Stevie Wonder - Berkeley Community Theater, Berkeley, CA, 3-4-1973

I said pretty much everything I wanted to say about this post in my last post. In short, I'm posting two Stevie Wonder concerts from back-to-back nights in 1973, and both are excellent soundboard recordings. Read the write-up at the other post for more.

By the way, the shows are very similar, but for anyone who downloads and listens to both of these, I'd be curious which one you like more. That might help others who only want to download one of them.

This album is an hour and 25 minutes long.

01 If You Really Love Me (Stevie Wonder)
02 Me and Mrs. Jones (Stevie Wonder)
03 Superwoman (Stevie Wonder)
04 You Were My First, but Not My Last (Stevie Wonder)
05 talk (Stevie Wonder)
06 I Think I'm on the Right Track (Stevie Wonder)
07 I Was Made to Love Her (Stevie Wonder)
08 talk (Stevie Wonder)
09 Feel It (Wonderlove & Stevie Wonder)
10 Killing Me Softly with His Song (Wonderlove & Stevie Wonder)
11 You Are the Sunshine of My Life (Stevie Wonder)
12 Big Brother (Stevie Wonder)
13 Blowin' in the Wind (Stevie Wonder)
14 What's Going On [Instrumental] (Stevie Wonder)
15 My Cherie Amour - Summer Breeze (Stevie Wonder)
16 Love Having You Around (Stevie Wonder)
17 Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours - Party Jam (Stevie Wonder)
18 Jam [Instrumental] (Stevie Wonder)
19 Superstition [Incomplete] (Stevie Wonder)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700510/STEVIWNDR1973b_BrkeleyCommnityThetrBrkeleyCA__3-4-1973_atse.zip.html

The cover photo of Wonder is from 1973, but I don't know the details.

Stevie Wonder - Winterland, San Francisco, CA, 3-3-1973

I'm doing something a little strange with this post and the one to immediately follow: I'm posting two Steve Wonder concerts from succeeding nights in 1973 that are very similar to each other. If you're a fan of Wonder's classic 1970s era, you really should listen to one of these. But you might not need both, since they are so very similar.

The reason I'm posting both concerts is because I believe that a very popular Wonder bootleg, of a concert at the Berkeley Community Theater, in Berkeley, California, on March 4, 1973, is actually a mix of songs from that show plus some songs from a concert the day earlier, at the Winterland, in San Francisco. There are very, very few excellent soundboard recordings from Wonder's career, especially from this era of his career. But for some reason, there are great concerts from two nights in a row in 1973.

The Berkeley concert is one of the most popular of his bootlegs. By contrast, the Winterland is very little known. I was able to find multiple bootlegs of both shows, each one a little different. Using some deductive reasoning, as well as accessing some setlist information from setlist.fm, I'm pretty sure I've been able to put together nearly full version of both shows for possibly the first time ever in the public domain. So I want to make both of these available, in hopes of finally clearing up some inaccuracies.

I don't want to go too deep into the weeds on how and why I figured out which songs belonged to which show. But to make a long story short, I figure that whoever put the popular Berkeley bootleg together combined the best of both shows. Because some songs were only played at once of the concerts or the other, but the bootleg generally has all of them.

I wish I could recommend one of these, for the casual fan who doesn't want both. But I can't do that, because they're both good, but in different ways. The Winterland show is short two songs: "For Once in My Life" and "You Are the Sunshine of My Life." I found only partial versions of those two, and I figured it was better not to include them when they get rudely cut off, especially since the other concert has the full versions. But, on the other hand, the Winterland show has the complete version of a long and interesting "Superstition," while the Berkeley show is missing roughly the end half of that song. So in terms of minutes, both shows are missing roughly the same about.

In my opinion, both shows are interesting, because even when Wonder is playing the same song on succeeding nights, he does them in different ways. A case in point is the jam that follows "Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours." The jam doesn't seem to have a name, but I call it "Party Jam," because "Party!" gets shouted a lot for the first few minutes on both nights. But then the performances diverge, with Wonder seemingly coming up with totally different lyrics on each night, as well as a lot of instrumental differences.

Anyway, both shows are here, and I figure it's better to have too many options instead of not enough. In terms of sound quality, both are stellar soundboards. Although on this Winterland show, there some rough noise near the end of "You Were My First, but Not My Last," and the next song, "Big Brother" fades in. But that trouble is only about two minutes out of the whole concert.

01 Instrumental Jam - For Once in My Life (Stevie Wonder)
02 If You Really Love Me (Stevie Wonder)
03 Me and Mrs. Jones (Stevie Wonder)
04 Superwoman (Stevie Wonder)
05 talk (Stevie Wonder)
06 I Wanna Be by Your Side (Stevie Wonder)
07 You Were My First, but Not My Last (Stevie Wonder)
08 Big Brother (Stevie Wonder)
09 Blowin' in the Wind (Stevie Wonder)
10 What's Going On [Instrumental] - My Cherie Amour (Stevie Wonder)
11 Love Having You Around (Stevie Wonder)
12 Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours (Stevie Wonder)
13 Party Jam (Stevie Wonder)
14 Papa Was a Rolling Stone (Stevie Wonder)
15 Jam [Instrumental] (Stevie Wonder)
16 Superstition (Stevie Wonder)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15274927/StevieW_1973a_WinterlndSnFranciscoCA__3-3-1973_atse.zip.html

The cover photo of Wonder is from 1973, but I don't know the details.

Sheryl Crow - Straight to the Moon - Non-Album Tracks (1998-1999)

Here's another in a long line of Sheryl Crow stray tracks collections.

Crow is one of those artists like Norah Jones in which I think these stray tracks albums are often better than her official studio albums. She has written a lot of very nice hit songs, but her albums tend to contain some mediocre songs that tend to blend into each other. With these stray tracks albums, one gets a lot more variety.

This album is a particular case in point, because the range is greater than usual. She does everything from an old Johnny Cash country song ("Orange Blossom Special") to a cover of a Guns n' Roses hit ("Sweet Child O' Mine"), with a lot of points in between. And by the way, a lot of people criticize that "Sweet Child O' Mine" cover, but I like it. Good covers do something different instead of just slavishly copying the original.

Anyway, most of the songs here are covers, with the exceptions being a couple of songs she wrote for B-sides. Two songs are duets with Dan Wilson. In case you don't know who he is, he was the lead singer and songwriter for the 1990s band Semisonic, who had a hit with "Closing Time." But he's also written some hit songs for others, including Adele's mega-hit "Someone like You." 

The duets with Wilson, plus another duet with Neil Finn and another duet with Tim Smith are the only officially unreleased songs, but they basically have the same sound quality as the rest of the songs.

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 Ode to Billy Joe (Sheryl Crow)
02 Is It like Today (Tim Smith & Sheryl Crow)
03 Merry Christmas Baby (Sheryl Crow with Eric Clapton)
04 Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree (Mary J. Blige & Sheryl Crow)
05 Four Seasons in One Day (Neil Finn & Sheryl Crow)
06 You Always Get Your Way (Sheryl Crow)
07 Straight to the Moon (Sheryl Crow)
08 Still (Sheryl Crow)
09 Sweet Child O' Mine (Sheryl Crow)
10 Drift Away (Sheryl Crow & Dan Wilson)
11 What Is Life (Sheryl Crow & Dan Wilson)
12 Orange Blossom Special (Sheryl Crow with Willie Nelson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15104658/SherylC_1998-1999_StrighttotheMoon_atse.zip.html

The cover photo of Crow dates to the year 2000. As a change of pace, I thought it would be interesting to have a more serious face instead of the using smiling one.

Bonnie Raitt - Sprague Hall, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 12-2-1972

In deciding what music to post at this blog, I've generally been prioritizing my stray tracks collections, because I figure those usually are unique. But I have lots of unreleased full concerts, and I plan on posting a lot more of those once my stray tracks albums start to run out. I figure there are tons of ways one can get full concerts from the Internet these days.

In some cases though, I'm able to offer something that's different from the usual concert recordings that float through cyberspace. The Kinks 1974 concert I just posted is one example, where I found some extra songs and made some sonic adjustments. This is another example, where my version of the concert is different.

First off, I should mention that this is one of the best Bonnie Raitt bootlegs of all time. It may well be my personal favorite. Both sets on one night were recorded as a soundboard, because it all was played live over the radio. So it stands out in terms of length and sound quality. Also, for the first couple of years of Raitt's career, she played her concerts acoustically (usually just herself and a bassist, though this concert also has a piano player join in), so it's neat to hear the songs done quite differently than the full band album arrangements. On top of that, she played lots of songs that never made any of her albums. (I'm including those on my stray tracks collections, including using a few songs from this very show.)

