The Red Hot Chili Peppers - Mercy Mercy - Non-Album Tracks (2006-2007)

In 2006, the Red Hot Chili Peppers released the album "Stadium Arcadium." Even though it's a double album, in my opinion it's solid all the way through and one of the best albums they ever did. Yet even with that double album, they still had lots of leftover songs, and they released many of them as B-sides in 2006 and into 2007. This album is mostly a collection of those B-sides.

Again, it's just my opinion, but I think even these B-sides are quite good. I have certain standards. I'm not going to include absolutely everything just to be completist. I only want the songs I'll actually enjoy listening to. But in this case, I've included all the B-sides because I like them all. (That's in sharp contrast to the B-sides to their next album, "I'm with You," which I feel aren't nearly as good.)

There are only two songs here that aren't B-sides. One is a surprisingly faithful version of the Beach Boys' classic hit "I Get Around." That performance actually comes from 2005, so I should have included it on the band's previous stray tracks collection. But I only discovered it recently, and I figure 2005 is close enough for horseshoes. ;)

The other non-B-side is also the only song that remains officially unreleased. It's an acoustic version of the Bee Gees hit "How Deep Is Your Love." In concert, guitarist John Frusciante often had a solo spot in which he played acoustic covers that were very different from the usual Red Hot Chili Peppers fare, such as versions of songs by Simon and Garfunkel or Cat Stevens. Generally speaking, I haven't included those, because I usually don't think they fit in well with the rest of the band's output. But in this case, I think an acoustic version of the Bee Gees song is interesting, different, and very well performed. It's mostly Frusciante, but if you listen carefully there are some drums and backing vocals.

Sadly, this is the last of my planned stray tracks albums for the band, unless more material emerges. For their next album, "I'm with You," they released an entire album's worth of outtakes as a collection of singles. Combined, the collection is known as "I'm Beside You." But, as I mentioned above, I simply don't think they're very good, so I'm not going to bother with those. Other than that, there's a surprising lack of stray tracks. For instance, their next album, "The Getaway," had four singles released, but none of them had any B-sides. And the band has had almost no songs on soundtracks, other various artist compilations, and the like.

By the way, the band did compose 20 to 30 new songs for "The Getaway" album, only to scrap them all and start anew when they picked a new producer to work with. So there probably are a ton of songs sitting in the vaults. But none of them have leaked to the public yet.

01 Million Miles of Water (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
02 Whatever We Want (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
03 Lately (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
04 I Get Around (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
05 A Certain Someone (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
06 Mercy Mercy (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
07 Lyon 6.6.06 [Instrumental] (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
08 Funny Face (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
09 I'll Be Your Domino (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
10 Permutation [Instrumental] (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
11 Joe (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
12 Save This Lady (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
13 How Deep Is Your Love (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15259318/TRedHChilP_2006-2007_MrcyMrcy_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I used a photo of the band in concert in 2006.

U2 - Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me - Non-Album Tracks (1995-1997)

U2 released the album "Zooropa" in 1993, and then "Pop" in 1997. In between was the experimental album with Brian Eno, technically under the "Passengers" name, called "Original Soundtracks 1." I've posted my alternate version of that album here. You'd think that was all they did between "Zooropa" and "Pop." But no, there's another entire album's worth of stray tracks. That's what I'm posting here. I think it holds up pretty well as an album of its own.

The key song, which I've made the title song, is the 1995 single "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me." It was a number 2 hit in Britain, and a number 1 hit in seven other countries. Most bands would have released an album around such a big hit, but the song was merely put on the "Batman Forever" soundtrack.

Instead of a new album, after the "Original Soundtracks 1" album, the band members pursued a variety of projects, including some minor solo work. For instance, band members Bono and the Edge wrote the song "GoldenEye" for Tina Turner to sing as the theme song to the latest James Bond movie. They never released a U2 version, but luckily they did an unreleased well developed demo that I've included here.

The rest of the songs have all been officially released. There are two more songs from movie soundtracks, and two songs from tribute albums. Four of the songs are B-sides to singles related to the "Pop" album. One of those, "Holy Joe," has also been a bonus track on some versions of that album.

All in all, in my opinion, the songs have a fairly consistent sound that's different from the experimental "Original Soundtracks 1" and is closely related to the sound of the controversial "Pop" album. That album has been seen as a disappointment. For my next U2 post, I'm going to share an alternate version of that that's somewhat better.

01 Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me (U2)
02 Hallelujah (Bono)
03 GoldenEye [Demo] (Bono & The Edge)
04 Theme from Mission Impossible [Instrumental] (Larry Mullen & Adam Clayton)
05 North and South of the River (U2)
06 Holy Joe [Garage Mix] (U2)
07 I'm Not Your Baby (Sinead O'Connor & U2)
08 Two Shots of Happy, One Shot of Sad (U2)
09 Slow Dancing (Willie Nelson & U2)
10 Dreaming with Tears in My Eyes (Bono)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15256878/UTwo_1995-1997_HldMeThrillMeKssMeKillMe_atse.zip.html

I didn't want to use the official cover of the "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" single, because it's mostly a picture of Batman, since it was associated with the "Batman Forever" movie. But luckily, there's a remix single with a totally different cover, so I used that. It's a typical compared to the usual moody U2 covers. But that's because the video of the song mixes clips from the movie with a cartoon version of U2. The cover art comes directly from that video. All I did was remove some small text at the bottom describing the remix details.

Pink Floyd - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: Sounds of the 70s, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 9-30-1971

I recently posted an album of Pink Floyd performing for the BBC in 1970. This is basically the exact same deal, except 1971 instead of 1970. The format was the same: an hour-long concert in front of an audience, played live on the radio. Even the host was the same, famous BBC DJ John Peel. Like the other show, he did all the talking between songs. So if you liked that one, you're sure to like this one.

A couple of the songs played in that 1970 concert are played again here: "Fat Old Sun" and "Embryo." But there are only five songs played in all, because the emphasis is on instrumental jamming. This concert took place one month before their album "Meddle" was released. Two songs from that album are played, "One of These Days" and "Echoes." "Echoes" is the clear focus and highlight, lasting for nearly half an hour. "Blues" is an unnamed instrumental played as an encore that was never released on any Pink Floyd album.

As far as song quality goes, this comes from "The Early Years" box set, so the sound quality is as good as you could hope for. The main thing I did was break up the talking between songs into their own tracks, and boosting the volume on those.

01 talk (Pink Floyd)
02 Fat Old Sun (Pink Floyd)
03 talk (Pink Floyd)
04 One of These Days (Pink Floyd)
05 talk (Pink Floyd)
06 Embryo (Pink Floyd)
07 talk (Pink Floyd)
08 Echoes (Pink Floyd)
09 Blues [Instrumental] (Pink Floyd)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697018/PNKFLYD1971a_BBSssonsVolum5Sunds70sParsThetre__9-30-1971_atse.zip.html

For the cover art photo, I went with a photo of the band in the studio in late 1971.

Norah Jones - Home Concerts 1, New York City, 3-19-2020 to 4-7-2020

I'm really enjoying these home concerts brought on by the recent "stay at home" policies about the coronavirus. Especially this one. If you're a fan of Norah Jones at all, you should get this. For one thing, I don't know of any instances of her ever doing an "unplugged" style concert, and that's essentially what this is (minus the audience). The other nice thing is that many of the songs are interesting choices that she's never performed before.

Actually, this isn't concert, it's a collection of different things. Since March 19, 2020, she's been occasionally playing individual songs and posting them on YouTube. I've included all four of those ("Patience," "It's Not Easy," "You and Me," and "I Am Missing You"). The first one is the hit by Guns n' Roses. Who would have ever imagined Norah freaking Jones covering a Guns n' Roses song?! True, it's probably the most Norah Jones-ish song they ever did, but still, I admire her willingness to find good songs from whatever the source. And "I Am Missing You" is a song written by her father, the world famous sitar player Ravi Shankar. She'd meant to perform it for a concert celebrating what would have been his 100th birthday. But since the concert was cancelled due to the virus, she played it at home instead.

The bulk of the album comes from two brief home concerts she did. One was on March 26th, and consisted of four songs. The other was on April 2nd, and also consisted of four songs. Between these two concerts, plus the four songs I mentioned above, this album actually has six recording dates. But in all sounds like one concert, in my opinion, because they were all performed solo by her, either on piano or guitar, in the same room of her house. Actually, I'll bet the two brief concerts were done on the same date but just posted separately because she wore the same outfit for both of them.

