those three albums contain nothing but cover versions of classic songs, done by decade. "Under the Covers, Volume 1" came out in 2006 and focused on songs from the 1960s. There were only three official bonus tracks to that. But I've used those plus other 1960s covers to make a companion album. I figured the only logical title I could give it was "Volume 1.5."

Three of the songs here are also on "Volume 1." That's because these are very different acoustic versions, done live in the studio for radio shows. All the other songs are different, and come from a variety of sources. Most of them are from 2006, but I went back to 2002 and 2004 grab two songs and forward to 2009 and 2011 to grab two others. I figure that for this type of album the year the song was recorded isn't as important as the performance and sound quality, as well as it being a 1960s cover. There were just two cases where I included a song that didn't have both Sweet and Hoffs on it ("Big Sky" and "Good Night.")

I've also included "Cinnamon Girl" as a bonus track. The reason it's only a bonus track is because that song is on "Volume 1" and this version isn't very different. (It was done live in a studio.) However, it's in excellent sound quality, so I'm throwing it on in case anyone wants it. 

UPDATE: On October 23, 2022, I updated the mp3 download file. I added one song I'd previously overlooked, "I Can See for Miles."

01 Here Comes the Sun (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)
02 Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)
03 I See the Rain (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)
04 Different Drum (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)
05 To Sir with Love (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)
06 Rain (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)
07 I Can See for Miles (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)
08 The Village Green Preservation Society (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)
09 Sorry (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)
10 On the Way Home (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)
11 Big Sky (Matthew Sweet)
12 Got to Get You into My Life (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)
13 I'll Keep It with Mine (Susanna Hoffs with Petra Haden)
14 Good Night (Matthew Sweet)

Cinnamon Girl (Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15263892/MattSwtSusH_2006_UndrCovrsVolme1.5_atse.zip.html

I made the cover using a photo of Sweet and Hoffs, but I don't know what year it's from. I copied and pasted the text from one of the official albums to keep that distinctive font, then I changed the numbering. 

Susanna Hoffs - Summer Daze - Non-Album Tracks (2012-2016)

I'm a big fan of the Bangles as well as Susanna Hoffs' solo career. I'll be posting a bunch of both eventually. Here's a start.

In 2012, Hoffs put out her solo album "Someday." It's a really excellent album. If you haven't heard it yet, please go do so. I'd say it's better than anything the Bangles did since their early years, but in a more mellow and acoustic vein. Anyway, in 2012, she also put out not one but two EPs, both of them with songs on them not found elsewhere. My guess is Hoffs recorded more songs that she wanted to put on her album (since she kept it to an all-killer no-filler 31 minutes in length), and rather than keeping her outtakes locked up in a vault, she released them through the EPs.

Those EP songs got me started on making an album of stray tracks to compliment "Someday." One song on one of the EPs was essentially an acoustic version of one of the album tracks ("One Day (Ragtag Version)"), and I found three more acoustic versions of the album tracks from a live radio appearance. I found three more songs done live in 2012 that weren't on the album.

That alone would have been enough for a 33-minute long album, longer than "Someday" itself. But since 2012, Hoffs has been surprisingly quiet, aside from doing some touring with the Bangles. Here it is 2018 and she hasn't put out another album, either by herself or with the Bangles. In fact, I've found almost no new music from her at all. However, I have found three songs she did from 2015 and 2016, so I've added them at the end.

I've organized this album so the first half is mostly acoustic versions of songs from her "Someday" album or other new acoustic-styled songs, while the second half is mostly cover versions.

01 Picture Me [Acoustic Version] (Susanna Hoffs)
02 Raining [Acoustic Version] (Susanna Hoffs)
03 Always Enough [Acoustic Version] (Susanna Hoffs)
04 Petite Chanson (Susanna Hoffs)
05 Summer Daze (Susanna Hoffs)
06 One Day [Ragtag Version] (Susanna Hoffs)
07 Sally Go 'Round the Roses (Susanna Hoffs)
08 All I've Got to Do (Susanna Hoffs)
09 This Will Be Our Year (Susanna Hoffs)
10 When You Walk in the Room [Acoustic] (Susanna Hoffs)
11 Never My Love (Susanna Hoffs)
12 September Gurls (Susanna Hoffs)
13 I'm Ready to Move On - Wild Heart Reprise (Susanna Hoffs & the Bleachers)
14 Take Me with U (Susanna Hoffs with Petra Haden)
15 I'll Keep It with Mine (Susanna Hoffs with Petra Haden)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15121862/SusannaH_2012_SummrDaze_atse.zip.html

By the way, I still haven't been able to get a new laptop so I can easily work on making album covers some more. However, I saw a photo of Hoffs from 2012 that looks so good I just had to make an album cover anyway. She truly is an ageless beauty, as well as a great singer. Keep in mind that she already was in her 50s when this photo was taken.

Robyn Hitchcock - Acoustic Covers, Volume 1: 1986-1991

In a previous post about Robyn Hitchcock, I mentioned that I've made three kinds of his albums for this blog: 1) acoustic versions of songs on his official albums, 2) collections of stray tracks, and 3) acoustic cover versions, usually done live.

So far, I've posted a few albums of the first two types. This is the first one of the third type. I've had to wait because I couldn't find any examples of Hitchcock doing acoustic covers until 1986. That's because he didn't tour much until around 1985. Then, for the next few years, he mostly played with his band the Egyptians, and quality bootlegs of his occasional acoustic concerts are rare.

