Grace Potter - Twilight Hour, Volume 4 - Home Concert, Topanga, CA, 5-25-2020 to 6-1-2020

It's been a while since I've posted any home concerts from Grace Potter, so here's the next one. 

This album follows the same contours as the previous ones. Namely, it was a "roll with the punches" kind of performance, where she was trying things out, sometimes for the very first time. So I haven't included everything she did. Sometimes she would start a song, only get a minute or so into it, then abandon the effort. I generally haven't included those. The songs I have included are usually the ones she knew better and are all strong performances. But to gather enough to include, I compiled two home concerts one week apart into this one album.

Also like earlier home concerts, this contains a mix of originals and covers. The covers include "Dreamweaver" by Gary Wright, "Foxy Lady" by Jimi Hendrix, "The Ballroom Blitz" by Sweet, "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen, "Blowin' in the Wind," by Bob Dylan, "On the Turning Away" by Pink Floyd, and "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon and Garfunkel. 

Unfortunately, there's a problem with "Bohemian Rhapsody." During the rocking section near the end, her microphone didn't work, so while she was singing, her voice can barely be heard. But still, the performance was strong enough overall that I decided to include it. 

The first show here, which included the first seven songs on this album, had a loose "Wayne's World" theme. That explains some of the song choices, such as "Dreamweaver" and "Bohemian Rhapsody." She had two band members helping her out on most of the songs, with drums and lead guitar. They actually dressed up to look like Wayne and Garth from the "Wayne's World" movies.

After this album, I still have four more home concert albums from her to post. She stopped doing home concerts in August 2020, because she found a way to resume touring despite the coronavirus pandemic: she plays solo acoustic concerts to people sitting in their cars in drive-in theaters.

This concert is an hour and six minutes long.

01 Stars (Grace Potter)
02 Dreamweaver (Grace Potter)
03 Nothing but the Water - Foxy Lady (Grace Potter)
04 Stop the Bus (Grace Potter)
05 Ah Mary (Grace Potter)
06 The Ballroom Blitz (Grace Potter)
07 Bohemian Rhapsody (Grace Potter)
08 Blowin' in the Wind (Grace Potter)
09 Ain't No Time (Grace Potter)
10 On the Turning Away (Grace Potter)
11 Colors (Grace Potter)
12 Empty Heart (Grace Potter)
13 Low Road (Grace Potter)
14 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Grace Potter)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15844970/GraceP_2020_TwilghtHourVolme4HmeConcrtTopangaCA__5-25-2020_to_6-1-2020_atse.zip.html

In the past, I've made album covers out of chalkboard drawings Potter has made to promote her home concerts. That's the case here again. I like her artistic style.

Merry Clayton - SOUL!, WNET Studios, New York City, 3-8-1972

By chance, I'm posting this right after posting an album by Dana Gillespie. But I'm glad at the coincidence, because in a better world both of them would have been big stars. They certainly had the talent. If you know Merry Clayton at all, you probably know the fact that she's the female singer who sings some truly amazing vocals on "Gimme Shelter," the classic Rolling Stones song. But she's done a lot more than that.

Vocally, Clayton is very much in the mold of classic Aretha Franklin. She's as soulful as it gets, and she can belt a song out like a diva. She put out two songs in the early 1970s that I highly recommend: "Gimme Shelter" in 1970, and "Merry Clayton" in 1971. But her music career faltered after that. She's continued to sing for decades, but she's only put out three more albums.

So what happened? There are answers to that question in the 2013 documentary film "20 Feet from Stardom," an Academy award winning film about back-up singers. Basically, to make it as a star, you need luck, drive, ambition, charisma, looks, and other key factors. Sheer talent isn't enough. Clayton had all the talent in the world, but lacked some of those other things. So she mostly made a living being a back-up singer. 

You can read more about her at her Wikipedia entry here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merry_Clayton

I'm mostly interested in her career in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Those were peak years for soul music in general, so it's not surprising she was firing on all cylinders then too. I plan on posting a stray tracks album for her from that time. But first, I want to post this live album, because I think it's a good intro for those who aren't familiar with her material.

