Curtis Mayfield - Beat Club, Bremen, Germany, 1-19-1972

I'm a big fan of soul music from the 1960s and 1970s (which unfortunately pretty much got killed off by disco in the late 1970s). For a variety of reasons, it's rare for me to come across entire "albums that should exist" in this genre. But every now and then I do, and here's a really nice one.

Curtis Mayfield certainly in a giant of soul music. He had a long run of good music, but I think he peaked around 1970 to 1972. So here's a "live" album that captures him at that peak. I put "live" in quotes because there actually is no audience whatsoever, but he plays an entire concert as if there was, including some between song banter.

The cause of this strange situation is the German TV show "Beat Club." By 1972, it had evolved to where it would let major artists stretch out and play more than just the usual one or two hits. I think in Mayfield's case he had three songs get on air at the time, but he recorded an hour of music in a TV studio for the producers to select from.

Most of this performance was lost in someone's vault for many years. But a bunch of complete Beat Club performances have been recently been making their way to YouTube, and just last month Mayfield's appearance got posted. I converted it to mp3 format and broke it into individual tracks.

The concert is from early 1972, so it predates his huge selling "Superfly" soundtrack later in the year. But it's got lots of great songs from his two earlier acclaimed solo albums, "Curtis" and "Roots." The set list is somewhat different from his 1971 album "Curtis/Live" (recorded 12 months earlier), and of course there's the sound quality advantage of having no crowd noise (though you may feel one loses some of the live concert vibe).

I particularly like his version of Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues." This song fits him so perfectly that it almost seems like he wrote it for Gaye instead.

I've cleaned up the recording in the sense that I removed some false starts and dead silence between songs. Also, he performed the last song, "We're a Winner," all the way through, then decided he didn't like it and performed it all the way through again. I only kept the second take.

I was all set to post this, but then it occurred to me that it didn't seem right to post something from Mayfield from 1972 and not include anything from the fabulous "Superfly" soundtrack. So I poked around and found four key songs from that done in 1972 that match the studio sound quality of the rest of this. Two of them actually were done live in the studio with no audience, the same as the Beat Club performance. I've added those at the end.

The result is an hour and nine minutes of prime Mayfield. This really should be released officially, just like so many BBC performances have been.

And by the way, if you want to see it and not merely listen to it, just search for it on YouTube.

01 Inner City Blues - Ain't No Sunshine (Curtis Mayfield)
02 Check Out Your Mind (Curtis Mayfield)
03 Mighty Mighty [Spade and Whitey] (Curtis Mayfield)
04 We've Only Just Begun (Curtis Mayfield)
05 We've Gotta Have Peace (Curtis Mayfield)
06 We People Who Are Darker than Blue (Curtis Mayfield)
07 Keep On Keeping On (Curtis Mayfield)
08 talk (Curtis Mayfield)
09 Stare and Stare (Curtis Mayfield)
10 talk (Curtis Mayfield)
11 Move On Up (Curtis Mayfield)
12 We're a Winner (Curtis Mayfield)
13 Pusherman (Curtis Mayfield)
14 Freddie's Dead (Curtis Mayfield)
15 Eddie, You Should Know Better (Curtis Mayfield)
16 Superfly (Curtis Mayfield)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687918/CURTSMYFLD1972_BetClbBremnGermny__1-19-1972_atse.zip.html

The album cover is a screenshot I took from the YouTube video of Mayfield's Beat Club performance.

Larkin Poe - Vintage Cover Versions, 2014-2015

It's time for some more of my favorite current obscure group that should be widely known and celebrated, Larkin Poe. If you've missed my previous posts, they are a duo of sisters who sing great harmonies, write very good songs, and one of them adds killer slide guitar.

Starting in 2017, they've posted a series of occasional YouTube videos of their acoustic covers of classic songs, called "Tip O' the Hat." I've made three album compilations of these versions (with more hopefully coming if they keep posting them). But it turns out they did an identical thing back in 2014 and 2015. Only that time, they called it "Vintage Cover Videos."

One can still find a bunch of videos from this series posted on their YouTube channel. Unfortunately, a bunch of them have slipped into "private viewing mode" only, which means I can't access them. Luckily, I grabbed a bunch of them a couple of years ago, so I think I have most of them. If anyone knows how to get access to the private ones, please let me know.

They posted about one album's worth of songs, but due to the private ones I can't access, it's a short album. To make up for that, I looked around for other cover versions they did in 2014 or 2015 also done as just an acoustic duo instead of their full band, and I found four more songs. Adding those in, it makes for an album that's 39 minutes long.

On this album, you'll find covers from Michael Jackson to Bing Crosby, from the Arctic Monkeys to Sonny and Cher, from Elliott Smith to Leadbelly. I love their wide ranging taste in music, and how they manage to put their personal stamp on everything they do.

Here are the artists who did the originals and/or famous versions for each song:

01 Off the Wall - Michael Jackson
02 Time in a Bottle [Instrumental Version] - Jim Croce
03 Black Betty [Acappella Version] - Lead Belly / Ram Jam
04 Bang Bang [My Baby Shot Me Down] - Sonny & Cher
05 Do I Wanna Know - Arctic Monkeys
06 The Sound of Silence - Simon & Garfunkel
07 Take Me to Church - Hozier
08 Needle in the Hay - Elliott Smith
09 Take Me Back - Buddy & Julie Miller
10 Withered and Died - Richard & Linda Thompson
11 Wade in the Water - traditional / Ramsey Lewis Trio
12 Mele Kalikimaka - Bing Crosby & the Andrews Sisters
13 Beat It - Michael Jackson
14 Tirineni Tsitsiki - Lila Downs
13 American Girl - Tom Petty
14 Rich Girl - Hall & Oates
15 I Got You, Babe [Acappella Version] - Sonny & Cher

Here's the usual song list:

01 Off the Wall (Larkin Poe) (Larkin Poe)
02 Time in a Bottle [Instrumental Version] (Larkin Poe)
03 Black Betty [Acappella Version] (Larkin Poe)
04 Bang Bang [My Baby Shot Me Down] (Larkin Poe)
05 Do I Wanna Know (Larkin Poe)
06 The Sound of Silence (Larkin Poe)
07 Take Me to Church (Larkin Poe)
08 Needle in the Hay (Larkin Poe)
09 Take Me Back (Larkin Poe)
10 Withered and Died (Larkin Poe)
11 Wade in the Water (Larkin Poe)
12 Mele Kalikimaka (Larkin Poe)
13 Beat It (Larkin Poe)
14 Tirineni Tsitsiki (Larkin Poe)
15 American Girl (Larkin Poe)
16 Rich Girl (Larkin Poe)
17 I Got You, Babe [Acappella Version] (Larkin Poe)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15261968/LarkinP_2014-2015_VintageCovrVersions_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is from a 2015 concert. That's Megan Lowell in front, and Rebecca Lowell in back.

Tom P*tty & the Heartbreakers - Stories We Could Tell - Non-Album Tracks (1981-1985)

Here's another album of stray tracks by Tom P. and the Heartbreakers. 

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

As I said in a previous in this series, I think P.'s albums from his first ten or so years with the Heartbreakers are spotty, usually with some great songs, but also with some forgettable ones. So I'm surprised once again at how strong the songs that didn't make his albums are. I think with better song selection of what was available at the time, nearly all of his early albums could have been as solid as 1979's classic "Damn the Torpedoes."