To make a long story short, if you like Bonnie Raitt's music, especially from her early years when she was more folky and bluesy and less poppy and commercial, you should listen to this.

Now, as to what I've changed, this is another case of "less is more." I've removed all the songs from the second set that were played in this first set. I generally dislike having two versions of the same song on one album, but that's especially true here where the songs only occasionally have solos to distinguish them. Additionally, all through the concert, Raitt was bedeviled by her guitar getting out of tune, so she had to tune it up at length after nearly every song. At once point, she was so exasperated that she asked out loud why her guitar was getting out of tune so quickly, and at another point she apologized to the crowd for all the time wasted with the tuning.

But you don't have to waste time listening to Raitt endlessly tuning her guitar between songs. I lopped off about twenty minutes of that in total. But I still kept all of the between song banter, of which there is a lot. If she was talking while tuning, I generally kept that, so you do get some tuning, but not much. Also, she sometimes spoke quietly between songs. I adjusted the volume so you can better hear those bits. I suspect she had a cold (she mentioned it was cold and snowy outside), because she coughed between songs some too. I removed most of the coughing.

I was able to make some other changes too. For instance, the version of "Bluebird" in the first set was bad due to the recording being wavery, so I simply used the version from the second set instead. I think it makes for a much better listen. There were still other fixes, but I think you get the gist. The bottom line is, I've cut out the fat and made some changes so you can focus on the songs and the entertaining between song banter. I think that if this concert was readied to be an official release (and it should be!), the producers would make the same kinds of edits that I did.

By the way, one curious aspect to this recording is that Raitt pretty much appears in one stereo channel, and all the other musicians (the bassist, piano player, and Maria Muldaur singing back-up vocals on the last three songs) are on the other stereo channel. It's extreme separation. I didn't make any changes (except to tweak the stereo balance for a couple of songs), but I thought I'd mention it.

After all the changes mentioned above, the concert is an hour and 46 minutes long. The unedited version is two and a half hours long.

01 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
02 Love Me like a Man (Bonnie Raitt)
03 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
04 That Song about the Midway (Bonnie Raitt)
05 Going Down to Louisiana - Rollin' and Tumblin' (Bonnie Raitt)
06 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
07 You Got to Know How (Bonnie Raitt)
08 Nothing Seems to Matter (Bonnie Raitt)
09 Big Road (Bonnie Raitt)
10 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
11 Write Me a Few of Your Lines - Kokomo Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
12 Special Delivery Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
13 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
14 Too Long at the Fair (Bonnie Raitt)
15 Women Be Wise (Bonnie Raitt)
16 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
17 Love Has No Pride (Bonnie Raitt)
18 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
19 Walk On By (Bonnie Raitt)
20 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
21 Blender Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
22 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
23 Can't Find My Way Home (Bonnie Raitt)
24 Any Day Woman (Bonnie Raitt)
25 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
26 Under the Falling Sky (Bonnie Raitt)
27 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
28 I Ain't Blue (Bonnie Raitt)
29 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
30 Bluebird (Bonnie Raitt)
31 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
32 Walking Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
33 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
34 Since I Fell for You (Bonnie Raitt)
35 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (Bonnie Raitt with Maria Muldaur)
36 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
37 Baby What You Want Me to Do (Bonnie Raitt with Maria Muldaur)
38 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
39 I Know (Bonnie Raitt with Maria Muldaur)

https://www.imagenetz.de/dismQ

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/f2KKUSGC

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/IL8sYxTE6qDVAsB/file

The cover art photo is from 1973, from Los Angeles in the summer of 1973.

The Kinks - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: In Concert, Hippodrome Theatre, London, Britain, 7-14-1974

Excellent sounding Kinks concert recordings are few and far between. So I'm going to continue to post more of their shows, at least from the years they were really great.

This concert was played over the radio in Britain as part of the BBC's "In Concert" series. Since it was the BBC, most of this concert has been officially released as part of a box set of the Kinks' BBC recordings. I've made my own series of albums for the Kinks at the BBC, I've add this to that series, but I've given it its own volume, since I figure it should be listened to on its own.

I'm glad to say I've made what I consider two important improvements over the officially released recordings of this show. First off, those recordings sound fantastic, except for one thing: the volume of Ray Davies' talking between songs was way too low. So I've moved all those bits to separate tracks, and increased the volume for them.

Secondly, and more importantly, I've found three songs that didn't get officially released. My theory on this is that the "In Concert" BBC program was an hour long, so if a band played more than an hour, those extra songs didn't get played on the radio, and generally got forgotten. The officially released songs make up an hour's show. I'm not sure how it happened, but I found three more songs on a bootleg that clearly come from the same show: "Alcohol," "Waterloo Sunset," and "Slum Kids." I know for sure they're from the same show, because all the other songs on that bootleg are from that show (though in jumbled up order), the sound quality is the same, and some of the between song banter for these three songs are EXACTLY the same as on the official recording, down to every last vocal inflection.

The only problem I've had is where these three extra songs go in the song order. It's quite possible that the songs chosen by the BBC to be played on the radio aren't in the exact same order as what was actually played in concert that day. It's also possible that there are still other songs that were played and didn't make it on that bootleg with the three extra songs either. One clue supporting this is that at one point, Davies tells the audience that he's going to play a couple of hits from the band's early days, and then only plays one, "Dedicated Follower of Fashion." The only setlists I've found merely include the songs that were played for the "In Concert" program, so they don't help. In fact, I think even the widely accepted date of the concert is off, because at one point, Davies says that the album "Preservation Act 2" is being released "tomorrow." But that album was released on May 7, 1974, and this concert supposedly took place on July 14, 1974. I suspect the concert was recorded on May 6th, then the BBC took some time to edit the tapes and played them on the radio on July 14th. But I can't be sure. If anyone can get to the bottom of this mystery, that would be nice. There must be some news articles from the time, though they would be very tough to track down.

Anyway, the bottom line is, I can made some educated guesses on where the three extra songs went in the setlist, based on overlapping between song chatter. But just to be on the safe side, I've put those three at the end of the concert. It works well to have the concert end with an all-time classic like "Waterloo Sunset" anyway.

I'm especially happy to have found the pristine version of "Slum Kids" that is one of the three extra songs. Apparently, the Kinks never recorded that song in the studio. The version that has been included as a bonus track for "Preservation Act 2" as well as for the box set "Picture Book" actually dates to 1979, if you examine the liner notes for the box set closely. So it's nice to have a version that actually dates from 1974, the year it should have been recorded and released.

Regarding the music, I'm not a big fan of the "Preservation Act 2" album. But it does have some good songs that are up to the typical Kinks high standards, and this concert features most of them (especially if you include "Slum Kids"). Many of the other songs are from early 1970s albums, which is a nice change from the setlists up through 1972, which were dominated by overplayed 1960s hits.

I have a serious gripe with the way the Kinks played snippets of hoary old "music hall" songs in the early 1970s. The "In Concert" show featured one of these, "Mr. Wonderful." I've kept it off, and I'm not even including it as a bonus track, sorry. In this case, less is more. Thankfully, 1974 was the last year the Kinks played that type of song in concert. In 1972 and 1973 especially, they actually played bits of "My Way," "Hava Nagilah," "Mammy," "Baby Face," and more of that ilk. I don't know what the heck they were thinking.

By the way, there are very few Kinks bootlegs from 1973. But that isn't a big loss, since the setlists were virtually the same as 1972, with almost no songs played from the album they released that year, "Preservation Act 1." But there's an excellent concert from 1975, so I'll be posting that too.

UPDATE: On October 22, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I renumbered the volume number in the title (from 4 to 5), and changed the artwork to match that.  

01 Victoria (Kinks)
02 Here Comes Yet Another Day (Kinks)
03 talk (Kinks)
04 Money Talks (Kinks)
05 talk (Kinks)
06 Dedicated Follower of Fashion (Kinks)
07 talk (Kinks)
08 Mirror of Love (Kinks)
09 talk (Kinks)
10 Celluloid Heroes (Kinks)
11 talk (Kinks)
12 You Really Got Me - All Day and All of the Night (Kinks)
13 talk (Kinks)
14 Daylight (Kinks)
15 talk (Kinks)
16 Here Comes Flash (Kinks)
17 talk (Kinks)
18 Demolition (Kinks)
19 talk (Kinks)
20 He's Evil (Kinks)
21 talk (Kinks)
22 Lola (Kinks)
23 talk (Kinks)
24 Skin and Bone - Dry Bones (Kinks)
25 Alcohol (Kinks)
26 talk (Kinks)
27 Slum Kids (Kinks)
28 Waterloo Sunset (Kinks)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QLHDcogD

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4VBaLaF6gyzLZtO/file

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any good color photos of the band in concert in 1974. But I did find one featuring singer Ray Davies, with keyboardist John Gosling in the background. So that'll have to do, unless someone else can come up with something better. When I updated the album in February 2021, I kept the same cover photo as before, but I removed the black background behind Ray Davies and replaced that with the same kind of background as all the other albums in the BBC Sessions series.