Because Clayton never became a major artist, we're lucky that there's an live recordings of her from those early years at all. There are basically no bootlegs to speak of, and only a couple of officially released live songs. But thankfully she played a mini-concert on the early 1970s TV show "Soul!" and someone uploaded that to YouTube. I converted that to mp3s. 

Unfortunately, it's not the full show. That's clear, because the last song got cut off. (I didn't include the incomplete song, because there wasn't much of it.) If anyone has the rest, please let me know, so I can present all of it. There are only 24 minutes here from that show. But what there is certainly shows that she had the talent to go toe to toe with Aretha or any other female soul singer of the time. I especially like her cover of Neil Young's "Southern Man." Hearing the song sung by a black person puts it in a different light and adds greatly to its emotional power.

Since what we have of the "Soul!" show is relatively short, I tried to add to it with other live songs by her. But the pickings were extremely slim. I found two songs she did for the Big Sur Folk Festival in 1970. Luckily, those made it to the official album of that concert. I also found a bootleg containing her singing just one song, "Acid Queen," since it was part of bunch of musicians singing the different parts to the Who's concept album "Tommy."

All those songs are from 1970 or 1972. At the end of the album, I've included a song from much, much later, 1989. But I feel it fits in well, because it's a song she did on her 1971 album "Merry Clayton." So it's highly likely she would have played it in 1972. By the way, the song is "Steamroller," which is a cover of a James Taylor song.

One weird thing is that pretty much all the songs had the audience applause cut short. So I did some editing to all the ends of songs to give them more reasonable audience reactions.

The album is 44 minutes long.

01 The Times They Are A-Changin' (Merry Clayton)
02 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Merry Clayton)
03 After All This Time (Merry Clayton)
04 Grandma's Hands - Amazing Grace - Grandma's Hands (Merry Clayton)
05 Southern Man (Merry Clayton)
06 Love Me or Let Me Be Lonely (Merry Clayton)
07 The Acid Queen (Merry Clayton)
08 Steamroller (Merry Clayton)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15284283/MerryClay_1972_SoulWNETStdiosNewYrkC__3-8-1972_atse.zip.html

You may notice this album cover looks very similar to one for an Al Green album I posted. That's because both concerts were played at the same place, for the same TV show, about one year apart. The font for the "Soul!" title was exactly that way for the show, so I figured I would just use that same font and such again.

The photo though, obviously is different than the Al Green one. It was taken in London in 1972.

Dana Gillespie - Light Up - Non-Album Tracks (1965-1971)

I'm very delighted to post this album. For one thing, I think Dana Gillespie's 1960s  musical career is very underrated, and I hope to turn more people onto her stuff. For another, I've found a bunch of very nice unreleased songs that haven't ever even been bootlegged before, so I'm particularly happy to share those here.

First, let me explain who Gillespie is, in case you don't know. She started out as a folk singer in the mid-1960s when she was only in her mid teens. She stuck out for both her beauty and musical talent. She put out a folk pop album in 1968, "Foolish Seasons," that had her backed by the likes of Donovan, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones. She put out a similar album in 1969, "Box of Surprises," in which she wrote all the songs, and was backed by Savoy Brown. I recommend both.

Apparently, she was David Bowie's first girlfriend, when he was 16 and she was only 14. They stayed friends, and he wrote the song "Andy Warhol" for her. He also produced some of her 1973 album "Weren't Born a Man." After that album, which was mostly rocking, plus another one in 1974, she didn't put out any music for quite a while. Then she reemerged in the 1980s singing the blues. She's put out dozens of blues albums since then, and is still going at 71 years old (as I write this in 2020). She also speaks several languages, including Sanskrit, of all things, and she's put out over a dozen albums of religious music sung in Sanskrit!

Here's her Wikipedia page, if you want to know more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Gillespie

I've never gotten into her blues music (at least not yet). But, as I said above, I especially like her two 1960s albums. This is meant as a stray tracks complement to them. 