It's baffling to me that a good song like "Worried Guy (Insomnia)" not only wasn't released at the time, but didn't make it on either of the box sets released since then either ("Playback" and "An American Treasure"). There are hints that there are lots more songs still in the vaults that haven't even been bootlegged. Let's hope they get released someday soon.

This time around, most of the songs are from B-sides or the two box sets I've mentioned. There's also a duet with Stevie Nicks, "I Will Run to You," that was written by P. but was only released on Nicks' 1983 album "The Wild Heart." And speaking of duets with Nicks, I've included the solo version of "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" rather than the hit duet version with Nicks, since I figure any P. fan interested in this already has the duet version.

Four songs, "Stories We Could Tell," "The Image of Me," "Big Boss Man," and "Cracking Up," are covers. A couple of the originals are goofy throwaway type songs ("Gator on the Lawn" and "Heartbreaker's Beach Party") but I think that adds to the charm of the album.

This album is 55 minutes long. 

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/gsq3kb8t

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/EYutriaRbj69uLj/file

I made the album cover using a 1980 concert poster as the basis. Unfortunately, the poster is rectangular. Through the magic of Photoshop I managed to stretch some parts and squish other parts without changing the shape of P.'s head. :)

Petra Haden - Acappella 3: The Beautiful Ones (2017)

Here's the third of my four albums made from Petra Haden's YouTube videos. Never heard of Petra Haden? Don't worry about it. In short, she's got an excellent voice and she multitracks like crazy to make herself a one-person Beach Boys, performing entirely acappella versions of an interesting variety of songs.

On this album, about half of the songs are famous songs with lyrics, such as "Every Breath You Take" by the Police, "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden, "Maniac" from Flashdance, and "Going to California" by Led Zeppelin. The other half are originally instrumental songs that sound great done with nothing but voices, such as the theme to the Taxi TV show.

If you haven't checked out any of the albums in this series, what are you waiting for?

01 Rebel without a Cause [Main Title] (Petra Haden)
02 Going to California (Petra Haden)
03 Law and Order Theme (Petra Haden)
04 Angela [Theme from Taxi] (Petra Haden)
05 Sometimes It Snows in April (Petra Haden)
06 Whatever Was Arranged (Petra Haden)
07 Maniac (Petra Haden)
08 Every Breath You Take (Petra Haden)
09 I Burn for You (Petra Haden)
10 The Beautiful Ones (Petra Haden)
11 Black Hole Sun (Petra Haden)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15634867/PetraH_2017_Acapella3TheBeautiflOnes_atse.zip.html

I made the cover art using a screenshot from an image Haden put in one of her YouTube videos. I have no idea where the image comes from, but I think it's a fun way to illustrate acappella music.

Paul Weller - Gravity - Non-Album Acoustic Tracks (2010-2014)

I'm finally getting kind of close to current day with my Paul Weller stray tracks albums ; just a few more to go. This one is another all-acoustic affair, covering 2010 to 2014.

The first three songs are B-sides. The rest are all unreleased. Most are acoustic versions of songs from his recent albums, though there are exceptions, such as his cover of the Zombies hit "Time of the Season." The sound quality on "Waterloo Sunset" is a little below the others, but it's worth it for this rare duet between Weller and Ray Davies of the Kinks, the writer of the song.

Three of the songs near the end come from the same 100 Club concert. Unfortunately, the sound quality on those are also a bit below the rest. But Weller does some really interesting songs, including an acoustic version of the Motown classic "Heat Wave" (also once done by Weller's old band The Jam) so I figured had to include them.

Note that one of the songs here is "Gravity," which has appeared on his 2018 album "True Meanings." But as this album shows, the song was performed in concert (once) all the way back in 2013.

01 All I Wanna Do [Is Be with You] (Paul Weller)
02 Andromeda (Paul Weller)
03 No Tears to Cry (Paul Weller)
04 Time of the Season (Paul Weller)
05 Be Happy Children (Paul Weller)
06 That Dangerous Age (Paul Weller)
07 The Attic (Paul Weller)
08 Waterloo Sunset (Ray Davies & Paul Weller)
09 Gravity (Paul Weller)
10 The Pebble and the Boy (Paul Weller)
11 [Love Is like A] Heat Wave (Paul Weller)
12 White Line Fever (Paul Weller)
13 I Spy (Paul Weller)
14 Aim High (Paul Weller)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376650/PAULWLLR2010-2014GravtyAcustc_atse.zip.html

I made the cover art using a screenshot from a YouTube video of Weller playing acoustically in 2013.

Buckingham Nicks - Buckingham Nicks (1973)

I just posted an album of demos by soon-to-be Fleetwood Mac stars Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, recorded in 1973. That same year, they released their only album as a duo, simply called "Buckingham Nicks."

I'm posting that album here, even though I haven't changed the album in any way, because the album has been out of print since mere months after it was released in 1973. The record company only printed up a limited run, believed to be about 35,000, and never promoted it in any way, so it was a rarity pretty much since the time it came out.

Since then, the album has been tied up in legal limbo, with disputes over who exactly has the legal rights to release it. Also, it's gotten caught up in personal disputes, with Nicks apparently in favor of releasing it and Buckingham against. Given that Buckingham was fired from Fleetwood Mac in 2018, it seems highly unlikely to me that people will get together enough to officially release this anytime soon.

If you like the "Rumours" era Fleetwood Mac, you really should check it out. It's a very good album. The song "Crystal" would be redone on the 1975 Fleetwood Mac album (just called "Fleetwood Mac), and "Don't Let Me Down Again" would be done in a live version on the 1980 Fleetwood Mac album "Live." But many of the other songs were strong enough to have been included on later Fleetwood Mac albums. Interestingly, it was the song "Frozen Love" that was a local hit in Alabama and caught the interest of Fleetwood Mac drummer Mick Fleetwood and led to him wanting to get the duo to join his band.

01 Crying in the Night (Buckingham Nicks)
02 Stephanie [Instrumental] (Buckingham Nicks)
03 Without a Leg to Stand On (Buckingham Nicks)
04 Crystal (Buckingham Nicks)
05 Long Distance Winner (Buckingham Nicks)
06 Don't Let Me Down Again (Buckingham Nicks)
07 Django [Instrumental] (Buckingham Nicks)
08 Races Are Run (Buckingham Nicks)
09 Lola [My Love] (Buckingham Nicks)
10 Frozen Love (Buckingham Nicks)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15291408/FleetwodMc_1973c_BuckinghmNcksBuckinghmNcks_atse.zip.html

I've used something very close to the official album cover. But that one uses a black and white photo, and I really hate black and white. I've colorized a lot of album covers myself, but in this case I found that someone else named Sam Taylor colorized it and posted that version on the Internet, so I've used that. There are also some very slight differences here and there due to having to add in the text and other bits from scratch.

Buckingham Nicks - The Coffee Plant Demos (1972-1974)

I've posted a ton of Fleetwood Mac stuff relating to the group's early Peter Green-led blues era. I still have some more to post there, especially BBC material. But I also want to move on to the second phase of the band, its rebirth as a soft rock group.

