Paul Weller - Open Road - Non-Album Tracks (2014-2015)

If you've been following my Paul Weller posts, you'll know I've often alternated between full-band albums and all-acoustic albums. This is definitely the full-band kind. It's especially lively. 

As is usually the case, it contains some cover versions, including "I Take What I Want" "Things Get Better," and "[I'm A] Roadrunner." I've also included a version of one of his songs by the Jam that he rarely performs, "Start."

Most of the rest of the songs relate to Weller's 2015 album "Saturns Pattern." There are five bonus tracks from various versions of the album, as well as three B-sides of singles from the album. There's also a separately released A- and B-side, the songs "Brand New Toy" and "Landslide" respectively. (And by the way, "Landslide" is an original, not a cover of the Fleetwood Mac classic.) One song, "Let Me In," is a demo of a Weller original that he gave to Olly Murs for an album called "Never Been Better." The Weller version came out on the "Will of the People" compilation in 2022.

As a result of all that, this album has an unusually high number of originals, compared to other stray tracks albums of his that I've posted.

Note that I also included another cover, "I've Never Found a Girl (Who Loves Me like You Do)," on the previous Weller album I posted. But that was an all-acoustic album, and that was the acoustic version of the song. This is the full-band version.

This album is 44 minutes long.

01 Start (Paul Weller)
02 Brand New Toy (Paul Weller)
03 I Take What I Want (Paul Weller)
04 Things Get Better (Paul Weller)
05 Landslide (Paul Weller)
06 Let Me In [Demo] (Paul Weller)
07 [I'm A] Roadrunner (Paul Weller)
08 Dusk Til Dawn (Paul Weller)
09 On Days like These (Paul Weller)
10 I Spy (Paul Weller)
11 Open Road (Paul Weller)
12 White Sky [Prof.Kybert vs. The Moons Remix] (Paul Weller)
13 I Work in the Clouds (Paul Weller)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16013646/PaulW_2014-2015_OpnRoad_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I used what I think is a painting of Weller in concert in 2018. I just found it randomly on the Internet, so unfortunately I don't know who painted it or any other details.

Pink Floyd - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1967

I've posted two Pink Floyd albums already, but that's just the tip of the iceberg of all the stuff of theirs I plan on posting. However, before I post more of their stray tracks stuff, I want to post some of their BBC performances. For late 1960s and early 1970s Pink Floyd, their BBC recordings are essential, both in terms of the breath and quality of the songs performed, but also the excellent sound quality.

So here's Pink Floyd at the BBC in 1967, at a time when Syd Barrett was still a member of the group. Nearly all of these come from "The Early Years" box set. But there are a couple of things I did that are different from just making an album of all their 1967 BBC appearances.

For one thing, sadly, there are no BBC versions of their great hit "See Emily Play." In fact, no good live performances of this song by the band have been recorded at all. (They did play the song a time or two on TV, but they just mimed to the record.) However, there's one partial exception: the song was recorded well for a 1967 concert in Stockholm, Sweden, and that performance was included on "The Early Years." But unfortunately, the vocals were recorded so low that it's as if they don't exist. So consider this an instrumental version.

The original song "One in a Million" wasn't included on "The Early Years." Maybe it's a sound quality issue. The vocals are muffled and distant, making it nearly impossible to understand the words being sung. But the instrumental part sounds as good as lots of other things that made "The Early Years," and any Pink Floyd originals from 1967 should be treasured. The song is mostly an instrumental anyway, and one can treat the vocals as just another instrument.

The original instrumental "Tomorrow's World" is also on "The Early Years," but there's a big problem with it. It comes from a BBC science documentary "Tomorrow's World," and parts of the song have an announcer loudly talking over the music. So I made an edit just of the two sections without the talking and spliced them together. That makes it just over a minute long, but I considered it interesting enough for inclusion anyway.

The band did two songs for a BBC science documentary that were marred by a narrator talking over large portions of the songs. Thanks to the sound editing program X-Minus, I figured out a way to split the audio from the music. The song "Tomorrow's World" is a really nice instrumental in a longer version than before, since I could include a bit more where there had been the narration. "Green Onion" is a cover of the classic instrumental. I hadn't included it previously due to narration over the entire thing. It's not the greatest, but it does show Syd Barrett's guitar playing.

I also added "Reaction in G." I'd skipped it before because it's only 40 seconds long. (Clearly there should have been more, but the BBC only played that much, and the rest apparently has been lost.) Furthermore, the BBC DJs talked over most of that, so there wasn't much left. But now one can at least hear all of it clearly.

The total length of this album is 40 minutes, which is an ideal length for an album of the era.

01 Astronomy Domine (Pink Floyd)
02 One in a Million (Pink Floyd)
03 Matlida Mother (Pink Floyd)
04 The Gnome [Edit] (Pink Floyd)
05 The Scarecrow [Edit] (Pink Floyd)
06 Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun [Edit] (Pink Floyd)
07 Reaction in G [Instrumental] [Edit] (Pink Floyd)
08 Flaming [Edit] (Pink Floyd)
09 Tomorrow's World [Instrumental] [Edit] (Pink Floyd)
10 Green Onions [Instrumental] [Edit] (Pink Floyd)
11 Scream Thy Last Scream (Pink Floyd)
12 Vegetable Man (Pink Floyd)
13 Pow R. Toc H. (Pink Floyd)
14 Jugband Blues (Pink Floyd)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696993/PNKFLYD1967_BBSssonsVolum1_atse.zip.html

I normally detest using black and white photos for cover art if anything in color can be used instead. But in this case, I found an actual photo of Pink Floyd at the BBC in 1967. Specifically,  they're at BBC's Maida Vale Studios on October 9, 1967. I cropped the photo somewhat to focus in on the band members. From the larger photo, I gather they're listening to a playback of their BBC performance. Of course, I had to colorize the photo, because everything in psychedelic 1967 was in vivid color. ;)

The Pretenders - Cuban Slide - Non-Album Tracks (1978-1980)

There are a lot of musical artists I want to post about but haven't gotten around to yet. The Pretenders/Chrissie Hynde are a big one. I've been surprised at just how much good non-album material there is. This is the first of at least nine stray tracks albums I have from her and her band.