This album is musically divided into three different parts. The first six songs are A- and B-sides to three early singles that don't appear on any of her albums. She wrote the B-sides but not the A-sides.

The next seven songs are all unreleased. In 2018, someone posted a bunch of previously unknown acetates on YouTube, including some from Gillespie. But unfortunately, this person wanted to make money selling the acetates at an auction, so only a portion of each song was played, typically about a minute and a half. Every single song got cut off before it was finished. 

I thought the Gillespie songs were pretty good, and very much in keeping with the style of her 1968 and 1969 albums. She's said in interviews that she wrote many songs at the time, but only two were allowed on her first album. It was her first album, and she was shy to push hard for her own songs at the time. So I strongly suspect that most or all of these acetate songs are the originals that she wanted to put on that album. The timing certainly fits. 

But there's the problem of the songs being incomplete. So I did my best to complete them. Luckily, in most cases, the person who posted them to YouTube let them play through a verse, a chorus, and then a second verse. So usually I repeated the chorus once or twice to fill it out and bring it to an end. But each song was a different case. In a couple of instances, I only had one verse and chorus to work with, so I just repeated the verse and chorus again. But I also did things like repeating an instrumental section for a fade out.

I don't actually know how any of these songs really end. But hopefully I've filled them out enough to make them a satisfying listen. Maybe someday the full versions will finally emerge. Somebody bought them, so the full versions are out there somewhere.

But there was another problem. Acetates aren't like regular records. Typically, they're made of cheaper material and are much more disposable. If they get played a lot, the sound quality degrades rapidly. That was the case here. All of the songs had lots of pops and scratches, especially at the beginnings of the songs. I used by very limited sound editing skill set to reduce those noises. Then I turned the songs over to my musical associate MZ. He did a much better job of noise reduction. However, you can still hear the damage on the starts of a few of the songs.

The third and final section of this album consists of two songs ("Melting Pot" and "That Same Old Feeling"). They need a bit of explanation. Around this time (1970) in Britain, many albums full of copycat versions of current hit songs were released, in order to get around the high copyright fees of using the hit versions. Just like Elton John and David Byron (lead singer of Uriah Heep) and others, she made some extra money singing lead vocals on some of these records. I only found two (one of which is a duet with David Byron), but she did others.

Wait, there's one more song. At the last minute, I decided to add her demo version of "Andy Warhol" to the end of the album. I would like to make another stray tracks album dealing with her early 1970s recordings, which are also excellent. I don't want two versions of "Andy Warhol" on that, so I'm putting the earlier one here. As mentioned above, this is a song Bowie originally wrote for her. But he liked it so much that he decided to do his own version too. He's singing backing vocals on this demo, though it's hard to tell that it's him.

There's a lot of different stuff here. Clearly, Gillespie dabbled in a lot of different musical projects. And that's not even considering her simultaneous careers in plays and in movies, which was happening at the same time. Oh, and by the way, she played the drums quite well and almost became a professional drummer instead, and also was the junior water skiing champion in Britain when she was a teenager!

This album totals 36 minutes. Although ii's a diverse bunch of styles, one thing that ties it all together is Gillespie's voice. Yes, if you look at the cover art, you can see she was unusually beautiful. But she also was a talented songwriter and a singer. She really should have been a big star. The fact that she sang on those copycat hit song versions is proof of her vocal talent, because that was done totally anonymously, with nobody buying the records knowing what she looked like. This is good music, and evocative of the 1960s era. I hope you check it out, and her two 1960s albums.