I've already posted an album by Fritz, the late 1960s and early 1970s group led by future Fleetwood Mac stars Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. That group evolved into the Buckingham Nicks duo. I've got a lot to post from them. In my opinion, Buckingham and Nicks basically took over Fleetwood Mac in 1975 and led them to become one of the most successful groups of all time. From a singing and songwriting perspective, it's true that Christine McVie also plays an important role. But Buckingham and Nicks were essentially two-thirds of the force behind all those big soft rock hits in the 1970s and 1980s.

Some people have noticed that Buckingham and Nicks didn't just pop out of thin air when they joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, but in fact already had a career going with one album as a duo in 1973. But unfortunately, not nearly enough people know about their duo work, since that one album has remained unreleased pretty much since shortly after it was released. I'm going to post that album here shortly. But this album is the compliment to that, a series of demos done by the Buckingham Nicks duo around the same time as they recorded their lone album in 1973.

The bulk of this comes from a popular bootleg known as the "Coffee Plant Demos." There isn't a single song here that is also on the Buckingham Nicks album, so this is like a second album. One can call these demo recordings, but a lot of them are fairly fleshed out, with drums and bass.

In my opinion, there are a lot of good songs here, and no real duds, showing that the Buckingham Nicks duo should have had success whether they joined Fleetwood Mac or not.  In particular, one song here, "Sorcerer," has kind of become a Stevie Nicks standard, getting on her more recent greatest hits collections, even though she didn't officially release a solo version of it until 2001.

In addition to the songs from the "Coffee Plant Demos" bootleg, I've added two songs. The first song on the album, "See the World Go By," is a Stevie Nicks song that dates from 1972, and seems to fall between the cracks of when the band Fritz broke up in 1971 and when the Buckingham Nicks duo did a lot of recording for their lone album in 1973. The song quality on this song is a bit less compared to the rest, but it's still decent.

I've also added a song at the end, the classic "Rhiannon." This comes from a concert bootleg dating to 1974. I'm going to post some live Buckingham Nicks material later. But I'm adding this in here because it's kind of a free floating recording that doesn't come from the two full Buckingham Nicks concerts that were bootlegged, and yet it's in pristine soundboard quality. So I've removed the audience noise to make it fit in with the rest of the songs on the album. This is probably one of the very first time this song was every played in concert, if not the very first time. (Although the exact date and location of the recording is unknown.) It's interesting to see how this song was different in its early days, with some different lyrics and a slightly faster pace.

This album is 36 minutes long.

01 See the World Go By (Stevie Nicks)
02 Without You (Buckingham Nicks)
03 Candlebright [Nomad] (Buckingham Nicks)
04 That's Alright (Buckingham Nicks)
05 Garbo (Buckingham Nicks)
06 Sorcerer (Buckingham Nicks)
07 Cathouse Blues (Buckingham Nicks)
08 Goldfish and the Ladybug (Buckingham Nicks)
09 Going Home (Buckingham Nicks)
10 Yesterday I Saw the World (Buckingham Nicks)
11 Rhiannon (Buckingham Nicks)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/otv4rsPe

alternate:

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

There are very few photos of Buckingham and Nicks prior to their Fleetwood Mac days. In November 2019, I changed the photo for the cover art. I thought the one I'd used was from 1973, but it turns out it's from 1975. So I updated it with a photo that is from 1973. It shows Buckingham and Nicks playing in the Troubadour club in Los Angeles that year.

In 2025, I improved the detail of the image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Stevie Wonder - On the Right Track - Non-Album Tracks (1972-1973)

Stevie Wonder is a prolific genius. He's said to have written hundreds of songs that have never seen the light of day, not even on bootlegs. For instance, the musicians who played on the classic "Songs in the Key of Life" say there were many more songs they played on that were just as good as the ones that got released, and yet none of those have been released. Wonder has released almost no songs whatsoever as bonus tracks or in anthologies.

That said, he has so many of these songs that a few have slipped through the cracks just the same. Mostly, there are some that he's played live in concert and luckily got bootlegged. I consider his golden era to be 1972 to 1980. I've managed to make an album's worth of music from the first two years, 1972 and 1973.

I believe three of the songs here are cover versions (the "Close to You - Never Can Say Goodbye," "You Were My First, But Not My Last," and "Me and Mrs. Jones"), but the rest are originals. One song was officially released at the time: "To Know You is to Love You." That's a song that appeared on a 1972 Syreeta Wright album. In addition to being a talented Motown singer and songwriter, she also was married to Wonder for a few years in the early 1970s. The song is co-written between them and also performed as a duet by them. Incredibly, all the other songs are still unreleased in any form to this day. Generally speaking, I removed the audience noise to make them sound like studio tracks.

Added together, the songs here aren't as great as any of Wonder's albums at the time. But Wonder was on one of the hottest streaks in musical history, so even his leftovers are pretty damn good.

By the way, five more songs from that 1972 Syreeta Wright album, just called "Syreeta," are either written or co-written by Wonder, and yet he's never released his own versions of any of them. I didn't include any of those because Wonder doesn't prominently sing on them. But it's still an interesting album for a Wonder fan.

01 You've Got It Bad Girl [Edit] (Stevie Wonder)
02 [They Long to Be] Close to You - Never Can Say Goodbye (Stevie Wonder)
03 Let Me Know Just How You Feel - If You Really Love Me (Stevie Wonder)
04 To Know You Is to Love You (Syreeta Wright & Stevie Wonder)
05 [Fine Young Thing] You Are Too Much for Me (Stevie Wonder)
06 Soul Train Song (Stevie Wonder)
07 You Were My First, But Not My Last (Stevie Wonder)
08 The Way You Do It Last Night (Stevie Wonder)
09 Me and Mrs. Jones (Stevie Wonder)
10 I Think I'm on the Right Track (Stevie Wonder)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15852580/StevieW_1972-1973_OnRightTrck_atse.zip.html

I made the cover art using the cover of one version of the "Higher Ground" single artwork.

Robyn Hitchcock - Surfer Ghost - Non-Album Tracks (1991-1995)

Yet another Robyn Hitchcock album. This one is of the stray tracks variety (as opposed to all acoustic or all covers).

It starts out with two 1991 songs that I've already included on a previous compilation, "Dark Green Energy" and "Watch Your Intelligence." That's because the previous versions (which I put on the album "Kiss Yourself") are solo acoustic versions, and these are significantly different full band versions. This version of "Dark Green Energy" is particularly interesting because it has Michael Stipe of R.E.M. singing on it.

Unlike most of my Hitchcock stray tracks albums, the vast majority of these songs have been officially released, with a bunch of them coming from B-sides. As a result, the sound quality is generally excellent. Only two songs - "Yes I Do" and "Direct Me to the Cheese" are unreleased, from concert bootlegs. Most of the songs are also done with a full band.

But that doesn't count the two bonus tracks, "The Fortunate Son" and "The Mousaka Song." are fun original songs. Unfortunately, they were only done rarely in concert, maybe only once, and the recordings here come from audience bootlegs that sound significantly worse than everything else. Thus I'm only including them as bonus tracks.

