Adele - Rare Songs and Cover Versions, Volume 2 (2011-2017)

I just posted an album of Adele rarities, all from the year 2008. I made that together with this one, so I might as well post this too. If you like that one, you should like this one too.

The main difference between the previous album and this one is that that one was mostly covers (all but two songs), whereas this one is about half covers and half non-album Adele originals. Most of the originals are bonus tracks to her 2011 and 2015 albums. But there's also "Skyfall," her 2012 hit for the James Bond movie of the same name. Plus, there are two songs, "You'll Never See Me Again" and "Never Gonna Leave You" that are still officially unreleased. They were recorded for her 2011 album "21" but weren't included on it, then were somehow leaked onto the Internet in 2014.

Additionally, I stumbled upon a really interesting unreleased mix of "Rolling in the Deep." That's easily my favorite Adele song. I think it's one of the very best songs of the millennium (from 2000 onwards). This version is the same as the studio album version, but with all the instrumentation removed, leaving just Adele's lead vocals plus the backing vocals. It's not as good as the hit version, but I still think it's interesting and worth hearing.

Regarding the cover versions, a few of them are bonus tracks. The rest generally are from live performances. Generally speaking, the sound quality is high, even though three of them are from concert bootlegs.

This album is longer than the previous one. That one is 44 minutes long, and this one is an hour and one minute long. It's kind of an album and a half. The first 40 minutes are all from 2011, and are related to the "21" album released that year. If Adele comes out with a new album and has a bunch of non-album tracks that go with it, I may well move the post-2011 songs to that, if that makes for a sensible album length.

Here is a list of the original artists that made the songs famous:

01 Need You Now - Lady Antebellum
02 I Found a Boy - Adele
03 If It Hadn't Been for Love - Darryl Worley
04 Hiding My Heart - Tim Hanseroth
05 Lovesong - Cure
06 You'll Never See Me Again - Adele
07 Never Gonna Leave You - Adele
08 Promise This - Cheryl Cole
09 [You Make Me Feel like A] Natural Woman - Aretha Franklin
10 I Can't Make You Love Me - Bonnie Raitt
11 Rolling in the Deep [Acappella Version] - Adele
12 Skyfall - Adele
13 Can't Let Go - Adele
14 Lay Me Down - Adele
15 Why Do You Love Me - Adele
16 Fastlove - George Michael
 
Here's the usual song list:

01 Need You Now (Adele with Darius Rucker)
02 I Found a Boy (Adele)
03 If It Hadn't Been for Love (Adele)
04 Hiding My Heart (Adele)
05 Lovesong (Adele)
06 You'll Never See Me Again (Adele)
07 Never Gonna Leave You (Adele)
08 Promise This (Adele)
09 [You Make Me Feel like A] Natural Woman (Adele)
10 I Can't Make You Love Me (Adele)
11 Rolling in the Deep [Acappella Version] (Adele)
12 Skyfall (Adele)
13 Can't Let Go (Adele)
14 Lay Me Down (Adele)
15 Why Do You Love Me (Adele)
16 Fastlove (Adele)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/mjvCkWn3

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Zy85JumDWcL9Hds/file

The photo for the cover comes from Adele's appearance at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards.

Adele - Rare Songs and Cover Versions, Volume 1 (2008)

I have mixed feelings about Adele. I think she has an incredible voice. She's a talented songwriter, and sometimes she hits it out of the park. "Rolling in the Deep" and "Someone like You" (both of which she co-wrote) are fantastic songs. But I feel she often squanders her talent with too many mid-tempo heartbreak ballads. If only she did more uptempo songs like "Rolling in the Deep!"

Adele put out her first album in 2008, but she's only had three studio albums in total so far, and one live album that pretty much repeats the songs from her studio albums. She's sold an ungodly number of albums, at least 120 million! But I feel all three of her albums are hit and miss.

So I've attempted to make a couple more albums for her. I found enough non-album material for two albums. Frankly, I like these albums better than her studio albums because while she has written or co-written some great songs, those albums have too many of those samey heartbreak ballads. By contrast, these albums mostly consist of covers of classic songs. So the songwriting is solid. It's great to hear Adele apply her remarkable voice to these songs. At times, she's like the second coming of Aretha Franklin or Etta James.

All but five of the songs here are officially unreleased. The sound quality on the unreleased ones are very good to excellent. Generally speaking, most of these come from BBC TV or radio shows, or other radio shows, which means excellent sound quality. Probably the roughest is a version of "Steady, as She Goes," which she apparently did off the cuff while backstage at one of those BBC performances. It's a remarkable performance considering you can see from video footage of it that she's reading the lyrics to the song off her cell phone as she sings!

At first, I was only going to make this a collection of her cover songs. But between this and the next album, I discovered that she has some rare original songs that are pretty good, often as good or better than some of the songs on her studio albums. There are two such songs here, and more on the other album in this series. Both the originals here were released as B-sides.

Adele has almost never included cover songs on her studio albums. One rare exception is "Make You Feel My Love" by Bob Dylan. I've included that here, but I was careful to use a different version than the well-known studio album one.

The song "God Put a Smile upon Your Face" has been edited. That's because the performance she did of it was very short, only a minute and a half long. (It was the first part of a medley, with the other parts of different songs sung by different singers.) It's just one verse and one chorus. I ended it a little bit by repeating the chorus. Even so, that only extended it by another half a minute.

The last two songs, "You Do Something to Me" and "Need Your Love So Bad" were already included on a Paul Weller stray tracks album I made. But since they're duets between Adele and Weller, they fit just as much here, so I put them on this album too.

One thing I like about this album is that it has much greater variety than Adele's studio albums. She does more upbeat material, including versions of some modern rock songs. If you enjoy her voice but aren't so keen on her usual style, you might want to give this a try.

Unfortunately, one of those versions of modern rock songs could only be included as a bonus track. That's "Dreaming of You" by the Coral. It's a great song, and she does a very nice version. But the recording is from an audience bootleg, with some audience noise throughout, so it didn't meet the standard as the other songs here.

This album is 44 minutes long.

Here are the original artists that made the songs famous:

01 That's It, I Quit, I'm Moving On - Sam Cooke
02 Last Nite - Strokes
03 God Put a Smile upon Your Face [Edit] - Coldplay
04 Many Shades of Black - Raconteurs
05 Now and Then - Adele
06 Steady, as She Goes - Raconteurs
07 Black and Gold - Sam Sparro
08 Baby, It's You - Burt Bacharach / Shirelles
09 Painting Pictures - Adele
10 I Just Want to Make Love to You - Willie Dixon / Muddy Waters
11 Make You Feel My Love - Bob Dylan
12 Fool that I Am - Etta James
13 You Do Something to Me - Paul Weller
14 Need Your Love So Bad - Little Willie John

Dreaming of You - Coral

Here's the usual song list:

01 That's It, I Quit, I'm Moving On (Adele)
02 Last Nite (Adele)
03 God Put a Smile upon Your Face [Edit] (Adele)
04 Many Shades of Black (Adele)
05 Now and Then (Adele)
06 Steady, as She Goes (Adele)
07 Black and Gold (Adele)
08 Baby, It's You (Adele with Burt Bacharach)
09 Painting Pictures (Adele)
10 I Just Want to Make Love to You (Adele)
11 Make You Feel My Love (Adele)
12 Fool that I Am (Adele)
13 You Do Something to Me (Paul Weller & Adele)
14 Need Your Love So Bad (Paul Weller & Adele)

Dreaming of You (Adele)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15123356/Adel_2008_RareSongsandCoverVersionsVolume_1_atse.zip.html

The cover art uses a promotional photo of Adele from 2008.

The Pretenders - In the Still of the Night - Non-Album Tracks (2003-2004)

Here's the next in a long series of stray tracks albums from the Pretenders. 

However, I should note this is really more of a Chrissie Hynde album. By this time the Pretenders had basically become Hynde plus a revolving group of supporting musicians. All but one of the songs here are credited to "Chrissie Hynde" with or without others instead of the "Pretenders" anyway. But I'll call this a Pretenders album to keep it consistent with all the other stray tracks album in this series.

The songs here are good, but stylistically, they're all over the map, from a cover of a 1930s ballad to a techno hit. By the way, speaking of that techno hit, "Straight Ahead," I'm not a big fan of it (or that style), but it was a hit and Hynde did sing parts of it, so I've included it. It's at the very end, so it's easy to leave off if you want to do that. I found an interesting acappella version that apparently was created by someone isolating just Hynde's vocal track, so I've included that as kind of an intro, or alternate.

During this time period, it seems Hynde took a prolonged break from the Pretenders. From early 2004 until early 2006, the Pretenders basically didn't play any concerts, and didn't release any new music. Instead, Hynde got very interested in Brazil and its music. She actually lived there for much of 2004. You can see this musical influence with some songs in the middle of this album, especially the two she did with Moreno Veloso (who is the son of the great Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso).