Van Morrison - Live Rarities, Volume 5: 1975-1977

So far, I've posted four collections of Van Morrison's live rarities. I've included interesting songs that aren't on any of the other many Morrison live albums I've posted here. This is the fifth and final album in that series. The reason it's the last is because I still really like Morrison's music in 1978 and 1979, but he played few to no rarities he hadn't played before, as far as I know. Then my interest in his music plummets after 1980, when he switched musical styles to some degree.

Unfortunately, the sound quality for these songs is merely okay. I believe they all come from audience bootlegs, except for the last song, which is from a TV show. The reason for this is because Morrison played less than 10 concerts in 1975, and then made only a smattering of special appearances in 1976 and 1977 (such as appearing in the Band's "Last Waltz" concert in 1976). But he played a really interesting bunch of songs in 1975, including some he never did before or again. That's why I'm willing to put up with the less than stellar sound.

The last song is a version of Morrison singing his classic song "Moondance." Boring, you'd think, right? He's done that a million times. But what makes this interesting are the guests he has on the song. It's a seven-minute-long version, and Morrison only singing a bit at the start and the end. Instead, it's a showcase for all those guests: Carlos Santana, George Benson, Dr John, Tom Scott & Etta James. Each of them take an instrumental solo, except for Etta James, who does some vocal scatting for her turn.

The other songs are all covers, and really unusual ones at that, except for one other. That's "T. B. Sheets," a song he recorded in 1967 and almost never played in the years since. According to setlist.fm, he's only played the song six times since 1968, and four of them were in 1975.

Even though the sound quality of these songs is not stellar, it has to be good enough for me to want to listen, or I wouldn't bother posting them. The one borderline case is with "Walking to Dog," so I've only included that as a bonus track.

01 I Have Finally Come to Realize (Van Morrison)
02 Alright, Okay, You Win (Van Morrison)
03 One of These Days (Van Morrison)
04 T. B. Sheets (Van Morrison)
05 You Move Me (Van Morrison)
06 Sweet Mary Blues (Van Morrison)
07 Moondance (Van Morrison, Carlos Santana, George Benson, Dr John, Tom Scott & Etta James)

Walking the Dog (Van Morrison)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15257411/VanMrsn_1975-1977_LivRritiesVolume5_atse.zip.html

The album cover is from the 1977 TV appearance where Morrison sang and played "Moondance" with all those guests.

Oingo Boingo - Graham Central Station, Phoenix, AZ, 9-14-1983

I continue to feel that Oingo Boingo are a very underrated band, and all too forgotten these days. One reason for this is because their best work was their first three albums, when they were very popular in Southern California but mostly unknown outside of it. They started to get more popular elsewhere after that, but they went into a slow decline as the band's singer and songwriter Danny Elfman refocused his attention on movie soundtracks (which he started doing in 1985).

I have long wanted to find an excellent concert bootleg to listen to from their early 1980s heyday. But the problem with Oingo Boingo is sound quality. Because they were a big band, they needed to be mixed properly with a very clear recording to make a concert listen worthwhile. I didn't find any worthy recording until a few days ago, when I stumbled on this one.

In short, the sound quality of this album is fantastic, as good as an official live album. After an Internet search, I concluded this is the only really excellent sounding (and soundboard) live bootleg from the band's first few years. The only downside is that it's incomplete. It's only 48 minutes long, and almost certainly isn't the full show, since it's missing some key songs the band played back then. But still, if you ever wanted to listen to Oingo Boingo live, give this a try.

By the way, the name of the concert venue needs a little explanation. Yes, it turns out the band played at a club in Phoenix called "Graham Central Station." This is confusing, because there was a popular funk band starting in the 1970s also using that name. I don't know if there's any connection, but I Googled it, and such a club did exist at the time, though it has closed since.

I found another concert from 1983 that has decent sound, though not as stellar as this Phoenix boot. It only had three full songs on it, however. I've included the two songs that weren't from the main show as bonus tracks.

01 Who Do You Want to Be (Oingo Boingo)
02 Private Life (Oingo Boingo)
03 Dead or Alive (Oingo Boingo)
04 Grey Matter (Oingo Boingo)
05 Insects (Oingo Boingo)
06 Wild Sex [In the Working Class] (Oingo Boingo)
07 Little Guns (Oingo Boingo)
08 What You See (Oingo Boingo)
09 Whole Day Off (Oingo Boingo)
10 Little Girls (Oingo Boingo)
11 On the Outside (Oingo Boingo)
12 Ain't This the Life (Oingo Boingo)
13 Only a Lad (Oingo Boingo)

Nothing Bad Ever Happens (Oingo Boingo)
Wake Up [It's 1984] (Oingo Boingo)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264852/OingBo_1983_GrhamCentrlStationPhoenixAZ__9-14-1983_atse.zip.html

I wish I had a better photo for the cover art. This is from a 1983 concert, which is good. But it only shows three band members at a time when there were eight members in the band. It's really hard to get close to that many people in a single photo when they're spread all over the stage.

Elliott Smith - Live Acoustic Cover Versions, Volume 2, 1999-2003

A couple of weeks ago, I posted an album of Elliott Smith doing acoustic cover versions in concert. That dealt with the years 1997 to 1999. This one takes care of the rest of his all-too-brief career, from 1999 to 2003.

Here are the original artists for each song:

01 These Days - Nico / Jackson Browne
02 Chelsea Girls - Nico
03 Trouble - Jon Brion
04 Nighttime - Big Star
05 Little Maggie - traditional / Bob Dylan
06 Moonshiner - traditional / Bob Dylan
07 Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain - Willie Nelson
08 Friends - Led Zeppelin
09 Give Me Love [Give Me Peace on Earth] - George Harrison
10 Out on the Weekend - Neil Young
11 Long, Long, Long - Beatles
12 Blackbird - Beatles
13 Golden Street - Minders
14 Hooray for Tuesday - Minders

Generally speaking, Smith plays songs from artists who are widely considered musical giants. The exception to that are the two songs by the Minders. The reason for that is because Smith was on the same concert bill with the Minders many times during this time period, and he presumably liked their music.

All the songs are officially unreleased. The sound quality varies. Many of the songs were only played in concert once or twice, so we're lucky to get any bootleg recording at all. That means most of these are audience boots, not from soundboards. But that's not so important for acoustic performances, like these. It's much trickier to record a full band properly. If any of these songs sounded poor I would demote them to bonus tracks, but I didn't need to do that.

Although I don't have any more albums of Smith's live acoustic covers to present, I do have an album of Smith performing covers live with a band. I'll post that soon.

01 These Days (Elliott Smith)
02 Chelsea Girls (Elliott Smith)
03 Trouble (Elliott Smith)
04 Nighttime (Elliott Smith)
05 Little Maggie (Elliott Smith)
06 Moonshiner (Elliott Smith)
07 Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain (Elliott Smith)
08 Friends (Elliott Smith)
09 Give Me Love [Give Me Peace on Earth] (Elliott Smith)
10 Out on the Weekend (Elliott Smith)
11 Long, Long, Long (Elliott Smith)
12 Blackbird (Elliott Smith)
13 Golden Street (Elliott Smith)
14 Hooray for Tuesday (Elliott Smith)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15835535/EllittS_1999-2003_LiveAcoustcCoverVrsionsVolume2_atse.zip.html

The photo of Smith in the album cover is from London in 2003.

Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder - The Ash Grove, Los Angeles, CA, 9-3-1963

I'm amazed that I'm able to present this concert, because until a few days ago, I never had any idea that such a recording existed (and in excellent sound). Not to mention the fact that I never had a clue that Jackie DeShannon ever performed a concert like this!

In case you don't know, DeShannon has had a long career as a singer songwriter. She's best known as the singer of the 1960s hits "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" and "What the World Needs Now Is Love," as well as writing hits for others, such as "When You Walk in the Room" and "Betty Davis Eyes." She was very musical since she was a young child, hosting her own local radio show in Kentucky by the age of 11, and having her first single in 1956 at the age of 15. A long series of singles followed, nearly all of them flops. However, in early 1963, she had a minor hit with "Needles and Pins" in the US, though it was a number one hit in Canada.