A lot of people think the Pretenders were at their best during the era of their first three albums, and I'm one of them. Arguably, the Pretenders were only a real band for their first two albums, because two of the four band members died between the recording of the second and third albums. It became Hynde plus backing musicians after that. Happily, all of the songs here are from when all four original members were still in the band.

This album is definitely a mixed bag. There are some great songs. For instance, "Cuban Slide" is one of my favorite Pretenders songs of all time, which is why I've named this album after it. There are a handful of other very nice originals. But there also are some slight instrumentals and unremarkable cover versions. But still, I consider anything from these early years to be pretty great.

The first song is a version of the famous 1960s Troggs hit "Wild Thing," except it's sung in French. It's credited to "Chrissie Hynde and the Strangeways." I don't know the full story behind this, but apparently the Strangeways weren't a real band, but a bunch of musicians who came together very briefly just to record this, right before the Pretenders were formed.

The next three songs are some demos recorded by Hynde with or without the other Pretenders. I actually have an entire album of demos from the band's early years to post. But I've put these three songs here instead because these are songs not done elsewhere, while the other demos are all versions of well-known Pretenders tunes. "Do I Love You" is a cover of a 1960s hit by the Ronettes, while the other two are originals that sound good enough to me to have fit on the first Pretenders album.

Most of the rest of the songs are originals also. One exception is "Sabre Dance," a 1960s hit that's a guitar-based instrumental, with Hynde strangely and occasionally singing some of the lyrics to "Stop Your Sobbing" on top of it. "Counterfeit" is a song by Chris Spedding that wasn't officially released by him until 1986.

Unfortunately, the sound quality on that one, plus "Tequila" (a Hynde original and not the 1960s instrumental hit) are rougher than all the rest. That's because they come from an audience bootleg. But still, I think they sound good enough for inclusion. However, the Pretenders' cover of "Girl Don't Come," a 1960s hit by Sandie Shaw, is even rougher. So I've only included that one as a bonus track.

01 Chose Sauvage [Wild Thing] (Chrissie Hynde & the Strangeways)
02 Do I Love You [Demo] (Chrissie Hynde & Steve Jones)
03 I Can't Control Myself [Demo] (Pretenders)
04 Suicide [Demo] (Chrissie Hynde)
05 Sabre Dance - Stop Your Sobbing [Live] (Pretenders)
06 I Need Somebody (Pretenders)
07 Swinging London [Instrumental] (Pretenders)
08 Nervous but Shy [Instrumental] (Pretenders)
09 Cuban Slide (Pretenders)
10 Porcelain (Pretenders)
11 Whatcha Gonna Do about It (Pretenders)
12 Counterfeit (Pretenders)
13 Tequila (Pretenders)

Girl Don't Come (Pretenders)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700858/TPRETNDRS1978-1980_CubnSlde_atse.zip.html

I based the cover art on the cover of the "Extended Play" EP, since "Cuban Slide" and a couple other songs here come from that.  But I changed the photo and most everything else, while keeping the general look. I called the band "Pretenders" instead of "The Pretenders" because that's what was written on the EP cover.

The Move - I Can Hear the Grass Grow - Non-Album Tracks (1966-1967)

First off, a couple of people asked if I've stopped doing album covers. I haven't. It's just that I've been too busy to work on them lately. But I promise I'll get caught up on those by and by.

A while back, someone asked if I could post albums of the Move. So here we go. I've got a lot to post from them because they have a lot of great non-album tracks. Plus, they pretty much had a second career covering other people's songs for the BBC. So I have three albums of stray tracks to post, plus another four of BBC stuff. That's a lot, considering the band was only in existence for a few years and released five studio albums.

If you like the big British rock bands of the 1960s, like the Beatles, Kinks, Who, Rolling Stones, etc, and you haven't gotten into the Move, you're missing out. They're not as great as that top tier of bands I just mentioned, but they're definitely in the next tier. However, they aren't well known outside of Britain, probably because they only went on one short tour of the US and never had much commercial success there. In that respect, they're similar to the Small Faces, another great British band of the time that only had one hit in the US (which is one more than the Move did!).

Plus, if you like ELO (Electric Light Orchestra) at all, consider the Move to be the 1960s version of that band. Although there were some personnel changes, it's literally true that ELO was just the Move renamed, and of course Jeff Lynne was in both bands (though he hadn't joined yet for the music on this album).

The Move are rather unusual in my opinion in that it took them so long to come out with a debut album. They were formed in late 1965, and many of the songs on this album date from January 1966. They had their first hit in late 1966, "Night of Fear," which reached number two in Britain. That alone would have been enough for just about any band to quickly follow up with an album. They had two more top five hits in 1967, yet their first album, simply called "Move," didn't come out until March 1968. That was an eternity in those days.

It turned out they recorded enough music to have put out an album in 1967, one of that would have been just as good as the album they released in 1968, yet containing all different songs. That's the album here. It contains all their stray tracks from 1966 and 1967, including their hit singles "Night of Fear" and "I Can Hear the Grass Grow." (Their other big hit from 1967, "Flowers in the Rain," was included on their 1968 album.) A few of the songs are covers of soul hits, like "You're the One I Need," "Respectable." and "Too Many Fish in the Sea," but most are originals.

I've gone to the trouble of finding out when all of the songs were recorded, and I've ordered they mostly chronologically. One exception to that are the first two songs. The first song is an intro to the second one, and the second one, simply called "Move," is kind of a theme song for the band, so I figured it makes sense to kick off with that.

The last song is basically a bonus track. It's an acappella version of "Night of Fear." Normally, I don't like to include two versions of the same song on one album, but this one is too good to ignore.