In terms of sound quality, five of the songs come from concert bootlegs. The sound quality of those isn't great, but it's plenty good. The rest are all officially released, from a wide variety of sources.

01 Something to Believe In (Pretenders)
02 Big Bad Cat (Bruce Willis & Chrissie Hynde)
03 In the Bleak Midwinter (Chrissie Hynde & the Blind Boys of Alabama)
04 Never Be Alone Again (Russell Crowe & the 30 Odd Foot of Grunts with Chrissie Hynde)
05 As Time Goes By (Rod Stewart & Chrissie Hynde)
06 Don't Let Me Down (Chrissie Hynde)
07 The Empty Boat (Chrissie Hynde)
08 Nenhuma (Chrissie Hynde & Moreno Veloso)
09 I Get Along without You Very Well (Chrissie Hynde & Moreno Veloso)
10 Cry [If You Don't Mind] (Jarabe De Palo with Chrissie Hynde)
11 In the Still of the Night (Chrissie Hynde)
12 Straight Ahead [Acapella Version] (Chrissie Hynde)
13 Straight Ahead (Tube & Berger with Chrissie Hynde)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700861/TPRETNDRS2003-2004_InStllofNght_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from a Pretenders concert in Dublin, Ireland, in 2003.

Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren - Sunday Mornings with Elle and Toni, Volume 5: 2018

I just posted an album of Morgan James doing all acoustic cover versions. That reminds me of Elle Cordova and Toni Lindgren, so here's another album of them doing all acoustic cover versions too.

If you've listened to the previous four covers albums of theirs that I've posted, this is more of the same good stuff. (And I have lots more to post.) But this album stands out for the number of lesser known songs, at least for me. I've previously mentioned that one thing I appreciate about this duo's covers are that they have a knack of picking excellent obscure songs and mixing them in with classics. About half of the songs here are like that. 

As an extreme example, note the song "High Five" by the band Sigrid. I highly doubt anyone here has heard of her, unless maybe if they live in Norway. She's a Norwegian singer who was so new at the time of this album that she hadn't even released her debut album yet. But Elle Cordova and Toni Lindgren heard this song while they were on tour in Norway, and liked it so much that they decided to perform their own version of it.

This album is 46 minutes long.

Here are the original artists for each song:

01 Post War - M. Ward
02 Sugar, We're Goin Down - Fall Out Boy
03 High Five - Sigrid
04 Bells of Harlem - Dave Rawlings Machine
05 Butter and Eggs [Instrumental] - Julian Lage & Chris Eldridge
06 Stuck in the Middle with You - Stealers Wheel
07 Silver Lining - Rilo Kiley
08 Make You Feel My Love - Bob Dylan
09 Rocky Top - Osborne Brothers
10 Sister Golden Hair - America
11 Don't Know Why - Norah Jones
12 Hold You in My Arms - Ray LaMontagne
13 Ellie's Song [Through the Valley] - Shawn James & the Shapeshifters

Here's the usual song list:

01 Post War (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
02 Sugar, We're Goin Down (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
03 High Five (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
04 Bells of Harlem (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
05 Butter and Eggs [Instrumental] (Toni Lindgren & Josh Turner)
06 Stuck in the Middle with You (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren with Josh Turner & Carson McKee)
07 Silver Lining (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
08 Make You Feel My Love (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
09 Rocky Top (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
10 Sister Golden Hair (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
11 Don't Know Why (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
12 Hold You in My Arms (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
13 Ellie's Song [Through the Valley] (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17363668/ELLECRDVATNILINDRN2018SndyMrnngswthEllTniVlum5_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/FGvn6XEx

This duo likes to record their Sunday Mornings videos in interesting locations if they have the opportunity. This is a screenshot from a video recorded overlooking the Mississippi River as it passes through Minnesota in 2018.

Morgan James - Acoustic Cover Songs, Volume 1, 2014-2015

Here's a new artist for this blog, Morgan James. She's new in the sense that I've never posted any music from her before. But she's also new in that I only discovered her recently. I was searching for something on YouTube when I got a suggestion to listen to her performance of the Beatles' "White Album." She sang and played the entire thing straight through (including "Revolution 9") and did a great job of it. But I was even more impressed with her cover of "Dream On" by Aerosmith. You really should check out this YouTube video of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq4KA0mUnC8

It has 20 millions views and counting, and deservedly so. What a voice!

So I started checking out more of her stuff. Yes, she has the face of a fashion model, and she's used that to her advantage getting some work as an actress. But she's much more than just another pretty voice. She trained at Julliard, the top music school in the country, and has sung in many Broadway shows and even operas. She's a talented songwriter too, and has been releasing albums of original material since 2014. I'm surprised she isn't a lot more famous. She's probably best known for her occasional role in Postmodern Jukebox, where famous modern songs are performed in old-fashioned musical styles.

Anyway, what interests me most about James is that she does a LOT of cover versions performed in just an acoustic format. Her long-time husband Doug Wamble is an excellent guitar player. The two of them have been posting acoustic covers since 2014, and probably have done over 200 by now. I plan on posting all of them, one album of about 45 minutes of music at a time. Here's the first one.

One thing I like about James' covers is that she has somewhat different musical tastes than I do. In particular, I've noticed she's more into popular songs from the past couple of decades. That's great, because my main beef with most of those songs is the bad production. When they're stripped down and sung by James, they're often revealed to be very good songs. She's also more into vocal jazz than I am, so I've been able to discover some new songs of that type through her as well.

Some of the songs have some drums on them, but are minimalistic enough for me to still consider them acoustic. She has occasionally done some covers in full band format. I plan on posting them separately eventually. 

The songs are generally in the order they were posted on YouTube. I changed the order slightly though to start things off with a bang with her cover of Aretha Franklin's "Baby, I Love You."

Here are the original artists for each song:

01 Baby, I Love You - Aretha Franklin
02 I'm Not the Only One - Sam Smith
03 Fantasy - Genius of Love - Mariah Carey
04 Fooled Around and Fell in Love - Elvin Bishop
05 Ain't It Fun - Paramore
06 Dancing in the Dark - Bruce Springsteen
07 Come Together - Beatles
08 Sledgehammer - Peter Gabriel
09 Rather Be - Clean Bandit
10 What Christmas Means to Me - Stevie Wonder
11 Really Love - D'Angelo
12 Sugar Daddy - D'Angelo

And here's the usual song list:

01 Baby, I Love You (Morgan James)
02 I'm Not the Only One (Morgan James)
03 Fantasy - Genius of Love (Morgan James)
04 Fooled Around and Fell in Love (Morgan James)
05 Ain't It Fun (Morgan James)
06 Dancing in the Dark (Morgan James)
07 Come Together (Morgan James)
08 Sledgehammer (Morgan James)
09 Rather Be (Morgan James)
10 What Christmas Means to Me (Morgan James)
11 Really Love (Morgan James)
12 Sugar Daddy (Morgan James)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15266886/MorganJ_2014-2015_AcoustcCoverSongsVolume1_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from a 2014 visit to a radio station.

Various Artists - A Song for Joe - Celebrating the Life of Joe Strummer, 8-21-2020

The coronavirus pandemic has been with us for half a year, and yet the home concerts continue. Musicians generally are having a hard time of it, since holding a concert is one of the most difficult things to do while maintaining social distancing. So this is a benefit concert for "Save Our Stages," which is a charity trying to prevent independent concert venues from closing permanently. 

I'm posting this because I like the musical theme. The concert pays tribute to Joe Strummer, the lead singer and co-songwriter for the Clash. All the songs here were written by Strummer, some from his time in the Clash and some from his solo career after that. In particular, it was timed to take place on Strummer's birthday. (He died of a heart defect in 2002 at the age of 50.) If you want to hear Clash songs done in a different way, this is a great way to do that.

Due to the pandemic, the concert doesn't have a location per se. Every artist recorded their songs in their own homes or recordings studios, then sent them in to be played in a concert format. As a result of that and the social distancing problem, many of the songs are done in an acoustic format. But many are done with a full band too, which is fitting since Strummer's songs usually rocked.

I've cut this down a lot from the original broadcast. That is an hour and 53 minutes long, whereas this is only an hour and eight minutes long. The main reason for the difference is I cut out nearly all the verbal tributes to Stummer. There were so many that there sometimes was more than one between songs. There were a lot of famous people who recorded their thoughts on Strummer. I deleted 22 of those! The only one I kept was from Bruce Springsteen. For one thing, he's the great Bruce Springsteen, but also his comments were very short. (Note that there is NO music by Springsteen here.) If you want to hear the others, I suggest you go to YouTube and listen to the whole concert there. There are some particularly entertaining stories by Steve Buscemi and Bob Weir.