Given that she already had spent eight years as a singles artist by 1963, what's strange is that this concert is fully acoustic, and almost all the songs she performs are traditional folk and blues songs. I had no idea DeShannon went through a phase where she was a full-on "folkie," but apparently she did that in 1963. That was the year she released her first studio album, simply called "Jackie DeShannon," and it was filled with folk songs, though it was given a mainstream glossy production. She claims she wanted to do an entire album of Bob Dylan covers, which would have been a bold move, because Dylan was just starting to break big in 1963. However, her record company nixed that idea, though she did get to put three Dylan covers on that album.

However, this concert is strange even given the fact that she released that folk album, because this concert occurred a few months after that album came out, and yet she played only one of the songs from it! She also didn't play any of her own songs, despite the fact that she already was a talented songwriter. (She would have a minor hit with her song "When You Walk in the Room" only a couple of months after this concert. The Searchers would have a much bigger hit with it a year after that.)

We're very lucky this concert was recorded at all. DeShannon didn't tour much, and I've never seen or heard of any concert bootleg from her until I came across this one. It exists because the Ash Grove, a folk music club in Los Angeles, recorded just about every concert in its club for years, going back to the early 1960s (though nearly all of those recordings remain unreleased). So not only does this recording exist, but it's a pristine soundboard! From 1963!

DeShannon was a very beautiful 22 year old at the time of this concert, as you can see from this album cover, but she wasn't just another pretty face. So it's no surprise to me that she plays these folk songs very well. She certainly would have excelled in this genre if she'd decided to continue with it. But the Beatles dominated the music world starting in early 1964, and she changed her style to catch the new trend. She even toured with the Beatles for a few months beginning in February 1964. Thus, her folkie phase probably lasted less than a year.

She played two sets in this one evening at the Ash Grove. She played a lot of the same songs in the two sets, and I'm not a fan of having the same song twice on the same album, so I haven't included the songs on the second set that are repeats from the first set. By eliminating the duplicates, this album turns out to be 43 minutes long, which would have been a fine album length for that era.

I also made big edits to two songs. The first song, "Key to the Highway," faded in partially through the song. I knew the song repeated the first verse as the last verse, so I copied the last verse back to restore the missing first verse. (That was a nice lucky break that the song repeats itself like that.) Also, the song "Trouble in Mind" is where her second set starts, and the recording had an announcer talk a lot over the intro to the song. So I found a section later in the song that repeated the intro, and i patched that in.

Note that Ry Cooder is also credited on this album. DeShannon was a capable guitar player herself, but she was accompanied for this concert by Cooder for the lead guitar parts, as well as David Cohen for some bass playing. At this time, Cooder's musical career was just starting and he was a total unknown, so I'm sure his name wouldn't have been on the billing. His participation is only significant in hindsight, thanks to his later successful career. But you can hear him playing some nice guitar solos here and there.

By the way, the one disappointment I have with this concert is that the last song fades out after less than a minute. And that's particularly unfortunate, because it's a cover of Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," the only non-traditional song played at the concert. Plus, since it fades out, I don't know if there are other songs after it that didn't get recorded. Plus, the first song of the first set also fades in, so there could be more missing songs there. But we're damn lucky to at least have this much.

01 Key to the Highway [Edit] (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
02 talk (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
03 Frankie and Albert (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
04 talk (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
05 Silver City Bound (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
06 Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
07 Betty and Dupree (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
08 Black Eye Blues (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
09 James Alley Blues (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
10 talk (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
11 Ninety-Nine and a Half (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
12 talk (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
13 Mean Old Bed Bug Blues (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
14 Trouble in Mind (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
15 Ain't No Grave Can Hold My Body Down (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
16 The House of the Rising Sun (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
17 talk (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
18 Dink's Song [Fare Thee Well] (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)
19 Don't Think Twice, It's All Right [Incomplete] (Jackie DeShannon with Ry Cooder)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/TuFp4ic3

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/QZxlCWqT6Ccncxn/file

I found it nearly impossible to find a good color photo of DeShannon from 1963 for the cover art. I had to resort to using a photo from her 1963 self-titled album. In February 2025, I upgraded it somewhat with the Krea AI program.

Keb Mo - Whittington Park, Greenwood, MS, 5-7-2011

I'm a big fan of Keb Mo's music. (His name is a slang version of his real name Kevin Moore, by the way.) However, I'm not a big fan of most of his albums, because I most enjoy Mo's music when he plays acoustic blues. Unfortunately, after his first couple of albums, his albums have moved in an "adult contemporary" direction, much like later day James Taylor and Bonnie Raitt albums.

That said, Mo is a talented singer, guitarist, and songwriter. Most of the time, he plays concerts with a full band, so the sound isn't that different from his glossy albums. But every now and then he plays a concert in solo acoustic format. He's done that less and less over the years, but this is a rare example of such a concert from the last decade. I'm guessing he was inspired to play solo acoustic because the concert was part of a festival celebrating the 100th birthday of blues legend Robert Johnson, who played solo acoustic on all of his relatively few recordings.

I've chosen this concert out of a bunch of possible concerts to post not only because of the solo acoustic format, but also because of the sound quality. This is an excellent soundboard recording, as good as any official live album. And the performance is top notch too. So what's not to like? The only slight downside is the concert is a bit on the short side, slightly longer than an hour.

01 talk (Keb Mo)
02 Love in Vain (Keb Mo)
03 Rita (Keb Mo)
04 Angelina (Keb Mo)
05 Muddy Water (Keb Mo)
06 Henry (Keb Mo)
07 France (Keb Mo)
08 Tell Everybody I Know (Keb Mo)
09 Kind Hearted Woman Blues (Keb Mo)
10 Government Cheese (Keb Mo)
11 Suitcase (Keb Mo)
12 Shave Yo' Legs (Keb Mo)
13 talk (Keb Mo)
14 Loola Loo (Keb Mo)
15 talk (Keb Mo)
16 Whole 'Nutha Thang (Keb Mo)
17 All She Wants to Do Is Dance (Keb Mo)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15260579/KebM_2011_WhittingtnParkGreenwoodMS__5-7-2011_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I'm happy to say that I was able to find an actual photo of Keb Mo in the concert that makes up this album.

Carole King - So Goes Love - More Legendary Demos, Volume 2 (1966-1969)

A couple of weeks ago, I posted the first of three albums containing Carole King's demos of songs that she wrote that were usually performed by others. This is the second album in that series. In my opinion, it's even better than the first one, as she moved away from her early 1960s Brill Building style to her more sophisticated "Tapestry" style.

King wrote some big hits in the late 1960s - the time period covered here - such as "Pleasant Valley Sunday" by the Monkees and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" by Aretha Franklin. (A couple more hits are not on this album because the demos haven't been made public, such as "Don't Bring Me Down" by the Animals and "Goin' Back" done by both Dusty Springfield and the Byrds.) But she had less success than before, because the trend was for music acts to write their own songs.

Yet, as I mentioned above, her songwriting was getting better and better. Most of the songs here at least got covered by some artists at some point, though some were obscure acts. And I think a couple of the songs near the end of the album never got covered at the time at all. King was more than capable of performing her own songs, as her massive 1971 album "Tapestry" would prove. She was all but forced to start her own musical career in the late 1960s, with her first album coming in 1968 (called "Now That Everything's Been Said").

I haven't included anything from that album, or her other studio albums, since this is a collection of demos. But I did include the songs from an obscure single she put out in 1966 ("A Road to Nowhere" backed by "Some of Your Lovin'") since the songs never made it on any album. Plus, those two songs essentially sound the same as her demos, which are much more produced than typical demos.

In addition to those two songs from the single, five more songs have been officially released. All of those were included on the archival album "The Legendary Demos." The remaining 11 songs are still officially unreleased. But the sound of those are pretty good, since they're all well-produced demos that were done in the studio.

I think this is a fantastic album, because King is an ace songwriter who performs and produces well. But also, many of the songs are good but obscure, because King never put them on any of her albums and other artists were shying away from recording her songs towards the end of the 1960s. 

This album is 54 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On August 6, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. I discovered two songs I'd previously missed: "Sweet Young Thing" and "As We Go Along."