01 Dark Green Energy (Robyn Hitchcock with Michael Stipe)
02 Watch Your Intelligence (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Ivy Alone (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Bright Fresh Flower (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 The Live-In Years [The Living Years] (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Yes I Do (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Lost Tribes (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Surfer Ghost (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 Testosterone Blues (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Zipper in My Spine (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 I Something You (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 Statue with a Walkman (Robyn Hitchcock)
13 Direct Me to the Cheese (Robyn Hitchcock)

The Fortunate Son (Robyn Hitchcock)
The Mousaka Song (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15122244/RobynH_1995_SurferGhst_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I decided it would be fun to go in a very literal direction. I found a drawing of the Silver Surfer surfing through space and added some semi-transparent space background to make it seem like he's a ghost.

Richard Thompson - Hand of Kindness and Across a Crowded Room - Acoustic Version (1983-1985)

I promised to post a lot more Richard Thompson soon, so here's a bit more from him.

I recently posted an acoustic Richard-only version of the classic Richard and Thompson 1982 album "Shoot Out the Lights." I'm going to continue to post more all-acoustic albums like that if I can. But the problem is, his first two solo albums of all new material, "Hand of Kindness" and "Across a Crowded Room" have a lot of rocking songs that he's never performed acoustically (or he's never played in concert at all). So I've combined the two, making one album of ideal album length, 46 minutes.

Luckily, Thompson is popular enough to have been bootlegged a lot, with a surprising number of quality soundboards. So that means the sound quality here is generally excellent. As I often do, I've removed audience noise to make it sound like he's playing acoustic guitar in your living room.

I got especially lucky with "Across a Crowded Room." There are very few Thompson studio bootlegs at all. But there is one containing many of the songs from that album being done as acoustic demos, and in excellent sound. That enabled me to find acoustic versions of some songs that he's never done acoustically in concert. (Unfortunately, it's a short bootleg and doesn't cover all the songs from that album.)

As with all albums in this series, I'm ordering all the songs in the same order as on the original albums.  Since this covers two albums, the first five songs are from "Hand of Kindness" and the remaining eight are from "Across a Crowded Room."

Since Thompson was in a particularly rocking mode during this phase of his career, I think it's especially interesting to hear these songs done acoustically. Also, he only played the stronger songs in concert at all, so this is kind of a "best of" collection as well.

By the way, not all the songs here are from the same years these albums were released. Sometimes, I had to widen my search to get a good acoustic version. But I usually came fairly close. The versions here date from 1982 to 1991.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Tear-Stained Letter (Richard Thompson)
02 How I Wanted To (Richard Thompson)
03 Hand of Kindness (Richard Thompson)
04 Devonside (Richard Thompson)
05 Two Left Feet (Richard Thompson)
06 When the Spell Is Broken (Richard Thompson)
07 I Ain't Going to Drag My Feet No More (Richard Thompson)
08 Shine On Love (Richard Thompson)
09 Ghosts in the Wind (Richard Thompson)
10 Fire in the Engine Room (Richard Thompson)
11 Walking through a Wasted Land (Richard Thompson)
12 She Twists the Knife Again (Richard Thompson)
13 Love in a Faithless Country (Richard Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15268194/RichrdT_1983-1985_HndofKindnessAcrssCrowdedRoomAcoustc_atse.zip.html

I took the photo for the cover art from the Watching the Dark box set art work. The top of his head is cut off in the original, so I couldn't do anything about that.

Tom P*tty & the Heartbreakers - Surrender - Non-Album Tracks (1976-1979)

This is a stray tracks album covering the first years of Tom P.'s solo career. In my opinion, up until his "Full Moon Fever" album in 1989, I consider his albums very hit or miss: some great songs, but also some skippable songs. (I think his albums get a lot more solid after that.) So I'm somewhat surprised that a lot of his songs that didn't get released at all at the time are as good as they are. 

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

This album is a case in point. With the exception of the solid classic 1979 "Damn the Torpedoes" album, I think this is as good as most of his other albums from that era. It's strange that songs like "Dog on the Run" and "Surrender" weren't put on albums when he liked to play them frequently in concert. (By the way, "Dog on the Run" is not to be confused with a song of his released on the 1985 album "Southern Accents" called "Dogs on the Run.") Four of the songs here came out at the time as B-sides, but the eight others did not, and five of those are still officially unreleased in any form.

Some of the unreleased songs here I've seen on bootlegs as Mudcrutch songs, his early band. But they're not. Probably the confusion is that some of them were Mudcrutch songs, but then when he was looking for album material for his second and third albums, he went back to some of those same songs for renewed consideration. That's the case, for example, with the classic hit "Don't Do Me like That." In a similar way, at least the song here "Long Way from Home" was recorded by both P. and Mudcrutch and then P. and the Heartbreakers. This is the Heartbreakers version. That probably the case with some of the others. I suspect some of these good songs were rejected at the time just because they were old in the mind of P. and his band member at the time.

By the way, P. has also done many interesting cover versions over the years. I plan on making an entire separate series of those. I'm two covers here, "Don't Bring Me Down" and "Somethin' Else" because they were done in the studio with the thought of being album tracks. Whereas my series of his covers will focus entirely on concert performances.

This album is 43 minutes long. 

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/A4ViiRzw

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/spFnzaRregDPc9Y/file

I made the cover using a photo of P. and the Heartbreakers in 1977.

Joe Jackson - Night by Night - Cover Versions (2012-2017)

Here's the third and last of my albums compiling the cover versions Joe Jackson has played in concert. Well, at least it's the last one for a while. Hopefully he'll keep touring and keep playing different songs.

In 2012, Jackson released the studio album "The Duke," in which he covers songs made famous by Duke Ellington. Personally, I think this is one of Jackson's most disappointing albums. I love his 1981 album "Joe Jackson's Jumpin' Jive," which similarly looked back to swing and jump blues at the like. But on "The Duke" I felt he tried too hard to make things different with rearrangements and bringing in guest singers.

With this album, I feel I can partially fix that. The first four songs are also songs on "The Duke" studio album. But here they're done in concert with Jackson singing. In my opinion, they're done in a more appealing manner. The fifth song, "In a Sentimental Mood," is another song associated with Ellington, but it was only done by Jackson in concert. (I would have included more songs from the album, except even in concert he had guest singers sing the other songs.)

The rest of this album consists of Jackson's usual wide variety of covers. "Peter Gunn Theme" is particularly interesting, because he does a version of this famous instrumental with lyrics, based on an obscure version once done by Sarah Vaughan. The remaining covers are of songs by David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, and Bob Marley.

01 I'm Beginning to See the Light - Take the 'A' Train (Joe Jackson)
02 Mood Indigo (Joe Jackson)
03 The Mooche - Black and Tan Fantasy [Instrumental] (Joe Jackson)
04 It Don't Mean a Thing [If It Ain't Got that Swing] (Joe Jackson)
05 In a Sentimental Mood [Instrumental] (Joe Jackson)
06 Peter Gunn Theme (Joe Jackson)
07 Life On Mars (Joe Jackson)
08 Big Yellow Taxi (Joe Jackson)
09 Night by Night (Joe Jackson)
10 Johnny Was (Joe Jackson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15908763/JoeJacks_2012-2017_NghtbyNight_atse.zip.html

The cover art uses a photo of Jackson from 2015.

Richard Thompson - In Over Your Head - Non-Album Acoustic Tracks (1982-1985)

Here's the third and final of my three Richard Thompson posts today. When it comes to Thompson's extensive solo career, I think it makes the most sense to split his stray tracks into acoustic and non-acoustic. So this is the first of the acoustic ones.