As far as the music goes, I included everything but two songs. The first one I cut was a performance by Joe Strummer of "Police on My Back" from 2001. While very nice, I thought it didn't fit the format of people giving tribute to Strummer. The other song I cut was "Raw Grace in Your Face" by Eugene Hutz. That's an original song by Hutz about Strummer. While nice, I also felt that didn't fit the format. Again, if you want to catch those, check out the YouTube video. The Strummer song is at the front and features rare video footage of him playing on stage.

Pretty much all the performances here are good. They pretty much have to be, because they're Joe Strummer songs. ;) I especially like "Death or Glory" by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, and "Straight to Hell"  by Lucinda Williams. Note that a few of the songs actually weren't written by Strummer (and/or his Clash mate Mick Jones), but are covers that are closely associated with him. "I Fought the Law" and "Police and Thieves" are examples of those. All the songs are done only once, except for "Death or Glory," done once by Jeff Tweedy near the start, and then by Jesse Malin with Bob Weir (of the Grateful Dead) near the end.

01 Get Down Moses (Interrupters)
02 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
03 Death or Glory (Jeff Tweedy)
04 Bankrobber (Tom Morello)
05 Johnny Appleseed (Jesse Malin)
06 Spanish Bombs (Hinds)
07 Washington Bullets (Hold Steady)
08 Janie Jones (Jesse Dayton)
09 I Fought the Law (Joe Ely)
10 Long Shadow (Brian Fallon)
11 Charlie Don't Surf (Cherry Glazerr)
12 Tommy Gun (Dropkick Murphys)
13 Police and Thieves (Nikolai Fraiture)
14 London Calling (Butch Walker)
15 Train in Vain (Josh Homme & Troy Van Leeuwen)
16 [White Man] in Hammersmith Palais (Frank Turner)
17 Rudy Can't Fail (Josh Klinghoffer)
18 Silver and Gold (Lyza Jane & C.C. Adcock)
19 Straight to Hell (Lucinda Williams)
20 Coma Girl (Dave Hause)
21 Death or Glory (Jesse Malin with Bob Weir)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376835/VA-ASngfrJoeCelebrtingLifeJoStrmmer__8-21-2020_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I used a promotional poster for the concert. I had to redo the list of performers, because I cut out all the people (except Bruce Springsteen) who gave verbal tributes only. I also made a couple more minor changes, adding and removing some text. But it basically looks the same as the original.

The Rolling Stones - West Australian Cricket Ground, Perth, Australia, 2-24-1973

A couple of days ago, the Rolling Stones released a deluxe edition of their 1973 album "Goat's Head Soup." I haven't posted a stray tracks album of that era yet, because I've been waiting for some songs from this new release. I'll get to that eventually. But in the meantime, to celebrate this release, here's something else from the band from 1973.

In my opinion, the Rolling Stones in concert were at their peak in the early 1970s, while Mick Taylor was the band's lead guitarist. He left the band in 1974, so arguably 1973 is the peak of the Taylor years, since the band had the biggest repertoire of songs to draw from shortly before he left. (They toured in 1973, but not in 1974.) The most famous concert recording of the band from that year is called "The Brussels Affair." It was a very popular bootleg for decades, then was officially released in 2011. It's been included in the "Goat's Head Soup" deluxe edition as well.

That's a great concert. But I think this bootleg from Perth, Australia, is just as good. The set list is very similar, and both recordings are soundboards. But one sonic advantage this one has is that very little of the crowd can be heard. It's nice to hear some crowd response at the end of each song. But sometimes it's nice to have the clarity of the music and the banter between songs without the crowd noise.

The one flaw with this recording that probably stopped it from being more popular is that the last two songs were not included. The recording actually ends right as the third to last song, "Rip This Joint," finishes. All of that song is included, but nothing immediately afterwards. However, I've added the missing last two songs. Unfortunately, I didn't keep track of where they came from. (If anyone can figure it out, please let me know.) But I'm sure it was from another 1973 concert, probably from that same Australian leg of the tour.

01 Brown Sugar (Rolling Stones)
02 talk (Rolling Stones)
03 Bitch (Rolling Stones)
04 Rocks Off (Rolling Stones)
05 talk (Rolling Stones)
06 Gimme Shelter (Rolling Stones)
07 talk (Rolling Stones)
08 Happy (Rolling Stones)
09 talk (Rolling Stones)
10 Tumbling Dice (Rolling Stones)
11 talk (Rolling Stones)
12 Love in Vain (Rolling Stones)
13 talk (Rolling Stones)
14 Sweet Virginia (Rolling Stones)
15 talk (Rolling Stones)
16 You Can't Always Get What You Want (Rolling Stones)
17 Honky Tonk Woman (Rolling Stones)
18 All Down the Line (Rolling Stones)
19 talk (Rolling Stones)
20 Midnight Rambler (Rolling Stones)
21 talk - Happy Birthday (Rolling Stones)
22 Little Queenie (Rolling Stones)
23 talk (Rolling Stones)
24 Rip This Joint (Rolling Stones)
25 Jumpin' Jack Flash (Rolling Stones)
26 Street Fighting Man (Rolling Stones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701041/TROLLNGSTNES1973_WstAustrlinCricktGrundPrthAustrlia__2-24-1973_atse.zip.html

For the album cover art, I used a poster for the band's Australian leg of their 1973 tour. I thought it was more interesting than a photo of the band on stage. The poster was rectangular, as most posters are. I had to crop it pretty dramatically to get it into a square shape. In order to get all the most interesting parts to fit, I moved the text of the band's name down some. I also added the text at the bottom.

Grace Potter - Twilight Hour, Volume 3 - Home Concert, Topanga, CA, 5-18-2020

I've posted two home concerts from Grace Potter, so far. If you haven't heard them yet, you've been missing out, and this is a good opportunity to give her a try. She has a remarkable voice, is a talented songwriter, and is good on the keyboards and guitar to boot.

She did a home concert a week for several months. That's come to an end recently, because she's resumed doing live concerts. (In order for people to watch them while social distancing for the coronavius, they're being held at drive-in movie theaters, and people stay in their own cars!) The last album I posted here compiled two home concerts together, but this is just one concert that lasted 50 minutes.

This is roughly an even mix of covers and originals. The covers are "Dead Flowers" (the Rolling Stones), "Someday We'll Be Together" (the Supremes), "No Expectations" (the Rolling Stones), "Son of a Preacher Man" (Dusty Springfield), "I'll Take You There" (the Staple Singers), and "Cortez the Killer" (Neil Young). "Someday We'll Be Together" is actually a duet with Michael McDonald, former lead vocalist of the Doobie Brothers. Due to the virus, McDonald's vocals were done remotely and added to Potter's recording.

Don't be put off by all the originals. They're pretty good. Her albums have often had production issues, in my opinion, but the songs shine better in this live format. Most of the songs here are done with a band, but a very minimalist one, usually just Potter on guitar or keyboards, plus a drummer and lead guitarist. 

Often during these shows, Potter is winging it. I haven't included her failed experiments, where she starts a song and gives up on it after only singing a verse or so. (I also didn't include any of the extensive talking between songs.) But I did include one very rough take, "Son of a Preacher Man." She stops it before finishing, admitting that she'd never played it before. But I thought it was cooking before the end, so I kept it. By contrast, "Cortez the Killer" is a song she's done a lot in concert, and it's a definite highlight.

By the way, one of her originals, "Please," has a very strange ending. She'd done a duet with Michael McDonald the song before that, and she still had McDonald's gruff singing style on her mind. She jokingly ended the song singing a parody of his style. I thought it was fun, so I kept it in.

01 Tiny Light (Grace Potter)
02 Eachother (Grace Potter)
03 Dead Flowers (Grace Potter)
04 Someday We'll Be Together (Grace Potter with Michael McDonald)
05 Please (Grace Potter)
06 Daylight (Grace Potter)
07 2.22 (Grace Potter)
09 No Expectations (Grace Potter)
10 Son of a Preacher Man (Grace Potter)
11 I'll Take You There (Grace Potter)
12 Shout It Out (Grace Potter)
13 Cortez the Killer (Grace Potter)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15835981/GraceP_2020_TwilghtHourVolme3HmeConcrtTopangaCA__5-18-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from her Instagram account, and was taken during one of her home concerts.

The Pretty Things - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: 1971-1975

It's been a while since I posted anything from the Pretty Things, but I'm still at it. I've posted four stray tracks collections, one alternate version of an album ("Emotions"), and then two collections of BBC performances. Here's the third BBC collection.