01 Move Intro (Move)
02 Move (Move)
03 You're the One I Need (Move)
04 Winter Song (Move)
05 The Fugitive (Move)
06 Is It True (Move)
07 Too Many Fish in the Sea (Move)
08 Respectable (Move)
09 Don't Hang Up (Move)
10 I Can't Hear You No More (Move)
11 Night of Fear (Move)
12 Disturbance [Single Version] (Move)
13 Don't Throw Stones at Me (Move)
14 I Can Hear the Grass Grow (Move)
15 Wave the Flag and Stop the Train (Move)
16 Vote for Me (Move)
17 Night of Fear [Acappella Mix] (Move)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/E2fU1iEt 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/AT1uvGXzNGqMjSL/file

The cover was a breeze to make. It's the cover of one of the many covers of the "I Can Hear the Grass Grow" single. All I did was clean it up a little bit.

Tom P*tty & the Heartbreakers - Live Cover Versions, 1987-1992

Tom P*tty and the Heartbreakers played well over a 100 cover songs in concert over the years. I'm moving chronologically through the years and I've already posted two albums. Here's the third.

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

For the first two albums I've posted, the vast majority of cover songs were 1960s rock and soul hits. With this album, P*tty branches out some more. He still is rooted in the 1960s, but he does a few country songs, two Bob Dylan songs, a song associated with Elvis Presley ("Milk Cow Blues"), and songs from the 1980s by the Clash and Van Morrison.

The sound quality is variable. Only three of the 15 songs are officially released. Of the remainder, many of them come from audience bootlegs instead of soundboard bootlegs. Happily, the vast majority of the time, I felt the sound quality was good enough for inclusion. However, three of the songs sounded iffy enough for them to be included only as bonus tracks.

This is probably the roughest sounding out of all of the albums in this series. But if you're a P*tty fan, I think you'll want to get all these albums, including this one.

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

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

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZwUEgBTW

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/U6fkEyg4KYEHONx/file 

For the cover art, I used a concert poster from 1989. I had to do some drastic cropping to get the rectangular artwork into a square shape.

The Beach Boys - Only with You - Non-Album Tracks (1976-1977)

Here's the next installment of my Beach Boys stray tracks.

However, with this album, I'm changing things up a little bit. I started in the late 1960s, and moved forward chronologically to the mid-1970s. All through those years, the official Beach Boys studio albums were solid and sometimes even great. But starting around this time, 1976, those albums become much more hit and miss. Unfortunately, as time goes on into the 1980s and beyond they become much more miss than hit. So, from this point on, these albums will cover everything the Beach Boys did, solo and as a band, and on album, singles, or other.

The only exception to that is if there are still any albums that are so good that I would recommend any Beach Boys fan should get the entire album. Luckily, there still are a couple of cases like that. One is in the time period covered by this album. I'm referring to "Pacific Ocean Blue," the first of two solo albums by Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson. Drummers are not usually known for either their singing or songwriting, but Dennis (who died in 1983) was great at both. In fact, I'd argue he was the second biggest creative force in the group being his genius brother Brian Wilson. Thus, I'm not including any songs here from "Pacific Ocean Blue," though a couple are bonus tracks from some versions of that album.

The first five songs on this album come from "15 Big Ones," the Beach Boys studio album released in 1976. As you can tell from the numbers, there are 15 songs on that album and I only like five, so  I don't think it's a very good album. Not only did critics and the public not like it very much, but even some of the Beach Boys themselves have knocked it. One problem was they couldn't decide if they wanted it to be an album of originals or of covers, and split the difference, with seven originals. Furthermore, the album was touted as the return of Brian Wilson, who produced the album after not producing any of the band's albums since 1966. But Brian was going through troubled times, having an idiosyncratic musical vision that was at odds with the rest of the band.

Basically, the album is a mess, but they rushed it out anyway, because they hadn't put out a new studio album since 1973, and demand was high, since they'd become the number one concert draw in the US (thanks to their backlog of hits).

Luckily, I think I was able to make a strong album by drawing on various solo projects and songs that weren't released at the time. In my opinion, this will be a common theme for the rest of the 1970s: the band was still recording a lot of good songs, it's just that a big chunk of them weren't ending up on their albums.

I want to make a particular note about the song "I Write the Songs." Chances are, you're familiar with this as a huge hit by Barry Manilow. But actually it was written by Beach Boy Bruce Johnston, and he released a version of it before Manilow's. The song is written from the point of view of Brian Wilson, since he's the one who "writes the songs that make the whole world sing."

One could imagine an alternate universe where the Beach Boys got the number of hit with this song, which would have been a much needed shot in the arm preventing them from turning into a oldies act. But Johnston left the band for a few years in the mid-1970s, and his version came out on an obscure solo album hardly anyone noticed (except for, apparently, Manilow).

01 Rock and Roll Music [Extra Verse Version] (Beach Boys)
02 Had to Phone Ya [Alternate Version] (Beach Boys)
03 That Same Song [Extended Version] (Beach Boys)
04 Everyone's in Love with You (Beach Boys)
05 Just Once in My Life (Beach Boys)
06 Sherry She Needs Me (Beach Boys)
07 Still I Dream of It [Demo] (Brian Wilson)
08 Sea Cruise (Beach Boys)
09 Tug of Love [Feel the Pull] (Dennis Wilson)
10 I Write the Songs (Bruce Johnston)
11 Morning Christmas (Beach Boys)
12 Only with You (Dennis Wilson)
13 Brand New Old Friends (Bruce Johnston)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17187624/TBECHBYS1976-1977OnlywthYu_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8dT1JseJ

The cover art here looks like a typical album cover photo, doesn't it? Actually, I looked for good photos of the band in 1976 or 1977, and the best one I could find featured them in an ad for car stereos. I removed some text up in the sky and replaced it with my own.

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

Brinsley Schwarz - Don't Lie to Me - Non-Album Tracks (1974-1975)

A couple of weeks ago, I posted an album of stray tracks for Brinsley Schwarz. Here's a second such album. That band didn't have a very long career, so this finishes off all the stray tracks I have for them. The main singer and songwriter in the band was Nick Lowe, so finishing this off will allow me to move on to Lowe's solo career, as well as his career with Rockpile. But if you like Lowe and/or Rockpile, don't miss these Brinsley Schwarz albums. It's very, very similar.