I definitely am not hoping that the virus lockdowns keep going for months. But if they do, I hope Jones will continue to post more material from her house every week. If she does, I'll gather that stuff up from time to time to post more albums like this one.

Finally, once more, if you find other good musicians who are performing home concerts like this, please let me know so I might post the concerts here. 

This album is 55 minutes long.

01 Patience (Norah Jones)
02 It's Not Easy (Norah Jones)
03 talk (Norah Jones)
04 Turn Me On (Norah Jones)
05 talk (Norah Jones)
06 Joey (Norah Jones)
07 talk (Norah Jones)
08 I'm Alive (Norah Jones)
09 talk (Norah Jones)
10 Humble Me (Norah Jones)
11 talk (Norah Jones)
12 You and Me (Norah Jones)
13 Come Away with Me (Norah Jones)
14 talk (Norah Jones)
15 Lucky (Norah Jones)
16 talk (Norah Jones)
17 I Remember Clifford [Instrumental] (Norah Jones)
18 talk (Norah Jones)
19 Lonestar (Norah Jones)
20 I Am Missing You (Norah Jones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15603573/NorahJ_2020_HomeCncerts1__3-19-2020_to_4-7-2020_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I took a screenshot of Jones at one of her home concerts. I believe it was the one on March 26, 2020. There was a wall decoration right behind her head that looked like some weird headgear, so I removed it in Photoshop.

Bill Withers - Beat Club, Bremen, Germany, 3-23-1972

Soul great Bill Withers died last week, on March 30, 2020. He was 81 years old. In honor of his passing, I wanted to post something from him. Unfortunately, like a lot of soul artists, there isn't that much material that hasn't already been released. But after some searching I found something I really like, and here it is.

Withers had a rather unusual career. When he started playing music professionally, he already was in his late 30s. Then he only stayed in the music industry for about a decade before effectively retiring. And even in that decade, he didn't tour that much more make many live TV or radio appearances. Luckily, he released an excellent double album of a 1972 concert called "Live at Carnegie Hall," so at least there's that.

My challenge was to come up with something that didn't just duplicate the live versions of the "Carnegie Hall" album. I think I found it with an appearance he made on the German TV show "Beat Club." It's from around the same time as "Carnegie Hall," but he played a couple of different songs. More importantly, the "Beat Club" performances were all done in a studio with no studio audience, so the overall feel is different. That also means the songs aren't bothered by audience noise.

The "Beat Club" performance is only about half an hour long. I've added some other things to that, essentially gathering up all the remaining live material I had from him. He did a performance for the BBC a few months after the "Beat Club" one that was very similar, except it was in front of an audience. I included the one unique song from that, "Grandma's Hands." Plus, I also added in some of his between song banter from the BBC in front of the "Beat Club" performances. It sounds a bit odd, but trust me, it works.

He did two unique songs for the US TV show "Soul!" in 1971, so I added those at the start. I also included "Better Days," which is from a 1971 movie soundtrack. It's the one officially released track here. It's also the only non-album track of his I could find. I added three more live songs at the end, two from 1974 and one all the way from 1982. That last performance was effectively the end of his musical career - he only performed songs in public a few times after that.

So this is a bit of a stretch to call this the "Beat Club" show, since seven of the songs are from other sources, but oh well. The important thing, in my opinion, is that it's a solid and consistent listen. Note that all of his big hits are included with the exception of "Lovely Day." I couldn't find any live versions of that one.

01 I'm Her Daddy (Bill Withers)
02 Grits Ain't Groceries [All Around the World] (Bill Withers)
03 Better Days (Bill Withers)
04 talk (Bill Withers)
05 Lonely Town, Lonely Street (Bill Withers)
06 Ain't No Sunshine (Bill Withers)
07 talk (Bill Withers)
08 Use Me (Bill Withers)
09 talk (Bill Withers)
10 Kissin' My Love (Bill Withers)
11 Lean On Me (Bill Withers)
12 Harlem - Cold Baloney (Bill Withers)
13 talk (Bill Withers)
14 Grandma's Hands (Bill Withers)
15 Hope She'll Be Happier (Bill Withers)
16 You (Bill Withers)
17 Just the Two of Us (Bill Withers & Grover Washington, Jr.)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15191081/BillWithrs_1972_BeatClbBremnGermany__3-23-1972_atse.zip.html

For the cover art photo, I could have used a screenshot of the "Beat Club" performance, since a video of that exists on YouTube. But it was somewhat low resolution. So instead I've chosen a photo from a 1973 concert in France.

The Bangles - The Loft, Berlin, Germany, 2-10-1986

The Bangles have never released an official live album. I find this surprising, because the band has been very good live, and a live recording allows one to hear them without the sometimes overly slick production of the studio versions.

When it comes to 1980s Bangles, I prefer their earliest stuff the most, because they were more raw and rocking then. They got very slick and overproduced by the time they broke up in 1988. Unfortunately, the sound quality on live recordings is pretty rough for their first years, until 1986. 1986 was when they hit ir really big with "Manic Monday" and "Walk like an Egyptian," so several of their concerts were recorded for live broadcast by radio stations.

I've listened to parts of those, and the other alleged best recordings from 1986, and I came to the conclusion that the sound quality for a show at The Loft in Berlin, Germany sounds the best. In my opinion, it's about as good as what you'd expect for an official 1980s live album. That's why I'm posting it here.

There's one other 1986 concert that also sounds very good, in my opinion - the Syria Mosque Ballroom Arena (Pittsburgh, PA, 10-29-1986). The Loft recording missed the opening song, plus part of the start of the next song. So I've used the Syria Mosque recording to fill in the missing song, as well as patching in the first half of a minute of the second song. Furthermore, some really great songs were played there that weren't played in Berlin, especially "I Want You" (which would have been a number one hit in my ideal alternate universe) and "Walk like an Egyptian." So I've added three songs to the end. That makes the album an hour and three minutes long.

In terms of fixes, there were a few occasions where there was a burst of unwanted feedback during a song. I mostly managed to patch those up, using bits from the Syria Mosque concert. But if there are any I missed, let me know and I'll fix those too.

01 In a Different Light (Bangles)
02 talk (Bangles)
03 Live (Bangles)
04 Restless (Bangles)
05 talk (Bangles)
06 Walking Down Your Street (Bangles)
07 James (Bangles)
08 Manic Monday (Bangles)
09 talk (Bangles)
10 I'm in Line (Bangles)
11 He's Got a Secret (Bangles)
12 talk (Bangles)
13 If She Knew What She Wants (Bangles)
14 Return Post (Bangles)
15 Let It Go (Bangles)
16 Going Down to Liverpool (Bangles)
17 talk (Bangles)
18 Angels Don't Fall in Love (Bangles)
19 I'm Not Talking (Bangles)
20 Hero Takes a Fall (Bangles)
21 Dover Beach (Bangles)
22 talk (Bangles)
23 September Gurls (Bangles)
24 I Want You (Bangles)
25 Walk like an Egyptian (Bangles)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15535013/TBangls_1986_TheLoftBerlinGrmany__2-10-1986_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from a New Year's Eve concert at the end of 1986.

Aretha Franklin - Swing In, WDR Studio-L, Cologne, Germany, 5-17-1968

It's frustrating how little well recorded live soul music there is from the 1960s and 1970s. Even for big names like Aretha Franklin, you're lucky if you get an official live album or two, usually short and flawed, and quality bootlegs are extremely rare. But this is one of those nice rare instances.

Franklin became a big star in 1967, and arguably had an even bigger year in 1968. A lot of Europeans discovered American soul music in the late 1960s. When soul stars toured Europe then, they usually were surprised by the size and passion of the fans there. Franklin was so big in 1968 that she was given her own entire episode of a German TV show called "Swing In."

This show has its plusses and minuses. A minus is that there was a very talkative MC who spoke in German a lot. I edited him out entirely, even carefully removing a bit where he talked over part of the end of the song "Respect." He also did a short interview with Franklin right in the middle of the show (with everything being painstakingly translated in German and English in real time). I cut that out too. The video of this concert has appeared on YouTube around 2018, so if you want to see it, including the missing German bits, you can watch it there.

One other minus is that Franklin pretty much never says a word between songs. I'm guessing this is because she surmised the German audience wouldn't understand her, as well as the fact that she only had an hour for the concert and couldn't afford to waste any time. 

One minus is also a plus in the sense that the German audience was unusually polite and subdued for a soul music audience at the time. They were even subdued compared to other European audiences, because one can see video on YouTube of a much more lively Aretha Franklin concert in Amsterdam in 1968. But this is a plus because one can clearly hear the music instead of lots of screaming and cheering. Also, it's a big plus that the recording exists at all, since this sort of soul bootleg from the time is so rare, as I mentioned above.