This is also the last BBC album from the band that I'm planning on posting. In opinion, their best years were the 1960s into the early 1970s. Around 1972 or 1973, with drastic changes in the music world, they switched to more of a hard rock style. In my opinion, they did some good things in this new style, but were much more hit or miss. Then in the mid-1970s, the band fell apart for a few years, only to reunite again in the late 1970s, after changing styles again. So I'm only including some songs here, the ones I like. Also, the band's appearances at the BBC petered out after 1975, so this is the last of the BBC stuff I plan on posting from them.

Now, let me get to the music. As I said above, the band still had plenty of good new songs in this time period. Oftentimes in these years, the band had trouble with the production of its studio albums. In my opinion, the BBC performances are better, since its closer to the band in their natural element, performing live on stage. Most of the songs are from their new albums at the time, but they also played the classic "Route 66" and one of their earliest hits, "Rosalyn."

All but one of the songs here have been officially released. That one song is the first one.

01 In the Square - The Letter - Rain (Pretty Things)
02 Stone-Hearted Mama [Edit] (Pretty Things)
03 Cold Stone (Pretty Things)
04 Summertime (Pretty Things)
05 All Night Sailor (Pretty Things)
06 Rosalyn (Pretty Things)
07 [Get Your Kicks On] Route 66 (Pretty Things)
08 Religion's Dead (Pretty Things)
09 Havana Bound (Pretty Things)
10 Old Man Going (Pretty Things)
11 Bridge of God (Pretty Things)
12 Dream-Joey (Pretty Things)
13 Not Only but Also [Instrumental] (Pretty Things)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700886/TPRETTYTHGS1971-1975_BBSessonsVolum4_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is of the band playing in concert in 1974 in London. I cut off the organ player because he was way off to the side, and I would have had to make everything else much smaller to include him.

Norah Jones - Everybody Knows - Non-Album Tracks (2014-2016)

Norah Jones continues to be very busy with her home concerts, playing a mini-concert of four songs once a week pretty much without fail. I still have lots more of that to post. But I've been so busy posting home concerts that I've fallen behind with posting stray tracks collections from her. So here's the next one of those.

I think all the songs here are covers. This time around, she does a lot of famous songs by famous artists. For instance, she does two songs by George Harrison of the Beatles ("Behind that Locked Door" and "Something"), one song by Neil Young ("Down by the River"), a song by the Beach Boys ("God Only Knows"), a song by the Grateful Dead ("It Must Have Been the Roses"), and a song by Leonard Cohen ("Everybody Knows").

The sound quality is mostly excellent, but a couple are a bit rougher. Most of the songs are officially released and come from various artists compilations, or appearances on other artists' albums. But five of the songs are unreleased, and four of those come from concert bootlegs. It's a couple of the concert performances that are a bit rougher, especially "God Only Knows" and "Everybody Knows." But those are such great songs, and great performances, that I had to include them.

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 Behind that Locked Door (Norah Jones)
02 Down by the River (Puss N Boots featuring Norah Jones)
03 Something (Norah Jones)
04 La La Lu (Norah Jones)
05 Illusion (Keith Richards with Norah Jones)
06 Mean Ol' Moon (Norah Jones)
07 Don't Misunderstand (Norah Jones & Harold Mabern)
08 Fools Rush In (Norah Jones & Harold Mabern)
09 God Only Knows (Norah Jones)
10 It Must Have Been the Roses (Norah Jones)
11 Everybody Knows (Norah Jones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696747/NORHJNS2014-2016_EverybodyKnws_atse.zip.html

The album cover photo is of Jones playing at the City Winery in New York City in 2015.

Bob Marley & the Wailers - Aeroport du Bourget, Paris, France, 7-3-1980

There are lots of musical giants for whom I haven't posted any material from yet, or only a little. One example is Bob Marley. I'm only a moderate reggae fan in general, but how can anybody not be a Bob Marley fan? He's arguably the most well known musician on the planet, in large part due to his popularity in the Third World.

Marley and his band the Wailers were very good in concert. His most popular live albums generally were recorded in the mid-1970s. But I've always wanted a good recording from the last year he performed on stage, in 1980.

Before I continue, a little explanation of his personal history is necessary. Marley was diagnosed with a kind of skin cancer on his foot in 1977. He had some minor surgery, removing a toenail and some surrounding skin. For the next few years, he was fine. In 1980, he put out the album "Uprising" and then started a big world tour in the middle of the year. But in September 1980, his health took a drastic turn for the worse. He collapsed while jogging in New York City, and was taken to the hospital. It was discovered that his cancer had spread to his heart, lungs, and liver, and he was only given a month or two to live. Despite this, he put on a concert in Pittsburgh the next day. It was his last concert. He managed to hang on longer than expected, but he died in May 1981, at only the age of 36.

The reason I mention all that is because currently the only live album from 1980 is called "Live Forever," and it's taken from that very last concert he did in Pittsburgh. I think this was a terrible decision by the record company, because he didn't go out on a high note. For that show, his health clearly got to him, and he could barely make it through the show. I recommend do NOT listen to that album.

A much better way to remember his last year is to listen to a concert from earlier in the summer, when he was on tour in Europe. Luckily, there are multiple excellent soundboard bootlegs from that leg of the tour, especially shows in Milan, Italy, Zurich, Switzerland, Deeside, Britain, and Paris, France. I listened to all of them. The sound is fantastic on all of them, with the best of them equaling the sound on the live "Live Forever" album. For years, I had the Milan show in my collection. But just a few days ago, I found the Paris show, and I've decided that was the best one of all.

I think this could be my favorite Marley concert recording. Not only is the sound quality great, but I really like the set list. His 1980 shows have some of my favorite songs from the end of his career that the other official live albums don't have, such as "Redemption Song," "Coming In from the Cold," Could You Be Loved," and "Is This Love." It's much like a greatest hits overview of his entire musical career.

There were some problems with the recording, but I was able to fix them. One weird aspect of the recording was that one of the stereo channels was much louder than the other one. I edited each song to bring them to a better balance. I did still keep one channel a bit louder though, since that's the one where most of the lead vocals were.

Additionally, the song "Jammin'" was cut in the middle, with a minute or two missing. I did an edit to stitch the two parts together. Luckily, the break was in a spot where I don't think you'll notice anything missing at all. Also, there were a few seconds of feedback here and there on some of the later songs, especially "Could You Be Loved" and "Kinky Reggae." I was able to fix those by patching in music from elsewhere in the song.

Finally, the recording of the last song "Get Up, Stand Up," ended a couple of minutes before the song ended. I used the version of the song from the Milan concert to give that an ending. These only a few seconds of music from that version, but then a long applause from the crowd that fades out. It wasn't a good match musically, so I got it over with as quickly as possible to give the song a proper ending.

The Paris portion of the concert is an hour and 31 minutes long. Since I knew of three other excellent soundboards from the same tour, I checked to see if they had any different songs. The set list was pretty much the same from night to night, but he did throw in some variations. So I added two songs from the Zurich show to the very start of the album ("Talkin' Blues" and "We and Them"), and then one from the Deeside one as the third song ("Coming In from the Cold"). (The Milan show didn't have any songs not played in Paris.) If you add in those three extra songs, this album totals an hour and 44 minutes.

01 Talkin' Blues (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
02 talk (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
03 We and Them (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
04 Coming In from the Cold (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
05 talk (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
06 Positive Vibration (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
07 Revolution (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
08 I Shot the Sheriff (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
09 War - No More Trouble (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
10 Zimbabwe (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
11 Zion Train (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
12 talk (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
13 No Woman, No Cry (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
14 Lively Up Yourself (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
15 Jammin' [Edit] (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
16 Exodus (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
17 talk (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
18 Redemption Song (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
19 talk (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
20 Natty Dread (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
21 Work (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
22 Is This Love (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
23 Could You Be Loved (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
24 Roots, Rock, Reggae (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
25 Kinky Reggae (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
26 Get Up, Stand Up [Edit] (Bob Marley & the Wailers) 

https://www.imagenetz.de/jQGN9

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/zKtnFYDV

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/TIFAKtYQOhEC3iL/file

I'm happy to say that the cover art photo is from the exact concert in question.

Sheryl Crow - Home Concerts, West Nashville, TN, 3-18-2020 to 8-15-2020

So how has Sheryl Crow been keeping herself musically busy during the coronavirus pandemic? In terms of public output, she hasn't been nearly as productive as some others, for instance Norah Jones. But she has done some things here and there. It's taken six months, but I finally have enough material to post an acoustic home concert album from her.

The emphasis here is on "acoustic." Crow has generally posted two kinds of performances. One are the acoustic versions presented here. She did a bunch in the early days of the pandemic, generally posting them on her Facebook page. More recently, she's done a smaller number, usually for TV or Internet shows.