About a third of the songs here come from BBC performances, another third are from concert bootlegs with the audience noise removed, and the remaining third are rare studio tracks, mostly A- and B-sides. Brinsley Schwarz's proper studio albums were mostly filled with original songs. But the vast majority of songs here are cover versions. Regarding the live songs, luckily, they come from sources with very good sound quality.

The 18 songs here total 54 minutes, not counting the bonus track.

The bonus track, a cover of the Rolling Stones classic "Brown Sugar," comes from the exact same concert as some of the other songs here. But it doesn't sound as good as the others, so it's only a bonus track. I think it's because the crowd was more boisterous through most of the song.

01 Don't Lie to Me (Brinsley Schwarz)
02 You Been Cheating (Brinsley Schwarz)
03 I'll Be Doggone (Brinsley Schwarz)
04 Save the Last Dance for Me (Brinsley Schwarz)
05 You Ain't Livin' Till You're Lovin' (Brinsley Schwarz)
06 Honky Tonk (Brinsley Schwarz)
07 You're So Fine (Brinsley Schwarz)
08 Hip City (Brinsley Schwarz)
09 Hey Bartender (Brinsley Schwarz)
10 I Ain't Never (Brinsley Schwarz)
11 Walking the Dog (Brinsley Schwarz)
12 I've Cried My Last Tear (Brinsley Schwarz)
13 Day Tripper (Brinsley Schwarz)
14 Slow Down (Brinsley Schwarz)
15 Snatch It Back and Hold It (Brinsley Schwarz)
16 Tell Me Why (Brinsley Schwarz)
17 I Should Have Known Better (Brinsley Schwarz)
18 Give Me Back My Love (Brinsley Schwarz)
19 There's a Cloud in My Heart (Brinsley Schwarz)

Brown Sugar (Brinsley Schwarz)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17187625/BRINSLEYS1974-1975DontLitoMe_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/runBnKTf

It's very hard to find good color photos of Brinsley Schwarz that aren't already used for official album covers or the like. I found this photo on the back of a bootleg. I have no idea when or where it's from. I wish I had a good photo of all five band members, but this was the best I could do.

UPDATE: On October 1, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program. The colors were so off that even the AI couldn't fix it much.

When I updated this album in February 2021, I updated the cover photo too. It's the same photo as before, but I used some Photoshop tricks to hopefully sharpen the image a bit, and improve the overly red colors somewhat.

Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers - The Van Sessions, Part 2 (2012-2013)

Here's the second of my two Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers' "The Van Sessions" albums. Please see my write up for the first album for an explanation. But, in short, even if you've never heard of this band, you'll want to hear their cover versions of hit songs, all recorded while they were driving in a van down a highway.

Before I say more, note that I first posted this album in 2019. Then I drastically overhauled it in 2026. I turned two albums into three, so some songs got moved from Volume 1 to this volume, and from this volume to a new Volume 3. Four songs were added to this volume, and more to the other two volumes. Furthermore, the sound quality of all the songs were drastically improved, due to new technology that allowed me to pretty much completely get rid of the hiss. And there was a lot of hiss, due to the way these were recorded in a van while it was actually moving. 

The "van sessions" songs were ordered on YouTube, from 1 to 37. I included the numbers in the mp3 tags when I could find them, and all the songs are in chronological order. All but four of the songs here are from the actual van sessions. The other four - tracks, 10, 11, 12, and 15 - are generally from other webcast broadcasts. You can find the exact details in the mp3 tags.

One thing I really like about their covers is that they're willing to play the songs they love no matter how uncool they are. They do versions of songs by Madonna, Whitney Houston, Paula Abdul, Kenny Rogers, and the like, as well as the usual classic rock suspects. I may not like the original versions of some of those songs, but their covers all sound good, and fun.

This album is 56 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On January 30, 2026, I heavily revised this album. See the changes discussed above. 

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

01 Islands in the Stream - Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers
02 Watercolor Canvas - Bobby Darin
03 I Can t Go for That [No Can Do] - Hall & Oates
04 Easy - Commodores
05 Faith - George Michael
06 Hit Me with Your Best Shot - Pat Benatar
07 Days like This - Van Morrison
08 Stuck in the Middle with You - Stealers Wheel
09 Let's Hear It for the Boy - Deniece Williams
10 Fever - Little Willie John
11 Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever - Four Tops
12 Reno, Nevada - Mimi & Richard Farina
13 Band on the Run - Paul McCartney
14 Take the Money and Run - Steve Miller Band
15 Danny's Song - Loggins & Messina

Here's the usual song list:

01 Hit Me with Your Best Shot (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
02 Days like This (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
03 Stuck in the Middle with You (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
04 Band on the Run (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
05 Take the Money and Run (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
06 Lido Shuffle (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
07 Danny's Song (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
08 I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
09 One Toke Over the Line (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
10 I Can Get Off on You (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
11 Bird Song (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
12 Mr. Saturday Night (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
13 Picture Book (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/237u1ArE

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/x3r2pvOf6xnZf3F/file

The cover art is a photo of the band getting ready to record another video inside their van.

Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers - The Van Sessions, Part 1 (2011-2012)

First off, I want to say that this post (and the next one) is 100% due to a post by Uncle Dan back at his alternate albums website "What-If." I'd never heard of Nicky Bluhm and the Gramblers until I saw an album of their stuff that he posted. He stated that he got hooked by watching their video of their cover of Hall and Oates' "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)." So I went to YouTube and watched the video, and I got hooked too.

I recommend you check out that video too. It has over four million views, and with good reason, because it's lots of fun. Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers were a band that unfortunately broke up in 2018. But while they were still around, they liked to record videos of themselves playing cover songs while driving down the highway in their van. Amazingly, Bluhm was both the lead singer and sometimes kazoo player while driving the van during the videos!