By the way, there's an official live Franklin album called "Aretha in Paris." Not only is it also from 1968, it was recorded only about a week before this concert. But I much prefer this recording to that one. The sound quality is similar, and the performance here is as good or better. Plus, especially with the extra songs I've included, this is longer.

I've added three songs at the start of the German concert, and three more after its end. These extra songs are arguably the most interesting of all, because she played some unusual songs, none of which were on the "Aretha in Paris" album. Highlights include a duet with Frankie Valli, of all people, and a strange medley with Sammy Davis. Jr. I put some at the start because those are chronologically earlier (including two songs from 1967), while the songs at the end are from later in 1968.

01 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (Aretha Franklin)
02 That's Life (Aretha Franklin & Frankie Valli)
03 Groovin' (Aretha Franklin)
04 You Are My Sunshine (Aretha Franklin)
05 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Aretha Franklin)
06 Night Life (Aretha Franklin)
07 [You Make Me Feel Like] A Natural Woman (Aretha Franklin)
08 Baby, I Love You (Aretha Franklin)
09 Dr. Feelgood [Love Is a Serious Business] (Aretha Franklin)
10 Since You've Been Gone [Sweet Sweet Baby] (Aretha Franklin)
11 Good to Me as I Am to You (Aretha Franklin)
12 I Never Loved a Man [The Way I Love You] (Aretha Franklin)
13 Chain of Fools (Aretha Franklin)
14 Soul Serenade (Aretha Franklin)
15 Respect (Aretha Franklin)
16 I Say a Little Prayer (Aretha Franklin)
17 Come Back Baby (Aretha Franklin)
18 What Is Soul - Think - Respect - What I'd Say (Aretha Franklin & Sammy Davis, Jr.)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/GCQY2z4S

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/u9EoWJxhvKXA1Gd/file

For the cover art photo, I could have used a screenshot from the actual show. But that was somewhat low resolution. Instead, I found a high quality photo from a rehearsal for the "Swing In" show that took place a couple of days earlier. I colorized the black and white photo to make it more interesting. (The video of the concert is in black and white as well.)

I did grab a screenshot of the "Swing In" logo from the video, and I included that as well. Note that most bootlegs that exist of this show claim it was from the German TV show "Rockpalast." But that show didn't start until 1974, and the logo clearly proves this was "Swing In" instead.

In March 2025, I upgraded the cover image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Jimi Hendrix - BBC Sessions, Volume 4 (1968-1970)

Here's the fourth and last of my albums compiling Jimi Hendrix's BBC performances, as well as other radio or TV appearances of similar sound quality.

This was the most difficult album to put together of the four. The others largely drew from officially released versions of songs. But for this volume, only three of the 12 performances on it have been officially released.

I'm not sure why Hendrix played on the TV and radio so much in 1967 (three volumes' worth) but so relatively rarely from 1968 to 1970, the year he died. 1968 is a particular puzzler. That year, he had a very big hit double album with "Electric Ladyland," which went to number 1 in the US and number 6 in Britain, and it contained "All Along the Watchtower," which was a sizeable hit in both countries. So he had material to promote. But, strangely, he only played a few songs from that album in concert, and didn't do TV or radio appearances for it either. His one such appearance in 1968 was for Dusty Springfield's BBC TV show, but that took place months before "Electric Ladyland" was released. It's also strange the three songs played for that weren't included on either of the official Hendrix BBC albums. I've included them, but the sound quality is a bit rough.

At least there's a good explanation for Hendrix not playing for the BBC much in 1969 and 1970. The first week of January 1969, he appeared on the BBC TV show of British pop star Lulu. He was supposed to play "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" then "Hey Joe." Lulu was due to turn "Hey Joe" into a duet halfway through the song, then she'd sing her traditional final song of the show. But Hendrix thought doing a duet with Lulu wasn't cool. (Apparently he liked Dusty Springfield more, sine he sang the duet "Mockingbird" with her in 1968, which is on this album.) So, halfway through "Hey Joe," right when Lulu was supposed to join him on stage, he switched to playing an instrumental version of the Cream hit song "Sunshine of Your Love."

Noel Redding, bassist in Hendrix's band, later explained what happened next:

"This was fun for us, but producer Stanley Dorfman didn't take it at all well as the minutes ticked by on his live show. Short of running onto the set to stop us or pulling the plug, there was nothing he could do. We played past the point where Lulu might have joined us, played through the time for talking at the end, played through Stanley tearing his hair, pointing to his watch and silently screaming at us. We played out the show. Afterwards, Dorfman refused to speak to us but the result is one of the most widely used bits of film we ever did. Certainly, it's the most relaxed."

However, as fun as that was for the band, it is widely believed that Hendrix got banned for any future appearances on BBC TV or radio. And that's borne out by the fact that he didn't perform for the BBC from the Lulu show in January 1968 until his death in September 1970.

Luckily, Hendrix's fame was growing in the US. He appeared on popular US late night talk shows in 1969: "The Dick Cavett Show" (twice) and "The Tonight Show." The sound quality for these appearances are also a bit rough, especially for the song "Lover Man." My musical friend MZ did his best to improve these songs, but there was only so much he could do. By the way, for "Lover Man," Hendrix was halfway through playing the song when his amp blew out. The show quickly cut to a commercial. When the show returned, he started the song again and finished it without any further trouble. I've only included the full version of the song.

I had to search high and low to find any instances of Hendrix playing on TV or radio in 1970. I found out that two songs ("Come On" and "Red House") from a concert in Stockholm, Sweden, were played on a Swedish radio station at the time. I've included those even though the sound also is fairly rough. Of all the songs on this four volume series, I'd say "Lover Man" plus these two songs have the worst sound. But MZ worked on these as well, and improved them. I figured they're still good enough for inclusion, especially because one of them, "Come On," was a song that Hendrix played live very rarely.

By the way, for this entire series, I tried hard to sort the songs from one volume to another to avoid having two versions of the same song on the same album. The first volume has two versions of "Hey Joe," and this one has two versions of "Voodoo Child." I couldn't avoid having "Voodoo Child" twice here since it's a 1968 song and the three previous volumes are from 1967 performances only. But I shuffled the song order a bit so at least the two "Voodoo Child"s aren't next to each other.

01 Voodoo Child [Slight Return] (Jimi Hendrix)
02 Stone Free (Jimi Hendrix)
03 Mockingbird (Jimi Hendrix & Dusty Springfield)
04 Voodoo Child [Slight Return] (Jimi Hendrix)
05 Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix)
06 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
07 Sunshine of Your Love [Instrumental Version] (Jimi Hendrix)
08 Hear My Train A-Comin' (Jimi Hendrix)
09 Izabella (Jimi Hendrix)
10 Machine Gun (Jimi Hendrix)
11 Lover Man (Jimi Hendrix)
12 Come On [Let the Good Times Roll] [Full Version] (Jimi Hendrix)
13 Red House (Jimi Hendrix)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15120755/JimiH_1968-1970_BBSessionsVolume4_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is a screenshot from Hendrix's 1969 appearance on Lulu's TV show.

Keb Mo - Home Concert, Franklin, TN, 4-4-2020

We can all agree that the coronavirus pandemic is a terrible thing. But it does have one nice silver lining in that lots of musicians are streaming concerts from their homes. A couple of days ago, I posted a home concert from Richard Thompson. Here's another one from Keb Mo. I hope I'll have more concerts like these to post in the near future.

As I mentioned with the Thompson post, if you kind out about home concerts such as these from talented artists, please let me know, because they're easy to miss. Today, I was looking over my musical collection to see which artists I'd like to see play a home concert, and I was disappointed to realize just how many of my favorites have died or retired. :( I need to find some younger musicians who are just as talented as the best of previous generations. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

A Keb Mo home concert is particularly welcome for me because I've had issues with the production on most of his studio albums. He keeps putting out music that  veers towards "adult contemporary," a la James Taylor, when I most enjoy him playing acoustically. So this concert is great, because it's just him and his acoustic guitar, and there's no crowd noise to mar the sound quality. The Richard Thompson home concert unfortunately was recorded at a low streaming rate, but that's not a problem here. Mo recorded this in a music studio, and the sound quality is fantastic.

Actually, there's one snag about the sound quality, and that's the fact that the concert started out with an extremely low volume for the first couple of songs. Happily, that's something I was easily able to fix with a sound editing program. Mo's talking between songs was also unusually quiet, so I boosted the volume there too.