Nearly all the songs here are covers. They display quite a range of music, from Django Reinhardt ("Melodie au Crepuscule") to Elvis Costello ("Pump It Up)." Five of the 13 songs are instrumentals, which are opportunities for Thompson to show off his guitar playing prowess.

There are a couple of originals though. "Love Is Bad for Business" is here, and also on the other stray tracks album I just posted, "Jealousy." But this is the solo acoustic version and that is the full-band version. It's a good song, so I don't know why it didn't make any of his studio albums in either form.

Much less well known is the song "In Over Your Head." This song has never been played by Thompson in concert, and we only know of it because of it was included on the rather obscure box set "The Life and Music Of." That version is incomplete at only about two minutes. It ends with Thompson muttering about how the song continues like that. But it's a really nice song that he definitely should have finished off and put on a studio album. I've made a major edit to it by repeating a section of it, making it three minutes long instead of two. I think it now sounds like a full song.

All but four of the songs here come from concerts. As I often do, I've removed the audience noise. Luckily, all of them are sourced from soundboards and have excellent sound quality. The last song though is somewhat interactive with the audience though, so one can hear some clapping and laughing.

By the way, there are a couple of supporting musicians on the first couple of songs, including a violinist. The rest is just Thompson, except for two other guitarists joining in on "Sheebeg and Sheemore."

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Honky Tonk Blues (Richard Thompson)
02 Farther Along [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
03 Why Don't Women Like Me (Richard Thompson)
04 Melodie au Crepuscule [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
05 Love Is Bad for Business (Richard Thompson)
06 The Kid on the Mountain [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
07 You're Gonna Change [Or I'm Gonna Leave] (Richard Thompson)
08 Shepherd's March - The Braes of Lochiel [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
09 In Over Your Head [Edit] (Richard Thompson)
10 Sheebeg and Sheemore [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson with Steve Morse & David Lindley)
11 Pump It Up (Richard Thompson)
12 Flyin' Saucers Rock and Roll (Richard Thompson)
13 Willie and the Hand Jive - Not Fade Away (Richard Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15268066/RichrdT_1982-1985_InOvrYourHeadAcoustc_atse.zip.html

Note that in November 2019, I changed the cover art photo. I thought the photo I'd used was from around 1985, but I later discovered it actually dates to 1991. So I replaced it with a photo of Thompson that actually dates from 1985, when he had a concert in Chicago.

Richard Thompson - Jealousy - Non-Album Tracks (1982-1985)

Here's the second of my triple shot of Richard Thompson albums. This one deals with full-band versions of songs from the earliest years of his solo career, 1982 to 1985.

Generally speaking, Thompson doesn't seem to have a lot of original songs that haven't been officially released yet have been made public through bootlegs. That said, there are some. This album starts with three. "Jealousy" is an original very much in the style of the Everly Brothers that surprisingly hasn't been officially released in any form. The next two songs, "Small Town Romance" and "Love Is Bad for Business," have been officially released, but in solo acoustic form, whereas these are full-band studio takes.

The rest of the songs are all cover versions, I believe. But they're an interesting and varied bunch that generally haven't been officially released, except for two that come from the little known "The Life and Music Of" box set. Some are well known songs and others are total obscurities.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 Jealousy (Richard Thompson)
02 Small Town Romance (Richard Thompson)
03 Love Is Bad for Business (Richard Thompson)
04 Steel Guitar Rag [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson, Dave Swarbrick & Simon Nicol)
05 Danny Boy (Richard Thompson)
06 Amaryllis - Nonesuch a la Mode de France [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
07 Let's Talk about Us (Richard Thompson)
08 Great Balls of Fire (Richard Thompson)
09 Loch Lomond (Richard Thompson)
10 Pennsylvania 6-5000 [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson Band)
11 Move It (Richard Thompson)
12 Skull and Crossbones (Richard Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15268061/RichrdT_1982-1985_Jealsy_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I found the art on-line. I believe it comes from a concert poster from the early 1980s. I added the text.

Richard Thompson - Shoot Out the Lights - Acoustic Version (1982)

Here's an all acoustic version of "Shoot Out the Lights." This classic album was recorded by both Richard and Linda Thompson. It usually gets on the best albums of all time lists, and deservedly so. But I'm not posting the official version with Linda here. In fact, there's no band at all, just Richard and his guitar.

Richard Thompson is a great guitarist all around. Rolling Stone magazine deemed him in their top twenty of the greatest guitarists of all time. He can wail on the electric guitar like Clapton or Hendrix, but he has a special talent for the acoustic guitar. He's learned a technique very few people know that allows him to solo while keeping a picking pattern or strumming pattern going. Sometimes, people going to his solo concerts will look around and wonder where the second guitarist is! (Hint: it's all him.)

So I plan on posting a lot of his acoustic versions of things. Luckily, it turns out he's played every song from "Shoot Out the Lights" in solo acoustic format, enabling me to put this together. All but one song here dates from 1982, the year the album came out. One of the songs, "Did She Jump or Was She Pushed," has been performed in concert only rarely, since Linda was the singer of it on the album. But I was able to find a pristine version from 2004.

And, as it so happens, I was able to find excellent versions of all the other songs too. These come from high quality soundboard bootlegs. I've removed all the audience noise, so it sounds exactly as if Richard Thompson is playing the album in your living room.

It's only 33 minutes long, five minutes shorter than studio album, since he doesn't actually do much soloing here. But it's all solid. Is it as good as the official album? No, but it's nice to listen to that album in a different way sometimes.

01 Don't Renege on Our Love (Richard Thompson)
02 Walking on a Wire (Richard Thompson)
03 Man in Need (Richard Thompson)
04 Just the Motion (Richard Thompson)
05 Shoot Out the Lights (Richard Thompson)
06 Back Street Slide (Richard Thompson)
07 Did She Jump or Was She Pushed (Richard Thompson)
08 Wall of Death (Richard Thompson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2r2D1UgR

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/F3lwNRezyr8KG2I/file

For the cover art, I found an outtake of the Shoot Out the Lights cover photo session that has Richard standing instead of sitting in a corner. Unfortunately, it was originally in black and white and I normally hate to use black and white photos for covers, but it was so fitting that I couldn't resist using it this time.

However, many months later, I got a good program for colorizing (Pixbim), so I was able to colorize it and closely match the official cover. (The way that Linda's portrait is heavily yellow is the same as the original.) I also added in the exact text from the original album cover, but minus Linda's name and with the word "Acoustic" added.

Then, still later, in January 2025, I upgraded the image with the help of the Krea AI program.

Tom P*tty & Mudcrutch - I Can't Fight It - Non-Album Tracks (1973-1975)

Before Tom P.'s long career with the Heartbreakers began in 1976, he played with Mudcrutch from about 1971 to 1975. Actually, it's more like Mudcrutch morphed into the Heartbreakers, since some key guys were in both. Strangely, P. got Mudcrutch together for a new album and tour in 2008, and then another new album and tour in 2016. 

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

But the music of the original 1970s version of Mudcrutch has largely been forgotten. I'm guessing P. felt these were his formative years, and most of his music from then wasn't up to snuff compared to what he did later. But I beg to differ. I've assembled an album of Mudcrutch's best stuff that I think holds its own with some of the early albums with the Heartbreakers.