01 A Road to Nowhere (Carole King)
02 Some of Your Lovin' (Carole King)
03 Sweet Young Thing (Carole King)
04 Like Little Children (Carole King)
05 So Goes Love (Carole King)
06 Pleasant Valley Sunday (Carole King)
07 I Won't Be the Same Without Her (Carole King)
08 Sometime in the Morning (Carole King)
09 Take a Giant Step (Carole King)
10 Yours until Tomorrow (Carole King)
11 A Man without a Dream (Carole King)
12 As We Go Along (Carole King)
13 [You Make Me Feel Like] A Natural Woman (Carole King)
14 Dear Marm (Carole King)
15 Lady Pleasure [with the Sunshine Eyes] (Carole King)
16 Image Collector (Carole King)
17 Porpoise Song [Theme from 'Head'] (Carole King)
18 If I'm Late (Carole King & Gerry Goffin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/kq1nWLBp

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/hySrG0FbvdQBE9f/file

For the album cover, I used the same template as the cover for the first album in this series, but I changed the basic color to yellow. The photo of King in the middle is from 1970. I would have preferred to use a photo of her from the late 1960s, but I couldn't find any good color ones.

Petra Haden - Acapella 4: The Sheltering Sky (2017-2019)

To refresh your memory, Petra Haden is very talented, both as a violinist and a vocalist, but she isn't very well known. She has a particular talent for singing acappella versions of songs in which she sings all the instruments to create a full sound. So here's more in that vein.

All these songs are unreleased on any album, but have been posted at Haden's YouTube webpage. Since it had been six months since I last checked, I looked again and found she'd done one song since then, a cover of a Radiohead song. Naturally, I added it to the end of the album. Unfortunately, that's the only song she's done for all of 2019. I hope she keeps going with more of her acappella covers in the future, and more frequently.

As with past volumes in this series, some of the songs have sung words and others just have wordless vocals. The most of the ones with words are all well known, so I won't bother to list who did the originals. But there are few songs that weren't hits, so I'll detail those. "There in a Dream" is by Charlie Haden, a jazz bassist who also happens to be Petra's father. "Stonehenge" is by the hilarious Spinal Tap. The wordless ones are lesser known. "The Sheltering Sky" is by King Crimson. "Hope" is by Robert Fripp (of King Crimson). "Throughout" is by Bill Frisell."

01 The Sheltering Sky (Petra Haden)
02 What the World Needs Now Is Love (Petra Haden)
03 Carol of the Bells (Petra Haden)
04 Hope (Petra Haden)
05 There in a Dream (Petra Haden)
06 Throughout (Petra Haden)
07 In the Air Tonight (Petra Haden)
08 Boys of Summer (Petra Haden)
09 Let 'Em In (Petra Haden)
10 Stonehenge (Petra Haden)
11 Idioteque (Petra Haden)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15849845/PetraH_2017-2019_Acapella4Th_SheltringSky_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I chose a photo of Haden from 2014. There are more recent photos, but I thought this is a particularly nice one.

Bonnie Raitt - Blender Blues - Non-Album Tracks (1971-1972)

With this post, I'm starting a series of stray tracks albums for Bonnie Raitt. It turns out that she's one of those artists like Norah Jones or Sheryl Crow who has done a ton of guest artist collaborations, duets, and songs played only in concert, so I've been able to make a lot of albums for her.

At the start of Raitt's career, she wasn't famous enough to appear on various artists compilations and soundtracks and the like, so all the songs here are songs she played in concert that she never put on any of her albums. In 2018, I posted a great acoustic concert from 1971, which was the same year she released her first album. Nine of the 14 songs here are from that concert. Additionally, there's one song from a 1970 concert, and four songs from two 1972 concerts.

This early in her career, Raitt didn't have enough money to pay for a band when playing in concert, so she did all her shows solo acoustic. I'm glad, because I love music stripped down to solo acoustic style, and I think it suits her well. She straddles the line between folk and blues, much like her first few solo albums. Virtually all the songs are covers, but "Blender Blues" is a rare original. I assume she never put that on any album because it was too raunchy, but that's a shame because it's a fun song.

I really wish Raitt would have released another album or two in the early 1970s, because she does a great job with these songs. A lot of the songs are famous, but she makes them her own with her unique vocals and guitar style.

01 Woodstock (Bonnie Raitt)
02 Something in the Way He Moves (Bonnie Raitt)
03 You Can Close Your Eyes (Bonnie Raitt)
04 In My Reply (Bonnie Raitt)
05 Your Song (Bonnie Raitt)
06 Set You Free This Time (Bonnie Raitt)
07 Candy Man (Bonnie Raitt)
08 Can I Get a Witness (Bonnie Raitt)
09 Country Road (Bonnie Raitt)
10 Love in Vain (Bonnie Raitt)
11 Going Down to Louisiana - Rollin' and Tumblin' (Bonnie Raitt)
12 Richland Woman Blues (Bonnie Raitt)
13 Walk On By (Bonnie Raitt)
14 Blender Blues (Bonnie Raitt)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687595/BONNIRTT1971c-1972_BlendrBlues_atse.zip.html

The photo I used for the cover art dates to September 1972.

Rockpile - A Mess of Blues - Non-Album Tracks (1977)

I'm very happy to present this album. I really love Rockpile, and I think this is great music that really rocks. You should check it out.

I should explain a bit about Rockpile, because they were a band with a rather unusual history. They basically were the merger of the careers of Dave Edmunds (on vocals and guitar) and Nick Lowe (on vocals and bass), with Billy Bremner (on vocals and guitar) and Terry Williams (on drums) rounding out the group. Edmunds would sing about half the songs and Lowe the other half, with Bremner getting to sing a song every now and then.

What made them unusual was that the band was together for about five years, and yet they only put out one studio album, near the end of their time together. This is because Edmunds was on one record label and Lowe was on another, and both wanted to pursue solo careers. So Rockpile was the backing band on all the songs for one of Lowe's solo albums and two of Edmunds', as well as backing some songs on their other solo albums. But while that was going on, neither Lowe or Edmunds did solo concerts. Nearly all their concerts from 1977 to the end of 1980 were done with Rockpile. Such concerts were billed as "Rockpile" despite the band not having any albums or even singles released. I guess word of mouth spread who Rockpile really was.

I've made four stray tracks albums for Rockpile; this is the first one. It would have been easy for me to simply collect the performances from the various Edmunds and Lowe solo albums and put them together to make Rockpile albums. But I didn't do that, because I think all those albums are really good as they are. Instead, I limited myself to everything else I could find. Since Rockpile was a very active live band, that mainly meant using recordings from live shows.

All the performances here are from 1977. About half the songs are different versions of songs from either Edmunds' or Lowe's solo albums at the time. Three more songs are versions of songs from Edmunds albums in 1970 or 1972 ("Down, Down, Down," "The Promised Land," and "I Hear You Knocking").

That leaves four songs. "A Mess of Blues" is a cover of a song made famous by Elvis Presley. "Downtown Hoedown" was recorded by Billy Bremner right before he joined Rockpile, but not released until many years after the band broke up. "Annie's Back - I Need Love" are a medley of obscure covers sung by Bremner. And "As Lovers Do" was the B-side to a Edmunds single. I've included it because it was a duet with Lowe.

01 Heart of the City (Rockpile)
02 Ju Ju Man (Rockpile)
03 Down, Down, Down (Rockpile)
04 I Knew the Bride [When She Used to Rock and Roll] (Rockpile)
05 Back to School Days (Rockpile)
06 They Called It Rock (Rockpile)
07 A Mess of Blues (Rockpile)
08 I Hear You Knocking (Rockpile)
09 Downtown Hoedown (Billy Bremner)
10 The Promised Land (Rockpile)
11 Let's Talk about Us (Rockpile)
12 Annie's Back - I Need Love (Rockpile)
13 As Lovers Do (Dave Edmunds with Nick Lowe)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15266518/Rockpl_1977_AMssBlues_atse.zip.html

I haven't been able to find lot of good color photos of Rockpile in color. For the album cover, I found a cover of a Rockpile bootleg that looked great. So I used it with only minor changes. I don't know where or when the photo is from.

Pete Townshend - Looking for Words - Non-Album Tracks (1997-2001)

I must say I'm disappointed with what Pete Townshend has done with his music career since the early 1990s. 1993 is the last time he's released a solo album of new music, remarkably enough. He spends a lot of time touring with the Who, but they've only put out one album of new music since 1982 ("Endless Wire" in 2006), and they've become a nostalgia act leaning on their long ago glory days. (Reportedly the Who will release a new studio album in the next year, so I hope they come up with something good and new.)

What frustrates me is that Townshend is a musical genius who could do so much better. Other artists of his age and caliber such as Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, Ray Davies, and so on have continued to put out new music on a fairly regular basis. But what this album of stray tracks shows is that Townshend has been making new music all along, it's just that he doesn't seem particularly interested in gathering it into albums and sharing it with the public. And that's just considering what's publicly available. The indications are he's done a lot more with his home recording than has even been bootlegged.