01 Donna Donna (Dana Gillespie)
02 It's No Use Saying If (Dana Gillespie)
03 Thank You Boy (Dana Gillespie)
04 You're a Heartbreak Man (Dana Gillespie)
05 Pay You Back with Interest (Dana Gillespie)
06 Adam Can You Beat That (Dana Gillespie)
07 Save Me a Piece - That’s Enough [Edit] (Dana Gillespie)
08 Love, Slow Down [Edit] (Dana Gillespie)
09 I Know the Feeling [Edit] (Dana Gillespie)
10 Classical Example [Edit] (Dana Gillespie)
11 Let's Pick Bluebells, Roses and Weeds [Edit] (Dana Gillespie)
12 Where Is My Life Going To [Edit] (Dana Gillespie)
13 Light Up [Edit] (Dana Gillespie)
14 Melting Pot (Dana Gillespie & David Byron)
15 That Same Old Feeling (Dana Gillespie)
16 Andy Warhol [Demo Version] (Dana Gillespie with David Bowie)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15119213/DnaGillespie_1965-1971_LghtUp_atse.zip.html

If I recall correctly, the cover art photo of Gillespie comes from the artwork to one of her 1960s albums. But it was from a gatefold or something like that, not the actual cover, so I figured it was okay to use it here.

Sheryl Crow - Sheryl Crow Sings the Rolling Stones - Non-Album Tracks (1993-2019)

The other day, when I was getting ready to post the latest Sheryl Crow stray tracks album I'd made, I noticed there was a cover of a Rolling Stones song on it, and that got me to thinking about the many Rolling Stones covers she's done over the years. There was the ideal amount for an album roughly 45 minutes long. So I gathered them all together, and voila, here we are.

Virtually all the songs here are officially unreleased, except for two. One is "Not Fade Away," which was released as an A-side only. The other is a duet with Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards on the Rolling Stones song "The Worst" from Crow's 2019 album "Threads." With the exception of that song, all the songs come from my various Crow stray tracks collections, including some I haven't posted here yet (as I write this in November 2020). 

If you're a Sheryl Crow fan, hopefully you'll still collect all those other albums. But I think it's fun to hear all the Stones covers together. Not only are the songs great, but this is about as rocking as Crow gets, and she really rocks here. 

It turns out Crow is a massive Rolling Stones fan. So she must be extremely delighted by the fact that she's appeared on stage with the band many, many times, from the first year of her commercial breakthrough in 1994 until the current day. She's often appeared as an opening act for them, and then joined the band to sing a duet with lead vocalist Mick Jagger during the Stones portion of the show. I've only included a couple of those duets, mostly because she's tended to duet on the same songs over and over again.

All of the songs here are written by the Stones, with one exception: "Not Fade Away." I included that that song, originally by Buddy Holly, because it's closely associated with the Stones. It was their breakthrough hit in Britain, hitting number three there.

By the way, I hesitated about including "Gimme Shelter." That's because it's not a full performance of the song. In concert, she has often played a section of the song as the second half of a medley with her own song "Gasoline." I decided what the heck, why not include it? But beware that it's only about half of the song.

This includes almost all the Rolling Stones covers Crow did that I know of. For the stray tracks compilation "Be Still My Soul," I included her version of "Dead Flowers" (as a duet with Bonnie Raitt), but I didn't include that here due to sound quality issues. If there are any others I missed, please let me know.

I've posted another album with a similar concept to this one: "Heart Plays Led Zeppelin." You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/01/heart-heart-plays-led-zeppelin-various.html

If you can think of any other good ideas for an album of one artist doing the songs on another artist, please let me know. Maybe I'll like the idea and post such an album here. (But then again, maybe not!)

01 Happy (Sheryl Crow)
02 Live with Me (Rolling Stones & Sheryl Crow)
03 Get Off of My Cloud (Sheryl Crow)
04 Let It Bleed (Sheryl Crow)
05 Sway (Sheryl Crow)
06 Bitch (Sheryl Crow with Eddie Van Halen & the All-Star Garage Band)
07 The Last Time (Sheryl Crow & Jakob Dylan)
08 Honky Tonk Women (Sheryl Crow & Pat Benatar)
09 Wild Horses (Rolling Stones & Sheryl Crow)
10 Not Fade Away (Sheryl Crow)
11 Gimme Shelter (Sheryl Crow)
12 All Down the Line (Sheryl Crow with Chuck Leavell & the Roots)
13 The Worst (Sheryl Crow with Keith Richards)
14 Tumbling Dice (Sheryl Crow)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15285130/SherylC_1993-2019_SherylCSingsRllingStnes_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I thought it would be fitting to use a photo of Crow and one or more of the Stones together. I looked around and found this one of Crow dueting with Mick Jagger during a Stones concert in Chicago in 2013.