Seven of the 12 songs here were released in excellent sound quality on the "Playback" box set. Another one was released on the "An American Treasure" box set. Two more have very good sound quality because they were officially released at the time as B-sides. (Mudcrutch only released two singles during its 1970s existence.) But for one of the B-sides, "Wild Eyes," I replaced a section of the song near the beginning with a repeat of the same section later in the song, due to lots of pops and crackles. There still are some pops, but hopefully it's not nearly as noticeable as it was.

That leaves just two songs that are still officially unreleased on this album. Actually, they have a bunch of other songs that have shown up on bootlegs, but I feel those aren't good enough to make to cut.

I decided to include Mudcrutch's version of "Don't Do Me like That" even though P. redid the song in 1979 and had a big hit with it then. I think this version is nearly as good, and should have been a hit for Mudcrutch. "I Can't Fight It" is the other clear standout, in my book. Unfortunately, they used the F-word in it, probably preventing them from releasing it at the time.

By the way, the band was just called "Mudcrutch," But I've gone with "Tom P. & Mudcrutch" in the mp3 files so these can come up if one is searching one's music collection for Tom P. songs

This album is 41 minutes long. 

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/79Si5kZi

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3FynXPvik8GuXZK/file

For the cover art, I originally used a cover I found on the Internet, but I don't remember where I got it from. The version I found was mostly tinted, but there were some places where the colorizing didn't look right, so I tinted it. I added the album title at the bottom, but "Mudcrutch" was already on the image.

However, later on, I figured out how to do decent colorizations using the program Pixbim, so I found a different photo of the band, from a photo shoot in December 1974, and I colorized that. I've included the old version down here, since it's a totally different photo.

Joe Jackson - Dirty Love - Cover Versions (2003-2011)

Here's the second of three albums I've made of Joe Jackson playing cover versions. As with the previous album, nearly all of these are from concerts, with the audience noise removed.

This time around, he plays songs by: XTC, a music hall number, Steely Dan (twice), Frank Zappa, the Beatles (twice), Duke Ellington, Suzanne Vega, ABBA, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, and David Bowie.

Most of the songs have excellent sound quality, with four coming from official releases. But a couple are a notch below, such as "Dirty Love." Still, I deemed those good enough to include.

01 Mayor of Simpleton (Joe Jackson)
02 Hello, Hello, Who's Your Lady Friend (Joe Jackson)
03 Any Major Dude Will Tell You (Joe Jackson)
04 Dirty Love (Joe Jackson)
05 I'm Looking through You (Joe Jackson)
06 Don't Get Around Much Anymore (Joe Jackson)
07 Reelin' in the Years (Joe Jackson)
08 Frank and Ava (Joe Jackson)
09 Knowing Me, Knowing You (Joe Jackson)
10 Anyone Who Had a Heart (Joe Jackson)
11 Music to Watch Girls By (Joe Jackson)
12 Inbetweenies (Joe Jackson)
13 Scary Monsters [And Super Creeps] (Joe Jackson)
14 Girl (Joe Jackson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15908581/JoeJacks_2003-2011_DirtyLve_atse.zip.html

The cover art is based on a 2008 photo.

Petra Haden - Acappella 2: Red (2016-2017)

Here's the second of four albums I've made using Petra Haden's acappella versions of famous songs. They all are officially unreleased and have only appeared at her YouTube account.

This album is a bit different than the first one in that only four of the 12 songs have actual sung words to them. But of course all the songs are sung, since Haden's voice makes every single note of every song here. It's really impressive how she can create a soundscape by multitracking her vocals over and over again.

I highly recommend you check out this album (and the other albums in this series). If you want soothing mood music, this hits the spot.

This time around, she does songs by the Police, Mike Oldfield, Tangerine Dream, Charlie Haden, Michael Hedges, Blind Faith, and two songs by King Crimson. Additionally, she does several oddities, such as the themes to the original Star Trek and the Incredible Hulk.

01 River's Edge Theme (Petra Haden)
02 Bring on the Night (Petra Haden)
03 Tubular Bells (Petra Haden)
04 Star Trek [Original Series Main Title] (Petra Haden)
05 Love on a Real Train (Petra Haden)
06 Auld Lang Syne (Petra Haden)
07 Silence (Petra Haden)
08 Two Days Old (Petra Haden)
09 Can't Find My Way Home (Petra Haden)
10 Red (Petra Haden)
11 Matte Kudasai (Petra Haden)
12 The Lonely Man Theme [The Incredible Hulk] (Petra Haden)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15634462/PetraH_2016-2017_Acapella2Red_atse.zip.html

All of these songs come from Haden's YouTube videos. But she never has a video of herself singing. She'll just post a photo to go along with the music instead. This is one of the photos. I thought it fit the "Red" album title nicely.

Richard & Linda Thompson - The Price of Love - Non-Album Tracks (1982)

1982 was a seminal year for Richard and Linda Thompson, because they released their all time classic album "Shoot Out the Lights" and had a final tour of the US even though their marriage was dramatically falling apart. Richard Thompson started his solo career right away, having solo concerts only a month after the last Richard and Linda Thompson concert. For the purpose of this album, I'm only including material from the time the two of them were still together musically, which lasted through June 1982.

Six of the eleven songs here (plus the bonus track) come from that tour, with the audience noise removed if possible, as I usually do. Unfortunately, the tour was not recorded well. Even officially released songs from soundboard performances sometimes only have good sound quality instead of excellent. We have to make do.

One song ("Great Balls of Fire") was a notch below the rest in terms of the sound, so I've only included it as a bonus track.

A few of the other songs feature Richard Thompson only. But they date from before the final break up of the Richard and Linda duo, so I consider those fair game. Luckily, they come from in-person radio show appearances, so the sound quality on those is excellent.

This album is 40 minutes long, not counting the bonus track.

01 Living in Luxury (Richard & Linda Thompson)
02 Move It On Over (Richard Thompson)
03 New-Fangled Flogging Reel - Kerry Reel [Instrumental] (Richard & Linda Thompson)
04 Danny Boy (Richard & Linda Thompson)
05 High School Confidential (Richard & Linda Thompson)
06 Genesis Hall (Richard & Linda Thompson)
07 Honky Tonk Blues (Richard & Linda Thompson)
08 Learning the Game (Richard Thompson)
09 I'll Keep It with Mine (Richard & Linda Thompson)
10 Sheebeg and Sheemore [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson with Simon Nicol)
11 The Price of Love (Richard & Linda Thompson)

Great Balls of Fire (Richard & Linda Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15852266/RichnLinT_1982b_ThePrceLve_atse.zip.html

I originally made the cover art using a screenshot of a YouTube video from 1982.But the quality was poor. Eventually, I was able to find a really nice color photo of the duo from a 1982 photo shoot for an album cover. The only problem was that it was taken from an album booklet and there was a distortion across the middle of the photo since it was spread across two pages. I used Photoshop to hopefully fix that issue, but some slight changes resulted from that.

Richard & Linda Thompson - Time to Ring Some Changes - Non-Album Tracks (1981)

Here's another Richard and Linda Thompson stray tracks album. Although I must say this doesn't have a lot of Linda on it.

In 1982, Richard Thompson got romantically involved with another woman despite being married to Linda at the time. She found out and they divorced as a result, after one final and emotionally contentious tour. But it retrospect, their marriage had been on the rocks for a while, and Richard had been starting in on his solo career before 1982.