As far as I can tell, he didn't perform acoustically much until 1990, after the release of his acoustic "Eye" album that year. But luckily we do have some occasional quality acoustic recordings from this early phase of his solo career that predate that.

If you enjoy this album, you'd be glad to hear that there's a lot more to come! This is the first of ten albums I've made containing nothing but Hitchcock playing songs by other artists. There are a total of 140 songs in the ten albums, with none of them repeated.

Mind you, this does NOT include any music from any of his full band concerts where he's played entire albums (plus bonus tracks) by other artists! I figure those are worth their own posts at a later time.  Over the years, he's performed:

all of Bob Dylan's 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert
The White Album (The Beatles)
Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Pink Floyd)
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (The Beatles)
Abbey Road (The Beatles)
Hunky Dory (David Bowie)
Clear Spot (Captain Beefheart)
Revolver (The Beatles)
The Basement Tapes (Bob Dylan)
Sweethearts of the Rodeo (The Byrds)
a show just of Syd Barrett songs
a concert of what he called "Naff 1970s Hits."

If I could ever examine Hitchcock's music collection, I imagine it would closely mirror my own, based on his cover choices. As you can see from the albums he's performed, he loves Bob Dylan and the Beatles most of all, and he also really loves Pink Floyd (especially the Syd Barrett era).

That's reflected in his acoustic covers, as he covers those three artists the most. Over the ten acoustic covers albums I've made, you'll also see more than one cover of: David Bowie, The Doors, The Byrds, The Velvet Underground, Richard Thompson, Van Morrison, Roxy Music, The Kinks, John Lennon (solo), Lou Reed, Nick Drake, Jimi Hendrix, The Incredible String Band, The Band, Love, The Grateful Dead, George Harrison (solo), Leonard Cohen, and Neil Young, plus many, many other artists he does one or two songs of.

That's pretty much a list of my very favorite musical artists of all time! (Though I must admit I've never really gotten into Roxy Music or The Incredible String Band.)

No, Hitchcock doesn't have an incredible voice like Aretha Franklin's or Elvis Presley's. But he has a very good one, with character, and he always does justice to the many classic songs that he clearly loves. I don't know of any other artist who has played so many cover songs acoustically in concert. And yet he's not even close to being a "covers artist" because his covers only make up a small percentage of all the songs he does in a typical concert. It's just that he loves to vary things up instead of playing the same songs over and over again. Many of the covers I've included in these albums were only ever publicly performed by him once.

By the way, on top of everything else, I've also made an album I'll post later on just of his acoustic versions of songs by the Soft Boys, his original band. I figure those should be treated separately since he wrote those songs.

For all of these acoustic albums, I've removed the audience noise wherever I could. That's to create a consistent listening experience, since some of the songs come from radio station performances and other occasions where there was no audience.

Only one song on this album has been officially released. The two Van Morrison cover "Fair Play" was recorded at a 1991 concert, but were included as B-sides to a single that year.  The rest are from bootlegs. There are more songs I could have included but didn't because I felt the sound quality wasn't up to snuff.

By the way, I want to give a shout out to The Asking Tree, a website of Hitchcock data. This series wouldn't have been possible without it. To see what a human jukebox Hitchcock is, check out this below weblink to a list of all the songs he's covered. (I didn't include lots of them in this series because they were done with a full band, often in one of his shows playing a full album by someone else, or because there's no quality bootleg recording.)

The Asking Tree

Here's a list of the original artists for each song:

01 The Book of Love [Acappella Version] - Monotones
02 That's When Your Heartaches Begin - Ink Spots
03 False Knight on the Road - traditional
04 Went to See the Gypsy - Bob Dylan
05 Big-Eyed Beans from Venus - Captain Beefheart
06 No Strange Delight - Roxy Music
07 The Crystal Ship - Doors
08 Charlotte Anne - Julian Cope
09 Avalon - Poor Man Story - Roxy Music
10 I Found a Reason - Velvet Understand
11 Here She Comes Now - Velvet Understand
12 Brown Paper Bag - John Hegley
13 Draft Morning - Byrds
14 Strawberry Fields Forever - Beatles
15 The Ghost in You - Psychedelic Furs
16 Wild Mountain Thyme - traditional / Byrds
17 Withered and Died - Richard and Linda Thompson
18 Fair Play - Van Morrison

Over You - Roxy Music

Note that the second part of "Avalon," "Poor Man Story," appears to be a story Hitchcock made up on the spot while he continued to play the music from "Avalon" on the guitar. I came up with the title, since I felt the need to call it something.

And here's the regular song list:

01 The Book of Love [Acappella Version] (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 That's When Your Heartaches Begin (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 False Knight on the Road (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Went to See the Gypsy (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 Big-Eyed Beans from Venus (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 No Strange Delight (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 The Crystal Ship (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Charlotte Anne (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 Avalon - Poor Man Story (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 I Found a Reason (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 Here She Comes Now (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 Brown Paper Bag (Robyn Hitchcock)
13 Draft Morning (Robyn Hitchcock)
14 Strawberry Fields Forever (Robyn Hitchcock)
15 The Ghost in You (Robyn Hitchcock)
16 Wild Mountain Thyme (Robyn Hitchcock)
17 Withered and Died (Robyn Hitchcock)
18 Fair Play (Robyn Hitchcock)

Over You (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16067939/RobynH_1986-1991_AcousticCoversVolume1_atse.zip.html

I made the cover based on a photo from 1992. I couldn't find any really good ones of him playing an acoustic guitar in concert from before then.