Two, she's posted full band performances. In them, she's involved a bunch of backing musicians, with everyone recording their parts remotely and then joining them together through audio software. I haven't included any of those for two reasons. One, if you've been following this blog, you probably know I'm an especially big fan of acoustic music, so I'm especially interested in those versions. But two, the full band performances are of songs already on her albums, and the versions are very close to the album versions, so I don't see much point to them.

It's different with these acoustic performances. A couple of them are covers of songs she's never done before. I'm especially thinking of "Willow Weep for Me," and "All You Need Is Love," the classic Beatles song. But her acoustic performances are nearly all just her, usually on guitar but sometimes on piano, and thus have to be vastly different than the album versions. So that makes them way more interesting, in my book.

One partial exception to that is her version of "All You Need Is Love." She overdubbed herself playing multiple instruments, and added her own backing vocals too. But I still consider it an acoustic performance since all the instruments are acoustic and the drumming is light. Even so, I put it at the end, out of chronological order, since it is a bit different than the others.

I almost didn't include the song "God Bless This Mess." The problem is that she recorded that one outside, and there was a ton of wind. I edited it some to patch in repetitive parts from less wind affected parts of the song. But I could only do so much, since some parts didn't repeat. In the end I decided to include it, since the sound quality is as good as the others, except for the occasional windy sections.

There is one bonus track, of her song "Home." It's a rare piano only version of the song, so it's worthy of inclusion. But unfortunately, the sound quality is poor. Thus it only makes it as a bonus track.

01 talk (Sheryl Crow)
02 Drunk with the Thought of You (Sheryl Crow)
03 talk (Sheryl Crow)
04 Weather Channel (Sheryl Crow)
05 talk (Sheryl Crow)
06 God Bless This Mess [Edit] (Sheryl Crow)
07 talk (Sheryl Crow)
08 The Difficult Kind (Sheryl Crow)
09 talk (Sheryl Crow)
10 Make It Go Away (Sheryl Crow)
11 I Shall Believe (Sheryl Crow)
12 talk (Sheryl Crow)
13 Flying Blind (Sheryl Crow)
14 talk (Sheryl Crow)
15 Beware of Darkness (Sheryl Crow)
16 talk (Sheryl Crow)
17 Willow Weep for Me (Sheryl Crow)
18 Leaving Las Vegas (Sheryl Crow)
19 All You Need Is Love (Sheryl Crow)

Home (Sheryl Crow)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15285298/SherylC_2020_HomeConcrtsWestNashvilleTN__3-18-2020_to_8-15-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover art is taken from her performance of "Beware of Darkness" (the George Harrison song) on the TV show "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."

Manfred Mann - Ragamuffin Man - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1969)

Here's the last of my stray tracks albums for Manfred Mann in the 1960s. At least, this ends the second version of the band. That version, lead by lead vocalist Mike d'Abo, broke up in mid-1969. Manfred Mann reformed later that year with two original members, becoming Manfred Mann Chapter 3. Then, a couple of years later, that turned into the Manfred Mann Earth Band. But that's a whole different story.

I'm very happy to be able to present this album, because it's so likely that it would even exist. After the music I put on the last Manfred Mann album in this series - the one I call "Cubist Town" but was mostly made up of their album "Mighty Garvey!" - the band only put out two singles before they broke up. The singles were "Fox on the Run" in late 1968 and "Ragamuffin Man" in early 1969. They were both moderate hits. But how does one turn a mere two singles into a whole album? There are NO other studio recordings from the band in that time frame, at least not that I know of.

The key, it turns out, is the BBC. Manfred Mann performed at the BBC quite a lot. Four of the songs here are the A- and B-sides to the two singles mentioned above. But another eight are from the BBC. And what's great about these is that while a couple are covers of famous songs, like "Fever" and "Abraham, Martin and John," most of them appear to be original songs that would have been totally lost to musical history except for the fact that they happened to have been performed on the BBC once. This is pretty close to being a genuine "lost album."

Why are there so many songs, and good songs, that were never released at the time? I don't know a whole lot about the history of the band, but my guess is that those songs were casualties of the band break-up. Probably, right when they had enough material to go record another album was when the group fell apart. Those songs remained unreleased all the way until 2019, when they were included on a compilation of the band's BBC performances called "Radio Days, Volume 2." 

What's crazy to me is that I saw a list of all the dates Manfred Mann played for the BBC, and at least half of the sessions have disappeared, since there are no known recordings of them. So it's quite possible that there were even more originals and/or interesting covers the band did in this time frame. Ironically, the band was blossoming as a creative force with original songs right as it fell apart.

One person who wrote a good portion of these new song was lead singer Mike d'Abo. And that leads me to the last song on this album. I find it very strange that in the late 1960s, the band got a lot of flak for having hits with cover versions instead of their own material. Yet d'Abo wrote two hits that the band never released at all! The first one is "Handbags and Gladrags," which I put on the 1968 stray tracks album "Up the Junction," since luckily the band played that once for the BBC. Rod Stewart had a hit with it instead.

The other d'Abo song Manfred Mann should have had a hit with is "Build Me Up Buttercup." This was a massive hit in 1968 for the Foundations. It was a number one hit in the US and a number two hit in Britain. Since d'Abo was the lead singer of Manfred Mann at the time, why the heck didn't his own band do the song?! To be honest, I don't know. But my guess is that the band was already starting to split. Band members Manfred Mann (the person, not the band) and Mike Hugg wanted to take the group in a more serious and "progressive" direction. That's exactly what they did with Manfred Mann Chapter Three. "Build Me Up Buttercup" was considered a light and poppy song, and probably was exactly what they were trying to move away from.

Anyway, I don't know of any Manfred Mann version that exists. But d'Abo did a solo version later. I'm not sure when exactly, because it wasn't released until many years later and I couldn't find good specific information. But I think it probably dates from 1970 or 1971. In any case, I've added it to the end as a rough idea of what a Manfred Mann version sung by d'Abo would have sounded like.

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 Fox on the Run (Manfred Mann)
02 Too Many People (Manfred Mann)
03 Fever (Manfred Mann)
04 Abraham, Martin and John (Manfred Mann)
05 So Long [Edit] (Manfred Mann)
06 Clair [Edit] (Manfred Mann)
07 Sentimental Sunday [Edit] (Manfred Mann)
08 Orange Peel [Instrumental] (Manfred Mann)
09 Ragamuffin Man (Manfred Mann)
10 A 'B' Side (Manfred Mann)
11 Oh What a Day [Edit] (Manfred Mann)
12 The Last Goodbye [Edit] (Manfred Mann)
13 Build Me Up Buttercup (Mike D'Abo)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696637/MANFRDMNN1968c-1969_RgamffinMn_atse.zip.html

The album cover is based on the cover for the "Ragamuffin Man" single. Unfortunately, back in those days, singles covers often looked worse than album covers, because they sometimes were quickly and cheaply thrown together. That was the case for this one, in my opinion. So I used that cover, but I tried to jazz it up a bit. I removed the record company logo, which had been prominently placed in the upper right corner, and caused the band name to be smaller to fit everything in. With the logo moved to the bottom left corner, I was able to stretch the band name all the way across the album. Also, the one color was an awful shade of green. I changed that into a mixture of green and blue, to create a slight psychedelic feel that fit the time period.

Roger Waters with Eric Clapton - Rosemont Horizon, Chicago, IL, 7-26-1984

Wouldn't it have been interesting if Eric Clapton took over from David Gilmour when Pink Floyd broke up, and soloed all over classic Pink Floyd songs? It turns out that's pretty much exactly what happened in 1984!

Pink Floyd had effectively broken up after the release of "The Final Cut" album in 1983, although the break wouldn't be official until 1985. Pink Floyd's main singer and songwriter Roger Waters released his solo album "The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking" in 1984 and went on tour to promote it. Surprisingly, Eric Clapton was hired to play lead guitar for the first leg of the tour, even though Clapton was more of a household name than Waters, and he was busy with his own successful solo career. I believe it's the first and only time in Clapton's long solo career that he played a whole tour as a supporting musician for someone else.

I'm posting this because I'm working on my own super-sized version of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" album, which should be coming soon. While working on that, I gave this bootleg concert another listen, and I was struck at how excellent the sound is. This is a pristine soundboard that sounds as good as any officially released album at the time.

Furthermore, the performance is excellent. The first half of the concert, which i two hour and four minutes long, consists entirely of Pink Floyd classics, played in rough chronological order. The second half features the entire "Pros and Cons" album played in the same order as the album. Personally, I think that album is merely good, not great. But I think it comes alive more in concert than on the studio album. But mostly, it's a blast hearing Clapton solo all over those songs, and especially the Pink Floyd classics in the first half of the show (as well as the encore).