I did some editing between the songs. If he spend some time tuning his guitar, I usually cut that out. I also cut some of his talking that wasn't interesting. For instance, it's not entirely true that Mo was all alone for the concert. His unnamed wife was never seen, but she was apparently in a nearby control room and occasionally gave him some remote feedback. I edited out some of their back and forth that was technical in nature. For the comments from his wife that I kept it, I had to boost the volume a very large amount, since she was barely audible. So you'll hear a lot of hiss the few occasions when she spoke. All in all, I probably only cut out about five minutes from the concert in total.

Virtually all the songs are Keb Mo originals. But this concert took place a day or two after soul legend Bill Withers died, so he did a cover of "Grandma's Hands" in tribute to him.

The concert is 50 minutes long. Here's a link if you want to watch it as well as hear it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5rq9c4uBME

01 talk (Keb Mo)
02 Muddy Water (Keb Mo)
03 talk (Keb Mo)
04 Grandma's Hands (Keb Mo)
05 talk (Keb Mo)
06 Better Man (Keb Mo)
07 talk (Keb Mo)
08 I Remember You (Keb Mo)
09 talk (Keb Mo)
10 Change (Keb Mo)
11 talk (Keb Mo)
12 Life Is Beautiful (Keb Mo)
13 talk (Keb Mo)
14 Woman in Charge (Keb Mo)
15 talk (Keb Mo)
16 Tell Everybody I Know (Keb Mo)
17 talk (Keb Mo)
18 Rita (Keb Mo)
19 talk (Keb Mo)
20 Every Morning (Keb Mo)
21 talk (Keb Mo)
22 She Just Wants to Dance (Keb Mo)
23 talk (Keb Mo)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15429910/KebM_2020_HomeConcrtFranklnTN__4-4-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is a screenshot I selected from the home concert.

Robyn Hitchcock - Tin Angel, Philadelphia, PA, 3-25-1995, Late Show

I just posted the early Robyn Hitchcock show that comes from the same date and location as this late show. No bootleg recording of that early show has ever been made publicly available up until now, as far as I know, but there is a boot of this late show. However, I'm posting it here so you'll be easily able to get both.

The late show is just the same as the early show in terms of stellar soundboard sound quality and performance. If you like that one, you'll like this one. The one snag is that the first song, "Cynthia Mask," was missing the first twenty seconds or so. Happily, I found a bootleg from just a few days later, March 30, 1995, in which he also played that song. So I used that version to patch the missing section. The sound quality for that isn't as good, so you might notice the transition, but I figure it's better than nothing.

Also, this show is about eight minutes shorter than the early show (52 minutes compared to one hour). That suggests that maybe one or more songs are missing, since I've noticed with concerts that late shows are often a bit longer than early ones. However, if that's the case, we'll probably never know, and this is all we've got.

In terms of song selection, the vast majority of the songs are different than the ones played in the early show, so you'll probably want to hear both. Three songs are repeated: "De Chirico Street," "I Something You," and "The Yip Song."

01 Cynthia Mask [Edit] (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Shuffling Over the Flagstones [Instrumental] (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Each of Her Silver Wands (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 De Chirico Street (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Statue with a Walkman (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Vegetation and Dimes (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 My Wife and My Dead Wife (Robyn Hitchcock)
13 Beautiful Girl (Robyn Hitchcock)
14 I Something You (Robyn Hitchcock)
15 Bass (Robyn Hitchcock)
16 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
17 The Yip Song (Robyn Hitchcock)
18 She Doesn't Exist Anymore (Robyn Hitchcock)
19 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
20 Listening to the Higsons (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15272091/RobynH_1995_Tin_AngelPhiladelphiaPA__3-25-1995__Late_Show_atse.zip.html

If you compare the cover art photo here with the one for the early show, I think it'll be obvious to you that they both come from the same concert. He's wearing the same shirt, and the lighting is the same. I don't know what show that was exactly, though, except that it took place in 1995.

Robyn Hitchcock - Tin Angel, Philadelphia, PA, 3-25-1995, Early Show

In recent weeks, a kind person nicknamed Lil Panda has been helping me find more music to post on this blog. You'll see more results from that in the future, including more covers collections. This Robyn Hitchcock concert comes from him. As far as I know, Lil Panda went to the concert, both the early and late shows, and got a copy of the soundboard for both. For some reason, the late show has been available on bootleg for many years, but the early show has never been, until now, right here.

And what a good show it is! The sound is fantastic, and the hour-long performance is excellent as well. All the songs are written by Hitchcock. The only slight disappointment for me is that he doesn't talk between songs as much as he sometimes does. But you can't have everything. I didn't have to do anything to fix the sound, except I broke the talking between songs into their own tracks, as I usually do.

For the most part, Hitchcock is accompanied by nothing but his acoustic guitar. However, towards the end of the show he switches to solo electric guitar for a little bit. He also is sometimes joined by Deni Benet on violin.

01 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Satellite (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Balloon Man (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Alright, Yeah (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Man with a Woman's Shadow (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 De Chirico Street (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Sinister but She Was Happy (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 The Devil's Coachman (Robyn Hitchcock)
13 Raining Twilight Coast (Robyn Hitchcock)
14 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
15 I Something You (Robyn Hitchcock)
16 So You Think You're in Love (Robyn Hitchcock)
17 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
18 The Yip Song (Robyn Hitchcock)
19 I Am Not Me (Robyn Hitchcock)
20 Autumn Is Your Last Chance (Robyn Hitchcock)
21 Never Stop Bleeding (Robyn Hitchcock)
22 Arms of Love (Robyn Hitchcock)
23 Zipper in My Spine (Robyn Hitchcock)
24 Only the Stones Remain (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15272085/RobynH_1995_Tin_AngelPhiladelphiaPA__3-25-1995__Early_Show_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is taken from an unknown 1995 concert. I had used it for another Hitchcock album cover, for "Acoustic Covers, Volume 2." But I decided it fits better here, since there's an early show and late show, and I'm posting them both, and I found this one and another one come from the same source. So I've put a different cover on that "Volume 2" album.

Jimi Hendrix - BBC Sessions, Volume 3 (1967)

Here's Volume 3 of Jimi Hendrix's performances for the BBC. Like the first two, all of the songs are from 1967. He did a ton of TV and radio performances in 1967. That isn't surprising. But what is surprising is that he did comparatively few from 1968 to 1970. I have just one volume in this series covering those three years.

This time, all but three of the songs were played at the BBC, and were on the official "BBC Sessions" album. The three exceptions come from a Dutch TV show called "Hoepla." One of those, "Catfish Blues," was released on the official "Blues" album. The other two remain officially unreleased. The "Hoepla" show was recorded very well. It was in front of a live audience, but I've removed the clapping as much as possible.

Other than that, there's no much to say for this album. However, as I mentioned earlier in this series, Hendrix played some songs for the BBC that he rarely or never played "live" (in the studio) again. One can especially see that on this volume, with rare songs like "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window," "Hoochie Coochie Man," "Wait Until Tomorrow," "Day Tripper," and even a "jingle" he wrote for the BBC called "Radio One."

01 Burning of the Midnight Lamp (Jimi Hendrix)
02 Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window (Jimi Hendrix)
03 Hoochie Coochie Man (Jimi Hendrix)
04 Driving South [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)
05 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
06 Catfish Blues (Jimi Hendrix)
07 Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
08 Hear My Train A-Comin' [Alternate Take] (Jimi Hendrix)
09 Radio One (Jimi Hendrix)
10 Wait until Tomorrow (Jimi Hendrix)
11 Day Tripper (Jimi Hendrix with Robert Wyatt)
12 Spanish Castle Magic (Jimi Hendrix)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15120521/JimiH_1967g_BBSessionsVolume3_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo was taken in the TTG Studios in Los Angeles in October 1968.

Pink Floyd - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: In Concert, Paris Theatre, London, Britain, 7-16-1970

Around 1970, the BBC began playing hour-long concerts in front of live audiences. Pink Floyd was one of the bands that benefited from being able to stretch out in that new format. They wound up playing concerts from the BBC in 1970 and 1971, as well as a longer one in 1974. This is the first of those.

Note that I've already posted three albums of Pink Floyd playing at the BBC (done in the BBC studios with no audience present). Since I'm continuing with three more BBC albums from them, I've decided to rename those earlier albums slightly, so they all have "Volume" in the title. For instance, the first one was known as "BBC Sessions, 1967," but now I'm calling it "BBC Sessions, Volume 1." I've just renamed those and updated the cover artwork accordingly. This one, then, is Volume 4.