But it's not just a gimmick of playing songs while driving. They were a really good band, and Bluhm is a talented singer. There's something about her slightly rough voice and singing style that I think makes her special. Having to play in a moving vehicle forced them to play all acoustic, and I have particular love for acoustic music. Their cover of "I Can't Go for That" is a good place to start, because it's done so well. They seriously should have released that and had a big hit with it. But all their other songs are done really well too.

I started by downloading Uncle Dan's compilation album of their "Van Sessions" cover songs, which you can find here:

https://whatif-misc.blogspot.com/2018/09/nicki-bluhm-and-gramblers-van-sessions.html

That's good stuff. However, there was a problem: due to the fact the videos were recorded in a van driving down a highway, there was a lot of background noise on the songs. For instance, one could hear the sound of passing cars creating extra loud hiss from time to time. This was worse on some songs than on others. 

I first posted this album in 2019. At that time, there wasn't much that could be done about all that hiss. So there were many songs that I skipped over because I didn't think they sounded good enough. However, I reposted this album in 2026. By then, audio editing technology had improved drastically, thanks to AI-related technology. I was able to use the "denoise" function of the MVSEP program to pretty much wipe away the hiss entirely!

Thanks to that technology, I completely redid this album. I got rid of the hiss on all the songs I'd posted in 2019. Then I added in more songs that I had passed over due to the hiss problem. There are six new songs here. Four songs were also moved to Volume 2. Then some songs from Volume 2 were moved to a brand new Volume 3. So if you like this, I strongly suggest you get all three volumes.

This album is 53 minutes long.

UPDATE: On January 30, 2026, I heavily revised this album. The changes are discussed above. 

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

01 Tonight You Belong to Me - Patience & Prudence
02 Hey Baby - Bruce Channel
03 How Will I Know - Whitney Houston
04 Ramblin' Man - Allman Brothers Band
05 You're No Good - Dee Dee Warwick
06 Everyday - Buddy Holly
07 How Sweet It Is [To Be Loved by You] - Marvin Gaye
08 Material Girl - Madonna
09 Don't Worry, Be Happy - Bobby McFerrin
10 Deal - Grateful Dead
11 Pack Up Your Sorrows - Mimi & Richard Farina
12 Forever Your Girl - Paula Abdul
13 I'm Your Woman - Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers
14 Here Comes the Sun - Beatles
15 Can You Get to That - Funkadelic
16 She's Got You - Patsy Cline

And here's the usual song list:

01 Hey Baby (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
02 Ramblin' Man (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
03 You re No Good (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
04 Everyday (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
05 Material Girl (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
06 Don t Worry, Be Happy (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
07 Deal (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
08 Forever Your Girl (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
09 I'm Your Woman (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
10 Here Comes the Sun (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
11 Islands in the Stream (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
12 I Can't Go for That [No Can Do] (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
13 Easy (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)
14 Faith (Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/c9CmQcu6

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/WZ20fh6A6vGuCsH/file

For the cover art, I created a screenshot from the video of the band singing "I Can't Go for That" in their van. I upgraded it with the Krea AI program.

Los Lobos - Live Classic Rock Cover Versions (1994-2000)

Before I post any more albums of studio stray tracks by Los Lobos, I want to post this album. I made it because I noticed a big number of classic rock songs played live by the band in the 1990s. There were so many from 1994 to 2000 that I decided to put them all together on an album. And it's an extra long album compared to what I usually post, at an hour and five minutes.

One reason I like Los Lobos so much is because they take wildly disparate types of music, from Mexican folk to experimental art rock to classic rock, and blend them together to make their own style. This album shows clearly the classic rock artists that influenced them the most. Here is who the songs on this album are originally by, in order:

01 Tomorrow Never Knows - Beatles
02 Spanish Castle Magic - Jimi Hendrix
03 Bertha - Grateful Dead
04 Don't Keep Me Wondering - Allman Brothers
05 What's Going On - Marvin Gaye
06 Waiting in Vain - Bob Marley
07 One Way Out - Allman Brothers
08 Cinnamon Girl - Neil Young
09 Rattlesnake Shake - Dear Mr. Fantasy - Fleetwood Mac - Traffic
10 Down by the River - Neil Young
11 Natural Mystic - No More Trouble  - Bob Marley
12 Oye Como Va - Santana

Those are a lot of my favorite artists too. I'll probably post something by all of them by and by.

This is the only Los Lobos album I've made like this because although they've continued to play classic rock covers in concert since 2000, they're mostly this same bunch of songs. I haven't found nearly enough different cover songs after 2000 to make another album. (At least not yet.)

Note that I included Los Lobos doing a version of "Bertha" on a previous stray tracks album. But that was their studio version, and this is live. I also included them doing "What's Going On" on another previous stray tracks album. But that was also done in a studio (in front of a small audience). Plus, that was Los Lobos, while this is their closely related spin-off band Los Super Seven, with Sheryl Crow doing some of the singing, so I figured it was different enough to be interesting.

By the way, Los Lobos has freely allowed tapers at their concerts for many years, so that means there are a lot of high quality bootlegs of them. That in turn means the sound quality here is typically excellent for live recordings. Three of the songs here are officially released and the rest come from bootlegs, but you can't tell which is which from the sound quality.

01 Tomorrow Never Knows (Los Lobos)
02 Spanish Castle Magic (Los Lobos)
03 Bertha (Los Lobos)
04 Don't Keep Me Wondering (Los Lobos)
05 What's Going On (Los Super Seven & Sheryl Crow)
06 Waiting in Vain (Los Lobos)
07 One Way Out (Los Lobos)
08 Cinnamon Girl (Los Lobos)
09 Rattlesnake Shake - Dear Mr. Fantasy (Los Lobos)
10 Down by the River (Los Lobos)
11 Natural Mystic - No More Trouble (Los Lobos)
12 Oye Como Va (Los Lobos)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16695511/LOSLBOS1994-2000_LivClssicRckCovrVersons_atse.zip.html

I'm really happy at how the cover art worked out. I found a concert poster of Los Lobos playing the Fillmore in San Francisco in 1998. It depicts a giant scorpion attacking San Francisco. All I did was crop it to fit the square space, then change the text on the green billboard.