For most of his long musical career, Waters has been big on putting on an audio-video spectacle for his concerts. For this tour, there was constant video footage playing behind the musicians, and various other special effects happening, so the music had to be choreographed carefully. As a result, there was very little musical variety from night to night. Clapton got bored of that, and left after only one leg of the tour. But luckily we have this one soundboard from that leg to give us a hint of what a Pink Floyd with Clapton in it would have sounded like.

01 Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
02 Money (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
03 If (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
04 Welcome to the Machine (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
05 Have a Cigar (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
06 Wish You Were Here (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
07 Pigs on the Wing, Part 1 (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
08 In the Flesh (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
09 Nobody Home (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
10 Hey You (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
11 The Gunner's Dream (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
12 talk (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
13 4-30 A.M. [Apparently They Were Travelling Abroad] (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
14 4-33 A.M. [Running Shoes] (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
15 4-37 A.M. [Arabs with Knives and West German Skies] (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
16 4-39 A.M. [For the First Time Today, Part 2] (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
17 4-41 A.M. [Sexual Revolution] (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
18 4-47 A.M. [The Remains of Our Love] (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
19 4-50 A.M. [Go Fishing] (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
20 4-56 A.M. [For the First Time Today, Part 1] (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
21 4-58 A.M. [Dunroamin, Duncarin, Dunlivin] (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
22 5-01 A.M. [The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking] (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
23 5-06 A.M. [Every Stranger's Eyes] (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
24 5-11 A.M. [The Moment of Clarity] (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
25 talk (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
26 Brain Damage (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)
27 Eclipse (Roger Waters with Eric Clapton)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/pftEbz1V

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/KDEZPbIElLy5B3P/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/fcjLF

The cover art photo shows Waters and Clapton on stage during Waters' 1984 tour. (Waters is much closer to the camera, playing bass.) I don't know which concert it's from exactly.

Pink Floyd's The Wall

 I haven't posted much here in recent days, but ironically, I've spent more time working on music stuff for this blog than ever before. For the past week or so, I've been working really hard to put together a super-sized version of "The Wall" album by Pink Floyd. By using songs from "The Final Cut" album and other bits and pieces, I've doubled the length of the album! I'm pretty much done, and I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

But I'm putting a lot of extra care into this, and before I post it here, I'd like to get some feedback. So if you're a big Pink Floyd fan and you definitely would give your feedback to an early listen, post your email and I'll send it to you. Otherwise, wait a few days and the final version should be posted here.

Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren - Sunday Mornings with Elle and Toni, Volume 4: 2017-2018

Here's more from the fabulous acoustic duo Elle Cordova and Toni Lindgren, because I still have so many more albums to post from them. As I've mentioned previously, they release a new performance on YouTube every Sunday morning, and they've been doing it very regularly for years. Sometimes they do originals in that series, but this series just collects their covers. Almost always, it's just the two of them and their acoustic guitars.

On thing I really like about this series is that it's an appealing mix of well-known classics and obscure gems. Sure, everybody knows "You Make Loving Fun" by Fleetwood Mac or "Mercedes Benz" by Janis Joplin, but I'll best most of you have never heard the songs they do here by Charlie Parr, Norman Blake, the Magnetic Fields, and so on. And I'm tickled pink they took the theme song to the "Inspector Gadget" TV show and turned it into a bluegrass hoedown!

If you haven't checked them out yet, why not give 'em a try?

This album is 43 minutes long.

Here's a list of the artists who made these songs famous:

01 Over the Red Cedar - Charlie Parr
02 Misirlou [Instrumental] - Jan August / Dick Dale
03 You Belong to Me - Jo Stafford / Patti Page
04 You Make Loving Fun - Fleetwood Mac
05 One Fine Day - Chiffons
06 Dooley - Dillards
07 Church Street Blues - Norman Blake
08 Dear Someone - Gillian Welch
09 All My Little Words - Magnetic Fields
10 Tennessee Jed - Grateful Dead
11 Inspector Gadget Theme [Instrumental] - Shuki Levy
12 Faded Love - Bob Wills
13 Mercedes Benz - Janis Joplin
14 She's Got You - Patsy Cline
15 Praise You - Fat Boy Slim

Here's the usual song list:

01 Over the Red Cedar (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
02 Misirlou [Instrumental] (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
03 You Belong to Me (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
04 You Make Loving Fun (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
05 One Fine Day (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
06 Dooley (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren & Josh Turner)
07 Church Street Blues (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
08 Dear Someone (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
09 All My Little Words (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
10 Tennessee Jed (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
11 Inspector Gadget Theme [Instrumental] (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
12 Faded Love (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
13 Mercedes Benz (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
14 She's Got You (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
15 Praise You (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17363679/ELLECRDVATNILINDRN2017-2018SndyMrnngswthEllTniVlum4_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Lwrf4waw

The cover art is a screenshot from one of the duo's YouTube videos.

Manfred Mann - Cubist Town - Non-Album Tracks (1968)

In 2018, a person named Joe Wiltshire wrote a blog post about a supposed lost classic 1968 album by Manfred Mann called "Cubist Town." He gave a short history about the album and provided a song list for it. You can read that here:

http://www.fuzzdandy.co.uk/blog/2018/07/13/manfred-mann-cubist-town-1968-lost-album/

As it so happens, none of that is true. It was just a clever idea to highlight some of the more creative and lesser known songs Manfred Mann did at the time.  However, I read that blog post, and it helped inspire me to take Manfred Mann more seriously. I realized there very easily could have been an excellent 1968 album by the band if they'd done a better job of song selection. This album is not the same as Wiltshire's version. About half of the songs I've included are different. But I liked the album title, so I've used that.

In my opinion, the band was hitting a creative peak around this time. Most of the band members were writing songs, and they were generally very good ones, and very much in keeping with the musical zeitgeist of the era, which is probably my favorite musical era. So they should have knocked their main 1968 studio album out of the park. (They'd released a movie soundtrack earlier in the year that was mostly composed of instrumentals.)

However, the album they did release - "Mighty Garvey!" - was very problematic. It had a bad title, bad artwork, and most importantly, bad song selection. Nearly every song the band did in the 1960s was at least decent, in my opinion. But this album had some clunkers. One was the song "Happy Families." It wasn't much of a song to begin with, but for some inexplicable reason the album included THREE different versions of it. All three were jokey (but not actually funny) piss takes on different musical genres. The tone of these songs clashed drastically with most everything else on the album, and ruined the overall mood. 

I've chosen to only include one of the three. That one is a kind of jazz lounge parody. In my opinion, it is strikingly similar to "You Know the Name (Look Up the Number)" by the Beatles, but a lot shorter (thank God). The Beatles recorded their version in 1967 but didn't release it until it came out as a B-side in 1970, so the similarities are almost certainly coincidental.

I didn't include another song, "Big Betty." This "original" in fact is a rip-off of the famous Leadbelly song "Black Betty." I find it an embarrassment. Furthermore, it's musically out of step with the rest of the album. I also didn't include "Ha Ha Said the Clown," because it was an old single by the time the album came out, and it fit better on a stray tracks compilation I've already posted. It also was out of step with the rest of the album. So, by removing those two songs by the two other versions of "Happy Families," the album got a lot better.

After I removed those songs, the album was only 28 minutes long, which is too short for an album. So I added four non-album tracks at the end. Two of those, "You've Got It Made" and "The Letter," were only ever recorded for the BBC, so I've used the BBC versions. For "The Letter," which is a cover of the famous Box Tops hit, I edited out a BBC DJ talking over the intro. The other two songs I added are the A- and B-sides to the "My Name Is Jack" single.

So, after all that, what do we have left? Once again, like the last album by the band that I posted ("Up the Junction") it's an album that's strikingly similar to what the Hollies were doing at the time. Both bands were mainly pop bands at the time, but they were influenced by psychedelic music, so there are some touches of that, but nothing that was full-blown psychedelia. 

I think it's a strong album. It contains two big hits that were written by others, "The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)" by Bob Dylan, and "My Name Is Jack." "The Mighty Quinn" was a number one hit in Britain and many other countries, and a top ten hit in the US, while "My Name Is Jack" was a top ten hit in Britain. I'm pretty sure those two songs, plus "The Letter," were the only covers.

Manfred Mann didn't release much more than two singles in late 1968 and early 1969 before they broke up and then reformed as almost a totally different band later in 1969. However, it turns out they recorded enough songs for another album. So I have one last album to go before my Manfred Mann series is over.