Graham Gouldman - Live Acoustic (2013)

Graham Gouldman is a songwriting genius. Have you heard of him? He wrote all sorts of 1960s hit songs you know, such as "For Your Love" by the Yardbirds, "Bus Stop" and "Look through Any Window" by the Hollies, and "No Milk Today" by the Hermin's Hermits, then in the 1970s and after he's been a member of 10cc, and wrote or co-wrote many more hits by them, such as "I'm Not in Love," "The Things We Do for Love," "Rubber Bullets," and "Dreadlock Holliday."

As I write this, Gouldman is 74 years old, yet he's still going strong, frequently touring both as the leader of 10cc and as a solo artist. As someone who has a particular fondness for acoustic music, I am most interested in his occasional solo acoustic tours. However, there are basically no official or unofficial recordings from any such tour, except for one. In 2014, Gouldman released an album of his 2013 solo acoustic tour, simply called "Live!" (It also is sometimes called "Heart Full of Songs," which is his name for his acoustic tours in general.) But he only released this as a promotional item to radio stations, then sold it at his 2014 concerts. Since then, it's totally disappeared. It's not listed in his discography on his personal website, nor is it listed on his Wikipedia page or most other places where one would find such things. It seems to have totally disappeared down the memory hole.

Luckily, I have a copy, and it's fantastic. The sound quality is excellent, and the performance is excellent. He played most of his famous songs, both from 10cc as well as his 1960s hits done by others. He was supported by a couple of his 10cc touring band members, but they kept things acoustic, with only occasional light drumming.

However, there is one thing sorely lacking for the album, and that is any kind of banter between songs. Because the album was made as a promo for radio stations, I guess the idea was to deliberately not include any such banter, since it was more of a selection of individual songs (taken from different concerts on the tour, not just one concert), than having a natural flow of a concert. So, for instance, sometimes songs start with the audience still clapping from something that had just happened, or a song comes to a sudden halt in the middle of the audience applause. The songs themselves were great, but the transitions between them were problematic.

So I decided to fix this, because I love Gouldman's songs so much. I spent way too much time finding banter to go before almost every song, but I'm proud of the result. I didn't have much to go on, since, as I said, there's very little in the way of official or bootleg live Gouldman tracks. But I scoured YouTube and all the bootlegs I could find, including 10cc ones from the last 20 years or so, and I found just enough to come up with fitting banter for most of the songs. As I said, I put a lot of work into this, so hopefully it sounds just like a normal concert, with thank yous at the ends of songs and the like. But every single word has been added by me. The original album didn't even have a single "thank you" on it!

I didn't keep track of where all the different talking bits came from. It would have been a bear to mark all that down. In some cases, even for only a short comment, I had to piece it together from more than once source. There are a few comments where the sound quality is noticeably poorer than the rest, and/or his voice sounds a little different. That couldn't be helped, since the rare material I had to go with was so scanty.

The other thing I did which took some work was getting the applause at the end of each song just right. Because the songs came from different concerts, those were all over the map. Some were quiet, some were loud, some faded out, some stopped suddenly, and some actually ended as they should, with the clapping trailing off. I fixed the applause for almost every song in some way. Hopefully, it should now sound normal, with the flow of a typical concert, instead of being a bunch of live songs collected together.

I changed the title slightly, since "Live!" is so generic and I changed the album significantly. I also changed the cover, since the original just had some text on it.

The album is an hour and ten minutes long. Seven of those minutes consist of the extra banter that I added.

I highly, highly recommend this album. The vast majority of the songs here are classic hits. Hearing them done by Gouldman reveals what a songwriting genius he truly is. Plus, these well known songs are shown in an appealing new light being done in the acoustic format.