Anyway, this album is a mix of all sorts of different things. I named it after the song "Looking for Words" (which ironically has words) because Townshend made a lot of instrumentals during these years. There are five here. More songs are covers, or duets with famous people of songs from earlier in his career ("So Sad about Us" and "Heart to Hang Onto"). I only could two new original songs with lyrics "Looking for Words" and "Can You Help the One You Really Love." That said, the album is still a solid listen for any Pete Townshend fan.

About half the album is officially unreleased stuff, mostly cover versions done in concert. The sound quality of those are pretty good, and of course the officially released stuff sound excellent. 

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Prelude 970519 [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
02 Christine's Tune [Devil in Disguise] (Pete Townshend)
03 Embraceable You (Pete Townshend)
04 Going Up the Country (Pete Townshend with Taj Mahal)
05 On the Road Again (Pete Townshend)
06 Hinterland Rag [Piano Rag for Three Hands] [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
07 Heart to Hang Onto (Pete Townshend & Eddie Vedder)
08 Can You Help the One You Really Love (Pete Townshend)
09 Collings [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
10 So Sad about Us (Pete Townshend & Paul Weller)
11 Variations on Dirty Jobs [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
12 Looking for Words (Pete Townshend)
13 St. James Infirmary (Pete Townshend)
14 Wired to the Moon [Part 2] [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/fwf5BD8f

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/qjiE8IeplLhebPF/file

I don't know what year the photo I used for the album cover is from. I'm guessing it's from roughly around the era of this album, give or take. But I wanted to use it since it's a rare chance to see Townshend tinkering in his home recording studio.

Cat Stevens - Vina del Mar Festival, Quinta Vergara, Vina del Mar, Chile, 2-27-2015

In the past few years, Cat Stevens has had a really impressive career renaissance that I think most people have missed. In my opinion, in terms of live shows, this is the best representation of that. His voice sounds exactly the same as it did in the 1970s. Really!

In my opinion, Stevens' creative heyday was in the early 1970s, and his record sales reflect that. As the 1970s went on, his songwriting declined and the production on his records got worse. He quit the music industry entirely by the end of that decade, and devoted his life to his new religion of Islam. For a time, he changed his name to Yusuf Islam, and then just to Yusuf. For his most recent album, released in 2017, he's gone back to "Cat Stevens," so I'm calling him that for consistency's sake.

In the 1990s, Stevens gradually returned to music, but he put out albums about Islam and sang mostly in Arabic, so that had limited appeal. He returned to English secular music with the 2006 album "An Other Cup," and then with the album "Roadsinger" in 2009. But in my opinion, although the production on those albums was okay, his songwriting didn't have the special magic of his 1970s heyday.

That takes us to 2014, and this concert. He put out the album "Tell 'Em I'm Gone," which was mostly filled with bluesy covers. But they were done really well, and the few originals on it were the best songs he did since the 1970s, in my opinion. He's followed that with a 2017 album, "The Laughing Apple," which I think is even better. It sounds exactly like it was recorded in 1971, and a lot of the songs on it actually were written in the late 1960s. If you're a Cat Stevens fan, you really need to check it out. It's amazing to me that he has his mojo back after so many years.

Since 2014 especially, Stevens has been touring a fair amount, doing his first tours of the US and Europe since the 1970s. But unfortunately, he hasn't put out a live album, and all the bootlegs from that time that I've sampled have average to poor sound quality.

Except for this one show, thankfully. Apparently, this concert was professionally recorded and shown on TV in Chile. The video of it has made its way to YouTube (where you can still watch it), and it's been seen by a couple of million people. Unfortunately, I downloaded that video, and it's only in mono. But I discovered the concert organizers uploaded each individual song to YouTube as well, and those are in stereo.

So that's what this is, a compilation of all those stereo YouTube videos, converted to mp3 and put in their proper order. One snag was that the individual videos generally faded out in the middle of the applause at the end of each song, and the next song would begin with the clapping still going on. So I went through all the songs and carefully removed all the annoying fade ins and fade outs while still keeping the applause. I also cut out several minutes of announcers talking in Spanish at the beginning of the concert, then again at the start of the encore to give Stevens an award, and more at the very end.

The end result is an hour and a half concert that probably has the best sound quality of any live recording of Stevens' entire career (since recording technology wasn't as good in the 1970s). The setlist is great. He does his classic 1960s and 1970s songs, with a few covers from his 2014 album sprinkled in. It's played with a full band (including Alun Davies, who has been his right hand man and lead guitarist since 1970, incredibly enough).

01 Wild World (Cat Stevens)
02 Where Do the Children Play (Cat Stevens)
03 The First Cut Is the Deepest (Cat Stevens)
04 Here Comes My Baby (Cat Stevens)
05 talk (Cat Stevens)
06 Dying to Live (Cat Stevens)
07 talk (Cat Stevens)
08 You Are My Sunshine (Cat Stevens)
09 Oh Very Young (Cat Stevens)
10 [Remember the Days of the] Old Schoolyard (Cat Stevens)
11 Sad Lisa (Cat Stevens)
12 Miles from Nowhere (Cat Stevens)
13 talk (Cat Stevens)
14 People Get Ready (Cat Stevens)
15 Maybe There's a World - All You Need Is Love (Cat Stevens)
16 talk (Cat Stevens)
17 If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out (Cat Stevens)
18 talk (Cat Stevens)
19 How Can I Tell You (Cat Stevens)
20 talk (Cat Stevens)
21 Roadsinger (Cat Stevens)
22 Moonshadow (Cat Stevens)
23 talk (Cat Stevens)
24 The Devil Came from Kansas (Cat Stevens)
25 Trouble (Cat Stevens)
26 Sitting (Cat Stevens)
27 talk (Cat Stevens)
28 Big Boss Man (Cat Stevens)
29 Rubylove (Cat Stevens)
30 Morning Has Broken (Cat Stevens)
31 talk (Cat Stevens)
32 Peace Train (Cat Stevens)
33 talk (Cat Stevens)
34 Father and Son (Cat Stevens)
35 talk (Cat Stevens)
36 Another Saturday Night (Cat Stevens)

https://www.imagenetz.de/gtsiD

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/XvhenLiP

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/FfmKNO2x18fe03D/file

For the album cover, I've used a photo of Stevens from 2015, but it's from the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards ceremony about two months after this concert.

Robyn Hitchcock - Shadow Cat - Alternate Version (1999)

I've been posting Robyn Hitchcock albums chronologically, but I when I got to 1999, I didn't post "Shadow Cat." That's because it's an officially released album that came out that year. I generally have a policy not to post official albums unless I've changed them in a significant way, so the artists can at least get some of what's left of a shrinking amount of royalty payments.

But I've changed my mind for a few reasons. One, "Shadow Cat" is an obscure Hitchcock album, even by his standards as more of a niche artist. It's actually a compilation of songs he did all through the 1990s. However, there's no information about when most of them were recorded. For the few that did have that info, I put those songs on the albums I made for those years of his career. So, if you're following my reorganization of his musical catalog, it's good to have what's left of "Shadow Cat," which is still enough to make up a full album.

On top of that, I recently came across a couple of unreleased songs from this time period (one is from 1999 and the other from 1998). Remarkably enough, both of them were created on the spot. Hitchcock has long had a habit of doing this, usually when someone in the audience said something that struck his fancy. For instance, I have a recording of someone shouting for him to sing "something about the IMF," so he came up with a song on the spot called "Something about the IMF!"

But normally, these spontaneous songs are done when it's just Hitchcock playing solo, because only he knows where he's going to take the song from moment to moment. But these two spontaneous songs are an extra treat because both of them were done with a full band. In both cases, they were played at a club called the Largo in Los Angeles, California. A talented musician there named Jon Brion is permanently based there, and he usually plays as part of a house band whenever Hitchcock comes to town. (He does this for many other artists, for instance Glenn Tilbrook and Aimee Mann.) Brion is known for being able to play along with just about any song, even one he's never heard before, even if it's a song that's being made up at that moment.

The two extra songs are "Gonna Build a Bonfire" and "Pigeon Lips (Shania)" (though of course the song titles are just guesses). "Pigeon Lips (Shania)" in particular is a real hoot. Someone in the audience suggested the phrase "Pigeon Lips" and Hitchcock started singing a song about that. But halfway through it somehow turned into a mocking song about country musician Shania Twain, while also going through drastic musical changes! Grant Lee Philips is also part of the creative madness. Unfortunately, I don't have more of the recording, but apparently it was part of a longer "suite" of songs spontaneously created in that concert about carrier pigeons, of all things. The comedian Paul F. Tompkins was also there and helping out.

So here you have "Shadow Cat," minus a few songs, and plus a couple other songs.