01 No Better No Worse (Manfred Mann)
02 Every Day Another Hair Turns Grey (Manfred Mann)
03 Country Dancing (Manfred Mann)
04 It's So Easy Falling (Manfred Mann)
05 Happy Families [with Ed Garvey and the Trio] (Manfred Mann)
06 The Mighty Quinn [Quinn the Eskimo] (Manfred Mann)
07 The Vicar's Daughter (Manfred Mann)
08 Each and Every Day [Day Time, Night Time] (Manfred Mann)
09 Cubist Town (Manfred Mann)
10 Harry the One-Man-Band (Manfred Mann)
11 You've Got It Made (Manfred Mann)
12 The Letter [Edit] (Manfred Mann)
13 My Name Is Jack (Manfred Mann)
14 There Is a Man (Manfred Mann)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696646/MANFRDMNN1968b_CubstTwn_atse.zip.html

I'm very happy with how this album cover art turned out. If you don't know, "cubist" is the name for a style of abstract painting in the early 1900s. So I thought the ideal cover would be of a maze-like town done in the cubist style. I Googled the phrase "cubist town," and discovered the painting that I used here. You can see where I got it here:

http://epiclone.blogspot.com/2013/03/gazebo-updates.html

I think that was done by someone by the name of Treble who hasn't posted since 2013. In any case, that painting is rectangular, so I had to crop it to make it fit into a square album cover space. I actually like it even better cropped. It's pretty much exactly what I had in my mind's eye, so thank you Treble! It's about a million times better than the cover for "Mighty Garvey!" Google that if you want to see some bad album art, and one that was especially out of touch with 1968 trends.

Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren - Sunday Mornings with Elle and Toni, Volume 3: 2017

I've already posted two albums of acoustic covers by Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren. To reiterate what I've said with those past albums, this singer-songwriter duo has put out a bunch of albums of original material, but in addition to that, they've also been posting one new video on YouTube per week for years, and the vast majority of those have been covers. I've been collecting them and posting them here. I hope you like them, because I do, and there's a lot more where those came from.

If you liked the previous albums in this series, you'll like this one too. Elle Cordova does all the lead vocals, and while her voice is low key instead of dramatic and high ranged, there's something about it that I find compelling and distinctive. Toni Lindgren adds a lot with her tasty lead guitar, as well as backing vocals.

One thing I really like about this duo is the range and quality of their cover choices. Most of the songs are well known classics, but it seems there are always some obscure gems I'd missed on each album. And how many musicians who mostly do folky songs would have the chutspah to cover KC and the Sunshine Band as well?

This album is 43 minutes long.

01 Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry
02 What Would I Do - Ray Charles
03 Sugaree - Grateful Dead
04 Irish Rover - J. M. Crofts
05 Engine Trouble - Last Revel
06 I've Been All Around This World [Hang Me, Oh Hang Me] - traditional
07 Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard - Paul Simon
08 Ain't No Sunshine - Bill Withers
09 Slip Slide on By - Valerie June
10 Boogie Shoes - KC & the Sunshine Band
11 Dream a Little Dream of Me - Ozzie Nelson / Mamas & the Papas
12 Coconut - Harry Nilsson
13 Brandy [You're a Fine Girl] - Looking Glass
14 Wildflowers - Tom Petty
15 Ginseng Sullivan - Norman Blake / Tony Rice Unit

Here's the usual song list:

01 Johnny B. Goode (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
02 What Would I Do (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
03 Sugaree (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
04 Irish Rover (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
05 Engine Trouble (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren with the Last Revel)
06 I've Been All Around This World [Hang Me, Oh Hang Me] (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
07 Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
08 Ain't No Sunshine (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
09 Slip Slide on By (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
10 Boogie Shoes (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
11 Dream a Little Dream of Me (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
12 Coconut (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
13 Brandy [You're a Fine Girl] (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
14 Wildflowers (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
15 Ginseng Sullivan (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16534282/ELLECRDVATNILINDRN2017SndyMrnngswthEllTniVlum3_atse.zip.html

The cover art is a screenshot from their performance of "Brandy." They recorded the song while Cordova drove their van! I wonder if that was kind of a tribute to Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers and their videos of cover songs recording in a van that was being driven at the time. (If you like this, you should check them out as this blog well.)

Glenn Tilbrook - Quarantine Songs (2020)

Just as a reminder, Glenn Tilbrook is the lead singer of Squeeze, and has cowritten virtually all of their songs. As I write this, Squeeze is still together, though they have a long history of breaking up, then getting back together. Instead of taking the more common approach of making videos of acoustic performances during the coronavirus lockdown, he's put out one new song a week using a full band. Apparently it was all done remotely with musical associates (none of whom seem to have been other Squeeze members).

Tilbrook started posting videos of these songs in mid-April 2020. Three weeks ago (late July), he announced that week's song would be the last one of the series. Since then there hasn't been anything new from him, so I figure it's okay to post this and consider it the complete collection. As you'll see below, all of the performances are covers. It's a pretty strange bunch of songs, even though most are famous and have a poppy sound. I suspect the only commonality is that they were songs Tilbrook liked and had fun performing. He could put them out for free on the Internet without having to worry about sales figures or critical reviews or the like.

All the songs are presented in the order he posted them on-line. This matters, because he claims that most of the songs have a musical clue to what the next song in the series would be. For instance, the guitar solo in the first song "Hackensack" makes a reference to the melody in the second song, "Jerusalem." And since I'm mentioning "Jerusalem," note that that's an instrumental backing track from the 1910s that backs a poem written by William Blake from the 1800s. He was inspired to play it after hearing it in an obscure movie from the 1930s!

The songs add up to 49 minutes, which is a pretty ideal length for an album.

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

01 Hackensack - Fountains of Wayne
02 Jerusalem [Instrumental] - Sir Hubert Perry
03 My Boy Lollipop - Millie Small
04 Jesus Was a Cross Maker - Judee Sill
05 I Must Be in a Good Place Now - Bobby Charles
06 Wichita Lineman - Glen Campbell
07 Everyday People - Sly & the Family Stone
08 I Do Not Miss You - Steve Nieve
09 She's Gone - Hall & Oates
10 Dolly My Love - Moments
11 Don't You Want Me - Human League
12 Cruel - Millions
13 BHS - Sleaford Mods
14 Lovely Day - Bill Withers
15 Wonderful - Beach Boys

Here's the usual song list:

01 Hackensack (Glenn Tilbrook)
02 Jerusalem [Instrumental] (Glenn Tilbrook)
03 My Boy Lollipop (Glenn Tilbrook)
04 Jesus Was a Cross Maker (Glenn Tilbrook)
05 I Must Be in a Good Place Now (Glenn Tilbrook)
06 Wichita Lineman (Glenn Tilbrook)
07 Everyday People (Glenn Tilbrook)
08 I Do Not Miss You (Glenn Tilbrook)
09 She's Gone (Glenn Tilbrook)
10 Dolly My Love (Glenn Tilbrook)
11 Don't You Want Me (Glenn Tilbrook)
12 Cruel (Glenn Tilbrook)
13 BHS (Glenn Tilbrook)
14 Lovely Day (Glenn Tilbrook)
15 Wonderful (Glenn Tilbrook)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15328304/GlnnTilbrk_2020_QuarntineSngs_atse.zip.html

The cover art uses a screenshot from one of the song's videos.

Paul Weller - Home Concerts, London, Britain, 3-29-2020 to 6-11-2020

During the coronavirus pandemic, some musicians have pleasantly surprised me at how prolific they've been, such as Norah Jones, Neil Finn, Melissa Etheridge, and Grace Potter. Others have disappointed me with their relative inactivity, including Beck, Pete Townshend, the Posies, Aimee Mann, etc... 

One who has mostly disappointed me is Paul Weller. It's not that he's been completely inactive, but given what a musically hyperactive guy he is, I've expected more. And the acoustic format fits him like a glove. Furthermore, he's had a great new album to promote, "On Sunset," which came out in early June 2000. But he hasn't done a single home concert of any length, as far as I know.

Happily, he has played one or two acoustic songs here and there during the virus lockdown. I've gathered all that he's done (not including multiple versions of the same song), and made this album out of them. It's a bit short, at only 38 minutes. I had been waiting for him to do at least another song or two, so I could have about 45 minutes, which is an ideal album length. But I've waited two months and he hasn't done any new songs in that time. So I'm posting this now. If he does play a bit more in the acoustic format relatively soon, I'll add that to this album when it's available.

I'm guessing the reason that Weller hasn't been that prolific with acoustic performances is because he's been in a rocking mood lately. His new album "On Sunset" is excellent, but it also rocks in a way that needs a full band for most songs. Thus, it's not surprising that only two songs here, "Village" and "More," are from the new album. The rest are generally tracks from his very deep solo discography. There's only one surprise cover version, the Elvis Presley classic "Can't Help Falling in Love."

All the performances are unreleased, as one would expect for something so recent. The vast majority were done for radio shows or Internet shows.