Although this is live, it was professionally recorded, and it widely considered one of the few really great concert recordings of the band. It was included on the official box set "The Early Years." I'm including it here to continue the BBC series, plus it really should be heard on its own.

I've broken the talking between songs onto their own tracks, but other than that, I didn't need to change anything. Note that the concert was hosted by legendary BBC DJ John Peel. He's the one that does all the talking between songs.

The concert took place while the band was in the middle of recording the album "Atom Heart Mother." So it's not surprising that it features three songs from that album, "If," "Fat Old Sun," and "Atom Heart Mother." We're especially fortunate that "If" was included, because the band only played that excellent song a handful of times. The song "Atom Heart Mother" had been played a few times already, using the clunky title "The Amazing Pudding." They wanted something better, and realized that had to come up with something fast so that Peel would have a new title to give it for this BBC show. Luckily, they came up with the new title shortly before the concert when band member saw the headline "Atom Heart Mother Named" in a newspaper article about a nuclear-powered pacemaker.

Also note that the song "Atom Heart Mother" really needed a full choir, plus a full orchestra, to play right. For this concert, they hired a professional choir and professional orchestra to back them. Later, when they played the song on tour, they had to make do with a revolving group of back-up musicians who often didn't perform nearly as well. As a result, they shortened the song in concert and cut out the parts that needed the choir and orchestra. So this is probably the definitive live version, especially due to the sound quality.

01 talk (Pink Floyd)
02 Embryo (Pink Floyd)
03 talk (Pink Floyd)
04 Fat Old Sun (Pink Floyd)
05 talk (Pink Floyd)
06 Green Is the Colour (Pink Floyd)
07 Careful with that Axe, Eugene (Pink Floyd)
08 talk (Pink Floyd)
09 If (Pink Floyd)
10 talk (Pink Floyd)
11 Atom Heart Mother (Pink Floyd)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697017/PNKFLYD1970c_BBSssonsVlum4InConcrtParsThetre__7-16-1970_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from a Pink Floyd concert later in 1970, at the Fillmore East in New York City.

Jimi Hendrix - BBC Sessions, Volume 2 (1967)

This is the second of four volumes of Jimi Hendrix playing at the BBC. Once again, all the performances date to 1967.

As I mentioned in my description of Volume 1, four of the songs here (the first four) chronologically belong with Volume 1, but I put them here in order to cut down on the duplications of the same song on one album. That's also the case for the last song, which should belong on the next volume in this series.

You may note that three of the songs here have "Alternate Take" in their names. That's because when Hendrix played at the BBC, he sometimes did more than one take of the same song, then only one version was played on the radio. Luckily, recordings of these alternate takes survived, and in just as good sound quality. If these are "inferior" versions, I don't hear that. They just have different solos and such.

For this volume, five of the 14 songs have not been officially released. Four of those come from Hendrix performing for TV or radio shows other than the BBC. There also is one song ("Burning of the Midnight Lamp") that was officially released, but not on the official BBC releases because it was from one of those other TV or radio shows.

Also, one of the unreleased songs WAS from the BBC: an instrumental medley of the Motown hits "I Was Made to Love Her" and "Ain't Too Proud to Beg." However, only about half of that version was included on the official "BBC Sessions" album, and this is the whole thing. By the way, that medley, plus an instrumental known as "Jammin'" also feature Stevie Wonder on drums.

As with the other volumes in this series, I was highly selective on what to include in terms of sound quality. There are other songs played on TV or the radio at the time that didn't make the cut, usually selections from concerts that are marred by lots of crowd noise. So the sound quality here is uniformly high. Even better, my musical associate MZ edited some of the unreleased songs to make them sound better than the commonly circulating bootleg versions.

01 Foxy Lady [Alternate Take] (Jimi Hendrix)
02 Hey Joe [Alternate Take] (Jimi Hendrix)
03 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
04 Stone Free (Jimi Hendrix)
05 Fire (Jimi Hendrix)
06 The Wind Cries Mary (Jimi Hendrix)
07 Burning of the Midnight Lamp (Jimi Hendrix)
08 Jammin' [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix with Stevie Wonder on Drums)
09 I Was Made to Love Her - Ain't Too Proud to Beg [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix with Stevie Wonder on Drums)
10 Hound Dog (Jimi Hendrix)
11 Driving South [Alternate Take] (Jimi Hendrix)
12 Little Miss Lover (Jimi Hendrix)
13 Catfish Blues (Jimi Hendrix)
14 Hear My Train A-Comin' (Jimi Hendrix)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15120218/JimiH_1967f_BBSessionsVolume2_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo shows Hendrix in a recording studio in October 1967.

Jimi Hendrix - BBC Sessions, Volume 1 (1967)

One clear highlight of Jimi Hendrix's recorded work are his recordings for the BBC. The sound quality and performances are just as good as those on his studio albums, and he played some interesting songs he never or rarely played in concert. Many of these performances were first officially released on the single album "Radio One" in 1988, and then more were released on the double album "BBC Sessions" in 1998.

The official "BBC Sessions" album certainly is a good one. But they missed a few songs. More importantly, there are some performances for TV or radio shows that sound just as good, except they weren't done for the BBC. I've expanded the reach of the "BBC Sessions" to include this non-BBC material as well. That has allowed me to make four albums of this stuff instead of two. This is the first one.

One nice benefit to putting these performances on four albums is that I have carefully organized them to reduce the number of times one album has two or more versions of the same song on them. For whatever reason, the vast majority of Hendrix's TV or radio appearances were in 1967. His song repertoire was small back then at the start of his fame, and he only had a few hits. So he tended to perform the same songs over and over again, especially "Hey Joe" and "Purple Haze."

Due to that fact, as well as the fact that there's a ton of Hendrix material out there, I've chosen to only include the versions that sound the best, without repeating songs too much. For this album, the only duplicate I have is two versions of "Hey Joe." Note that I've generally stuck to ordering these albums by the dates they were recorded. But I've made a few exceptions to reduce the duplications. So, for instance, I've moved versions of four songs ("Hey Joe," "Purple Haze," "Foxy Lady," and "Stone Free") that were recorded in early 1967 to the next album in this series.

Three of the 14 performances on this album are still officially unreleased. In addition, two more are from official releases other than either of the BBC albums. One of those, "Burning of the Midnight Lamp," actually was played on the BBC, but on a TV show instead of the radio. That one was only available as a rare bonus track for the "Jimi Hendrix Experience" box set.

I'm glad to say that none of these performances are marred by BBC DJs talking over the music. If there were instances of talking before or after songs, I've cut that out to keep the focus on the songs.

I've included one bonus track, an unreleased version of "Rock Me Baby." This also was played for the BBC. But unfortunately, the last minute or so got cut off, so I faded it out. I suspect that's why it wasn't included on the official BBC albums. The sound on that one is a little rough, but my associate MZ worked on editing it to at least make it sound better than it had been.

01 Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix)
02 Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
03 Stone Free (Jimi Hendrix)
04 Love or Confusion (Jimi Hendrix)
05 Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix)
06 The Wind Cries Mary (Jimi Hendrix)
07 Killing Floor (Jimi Hendrix)
08 Fire (Jimi Hendrix)
09 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
10 Manic Depression (Jimi Hendrix)
11 Burning of the Midnight Lamp (Jimi Hendrix)
12 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Jimi Hendrix)
13 I Don't Live Today (Jimi Hendrix)
14 Driving South [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)

Rock Me Baby (Jimi Hendrix)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15119366/JimiH_1967e_BBSessionsVolume1_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo shows Hendrix playing "Purple Haze" at the BBC's "Top of the Pops" TV show in March 1967. I didn't include any music from this performance because he sang to the recorded version of the song.

Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips - Keep Your Distance - Home Concert, Montclair, NJ, 3-30-2020

As I write this, the world is in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic. That means that everyone should be practicing social distancing. That, in turns, means musicians are sitting at home instead of going on tour. To cheer up their fans, many musicians have started performing home concerts that are streamed across the Internet.

By luck, I stumbled across a Richard Thompson home concert that was recorded just one day earlier! Normally, I don't post much current music, both because I don't want to deny musicians what meager songwriting royalties are still left by sharing something that has just come out, but also because I tend to focus on music from what I consider the "golden age" of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, much more than current music. But I can make a special exception here because one of the all-time musical greats has posted this concert for free to help us all get through these troubled times.