Paul Weller - Ghosts - Non-Album Acoustic Tracks (2015-2018)

I've posted a ton of Paul Weller albums, but I'm finally getting to the end of the road as I reach close to the present day. This one covers just acoustic performances from 2015 to 2018. I've got one more album after this which deals with full band material from roughly the same time period.

Only one song here is officially released, "The Ballad of Jimmy McCabe." I was able to include it because it comes from the soundtrack to the movie "Jawbone" instead of one of his studio albums. Most of the rest of the songs are acoustic versions of songs from his albums of the time period. There are a couple of exceptions: "Have You Ever Had It Blue" is a version of one of his Style Council songs, "Ghosts" is a version of one of his Jam songs, and "I've Never Found a Girl (Who Loves Me like You Do)"is a cover of a 1960s hit from soul musician Eddie Floyd.

As I write this, Weller's most recent studio album is 2018's "True Meanings." That generally has an acoustic sound, but usually with other instruments added, especially strings. The last two songs here are songs from that album, but these are unreleased studio versions that are strictly acoustic. If you haven't heard that album, you should. It's one of his best in a long time.

01 Dusk Til Dawn (Paul Weller)
02 Going My Way (Paul Weller)
03 Ghosts (Paul Weller)
04 Have You Ever Had It Blue (Paul Weller)
05 I'm Where I Should Be (Paul Weller)
06 These City Streets (Paul Weller)
07 Aspects (Paul Weller with Robert Wyatt)
08 The Ballad of Jimmy McCabe (Paul Weller)
09 Long Long Road (Paul Weller)
10 I've Never Found a Girl [Who Loves Me like You Do] (Paul Weller)
11 Glide (Paul Weller)
12 Gravity (Paul Weller)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696937/PALWLLR2015-2018_GhstsAcoustc_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used a photo of Weller in concert in 2018.

Robyn Hitchcock - Moss Elixir - Acoustic Versions (1996)

I still have a zillion Robyn Hitchcock albums to post, so here's the next one. It boggles my mind that I've posted 26 of his solo albums so far (not to mention his Soft Boys, and I've only made it about halfway through his solo career, while he continues to put out more new music every year! And those are all albums I've compiled, on top of the many studio albums he put out during that time period!

In 1996, Hitchcock released the mostly acoustic album "Moss Elixir." But while it generally had an acoustic sound, there were bass and drums and other instruments on nearly all of the songs. So this is the pure acoustic version, featuring just Hitchcock and his acoustic guitar.

As usual, I took the recordings from concert bootlegs, with the audience noise removed. Generally speaking, the sound quality is excellent. All the performances are unreleased, except for "I Am Not Me," which comes from the archival box set "Bad Case of History." But five of the other performances are studio demos that somehow leaked out, and a couple more come from in-person radio performances. Most or all of the three remaining songs come from soundboard bootlegs.

I recently posted my version of the album "Mossy Liquor," which essentially are the 1996 leftovers from the "Moss Elixir" sessions. For this album, I was able to find acoustic versions of all 12 songs on "Moss Elixir," plus two of the songs from "Mossy Liquor."

01 Sinister but She Was Happy (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 The Devil's Radio (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Heliotrope (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Alright, Yeah (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 Filthy Bird (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 The Speed of Things (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Beautiful Queen (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Man with a Woman's Shadow (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 I Am Not Me (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 De Chirico Street (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 You and Oblivion [Solo Electric Version] (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 This Is How It Feels (Robyn Hitchcock)
13 Shuffling Over the Flagstones [Instrumental] (Robyn Hitchcock)
14 Each of Her Silver Wands (Robyn Hitchcock)
15 Trilobite (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15272163/RobynH_1996_MossElixAcousticVersions_atse.zip.html

I had a hard time figuring out a good cover for this album. I couldn't find anything from 1996. However, there's an interesting cover for the 1995 single "I Something You." It has no words on it other than Hitchcock's name. So I moved his name over to make room for the album title.

Buckingham Nicks - Circles in Time - Non-Album Tracks (1975)

As long as I'm posting the Buckingham Nicks concert that I just posted, I want to post something that's very closely related. You as a listener might want to download this, or that, or both.

As I mentioned in my post about that concert, Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were in the middle of recording their second Buckingham Nicks studio album, but that never got finished. Apparently, they got the phone call inviting them to join Fleetwood Mac, so that took precedence. Then it seems all the recordings for that second album got lost and/or destroyed, which means we'll never get to hear what that second album would have sounded like.

So instead, I've come up with this, my attempt to recreate that second album as closely as I can. The song list largely overlaps with the songs played in the Tuscaloosa concert I just posted. However, it turns out there was another concert recorded just one day earlier, on January 28, 1975, at the Alabama State Fairgrounds in Birmingham, Alabama. Probably the same person recorded both shows, as the sound quality is excellent for both. Only part of that concert has made it onto bootleg.

I've used performances from that concert whenever possible in order to reduce duplication. The result is that only four of the same performances are on this album and the full Tuscaloosa concert I posted. I also removed all audience noise and talking between songs. Since the sound quality is excellent, I think this sounds like studio recordings and not a concert.

I didn't include any songs from the 1973 Buckingham Nicks album, which eliminates tunes like "Crystal" (which would also appear on the 1975 "Fleetwood Mac" album), "Don't Let Me Down Again," "Frozen Love," and "Long Distance Winner." Three of the songs I have included would be done by Fleetwood Mac for their 1975 album ("Monday Morning," "Blue Letter," and "Rhiannon"), and one more would make it on their 1977 album "Rumours" ("I Don't Want to Know").

I think it's very interesting to hear Buckingham Nicks versions of those songs. This would-be album should have been a big seller just from the inclusion of all time classics like "Monday Morning" and "Rhiannon."