In 1981, not only did he release his first solo album (an all instrumental one called "Strict Tempo!"), but he started doing some other solo recordings and even performing some solo shows. On top of all that, he joined a group (that only lasted through 1981) called the GPs that was led by him and Ralph McTell, with the two of them evenly splitting the singing.

Five of the ten songs here are from Richard's various solo ventures that year. Three of those songs are from the GPs (who only released one obscure album about a decade after they broke up). "The Knife-Edge" comes from his solo album "Strict Tempo." Frankly, that all-instrumental album is for limited tastes. But the song I chose is the only Richard Thompson original from it, and I think it's the highlight.

I made a significant edit on the other Richard solo song, "Time Has Told Me." This is a nice cover of a Nick Drake song with some tasty Hawaiian slack key guitar work added by Raymond Kane. But on the released version, Kane sings the last verse, and I didn't like that. It seemed odd to me that his unusual voice would come in so late in the song. It just didn't work musically, in my opinion. Since that last verse was a repeat of the first verse, I swapped out Kane's singing with Richard's.

By the way, for albums like these, I try to stick to songs that aren't on official studio albums. I've made kind of an exception here with the song "Sloth." That song (which Richard co-wrote) is well known from it's original version when Richard was a part of Fairport Convention. It's a classic that's been done lots of times since. But I figure this version is special because it's possibly the only version with high sound quality in which Linda Thompson has a prominent role in the vocals.

Speaking of sound quality, I included one song as a bonus track only because the sound quality wasn't quite up to snuff with the rest of the album.

01 Time to Ring Some Changes (Richard & Linda Thompson)
02 Baby Don't You Do It [Don't Do It] (Richard Thompson & the GPs)
03 Tryin' to Get to You (Richard & Linda Thompson)
04 Planxty Morgan Mawgan - Long Odds [Instrumental] (Richard & Linda Thompson)
05 [Come Round Here] I'm the One You Need (Richard Thompson & the GPs)
06 Sloth (Richard & Linda Thompson with Simon Nicol)
07 Going, Going, Gone (Richard Thompson & the GPs)
08 Blues in a Bottle (Richard & Linda Thompson with Simon Nicol)
09 The Knife-Edge [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
10 Time Has Told Me [Edit] (Richard Thompson with Raymond Kane)
11. Banish Misfortune [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)

Lawdy Miss Clawdy (Richard Thompson & the GPs)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/E4EKsQyd

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/8srzCzEbRIT00GQ/file

I made the album cover from a screenshot of a YouTube video of a 1981 concert performance. I later used the Krea AI program to sharpen the image.

Richard & Linda Thompson - The Wrong Heartbeat - Non-Album Tracks (1978-1980)

I've been really getting into Richard Thompson's music lately. I'd already been a big fan, but I recently found a bunch of bootleg material I hadn't known about, and I've been incorporating it into my collection. I've got so much of his stuff to post that I'm going to post three of his albums at once, finishing off the stray tracks for the phase of his career with his then wife Linda Thompson.

This album deals with the years 1978 to 1980, but most of it is from 1980. A majority of the songs are originals, and the rest are pretty obscure covers. Well, a couple of them aren't obscure. Surprisingly, Richard does the surf rock instrumental "Pipeline" and a song best known from its association with the Harlem Globetrotters, "Sweet Georgia Brown." Oh, and "Crying in the Rain" was a hit for the Everly Brothers.

The song quality ranges from excellent to pretty good. There are three songs though that I wanted to include but felt I couldn't, due to sound quality issues. So I've added those as bonus tracks.

UPDATE: On February 1, 2021, I updated the mp3 download file. I added the songs "Then He Kissed Me," "The Dust of Your Road," and "Drunk."

01 Woman or a Man (Richard & Linda Thompson)
02 The Gas Almost Works [Instrumental] (Richard & Linda Thompson)
03 La Valse de Madame Sosten (Richard & Linda Thompson)
04 The Dust of Your Road (Richard & Linda Thompson)
05 Drunk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
06 Then He Kissed Me (Richard & Linda Thompson)
07 Speechless Child (Richard & Linda Thompson)
08 I'm a Dreamer (Richard & Linda Thompson)
09 The Wrong Heartbeat (Richard & Linda Thompson)
10 Modern Woman (Richard & Linda Thompson)
11 Pipeline [Instrumental] (Richard & Linda Thompson)
12 How Many Times Do You Have to Fall (Richard & Linda Thompson)
13 Lucky in Life, Unlucky in Love (Richard & Linda Thompson)
14 Sweet Georgia Brown [Instrumental] (Richard & Linda Thompson with Richard Digence)
15 Crying in the Rain (Richard & Linda Thompson)

No Particular Place to Go (Richard & Linda Thompson)
Sugar Babe (Richard & Linda Thompson)
The Train That Carried My Girl from Town (Richard & Linda Thompson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/kVFPJSLJ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/2dBZauM793yoiPl/file

I could find very, very few photos of Richard and Linda Thompson. I found this one in black and white and added a sepia tone. Months later, I colorized. I'm not completely sure, but I believe it's from 1978. Still later, I used the Krea AI program to improve the image.

Robyn Hitchcock - Oscar - The A&M Sessions - Acoustic Demos (1993)

Followers of this blow know I've posted a lot of Robyn Hitchcock albums, and I've even started a series of albums just of Hitchcock's acoustic cover songs.

This is yet another acoustic covers album by him, except it's somewhat different. Those other albums generally collect songs from concert bootlegs. whereas this all comes from one source. I decided to keep this together instead of incorporating it into the long series of covers albums. A key reason is that the sound quality is a cut above, since these tracks were all recorded in a studio, so they sound a bit better than even soundboard versions of concert performances.

I don't know why Hitchcock recorded an album of covers in 1993. It's especially curious given that this came during his time with A&M Records, which produced his albums more heavily than at any other time in his career. I also don't know why the bootleg of this music is called "Oscar."

Getting to the music, Hitchcock has his usual great taste in covers. He does songs by Jimi Hendrix, Morrissey, Roxy Music, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Syd Barrett, the Incredible String Band, and Richard Thompson. (One more song, "Polly on the Shore," is traditional, but Fairport Convention did a well known version.)

It's a short album, only 31 minutes long. It could have been longer, but I removed two songs because they were just repeat versions of songs already on the album, and were almost identical.

01 The Wind Cries Mary (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Polly on the Shore (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Every Day Is like Sunday (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Take a Chance with Me (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 Senor [Tales of Yankee Power] (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Yer Blues (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Dominoes (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Chinese White (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 The Calvary Cross (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15271970/RobynH_1993c_OscarA_MSessions_atse.zip.html

The cover is the exact cover of a bootleg of this album. However, that cover didn't have the word "Oscar" on the front, so I moved some text and added it in.

Fleetwood Mac - Dragonfly - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1971)

Since I've been posting a lot of Fleetwood Mac lately, here's one more. This kind of completes an era, because the Peter Green-led Fleetwood Mac had all kinds of stray tracks from its inception through this year. The songs here are actually from the year after Green led the band in mid-1970, but there still were lots of stray tracks in late 1970 and 1971. Then there's practically nothing from 1972 until the band significantly changed in 1975 when Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined and they found huge success.