By the way, I like Gouldman so much that I plan on posting a collection of covers of his songs for my "Covered" series, as well as a separate collection of his own performances from his pre-10cc years.

01 talk (Graham Gouldman)
02 Pamela, Pamela (Graham Gouldman)
03 talk (Graham Gouldman)
04 Heart Full of Soul (Graham Gouldman)
05 talk (Graham Gouldman)
06 Good Morning Judge (Graham Gouldman)
07 talk (Graham Gouldman)
08 No Milk Today (Graham Gouldman)
09 talk (Graham Gouldman)
10 Sunburn (Graham Gouldman)
11 talk (Graham Gouldman)
12 Love's Not for Me [Rene's Song] (Graham Gouldman)
13 talk (Graham Gouldman)
14 Look through Any Window (Graham Gouldman)
15 talk (Graham Gouldman)
16 Bridge to Your Heart (Graham Gouldman)
17 talk (Graham Gouldman)
18 Daylight (Graham Gouldman)
19 talk (Graham Gouldman)
20 Bus Stop (Graham Gouldman)
21 Dancing Days (Graham Gouldman)
22 talk (Graham Gouldman)
23 I'm Not in Love (Graham Gouldman)
24 talk (Graham Gouldman)
25 Ariella (Graham Gouldman)
26 talk (Graham Gouldman)
27 Ready to Go Home (Graham Gouldman)
28 talk (Graham Gouldman)
29 The Things We Do for Love (Graham Gouldman)
30 Memory Lane (Graham Gouldman)
31 talk (Graham Gouldman)
32 For Your Love (Graham Gouldman)
33 talk (Graham Gouldman)
34 Donna (Graham Gouldman)
35 talk (Graham Gouldman)
36 Dreadlock Holiday (Graham Gouldman)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15844999/GrahmGouldmn_2013_LivAcoustc_atse.zip.html

I don't know where Gouldman was when the photo for the cover art was taken, but apparently it dates to September 2013.

Elton John - Regimental Sgt. Zippo (1968)

Here's something very special and brand new. If you're an Elton John fan at all, you'll want to listen to this. Officially, John's first album was "Empty Sky," released in 1969. But did you know he had an album that was almost released in 1968? I didn't, until today. But this is the very first time the public has all the songs to make up the album. This is his long lost 1968 album, "Regimental Sgt. Zippo." So that's pretty cool. But what's important is that the music in it is very good.

Elton John was a struggling musician for several years before he hit it big. He sang lead vocals on a single by the band Bluesology as far back as 1965. But it wasn't until 1967 when he met his collaborator Bernie Taupin when he began to hit on something special. All the songs here are John-Taupin originals, including "Hour Glass," which has often been incorrectly deemed a cover. 

In 1967, the Beatles released one of the greatest albums of all time, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." The songs on this 1968 album are heavily influenced by late period Beatles. It's downright odd they would put "Sgt." in the album title, because that would have led some people to think it's a "Sgt. Pepper's" ripoff. But it's not. Yes, there's a strong Beatles influence, but John was already finding his own style, though one that was steeped in a general late 1960s slightly psychedelic rock sound. For instance, Taupin would later explain the "Regimental Sgt. Zippo" was actually influenced more by Procol Harum than the Beatles.

In any case, at the time, Elton John was signed to a tiny label that wasn't making much money. This album was developed to the point that an exact song list was created. But it was never released, probably because the record company didn't see any potential hit singles.

So how is it that one is able to put this album together, after so many years? As I write this, yesterday was the release of "Jewel Box," an eight CD Elton John box set. Three of the CDs contain demos from the years 1965 to 1968. Those include all but two of the songs from this album. Most of the other songs had been out there on bootlegs, but a couple of the songs were missing, and others only available in poor sound quality. By luck, the previously missing songs were included as part of "Jewel Box," and the two songs that failed to include have been bootlegged. So I was able to put it all together. The "Jewel Box" artwork even includes a song list for the album, so we know this was exactly how it was supposed to go.