There's good news and bad news with the sound quality of this recording. The good news is that since it was recorded in Thompson's house in New Jersey, it isn't hampered by any audience cheering. The bad news is that because it was broadcast live, the sound quality was limited so people with poor Internet connections could hear it in real time. As a result, the music is strangely clipped or muffled at times. So this is a really nice concert if you can put up with that. But some people might get annoyed with it. Thompson mentioned he plans on doing more concerts like this soon, since we're likely to keep doing this social distancing thing for another month or two, at least. I hope he improves the sound quality the next time around.

I took the recording from YouTube. It was one big file, but I broke it down into individual tracks, with the talking between songs split onto their own tracks as well. I boosted the volume of the talking a bit. I edited out some guitar tuning between songs. I kept in a certain amount of tuning though, when it was mixed in with the talking. Also, in recent years, Thompson has gotten in the habit of coughing and/or clearing his throat between songs a lot. That bugs me, so I carefully removed all of those throat noises. The YouTube video is 59 minutes long; I edited out a total of about four minutes of that, mostly from removing some guitar tuning.

A majority of the concert just features Richard Thompson. However, he was eventually joined by his partner Zara Phillips, who sang on the last five songs, largely on the choruses. So I've credited this as "Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips," since it's mostly him.

In the likely case that you only listen to this instead of watching it on YouTube, the loud buzzing noise before the song "Keep Your Distance" was Phillips jokingly using a vacuum cleaner around where Thompson was sitting for a few moments. Then she continued to joke around by taking his temperature while briefly wearing a mask and gloves. You can see that in the screenshot I took for the cover art.

Speaking of the song "Keep Your Distance," I felt obliged to use that song title as the title of this album because it's so fitting. I'm very glad he played that song, because it's been in my head a lot in recent days when I find myself forced to practice social distancing.

Anyway, please stay safe, and enjoy. And if you find about other home concerts like this one featuring the kind of musicians I post at this blog, please let me know, so I can possibly share those concerts here too.

01 talk (Richard Thompson)
02 I Misunderstood (Richard Thompson)
03 talk (Richard Thompson)
04 If I Could Live My Life Again (Richard Thompson)
05 talk (Richard Thompson)
06 Now Be Thankful (Richard Thompson)
07 talk (Richard Thompson)
08 Walking the Long Miles Home (Richard Thompson)
09 talk (Richard Thompson)
10 As Soon as You Hear the Bell (Richard Thompson)
11 talk (Richard Thompson)
12 O Cinderella (Richard Thompson)
13 talk (Richard Thompson)
14 Down Where the Drunkards Roll (Richard Thompson)
15 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
16 Keep Your Distance (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
17 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
18 The Rattle Within (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
19 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
20 She Never Could Resist a Winding Road (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
21 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
22 Jet Plane in a Rocking Chair (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
23 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
24 I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips)
25 talk (Richard Thompson with Zara Phillips) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/wRCA1xhg

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Q7K2wMevOsNVSnU/file

As mentioned above, the cover art photo comes from a screenshot from the YouTube video of this concert. In January 2025, I upgraded the image with the help of the Krea AI program.

Jimi Hendrix - Berkeley Community Theatre, Berkeley, CA, 5-30-1970, Early Show

I'm going through a Jimi Hendrix kick right now, so expect more posts of his music soon. I've finished posting all the stray tracks albums I've made for him, and I'm going to start posting more of his live material.

After three decades of fairly incompetent management, the Hendrix music catalog has been treated better for the last twenty years or so, since it's come under new management. That said, there still are some baffling decisions about what has been released and what hasn't so far. The two Berkeley concerts that Hendrix played on May 30, 1970 were professionally recorded and filmed. (The film of it, "Jimi Plays Berkeley," was released in 1971.) In 2003, an official live album was finally released. But it was only of the late show!

The release of only the last show is a real head-scratcher. Both of the Berkeley shows are great, and the set lists of the early and late shows are fairly different. Many serious Hendrix fans consider the Berkeley concerts to be among the very best of his concerts if you consider both performance and sound quality, and some even say it was him at his absolute peak. Furthermore, many also say the early show was even better than the late one. Plus, the early one is about twenty minutes longer, at an hour and a half. So why the heck hasn't the early show been released too?!

Actually, many of the performances from it have been released, here and there. For instance, "Johnny B. Goode" was released on "In the West" and other albums. "Hear My Train A-Comin'" was released on "Rainbow Bridge." "Ezy Rider" was released on "Band of Gypsys 2" (strangely enough, since Berkeley wasn't a Band of Gypsys concert). "Red House" was on the "West Coast Seattle Boy" box set. A few other songs were on more obscure releases, such as an EP that only came out in Britain for a limited time in the 1990s. But it's a crying shame the early show hasn't been released in full.

Luckily, there's an excellent bootleg version that came out around 2011 that sounds just as good as any live album from that era. (If you have a boot of the concert from before that time, you should replace it, because the sound is even better than earlier versions.) Clearly, it must come from the master tapes of the mobile recording unit. That's the version I've used here.

I only had two major issues with that recording. The first is that because it's such a pristine soundboard, it often didn't record much of the audience noise. So at the end of some songs, I've boosted the volume of the cheering to be as loud as typical cheering after a song ends. The second issue is that Hendrix's talking between songs was often unusually quiet. I've carefully boosted that up to make it more audible while leaving everything else alone. Sometimes it gets a little hissy because I had to increase the volume so much, but that can't be helped. The hissing is minor, in any case.

1970 was the last year of Hendrix's life. His concerts that year were admittedly hit or miss. But, in my opinion, when he hit, that was peak Hendrix. I especially like the fact that his set lists were more varied, with lots of new songs and less of the old warhorses like "Hey Joe" and "Purple Haze." Personally, I think if I were to recommend just one Hendrix concert to someone who doesn't know his music that well, it would be this one. Oh, and the movie "Jimi Plays Berkeley" is pretty good as well, so you should check that out too.

01 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
02 Fire (Jimi Hendrix)
03 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
04 Johnny B. Goode (Jimi Hendrix)
05 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
06 Hear My Train A-Comin' (Jimi Hendrix)
07 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
08 Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
09 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
10 Machine Gun (Jimi Hendrix)
11 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
12 Freedom (Jimi Hendrix)
13 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
14 Red House (Jimi Hendrix)
15 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
16 Message to Love (Jimi Hendrix)
17 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
18 Ezy Rider (Jimi Hendrix)
19 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
20 The Star Spangled Banner [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)
21 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
22 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
23 Voodoo Child [Slight Return] (Jimi Hendrix)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15121534/JimiH_1970d_BerkelyCommunityTheatre__5-30-1970__Early_Show_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I found a copy of a promotional poster for the Berkeley concerts. I used that for the framing artwork, plus the text. I had to make some major changes to clear out room for a photo in the middle. I also only kept some of the text, and then I edited the text slightly to make it specific for the early show (the poster was for both the early and late shows). The picture in the middle comes from Hendrix at the Berkeley concerts.

The Key - Fit Me In (1978)

Here's something that's a little unusual for me. Normally, I don't post studio albums unless I change them in some significant way. But in this case I'm going to post a studio album totally unchanged because A) it's really good and B) it's totally obscure. Plus, C) it's catchy, Beatlesque pop, and in these troubled coronavirus times, we all could use more music like that.

Instead of trying to explain what this album is like, I'm going to quote extensively from the allmusic.com review of it:

"For decades, the Key's 'Fit Me In' has been a lost treasure for fans of a certain strain of '70s AM pop. Think Paul McCartney and Wings, 10cc, Emitt Rhodes, the Korgis -- basically anything involving falsetto harmonies, chorused guitar effects, and an overall sense of languor and studio gloss. The Key were an Anglo-German duo of singer/songwriter Volker Langefeld (he of the breathy tenor vocals a la the Raspberries' Eric Carmen) and multi-instrumentalist Alan Warren, and their sole album was released in 1978, just a hair too late for the times. By the time this album was released, the new wave had overtaken the top of the pops, and a new band whose music sounded like the best Badfinger album ever made was, sadly, a couple years behind the time. In retrospect, however, the best songs on Fit Me In are astonishingly good examples of the form."

I especially like the comment about this sounding like the best Badfinger album ever made. The music is so good and catchy that it's a wonder to me that it had such little commercial success. Even now, it seems the band hasn't been rediscovered the way Big Star and the Plimsouls and other similar bands have been. I guess a lot of that has to do with the fact that they only ever released one album. That's a big puzzler for me: if they're as talented as they sound, what the heck did they do musically before or after this?! Apparently nothing, as far as I can tell. If anyone knows of more music either or both of them made, please let me know.