This is a very excellent album in my opinion. I think it's my favorite of all the band's stray track albums I've posted so far. With Peter Green gone and Christine McVie fully on board, the band largely left the blues behind and became a rock band. Most of the songs here are originals and quite good, so it's surprising to me that they didn't make it on album at the time. Perhaps that had to do with the personnel changeover. Not only did Green leave in 1970, but guitarist Jeremy Spencer left in 1971, and guitarist Danny Kirwan would leave in 1972 after growing increasingly estranged from the rest of the band.

But despite the changes, the band was still going strong. The album "Bare Trees" came out in 1971, and it's one of my favorites, and it's critically acclaimed in general. So it's not surprising that other songs from that time are good too. Admittedly, four of the songs here were done by McVie during her short solo career before joining the band. You can find them on my collection of her best early solo songs.

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/05/chiristine-mcvie-christine-perfect.html

That said, these are all the full Fleetwood Mac versions of those songs, and they're done somewhat differently. I see no reason why they couldn't have put at least a couple of these on a Fleetwood Mac album.

"I'm Alright Now." is a song sung by Christine McVie that appears to have been written by her as well, yet has remained totally unreleased. (The title is certain because she introduced it in concert that way.)

By the way, nearly all the songs here are from 1971, except for three from 1970 and one from 1972. I put the 1972 one here because, as I said, the number of stray tracks from the band suddenly drops off a cliff right after this. I can't find a single stray track from 1973 or 1974, which is startling considering that it took three and a half albums to contain all the stray tracks the band did in 1969 alone! This can be seen in concert set lists too, where the band dramatically reduced the number of different songs it was playing in concert by 1972.

That said, we have this one last burst of creativity before the band went into a fallow period where their popularity with fans and critics went way down for a couple of years. McVie in particular comes to the fore here for the first time, with about half of the songs sung by her.

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 I'm on My Way (Fleetwood Mac)
02 Madison Blues (Fleetwood Mac)
03 Crazy 'bout You Baby [Can't Hold Out Much Longer] (Fleetwood Mac)
04 Open the Door (Fleetwood Mac)
05 Get like You Used to Be (Fleetwood Mac)
06 Preachin' (Fleetwood Mac)
07 Lonely without You (Fleetwood Mac)
08 It's Alright Now (Fleetwood Mac)
09 Dragonfly (Fleetwood Mac)
10 The Purple Dancer (Fleetwood Mac)
11 I'd Rather Go Blind (Fleetwood Mac)
12 Trinity (Fleetwood Mac)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15116100/FleetwodMc_1971a_Dragnfly_atse.zip.html

Two of the songs here were released as an obscure single, "Dragonfly" backed by "The Purple Dancer." The cover art is just the cover of that single.

Petra Haden - Acappella 1: Frame by Frame (2016)

In 2005, Petra Haden released an album called "Petra Haden Sings The Who Sell Out," which contained acappella versions of all the songs on the Who's "The Who Sell Out," done in the exact order of the original album. I really enjoyed this album (even though I'd never heard of Petra Haden), because she didn't just sing the lyrics, she sang all the instruments too, creating a full sound that allows one to hear the Who's great album in a different way. She even sang all the fake commercials between the songs.

While I liked that album a lot, I didn't get any of her other albums. Actually, she's mainly known for being a violinist in a variety of bands and hasn't put out much solo stuff at all, even though she has a great voice. However, I recently discovered that she's been active on YouTube since 2016, putting out her acappella versions of all sorts of interesting songs. So I've gathered them up and assembled them into albums, generally ordered by the dates of her YouTube postings.

This is as good as acappella music gets. This is miles beyond barbershop quartets. Think the Beach Boys at their vocal best, except it's all just Haden, multitracked enough to sometimes sound like a full orchestra of voices.

You really need to down this and check it out. I think it's very cool, and it's a shame that she's only put these out on YouTube instead of releasing them on albums. She has a very interesting taste in music, obviously picking songs by how well she thinks they'd work in acappella form. On this album alone, she covers Duran Duran, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, David Bowie, the Psychedelic Furs, Journey, the Beach Boys, and more!

By the way, the last three songs don't fit with the others chronologically. They are from years before (2007 to 2012), and were all the other acappella songs I could find from her other than her "Who Sell Out" album. But musically they fit in perfectly with the rest of the album, and I didn't have anywhere else to put them.

She's posted so many songs that this is just the first of four albums I've compiled, of about 45 minutes of music each. And she's releasing new songs from time to time, so hopefully I'll eventually be able to post even more from her.

01 Save a Prayer (Petra Haden)
02 Blade Runner Theme (Petra Haden)
03 Frame by Frame (Petra Haden)
04 Don't Box Me In (Petra Haden)
05 Goodbye Blue Sky (Petra Haden)
06 Life on Mars (Petra Haden)
07 The Ghost in You (Petra Haden)
08 Love My Way (Petra Haden)
09 Batman Theme (Petra Haden)
10 Don't Stop Believin' (Petra Haden)
11 Music (Petra Haden)
12 God Only Knows (Petra Haden)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15634474/PetraH_2016_Acapella1FrmebyFrme_atse.zip.html

I made the cover from a photo of Haden, but I don't know what year it's from.

Pete Townshend - Body Language - Non-Album Tracks (1980-1982)

Pete Townshend was very productive writing songs between 1980 and 1982. He wrote the vast majority of the songs on two Who album released in that time, and released two solo acclaimed albums besides that. Furthermore, I think this post shows that he could have released yet another solo album in that time period. And that's just from the demos that have been made public.

Indeed, nearly all the songs here are from his demos, generally released on his three Scoop albums. There's also one demo from a bootleg with slightly less sound quality ("What Is Love"). Furthermore, there are two songs from a bootleg of a concert he did in 1981. One is the R&B standard "Big Boss Man."

The other needs some explanation, because it's the song "Body Language," and I've put two versions of that here. One is from a demo and the other is from the concert. The reason I'm including both is because they're so different. One is less than two minutes, and the other is over five minutes long, for starters. The sound quality of the two songs from the concert are also slightly below the other songs, but I think they're worth including, especially since they've hardly even been bootlegged.

By the way, I didn't include one song from this time period that was included on "Scoop 3," and that's "Theme 017." In my opinion, it's an unimpressive and short instrumental. However, I've thrown it on as a bonus track, because why not.

01 Prelude No. 556 [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
02 Dance It Away (Pete Townshend)
03 Body Language [Demo Version] (Pete Townshend)
04 You're So Clever (Pete Townshend)
05 Zelda (Pete Townshend)
06 Ascension Two (Pete Townshend)
07 Dirty Water (Pete Townshend)
08 Driftin' Blues (Pete Townshend)
09 Big Boss Man (Pete Townshend)
10 It's in Ya [It's in You] (Pete Townshend)
11 What Is Love (Pete Townshend)
12 Holly like Ivy (Pete Townshend)
13 Man Watching (Pete Townshend)
14 Vivienne (Pete Townshend)
15 Body Language (Pete Townshend)
16 Baroque Ippanese [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)

Theme 017 [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/B5dBTd6H

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ojvU0lCvgbWy8Qx/file

Admittedly, I pictured a pretty strange photo for the cover art. But it is a pic of Townshend in 1982, doing a promo for MTV. It seemed fitting to have an unusual expression for an album called "Body Language." In January 2025, I used the Krea AI program to sharpen up the image some.