01 For Debbie Reynolds (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Never Have to See You Again (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Love Affair (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 The Wind Cries Mary (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 High On Yourself (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 The Cat Walks Her Kind of Line (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 The Green Boy [Acoustic Version] (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Beautiful Shock (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 Baby-Doll (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Shadow Cat (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 Gonna Build a Bonfire (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 Pigeon Lips [Shania] (Robyn Hitchcock, Grant Lee Phillips & Jon Brion)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15122241/RobynH_1999_ShadwCtAlternate_atse.zip.html

The cover is the exact official cover to the "Shadow Cat" album, unchanged.

Robyn Hitchcock - Obliteration Pie - Alternate Version (2003)

In 2003, Robyn Hitchcock released the album "Luxor." But he usually has many more songs than can fit on an album, and it's rare that he writes a bad song, so his outtakes are generally pretty good. Thus it was a good idea that he released an album that mostly consisted of "Luxor" outtakes called "Obliteration Pie."

However, the album only came out in Japan, and wasn't released until 2005. Furthermore, it was a hodge-podge, because it also included some a couple of live performances, as well as some old songs that were rerecorded with different arrangements in 2005. Furthermore, the musical style varies wildly from a cover of the disco song "Funky Town" to an acoustic instrumental to a live track that's just a spoken dialogue. It's as if Hitchcock was deliberately trying to make an album that didn't have a good musical flow.

This is my attempt to make "Obliteration Pie" sound like a coherent album. I removed the live tracks, since they are well known songs of his ("My Wife and My Dead Wife" and "Chinese Bones") with nothing special about them in terms of the performances or arrangements. I also removed the rerecorded songs done in 2005 (I'm putting them on a 2005 compilation instead). That leaves the actual "Luxor" outtakes. I've reordered them for a better listening experience.

Note that one of these outtakes, "(A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations) Briggs," is a song that Hitchcock would become very fond of. He would put a different version of it on his 2006 album "Ole! Tarantula," and he still plays it in concert. I'm including it here because this is its first studio recording, and this version is different than the "Ole! Tarantula" one.

The seven "Luxor" outtakes on "Obliteration Pie" only make for 33 minutes of music, which is a bit short for a typical album. So I've included two more songs from 2003 to fill it out. One, "Uncorrected Personality Traits," is a very well known number from his 1994 album "I Often Dream of Trains." But that version, and nearly all of his live versions, are done acappella. This version is done with acoustic guitar, so it's quite different. The other additional song is an original, "You Want Me to Go," that has never been released anywhere.

01 City of Women (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Funkytown (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 My Dreams Are Scars (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Butterfly (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 I Fall into Your Eyes (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 [A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations] Briggs (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Madelaine (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Let the Sun Begin (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 Uncorrected Personality Traits [Non-Accapella Version] (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 You Want Me to Go (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 Little Kara Discovers the Ice Cream Van (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15122306/RobynH_2003_ObliteratinPieAlternate_atse.zip.html

The album cover is just the official "Obliteration Pie" cover, completely unchanged.

Neil Young & the Ducks - The Summer of Duck - Various Live Songs (1977)

I just posted a full concert of Neil Young playing as part of the Ducks in 1977. As part of that, I wrote a lot of text about why the heck Young spent the summer of 1977 in Santa Cruz, California, as just one member of an obscure band nobody had ever heard of. Please read that to get up to speed on the whole story before continuing here.

As I explained in that post, I wanted to post all the "must have" Ducks songs for someone into Neil Young's music. I decided the best way to do that was post the only complete Ducks concert that's publicly available (as a bootleg). That was my previous post. This is the "leftovers," all the songs the Ducks did that are in good quality that weren't played in that concert.

No Ducks music has ever been officially released (yet). Luckily, it turns out that although there are only a few Ducks bootlegs out there, most of what exists is in excellent soundboard sound quality. This is probably due to the fact that a mobile recording studio was seen at most or all of the Ducks' 20 or so concerts in the summer of 1977. Apparently the plan was to record a live concert, though sadly that never happened.

I'm guessing that the concert I posted (played at the Catalyst on August 22, 1977) comes from those professionally done recordings. On top of that, three more hours of Ducks' soundboard recordings have emerged. I'll bet they're from the same source. Unfortunately, those three hours have no information whatsoever regarding which concerts they're from. Neil Young fans have figured out the exact songs the Ducks played at each of their concerts, and these songs appear to be drawn from many concerts, in no understandable order.

I found 12 songs on these undated recordings, for a total of 47 minutes' worth of music. By chance, that's an ideal album length. Since the recordings were in no special order, I reordered them to match what the Ducks would do in concert. The recordings often had two versions of the same song, so I was able to pick the best versions. The band members were very democratic, and usually each band member would sing one song until all four were done, and then they would repeat that process. I tried to follow that pattern. However, I was short one song for Jeff Blackburn and John Craviotto, and I have one instrumental, so I had to vary that pattern up a little bit. (By the one, one of Bob Mosley's songs, "Leaving Us Now," is sung by Craviotto, so I put that in what would be Craviotto's spot.)

On the Catalyst concert I just posted, there was a lot of dead air between songs (no talking, just the tuning of instruments). I removed a lot of that for that concert. There was a little bit of that here, but not nearly as much, as the three hours of recordings seem to have already been a "best of" selection that removed that unnecessary stuff. But still, I did a little trimming where I thought it could help tighten things up. I didn't remove any of the talking between songs. There isn't much of that in any case.

As with the Catalyst concert, Neil Young was "just one of the guys," so he only sings four out of the 12 songs here. But he plays all the lead guitar for everyone's songs, and does some back-up vocals too. If you like the Catalyst concert, this is more of the same good stuff. What's surprising is how talented the other members of the Ducks are, including with their songwriting.

As far as I know, there's just one Ducks concert that was recorded as an audience bootleg. That's their last show, on September 1, 1977. I obtained that bootleg, checked the song list against the other Ducks music I had, and only found one unique song, a version of Young's "Homegrown." So I've added that as the last song here. Even though it's from an audience recording instead of a soundboard, the sound quality is nearly as good.

Also, note that while there is some crowd noise between songs on the Catalyst concert, there's almost none here. That has nothing to do with me. It's just that some soundboards capture more of the audience than others, and these capture very little. It's no big deal, but I just thought I'd point that out in case you're curious why it's so quiet after each song ends.

When I made a compiled album like this, I typically title it after one of the songs, if there's no better option. But in this case, on a whim, I decided to call it "The Summer of Duck." I wasn't there, but it seems that Young's time with the Ducks was a very big deal for Santa Cruz in the summer of 1977. A kind of "Duckmania" happened in the town, with a lot of playfulness over the "Duck" name. For instance, all the duck whistles were sold out for miles around, and people would blow their duck whistles between songs in the concerts. (You can hear this if you listen carefully, especially on the Catalyst concert.) The band members, including Young, liked making lots of duck jokes, such as punning off words like "bill" and "quack." So "The Summer of Duck" somehow seemed fitting as a play on "The Summer of Love" ten years earlier, especially since we don't know when these songs were recorded, except that they were recorded that summer.

By the way, just as I did with the Catalyst concert, I've added the last names of the songwriters for each song in the "comment" mp3 tag field. Hopefully, that can help you appreciate who did which song.

01 Human Highway (Neil Young & the Ducks)
02 Sailor Man (Neil Young & the Ducks)
03 Wide-Eyed and Willing (Neil Young & the Ducks)
04 Honky Tonk Man (Neil Young & the Ducks)
05 Long May You Run (Neil Young & the Ducks)
06 Trucking Man (Neil Young & the Ducks)
07 Hey Now [Instrumental] (Neil Young & the Ducks)
08 Little Wing (Neil Young & the Ducks)
09 Love You Forever (Neil Young & the Ducks)
10 Car Tune (Neil Young & the Ducks)
11 Leaving Us Now (Neil Young & the Ducks)
12 Homegrown (Neil Young & the Ducks)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/zbafJ7Pk

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/uBvD3srss8knC6u/file

alternate:

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696720/NELYNG1977_DcksTheSmmerofDckSntaCruzCA__8-1977_atse.zip.html

There are very few quality photos of the Ducks together. However, I found this one, and it's in color. It was taken backstage at the Catalyst. From left to right, the band members are: Bob Mosley, John Craviotto, Jeff Blackburn, and Neil Young.

Neil Young & the Ducks - The Catalyst, Santa Cruz, CA, 8-22-1977

I've been planning to post more of Neil Young's music, and I want to post albums in a more chronologically consistent way, after I'd posted a few things out of order. However, I've been stuck from moving forward due to not knowing how to deal with his time playing with the Ducks in 1977. But I've figured it out: first, I'm posting this bootleg concert, the only compete concert of Young and the Ducks recorded in soundboard quality. Then I'll post another album of all the bootlegged songs they did that weren't played at this concert, also in soundboard quality.