01 Wishing Well (Paul Weller)
02 Mayfly (Paul Weller)
03 Light Nights (Paul Weller)
04 Can’t Help Falling in Love (Paul Weller)
05 Clues (Paul Weller)
06 Amongst Butterflies (Paul Weller)
07 Beautiful Blue (Paul Weller)
08 More (Paul Weller)
09 talk (Paul Weller)
10 Your Balloon Is Rising (Paul Weller)
11 Village (Paul Weller)
12 The Ballad of Jimmy McCabe (Paul Weller)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16013641/PaulW_2020_HomeConcrtsLondnBritain__3-29-2020_to_6-11-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover art uses a screenshot from one of the performances here. I believe he was playing "Village" at the time.

Sheryl Crow - Leaning in a New Direction (Edited Song) (2013)

Sometimes, things come together so nicely that it's downright uncanny. This is one of those times. ;)

Today, a song on my SoulseekQT "wish list" appeared and I was able to download it. It's a Sheryl Crow song from 2013 called "Leaning in a New Direction." It's a very good, poppy song, and I'm guessing it's one she wrote. I could even see it being a hit. But unfortunately, it was never released at all. It was shown in the comedy movie "The Hot Flashes." The file I found on SoulseekQT was simply an audio recording of that scene from the movie.

Unfortunately, as sometimes happens, the song playing was just one thing happening in the movie scene. I haven't seen the video myself, but there were all sorts of other sounds going on in the audio, especially different people talking. At more than one point in the song, the music volume dropped way down so the talking could be the main focus. Upon first listen, I thought the audio might be unsalvageable.

But I got lucky, very, very lucky. It turns out nearly all the talking parts took place during the chorus, which was repeated three times. All three choruses had lots of talking over them. But by combining the best bits from the three different choruses, I was able to make one good one. Then I replaced all three of them with the better version. There were some other parts of the song with talking or other annoying noises. But, amazingly, virtually all of them were in instrumental parts or vocal lines that were repeated elsewhere. Some more audio cutting and pasting took care of those.

So here's the fixed version. Is it perfect? Definitely not. You can still hear some stray noises and talking here and there. But I'm downright shocked at how well it turned out, considering how bad it sounded at first. I plan on posting this in one of the future Sheryl Crow stray tracks albums I'll be posting here, but it'll be a while before I get that far chronologically into her career, so I thought I'd post it here today.

https://www.upload.ee/files/15239463/SherylC_LeannginNewDirctionSongEdit.zip.html

Pink Floyd - Oakland Coliseum, Oakland, CA, 5-9-1977

Slowly but surely, I've been posting what I consider to be the best and most important Pink Floyd live performances. Most of those were performed at or for the BBC, but this one is not. I consider it just as much of a "must have" as the BBC ones.

In 1977, Pink Floyd toured to promote the album they put out that year, "Animals." It wasn't as popular as some of their other albums, since it didn't have any obvious hit singles (or even songs short enough to be easily played on the radio), but I consider it one of their very best. So it's key to have a good concert from 1977, both for the "Animals" songs, since they played that entire album, but also for the "Wish You Were Here" songs, since they played that entire 1975 album too. And they played three more songs at the end on top of that. (Note that the 1974 BBC concert I posted has most of the "Animals" songs, but they were early versions with different titles and different lyrics.)

There aren't many songs in this concert, but most of the songs are long, with lots of great soloing. The album is two hours and 20 minutes (or 147 minutes) long. I added up the lengths of all the studio versions of the songs, and that totaled 107 minutes. So you basically get 40 extra minutes of solos. There's virtually no between song banter, except for the occasional sentence here and there.

The one snag with 1977 Pink Floyd concert bootlegs is that there are no decent soundboards that have leaked to the public. But the Oakland show here is widely considered the best of the audience bootlegs. In my opinion the sound is excellent, just as good as many soundboards I've heard from other bands. If anyone knows of a better sounding 1977 Pink Floyd show, please let me know.

My interest in live Pink Floyd pretty much comes to an end after this. They only did a small number of concerts to promote their 1979 album "The Wall," and the best of those have been released as an official life album. After that, the band didn't play live again until after band leader Roger Waters left, and my interest in the David Gilmour-led version of the band is much lower. But I'll still post more of the "classic" (1960s to early 1980s) version of the band by and by.

01 Sheep (Pink Floyd)
02 Pigs on the Wing, Part 1 (Pink Floyd)
03 Dogs (Pink Floyd)
04 Pigs on the Wing, Part 2 (Pink Floyd)
05 Pigs [Three Different Ones] (Pink Floyd)
06 Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Parts 1-5 (Pink Floyd)
07 Welcome to the Machine (Pink Floyd)
08 Have a Cigar (Pink Floyd)
09 Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd)
10 Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Parts 6-9 (Pink Floyd)
11 Money (Pink Floyd)
12 Us and Them (Pink Floyd)
13 Careful with that Axe, Eugene (Pink Floyd)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/dYdunqJu

alternate:

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

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/fNXgr

The album cover art is made out of two main pieces. The photograph is of the band actually playing at Oakland in the very concert posted here, I'm happy to say. Unfortunately, David Gilmour was way off to the side, and I had to crop him out of the photo. I've added the band name in huge lettering. This comes from a photo I found of an official concert T-shirt from the 1977 tour. I liked the flying pig inside the band's name, so I added that to the cover.

Manfred Mann - Up the Junction - Alternate Version (1968)

Manfred Mann didn't release a studio album in Britain in 1967. But in early 1968, they released this one. Technically, it's name is "Manfred Mann Go Up the Junction," but I just call it "Up the Junction." It was an unusual album for them, because it was the soundtrack for a movie by the same name. But this album is very different to that one. I didn't include some songs, and added a bunch more. Only five out of the 14 songs here are exactly the same as on the 1968 release. Personally, I think this one is much better.

As I've previously mentioned for earlier Manfred Mann, most of the guys in the band were really jazz musicians who got into rock because that's where the fame, fortune, and excitement mainly was in the 1960s. When they were given the chance to record a movie soundtrack, it's not surprising they filled it mostly with jazzy instrumentals. Unfortunately, in my opinion, most of those sound like boring Muzak, so I haven't included them. I did include the two instrumentals I liked the best, which are more actually jazzy than the others.

But the soundtrack does have its charms. There are a few good songs with vocals, and I've included all of those. The best of the bunch is the title song. Personally, this might be my favorite Manfred Mann song of all. It was only a minor hit, but in a better world it would have been a big one. However, the version of it I've included here is actually unreleased. There's a bootleg out there of pristine studio outtakes by the band, and this version is from that. It's similar to the released version, but has some more psychedelic touches. I've included it instead because I think it's better. It also was written by them, showing yet again they were much more than just hit makers of cover songs.

The first six songs here are from the soundtrack, if you include the unreleased version of the title song. The rest all come from different sources but were recorded around the same time, in late 1967 or early 1968. Most of these weren't officially released at the time, but came out as bonus tracks decades later. That's a shame, because they're all as good as the stuff that was released. 

The last three songs are all from BBC performances. Apparently, no studio versions of these were ever done, so we're lucky to have the BBC recordings. I find it baffling that Manfred Mann never recorded "Handbags and Gladrags" other than this BBC version, because it was written by one of the band members. Instead, Rod Stewart recorded it, and his version is known as a minor classic. By the way, I edited this version to remove a BBC DJ talking over the beginning of it.

Probably, the late 1960s are my favorite time period for music. I feel Manfred Mann was really hitting its stride around this time, because these songs have that special late 1960s feel. This sounds very much like a Hollies album from the same time period, and I think this album was just as good as one of those.

The one bonus track here is the officially released version of the "Up the Junction" title track. As I said, I like the unreleased version better, but I'm including it for completeness's sake.

01 Theme from 'Up the Junction' [Alternate Version] (Manfred Mann)
02 Sing Songs of Love (Manfred Mann)
03 Sheila's Dance [Instrumental] (Manfred Mann)
04 Walking Around (Manfred Mann)
05 Just for Me (Manfred Mann)
06 Belgravia [Instrumental] (Manfred Mann)
07 I Think It's Gonna Rain Today (Manfred Mann)
08 Budgie (Manfred Mann)
09 Sitting Alone in the Sunshine (Manfred Mann)
10 Please Mrs. Henry (Manfred Mann)
11 Sleepy Hollow (Manfred Mann)
12 She's a Woman (Manfred Mann)
13 Summertime [Instrumental] (Manfred Mann)
14 Handbags and Gladrags [Edit] (Manfred Mann)

Theme from 'Up the Junction' (Manfred Mann)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696639/MANFRDMNN1968a_UpJnctionAltrnate_atse.zip.html

The album cover is basically the official cover released in 1968. But I made a couple of minor changes. The biggest was I changed the text "Manfred Mann Go Up the Junction" to just "Manfred Mann" and "Up the Junction."