Normally, I wouldn't want to post something from material that was officially released so very recently. But this is just a portion of the 8 CD box set, not even as long as one of those CDs, and it's inevitable that people are going to put this together. The box set practically begs for it, by including most of the songs (but scattering them around), and the song list.

This album is 37 minutes long, which was typical for that era. If you enjoy this, please go out and buy the "Jewel Box" box set. The songs here are but a small portion of all the previously unreleased demos on that, and that in turn is only a portion of the entire box set.

UPDATE: On November 17, 2021, I updated the mp3 download file. For Record Store Day 2021, an official version was released, for a limited time. This is very similar, the same songs in the same order, but some different mixes are used. (And the two unreleased songs were officially released for the first time on this special release.) So I'm updating the link to this version, which must be what the artist had in mind. But I'm leaving the other link up, since it has some different versions.

01 When I Was Tealby Abbey (Elton John)
02 And the Clock Goes Round (Elton John)
03 Sitting Doing Nothing (Elton John)
04 Turn to Me (Elton John)
05 Angel Tree (Elton John)
06 Regimental Sgt. Zippo (Elton John)
07 A Dandelion Dies in the Wind (Elton John)
08 You'll Be Sorry to See Me Go (Elton John)
09 Nina [You're My Woman] (Elton John)
10 Tartan Coloured Lady (Elton John)
11 Hour Glass (Elton John)
12 Watching the Planes Go By (Elton John)

RECORD STORE DAY 2021 VERSION:

https://www.upload.ee/files/15904981/EltonJn_1968_RegimentalSgtZippo_atse.zip.html

PREVIOUS VERSION:

https://www.upload.ee/files/15239313/EltonJn_1968_RegimentlSgtZppo_Old_Version_atse.zip.html

As mentioned above, there was an official release of this album in 2021, though for a limited time only. So I've replaced the cover I've made with the official cover. That said, I'm keeping my version for people who want to hear the alternate versions for some of the songs. The rest of the text below discusses the cover for that version. I was pleased to see that it had a lot of similarity to the official cover, using the same drawing of Elton John's head.

The album cover art needs some explanation. Even though the "Sgt. Zippo" was almost released, I don't know if cover art for it was even made. If so, it hasn't made it to the public. But about a month before the "Jewel Box" was released, the "Regimental Sgt. Zippo" song was released as a teaser, and an official animated video was done for it. I took most of the elements of the cover from the video. 

At one point in the video, the large head with smaller heads in it was shown. (That seems to be heavily based on the cover for the Beatles' "Revolver" album, by the way.) So I took a screenshot of that and used it. At another point, a vista of some hills and a sunset appeared. I used that as the background behind the head. At yet another point, the word "Zippo" appeared in large letters right over the top portion of the head. I used that exactly as it appeared in the video, complete with the black highlighting. The only thing I changed is the color (it was kind of a tan that's too similar to some of the sunset colors). I then added the "Regimental Sgt." text in a similar font, as well as the "by Elton John" text. (I felt the need to add the "by" so the hypothetical record buyer wouldn't get confused and think that "Regimental Sgt. Zippo" was the name of the artist. Also, just to add some more period flavor, I added a "stereo" logo in the bottom corner, since that was common for 1968 albums.

Had the album been released in 1968, I'm sure the cover would have looked totally different. But the 2020 video was meant to ape the artistic styles of 1968, and they did a good job. So hopefully this at least has the right spirit of a 1968 cover, and it does all come from an official source specifically meant for the title song.

Oh, by the way, one day after posting this, I found out that the drawing of the head actually dates back to 1968. Elton John used it in a press pack that went with the release of his first album in 1969.

Brandi Carlile - Home Concerts 3: Maple Valley, WA, 7-12-2020 (Bear Creek Album)

I recently posted a home concert in which Brandi Carlile played her entire "The Firewatcher's Daughter" album, in the original song order. This is exactly the same, except it's her 2012 album "Bear Creek." She actually has done most or all of her albums this way during the coronavirus pandemic, but the others are behind a paywall so I won't be posting them here.