But I think what's most interesting are the inclusion of good songs that got lost and forgotten as the duo joined Fleetwood Mac. "Sorcerer" is one of the best Buckingham Nicks songs, in my opinion, and it's strange that it never got released in the 1970s. Nicks revived it decades later, and it was popular enough to make it onto one of her solo greatest hits albums. It also was recorded around 1973 as an unreleased acoustic demo which I included on the Buckingham Nicks album called the "Coffee Plant Demos." But two other songs here, "Farewell Failure" and "Heartbreaker (Circles in Time)" are also really good original songs that seem to have totally disappeared except for their appearance on the two Buckingham Nicks concert bootlegs from January 1975.

I added one song to the end of this album, "After the Glitter Fades," that is technically a Stevie Nicks recording instead of a Buckingham Nicks one. That's because the song was included on her first solo album, "Bella Donna," in 1981, but this unreleased demo recording dates from around 1975, if not earlier. Furthermore, according to interviews, Nicks says the song was written in 1974, or maybe 1973. So I think the odds are very good that it would have been included on a second Buckingham Nicks album.

If anyone knows the names of the two short guitar instrumentals here, please let me know so I can update the song list. I titled one of them "Little Guitar Thing" only because Buckingham said right before starting the song that he was going to "play a little guitar thing." It sounds a little bit like "Never Going Back Again," so it could be an early version of that.

This album is 32 minutes long.

01 Monday Morning (Buckingham Nicks)
02 Farewell Failure (Buckingham Nicks)
03 Sorcerer (Buckingham Nicks)
04 You Won't Forget Me (Buckingham Nicks)
05 Blue Letter (Buckingham Nicks)
06 Rhiannon (Buckingham Nicks)
07 Guitar Instrumental (Buckingham Nicks)
08 Heartbreaker [Circles in Time] (Buckingham Nicks)
09 I Don't Want to Know (Buckingham Nicks)
10 Little Guitar Thing [Instrumental] (Buckingham Nicks)
11 After the Glitter Fades (Stevie Nicks)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MRJeSrup

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/CMDrLd8N9JigUBl/file

In 2025, I found a better photo, so I replace it. This shows Buckingham and Nicks in the mid-1970s.

Buckingham Nicks - Morgan Auditorium, Tuscaloosa, AL, 1-29-1975

Since I just posted what Fleetwood Mac was up to in late 1974, I think it's fitting to also post what was happening with Buckingham Nicks just a couple of months later.

By the time this concert took place, Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks had already joined Fleetwood Mac, but they had a few last concert obligations to fulfill. That was a lucky thing, because it was only their last few shows that got decently recorded. In fact, this show took place on January 29, 1975, and their last show as a duo was two days later, on January 31st.

If you want to know more about this concert, there's a really good newspaper article about it from 2018, surprisingly enough:

https://expo.al.com/life-and-culture/erry-2018/09/da850ca1cf6155/45-years-later-buckingham-nick.html

So I won't say much more, since that article says it so well. But I'll note that the sound quality is very good. Also, Buckingham Nicks' only album was released in 1973, and they planned to record a second one. But that was never finished, and most of those songs went on Fleetwood Mac's self-titled 1975 album, with one of them ("I Don't Want to Know") making it on 1977's "Rumours." Recording for that 1975 Fleetwood Mac album began just days after these last concerts. So this is a really interesting look at a pivotal moment in the musical careers for Buckingham and Nicks.

I'm very surprised that this concert recording doesn't get around more as a bootleg, because the performance is excellent and so is the sound quality. I suspect it's because it's under the name "Buckingham Nicks" instead of "Fleetwood Mac."

This album is an hour long.

01 Lola [My Love] (Buckingham Nicks)
02 talk (Buckingham Nicks)
03 Monday Morning (Buckingham Nicks)
04 I Don't Want to Know (Buckingham Nicks)
05 talk (Buckingham Nicks)
06 Little Guitar Thing [Instrumental] (Buckingham Nicks)
07 Races Are Run (Buckingham Nicks)
08 Rhiannon (Buckingham Nicks)
09 Long Distance Winner (Buckingham Nicks)
10 Django - Sorcerer (Buckingham Nicks)
11 talk (Buckingham Nicks)
12 You Won't Forget Me (Buckingham Nicks)
13 Blue Letter (Buckingham Nicks)
14 Heartbreaker [Circles in Time] (Buckingham Nicks)
15 Don't Let Me Down Again (Buckingham Nicks)
16 talk (Buckingham Nicks)
17 Frozen Love (Buckingham Nicks)
18 Crystal (Buckingham Nicks)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ViWHFmeZ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/vbwYdyM1x2IkrN9/file

The photo for the cover is of the band playing at the University of Alabama within days of the concert this music is from. It comes from a university yearbook, and I found it because it was reprinted in a news article. Since it was in black and white, I tinted it with some color to make it more interesting.

Fleetwood Mac - WLIR Ultrasonic Concert Series, Ultrasonic Recording Studios, Hempstead, NY, 10-8-1974

I've wanted to post something from the 1972 to 1974 Bob Welch-led era of Fleetwood Mac, that mostly forgotten time between the end of the Peter Green-led blues years and the start of the Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham dominated pop rock years.

Unfortunately, there just isn't much to post. For instance, I can't do a stray tracks album since pretty much zero stray tracks have been made public. In fact, because Fleetwood Mac went way down in popularity at this time, even the number of good bootlegs is very small.

Luckily, there is this one concert as an exception. It comes right at the end of that era (a month or two before Welsh left and Nicks and Buckingham joined), and it's a really nice concert. Because it was recorded in a recording studio (though with an audience) it has excellent sound quality. I think it shows this version of the band is very underrated.

By the way, keep in mind that Christine McVie is in the band through this whole time period. She already was doing the pop rock thing that would explode in popularity in 1975 and after. I think some of her songs here would be huge hits if they would have been included on the "Rumours" album a few years later instead.

UPDATE: On September 12, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. I removed two extra songs at the end, because they're from a different concert and I now have posted that concert in full. I also made changes to the cover art and title to match other albums from the same radio show.