I should probably explain the whole Neil Young and the Ducks saga. It's very little known episode in Young's career, since absolutely none of the Ducks' music has ever been officially released.

The story begins with Moby Grape. They were a critically acclaimed San Francisco rock band in the 1960s, though they didn't sell a lot of records. If you haven't heard their 1967 debut album, simply called "Moby Grape," you should definitely do so. It's a five star album for sure, and it's unusual in that all five of the band members were good songwriters. Unfortunately, the band never hit the heights of that first album again, though they stayed together until the early 1970s.

By the mid-1970s, the band had already reformed for the first of many times, with two original singer songwriter members, Jerry Miller and Bob Mosley. Another talented singer songwriter, Jeff Blackburn, joined them. He had been half of the folk duo Blackburn and Snow, which put out one album in the late 1960s. A drummer, John Craviotto, also joined them. Unfortunately, after Moby Grape broke up, their former manager kept the rights to the band's name and wouldn't let them use it. So they were calling themselves "The Jeff Blackburn Band," even though they essentially were Moby Grape plus Blackburn.

Neil Young knew Blackburn, Miller, and Mosley due to bumping into them in the late 1960s rock music world. Young also was a big fan of Moby Grape's music, which isn't surprising since that first great Moby Grape album sounds a lot like the stuff Buffalo Springfield was doing at the same time. In early 1977, he began occasionally jamming with them. But then Miller, the lead guitarist, quit. The others asked Young to join their band.

Amazingly enough, Young agreed and actually did it! This is pretty wild when you consider that he was one of the most famous musicians in the world in the mid-1970s. And while Moby Grape and Blackburn had some limited fame and success in the 1960s, by the mid-1970s they were toiling in obscurity, probably not even capable of getting a decent record contract. In 1977, disco and punk were the hot trends, and nostalgia for 1960s music hadn't kicked in yet. But Young is notorious for following his musical muse, and he was having fun playing with the Ducks.

The band was based in Santa Cruz, California, so Young moved there and spent all of the summer of 1977 totally focused on the band. Apparently, part of his contract with his occasional band Crazy Horse stipulated that he couldn't tour with any other band. But a loophole allowed him to play with the Ducks, so long as they only played within the city limits of Santa Cruz. Thus, Young and the Ducks played about twenty shows there, mostly in July and August.

The band was surprisingly democratic. Young was treated as just another band member. When it came to concerts, each of the four band members sang about one-forth of the songs. The drummer John Craviotto couldn't write songs like the others, but he could sing well, so he would generally sing cover versions of classic rock and roll songs. Blackburn and Mosley were both talented songwriters and singers, so they were able to rise to the occasion of competing with Young. (In fact, during the summer of 1977, Blackburn co-wrote a song with Young, the classic "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)," although unfortunately the Ducks never played it live.)

So keep in mind that Young only writes and sings about one-fourth of the songs in this concert. They truly were "The Ducks" and not "Neil Young and the Ducks" (even though I'm calling them that so that Neil Young fans don't miss the album). But Young is the lead guitarist for everything, and his guitar is all over this concert. Plus, as I mentioned above, the other band members were all talented, with good original songs. I'm sure Young wouldn't have joined them otherwise.

Unfortunately, the saga of the Ducks ended much too soon. No doubt, Young enjoyed being "just one of the guys" for a while instead of a big star, and at first that's how it was. In the early summer, the band played to the locals in small clubs with little to no advance notice, and everyone was having a great time. But as the summer went on, the fact that Young was living and frequently playing in Santa Cruz started to spread. People came from far and wide to see him, and things started to get crazy. Young was increasingly hassled by strangers, and his place was even robbed. The band had to play in venues that seated a thousand people instead of ones that seated a hundred.

The special vibe Young felt was over. He skipped town at the end of the summer, and the Ducks were no more. Young had paid for a mobile recording unit to record most or all of the band's concerts, and it was expected that a live album would result, but no such album ever came out.

(By the way, due to the rise of the Internet and social media, what Young did then simply wouldn't be possible for a big star today. Hordes of fans would have ruined the special vibe in a matter of days.)

The other band members kept going under a variety of names, but without Young in the band they went back to toiling in obscurity without a record contract. Apparently, Blackburn is still playing concerts to this day, even though I don't think he's ever put out an album. Unfortunately, Mosley was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the late 1960s. He was still fully functional in 1977 and still writing good songs, but by the 1990s he was homeless due to mental illness. Some former Moby Grape members found him living by the side of a freeway in San Diego and helped him out, leading to him recording a solo album in 2005. I don't know what's happened to him since, but it seems he's still alive.

One well known rock critic, Jeff Tamarkin, has said of Moby Grape: "The Grape's saga is one of squandered potential, absurdly misguided decisions, bad luck, blunders and excruciating heartbreak, all set to the tune of some of the greatest rock and roll ever to emerge from San Francisco. Moby Grape could have had it all, but they ended up with nothing, and less." The story of the Ducks fits into that larger story, which I don't have time to explain here. The other guys, Mosley, Blackburn, and Craviotto, still had a lot of talent in 1977. The lucky stroke of luck of Young joining their band could have propelled them back into the musical big leagues if only the Ducks had managed to release at least one album. But they didn't, so it became just one more heartbreak for them.

But at least we have this album, and the other album I'll post shortly. Also, I hope that Young will eventually release some Ducks music, maybe as part of a long-awaited "Archives 2" project. I hope he does that while the other guys are still alive, so they'll be able to see that the Ducks weren't totally forgotten after all.

Regarding the recording of this concert, as I mentioned above, it's an excellent soundboard, probably from that mobile recording unit that Young had at most or all of the Ducks' concerts. I did make a major change though. There was a LOT of dead air between songs. Typically, there was a minute or so of relative quiet between songs while the band members tuned up and got ready. I deleted all of this boring stuff without cutting out anything important. Whenever anyone on stage said anything, I kept that. But as you'll see when you listen, there isn't much commentary, maybe just a sentence or two here or there. By removing the dead air, I shortened the concert by at least 20 minutes. I think it makes for a much better listening experience. It still is one hour and 45 minutes long.

Oh, one other thing. When I first heard music by the Ducks, it took me a while to get into it, because I expected all or mostly Neil Young songs, when in fact it's mostly songs by the other band members. To help myself sort out who sang and wrote what, I looked up the songwriters for each song. Then I added that info to the "comment" mp3 tags. That can help you learn to identify the different styles of each of the singer songwriters.

Note that the song "Gone Dead Train" appeared on a Crazy Horse album in 1971. Young played guitar on that, and the rest of that album, but he didn't write it or sing it. And in this concert, he doesn't sing it either. Young's songs are a mix of old (like "Mr. Soul" and "Are You Ready for the Country") and songs that were then new (such as "Comes a Time," "Sail Away," and "Cryin' Eyes," which wouldn't be released until 1987). His long instrumental "Windward Passage" still is officially unreleased.

01 talk (Neil Young & the Ducks)
02 Deeper Mystery (Neil Young & the Ducks)
03 Gypsy Wedding (Neil Young & the Ducks)
04 Sail Away (Neil Young & the Ducks)
05 I'm Tore Down (Neil Young & the Ducks)
06 Behind the Sun (Neil Young & the Ducks)
07 Only Loving You (Neil Young & the Ducks)
08 Cryin' Eyes (Neil Young & the Ducks)
09 Bye Bye Johnny (Neil Young & the Ducks)
10 Your Time Will Come Around (Neil Young & the Ducks)
11 Do Me Right (Neil Young & the Ducks)
12 Are You Ready for the Country (Neil Young & the Ducks)
13 Silver Wings (Neil Young & the Ducks)
14 Two Riders (Neil Young & the Ducks)
15 Your Love (Neil Young & the Ducks)
16 Gone Dead Train (Neil Young & the Ducks)
17 Mr. Soul (Neil Young & the Ducks)
18 Hold On Boys (Neil Young & the Ducks)
19 Poor Man (Neil Young & the Ducks)
20 I'm Ready (Neil Young & the Ducks)
21 Comes a Time (Neil Young & the Ducks)
22 Windward Passage (Neil Young & the Ducks)
23 talk (Neil Young & the Ducks)
24 Younger Days (Neil Young & the Ducks)

https://www.imagenetz.de/byzmk

I had a hard time finding any photos of the Ducks in concert. Luckily, I did find one, which I've used here. I'm not sure what Santa Cruz venue it's from, but it's not the Catalyst, which is larger.