But also, as the allmusic.com review noted, this album came out in the wrong country (Germany) at the wrong time (1978). If they'd been a British band in the late 1960s, or an American band after the Knack and Cheap Trick briefly made power pop cool in 1979, they could have done much better. To make matters worse, I don't think they ever toured or did any promotion.

This album languished in (even more) obscurity until 2007, when it was released on CD with four bonus tracks. I've included the bonus tracks here too. They're some of the best songs, actually.

While looking up information about this album so I could post it, I stumbled across a social media post that has commentary by Volker, one of the two band members, about each song. Apparently, it was going to be part of the CD release, but was finished too late.  So I've added it in the zip download as a text file. Also, for the first releases of that CD, a little bit of one of the songs was accidentally cut off. But my version doesn't have that problem.

By the way, if any of you know of similar "lost albums" like this one, please let me, and the other people reading this blog, know. I find the vast majority of those don't live up to their hype. But every now and then, there's one, such as this one, that does.

01 The Farmer and the Fisherman (Key)
02 And the Rain (Key)
03 Pamela (Key)
04 Lazy Bird (Key)
05 Pretty Little Star (Key)
06 Old Fashioned Boogie (Key)
07 Half as Much (Key)
08 I'd Really Go for a Lady (Key)
09 That Game (Key)
10 Dragonmania (Key)
11 Fit Me In (Key)
12 Sometimes (Key)
13 Western People (Key)
14 Ba Uwa Mare Re (Key)
15 Until the Day (Key)
16 Should You Ever Meet Again (Key)
17 Cause You're a Lady (Key)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/NVHicQeA

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/osoiKUpwny334Cg/file

For the album cover, I just used the official album cover, unchanged.

U2 & Brian Eno (The Passengers) - Original Soundtracks 1 - Alternate Version (1995)

As I continue to work my way through U2's career, I come to 1995 and the curious album "Original Soundtracks 1." This album has largely been overlooked by U2 fans because it was credited to "The Passengers" instead of U2. But that's just a name for the four members of U2 plus their frequent producer Brian Eno. The "Passengers" name never caught on, since they've only done the one album, so I'm going to call a spade a spade and credit this to U2 and Brian Eno.

The other main reason this album is "Original Soundtracks 1" is often overlooked is because it's different than the typical U2 album. It's more atmospheric and experimental. And, to be frank, I don't think it's up to their usual standards. Clearly, they were making the songs up as they went along, and some of their ideas worked and some of them didn't.

But there was a lot of good stuff on it. The album would have been a lot better if they'd cut the album length down. This is another case of "less is more." The original album is an hour long. I've cut that down nearly in half, to 37 minutes. In so doing, I generally removed the more experimental and atmospheric songs, and favored the ones with more vocals and song structure.

That's not all I did though. I also have added three songs to the end. One of them, "Slow Dancing," was released as a B-side in 1993. I already included an acoustic version of that song on the previous album in my U2 albums series, and I didn't want to put two versions on the same album. Plus, there's another version I want to put on my next U2 stray tracks album that's significantly different, since it's a duet version with Willie Nelson. So its best fit is here.

The two other songs I've added, "In the Name of the Father" and "You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart," are Bono songs from 1994. I've included them because they're good songs that are from the right time period. But also, in my opinion, they perfectly fit the same music mood as the "Original Soundtracks 1" songs. Clearly, Bono was going through a certain musical phase, and they were part of that phase. By the way, "You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart" is officially unreleased, but it sounds as good as any released track.

Note that I have some other songs from 1995, most especially U2's hit single "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me." But those have a different sound to them. I'm saving those for my next U2 stray tracks album, which covers the time between this album and U2's 1997 album "Pop."

After the changes I've made, this still isn't a great U2 album, on the lines of "The Joshua Tree" or "Achtung Baby." But it's a very good one, if you're willing to go along with them in a more atmospheric direction. It certainly deserves more attention than it's received so far.

01 Slug (U2 & Brian Eno)
02 Your Blue Room (U2 & Brian Eno)
03 Always Forever Now (U2 & Brian Eno)
04 Beach Sequence (U2 & Brian Eno)
05 Miss Sarajevo (U2 & Brian Eno with Luciano Pavarotti)
06 One Minute Warning (U2 & Brian Eno with Holi)
07 Corpse (U2 & Brian Eno)
08 Elvis Ate America (U2 & Brian Eno with Howie B.)
09 In the Name of the Father (Bono & Gavin Friday)
10 You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart [Demo] (Bono)
11 Slow Dancing (U2)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701177/UTWO1995_PssengrsOrginlSundtrcks1Altrnte_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I could have just used the existing cover to the officially released version of the album. But I figure this version is different enough to merit its own cover. I couldn't find any photo of the four members of U2 plus Brian Eno together in the right time frame. But I did find one of the two most famous members of the band, Bono and the Edge, with Eno, so I've used that. The photo was taken at a benefit concert in Modena, Italy, in 1995. From left to right, the photo shows Eno, Bono, and the Edge (in the glasses).

Gladys Knight & the Pips & Ray Charles - Together at the Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, CA, 9-22-1977

I really like soul music from the 1960s and 1970s, and I wish I could post more of that type of music here, but it's not often that I find that kind of album that's worthy of the "albums that should exist" label. However, this one definitely is: it's a one-of-a-kind concert featuring two soul music greats, Gladys Knight (and the Pips) and Ray Charles.

To be honest, this is more of a Gladys Knight and the Pips concert: it's an hour long, and 37 minutes pass before Ray Charles shows up. But it's quite good just as a Knight concert, because there's only one of those from her prime 1960s and 1970s years, and it's not that good and is long out of print. In my opinion, it's a lucky thing that this concert took place in 1977 and not more recently, because 1977 was the tail end of soul music's golden era. Already in that year, disco was taking over, and disco destroyed or compromised the music of nearly every major soul figure. (I'm not against all disco, but there was a time when basically everyone "went disco" when they shouldn't have, including the likes of Ethel Merman!) Luckily, there are no traces of disco here. Had this been recorded a year or two later, I'll bet a lot of the songs would have been "disco-fied."

Anyway, we have an album of a very solid Gladys Knight and the Pips concert, where she played most of her biggest hits. Then Ray Charles joined in and played two songs on his own. For the last three songs, Knight and Charles sang together. As far as I know, this is the only time the two of them collaborated like this on stage, although they did a couple of duets in the studio towards the end of Charles' life.

The reason we have a recording of this concert, and in very good sound quality, is because it was professionally filmed and then shown on HBO a year later. Many years after that, that film was released on video, and then on DVD in 2008. I was able to find a version of that on YouTube and convert it to mp3 format. The sound quality isn't awesome, like you'd expect of a music DVD from decades later, but it's akin to a soundboard bootleg, which is still really good.

Unfortunately, we only get what was included on the DVD. Newspaper reports from the time indicate that more songs were played. For instance, we know Charles also played "Mack the Knife," Knight played "Daddy Could Swear, I Declare" (with Charles on piano), and the concert ended with "What I'd Say" as a finale. So that's a bummer, but we do get the vast majority of the concert, and hopefully someday the rest will be released.

01 How Can You Say That Ain't Love (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
02 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
03 Every Beat of My Heart (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
04 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
05 So Sad the Song (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
06 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
07 On and On (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
08 talk (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
09 Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
10 Midnight Train to Georgia (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
11 Evergreen - The Way We Were (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
12 I've Got to Use My Imagination (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
13 I Heard It through the Grapevine (Gladys Knight & the Pips)
14 talk (Ray Charles & Gladys Knight & the Pips)
15 I Can See Clearly Now (Ray Charles)
16 America the Beautiful (Ray Charles)
17 talk (Ray Charles & Gladys Knight & the Pips)
18 Georgia on My Mind (Ray Charles & Gladys Knight & the Pips)
19 talk (Ray Charles & Gladys Knight & the Pips)
20 Neither One of Us [Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye] (Ray Charles & Gladys Knight & the Pips)
21 talk (Ray Charles & Gladys Knight & the Pips)
22 Hit the Road, Jack (Ray Charles & Gladys Knight & the Pips)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cVuAbgKe

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/44SrXzW3r7vjdbe/file

For the cover art photo, I used a screenshot from the exact concert in question, thanks to the DVD of it (which has been posted on YouTube). Unfortunately, the picture quality wasn't good. But in February 2025, I used the Krea AI problem to significantly improve the image.

Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight & the Squires - George's Club 20, Hackensack, NJ, 12-26-1965

In September 1966, an obscure lead guitarist known as "Jimmy James" changed his name to Jimi Hendrix ("Hendrix" being the last name he was born with), moved to England, got a new band, and quickly became a superstar. But what about his music prior to that? He did head his own band, known as "Jimmy James and the Blue Flames," for much of 1966. Unfortunately, no recordings of them are known to exist. However, I've managed to create an album of a Hendrix concert all the way back in December 1965, thanks to some selective editing. The sound is a little rough, but I consider it a great listen for any serious Hendrix fan.

To better explain what I did here and why, I need to explain more of Hendrix's early musical career. Starting in 1963, he spent a few years as a little-known side man and session musician. Generally speaking, he played guitar for well known soul artists like the Isley Brothers and Little Richard when they toured. He found this very frustrating, because his incredible skills were very little used. In 1965, he began playing sometimes with Curtis Knight and his band the Squires. Knight was fairly obscure himself, so he didn't have a big ego, and he recognized Hendrix's talent. As a result, Hendrix was given much more of the spotlight than before, getting to sing quite a few songs while also showing off his lead guitar prowess, including doing showy tricks like playing solos with his teeth.

In December 1965, Knight recorded at least one concert at a small club, George's Club 20, in Hackensack, New Jersey. We know one of the concerts occurred on December 26, 1965, because Knight mentioned the date in his between-song banter. But many of the songs were played twice, suggesting that the band played two concerts that evening, or shows from more than one night were recorded. There's a surprising lack of audience noise on the recordings, and some of it seems to have been added in later, so it's not entirely clear if these were really live recordings, or done in the studio, or maybe played at something similar to a soundcheck, with a nearly empty club.

In any case, these December 1965 recordings appear to be the only early "live" recordings of Hendrix that have survived. A double album bootleg version has floated around for many years. In 2017, Hendrix's record company issued an official version called "Live at George's Club 20" that's half as long as the bootleg. Unfortunately, the sound quality of the official album and the bootleg are about the same, and both leave something to be desired. This music sounds better than a typical audience bootleg from the era, but not as good as a professionally recorded live album from that time, or even a well-recorded bootleg soundboard.

For legal reasons, the official album couldn't mention Hendrix's name on the cover, not even in small print. To make matters worse, a majority of the songs were sung by Knight instead of Hendrix. To be honest, most of the songs are bar band-like versions of soul music hits, sung by someone (Knight) with merely a good voice instead of a great one. Because of these reasons, plus the rough sound quality, the album has remained obscure, even for most Hendrix fans.

But wait! I'm knocking these recordings a lot, but there is a real gem of an album buried within them. I've collected just the songs sung by Hendrix from the official album, plus a few that they'd missed from the bootlegs of the same show(s). By focusing on just that material, one gets a fascinating view of how developed Hendrix's musical talent already was in late 1965. His guitar skills were already extraordinary, and unlike the limited studio recordings he did in those early years where he rarely got to solo, he soloed all over these songs. A few even are instrumentals meant to highlight his guitar prowess. A good portion of the songs he sang were songs he continued to perform after he got famous ("Killing Floor," "I'm a Man," "Driving South," "Bleeding Heart," and "Day Tripper"). One song, "Come On," even made it's way in modified form onto his classic "Electric Ladyland" album.

Nearly all the songs sung by Knight that I didn't include were pop and/or soul hits. Some of them were in the charts at the time the recordings were made. By contrast, the Hendrix-sung songs were significantly more bluesy, including some obscurities, such as Albert King's "Travelin' to California." It's almost like discovering a different concert inside the larger concert. (By the way, "Driving South" is often considered a Hendrix original when it's shown up on some of his albums after he hit the big time. But it's basically the Albert Collins instrumental "Thaw-Out" with some lyrics added.)

Unfortunately, the song order is all jumbled up. The order on the bootleg is different from that of the official album, and both of them are probably different from what was actually played that night, or nights, considering that we don't even know how many concerts the songs are from. So I've made some changes in the order for musical flow reasons. But I've kept the between song banter (which is mostly by Knight) in the right places whenever possible. I put all four songs that come from the bootleg instead of the official album at the end. But, as I said above, the sound quality of those are about the same. However, one of those songs, "Bleeding Heart," got cut off halfway through, and fades out. That's probably why it wasn't included on the official album, even though it's a Hendrix showcase.

I'm happy to say that after the Knight-sung songs are removed, one is left with about 50 minutes of music, which is a nice album length. (Knight does sing back up on some of the songs here, and co-lead on a couple, such as "Day Tripper." He also does most of the vocals for "Driving South," but that's mainly an instrumental.) I think it would be quite similar to what Hendrix probably played a few months later when he fronted his own band, Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, except that Knight is basically the MC doing most of the talking between the songs.

In my opinion, this album is a classic case of "less is more." The Knight-sung songs are worth listening to, especially since Hendrix played guitar solos on some of them. But when I had the full recording dominated by Knight, it was a historical curio that I hardly ever listened to. Now that I've boiled it down to the Hendrix-led songs, I enjoy it more and listen to it a lot more. I hope you'll feel the same way.

01 talk (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
02 Killing Floor (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
03 talk (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
04 Last Night [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
05 Land of 1000 Dances (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
06 talk (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
07 Come On, Part 1 [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
08 Get Out of My Life Woman (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
09 talk (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
10 Travelin' to California (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
11 talk (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
12 What'd I Say (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
13 I'm a Man (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
14 talk (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
15 Driving South [Thaw-Out] (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
16 Day Tripper (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
17 Bleeding Heart (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
18 Bo Diddley - Hush Your Mouth (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)
19 Walkin' the Dog (Jimi Hendrix with Curtis Knight)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xNqEPtc9

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3jD2lMiA1MODP8F/file

Believe it or not, there actually are photos of Hendrix playing at the George's Club 20 from around the date of the concert. But they're black and white and low resolution. Instead, I decided to use a publicity photo of Hendrix as part of Knight's band from around that time period. It was high resolution enough for me to be able to zoom in on just Hendrix's head, so you could get a good idea of what he looked like at the time. Even that one was in black in white, but I managed to colorize it with the help of the Kolorize program.

Later, in 2025, I used the Krea AI program to drastically improve the detail in the image.

Aretha Franklin with Jimi Hendrix - Save Me (MASH-UP)

As far as I know, Aretha Franklin and Jimi Hendrix never played music together, either on stage or in the studio. But they kind of did, in a weird way, which is what the mash-up is all about.

In 1966, Hendrix was still known as "Jimmy James," and was a little-known lead guitarist backing up various soul music acts. He got occasional work as a session musician. For one such job, he was the guitarist for a 1966 song by Ray Sharpe with the King Curtis Orchestra, called "Help Me." The song was divided into two parts, and the part 2 B-side contained a Hendrix guitar solo.

The song was basically a soul version of "Gloria" by Them (with lead vocals by Van Morrison). It has the same driving three chord guitar pattern, and part 2 of "Help Me" even uses some of the same lyrics. The basic groove of "Help Me" sounded so good that the backing track was reused several times. For instance, King Curtis used it for an instrumental called "Instant Groove." King Curtis was also the original songwriter.

But the most important recycling of the backing track was by Aretha Franklin. She, along with her sister Carolyn, added her own lyrics and melody and completely transformed the song. It was included on her classic 1967 album "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You," and the song has become a classic in its own right. Unfortunately, while that version used the backing track that Hendrix played on, his solo was wiped from the final version.

What I've done here is take the Franklin song "Save Me" and then splice the Hendrix solo back in where a guitar solo would logically go. I tweaked the pitch and tempo slightly to get them to match. I think the mash-up works well, but I'll let you be the judge.

Hendrix's solo is about 30 seconds long. If you're expecting the amazing guitar pyrotechnics that he's famous for, you'll be disappointed. His solo is in a very different style than what he became famous for later. It's quite minimalist, and heavily influenced by guitar great Steve Cropper, in my opinion. But still, I think it's quite fascinating to hear his solo style from early 1966, before he changed his name to Jimi Hendrix and made radical changes to his life, dress, and personality.

I made this today because I'm working on posting some albums of Hendrix as a session musician. I'll probably include this on one of those albums, when I'm ready to post it. But I thought it was notable enough to merit its own blog post. I'm really surprised this mash-up hasn't been tried before (or at least I couldn't find one) because it's just combining different versions of the same original recording.

https://www.upload.ee/files/15239497/ArethaFJimiH_Save_MeSongEdit.zip.html