01 The Green Manalishi [With the Two Prong Crown] (Fleetwood Mac)
02 Spare Me a Little of Your Love (Fleetwood Mac)
03 Sentimental Lady (Fleetwood Mac)
04 Future Games (Fleetwood Mac)
05 Bermuda Triangle (Fleetwood Mac)
06 Why (Fleetwood Mac)
07 Angel (Fleetwood Mac)
08 Homeward Bound (Fleetwood Mac)
09 Rattlesnake Shake (Fleetwood Mac)
10 Hypnotized (Fleetwood Mac)
11 Black Magic Woman (Fleetwood Mac)
12 Mystery to Me (Fleetwood Mac)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qwR4XCbR 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/e6qPr2VGybHaGRb/file

For the album cover, I found some cover art from a popular bootleg of the show, using actual photos from the show. The front cover of this bootleg just had a photo of one of the band members (Bob Welch), so I used the back cover instead, and added the text from the front to the middle of it.

The Beatnix - It's Four You (1998)

I'm a huge fan of the Beatles. They're my favorite musical artist, by far. So I think it's a tragedy that there are a bunch of songs they wrote in the 1960s that they never properly recorded.

Luckily, there have been several different musical attempts to rectify this. The most famous is the 2003 album "Lost Songs of Lennon and McCartney." A group of musicians led by Graham Parker and Kate Pierson (of the B-52's) perform 17 of the songs that the Beatles gave to other artists.

I like that one, but my favorite album along those lines is this one, "It's Four You," by the Beatnix. They're an Australian band that's existed since 1980 and does nothing but Beatles covers. Apparently, they're still going strong as a Beatles tribute band. What I like about this album is that they try to do the songs as close to the Beatles style as they can manage. So it's a bit like discovering a lost Beatles album (the vast majority of it in their early style). It's long out of print and goes for big bucks on eBay, so I think it's okay to post it here.

Regarding the songs, John Lennon and Paul McCartney liked giving some of their songs to other artists for various reasons. Generally speaking, they wanted to help other struggling artists make it. For instance, McCartney was seriously romantically involved with a woman named Jane Asher for a few years, and her brother Peter Asher was part of the vocal duo Peter and Gordon. Plus, they were managed by Brian Epstein, who also managed the Beatles. So McCartney gave that duo the songs "A World Without Love," "Nobody I Know," "Woman," and "I Don't Want to See You Again." The first one was a number one hit, and the next two were top 20 hits. Other artists like Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas or Cilla Black or the Fourmost were also managed by Epstein, the same man who managed the Beatles, and they were given songs to help their careers too.

In a way, these songs were considered the Beatles' rejects, but that's not really the case. In my opinion, nearly all of them are really good songs, worthy of being on Beatles albums. Nearly all of them were hits, with the exceptions of "One and One Is Two," "I Don't Want to See You Again," "Tip of My Tongue," and "I'll Be on My Way." In fact, McCartney wondered if it was just the fact that the songs had "Lennon-McCartney" in the credits that made them hits, so he had the songwriting credit for "Woman" go to the pseudonym "Bernard Webb," and it was a hit anyway.

Out of the 19 Beatles songs on this album, a bunch of them actually were recorded by the Beatles at some point:
If You've Got Trouble
Hello Little Girl
Like Dreamers Do
Step Inside Love
I'll Be on My Way
Love of the Loved

In addition, either Lennon or McCartney made solo demos of these songs that have been officially released or widely bootlegged:
I'm in Love
One and One Is Two
Bad to Me
Goodbye

Furthermore, McCartney made demos of "It's for You" and "A World without Love," but only snippets of less than 30 seconds have been publicly released so far.

So that means 13 of the 19 Beatles songs here either were never done by the Beatles at all or were only done in a very different solo demo form. The odds are that hearing the Beatnix doing them in Beatles style is as close as we'll ever get to hearing the Beatles do these songs.

Note that there are at least another 20 songs the Beatles wrote between 1956 and 1962 that are even more obscure. Some of these include "I Lost My Little Girl," "You'll Be Mine," "In Spite of All the Danger," "Cayenne," "Cry for a Shadow," and "Thinking of Linking." There are still other songs the Beatles gave away or cowrote, such as "Come and Get It" (a big hit for Badfinger), "Catswalk," "Badge" (cowritten by George Harrision and done by Cream), "My Dark Hour" (cowritten by McCartney and done by the Steve Miller Band), and others. On top of that, there are still more songs written after 1962 but never released, such as "Carnival of Light," "Etcetera," "Watching Rainbows," and so on.

By the way, I've added one extra bonus song. As far as I know, the only album the Beatnix ever recorded was this one, but they have one other song that's been officially released. It's a version of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," but it's done in the style of the Beatles circa 1963! It's quite amusing. This was part of a 1992 project in Australia by a wide variety of musicians to record "Stairway to Heaven" in vastly different styles. An album was made of it called "The Money or the Gun: Stairways to Heaven," and this extra song comes from that. The whole album is amusing and entertaining, though extremely obscure.

01 I'm in Love (Beatnix)
02 Nobody I Know (Beatnix)
03 If You've Got Trouble (Beatnix)
04 It's for You (Beatnix)
05 Hello Little Girl (Beatnix)
06 Like Dreamers Do (Beatnix)
07 Step Inside Love (Beatnix)
08 Woman (Beatnix)
09 That Means a Lot (Beatnix)
10 I Don't Want to See You Again (Beatnix)
11 One and One Is Two (Beatnix)
12 Bad to Me (Beatnix)
13 Tip of My Tongue (Beatnix)
14 I'll Be on My Way (Beatnix)
15 A World without Love (Beatnix)
16 From a Window (Beatnix)
17 I'll Keep You Satisfied (Beatnix)
18 Love of the Loved (Beatnix)
19 Goodbye (Beatnix)
20 Stairway to Heaven (Beatnix)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15124400/Beatnx_1998_ItsFurYou_atse.zip.html

This cover is the exact cover of the album.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HQSDJGkX

alternate: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Bfib5RSf

alternate: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://pixeldrain.com/u/shU9CUwV

alternate:

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

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