As with "The Firewatcher's Daughter," she is supported only by "the twins," Phil and Tim Hanseroth, who have been her main musical collaborators and co-songwriters for most of her musical career. The three of them only play acoustic instruments, so one can consider this an acoustic performance, those it's not a totally solo one.

The sound quality is excellent. There's a lot of talking between songs, with banter between Carlile and the twins. It's clear they're having a lot of fun.

All the songs from "Bear Creek" appear here, except for the last one, "Just Kids," which apparently had some instrumentation they felt they couldn't duplicate. Instead, this ends with "If She Ever Leaves Me," a song she sang on the 2019 album by the Highwomen.

01 talk (Brandi Carlile)
02 Hard Way Home (Brandi Carlile)
03 talk (Brandi Carlile)
04 Save Part of Yourself (Brandi Carlile)
05 talk (Brandi Carlile)
06 That Wasn't Me (Brandi Carlile)
07 talk (Brandi Carlile)
08 Keep Your Heart Young (Brandi Carlile)
09 talk (Brandi Carlile)
10 100 (Brandi Carlile)
11 talk (Brandi Carlile)
12 A Promise to Keep (Brandi Carlile)
13 talk (Brandi Carlile)
14 I'll Still Be There (Brandi Carlile)
15 talk (Brandi Carlile)
16 What Did I Ever Come Here For (Brandi Carlile)
17 talk (Brandi Carlile)
18 Hearts Content (Brandi Carlile)
19 talk (Brandi Carlile)
20 Rise Again (Brandi Carlile)
21 talk (Brandi Carlile)
22 In the Morrow (Brandi Carlile)
23 talk (Brandi Carlile)
24 If She Ever Leaves Me (Brandi Carlile)
25 talk (Brandi Carlile)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17362441/BRANDICRLLE2020HomeConcrts3MpleValleyWA__7-12-2020_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6dnpo7P4

In order to promote this concert, Carlile recorded a short video in which she held up a supersized copy of the "Bear Creek" album cover. I took a screenshot of that for the cover art.

Sam Phillips - Largo, Los Angeles, CA, 6-6-2019

It's a real shame about Sam Phillips. She's a great musician, yet so few people know about her. A lot of that is due to her own choice. She's stated she isn't interested in being famous, as she had a taste of that in her early days as a Christian music hit maker as "Leslie Phillips," and didn't like it. She hardly ever tours or do much to promote herself. 

But if you're reading this, hopefully you have the taste to check out her music if you haven't already. This is an ideal starting point, in my opinion. It's an excellent sounding bootleg that has songs from all parts of her career (except for her Christian "Leslie Phillips" years, which she has distanced herself from).

As mentioned above, Phillips almost never plays concerts. But when she does, it's usually at the Largo. This is a small club in Los Angeles that is a very special place that musicians love to play more for the fun of it than to make money. Phillips lives in Los Angeles, so it's probably very convenient for her as well. We're very lucky to have this recording, since according to setlist.fm, she's only played three concerts from 2013 to 2020.

Although this essentially is a one-off concert, you wouldn't know it by listening to it. For many years, Phillips has played with a small string section, and they join her here. In 2001, she pretty much reinvented her musical style, switching from Beatlesque pop to a more mellow singer-songwriter style. Ever since then, she turned her back on her earlier style, maybe playing only one song from her pre-2001 years if you were lucky. But for this concert, she finally seems to have warmed up to her older music, playing three early songs. That makes sense, because on her more recent albums she's sometimes gone back to her earlier, more poppy styles. She also does songs from different points in her career, almost making this into a "best of" selection. 

This concert began with a long medley of some of her early songs. I didn't include it because it was an instrumental done only by the string section before Phillips took the stage. It sounded a bit like forgettable Muzak. The concert is stronger without that.

This is a bootleg, and it's an audience recording, not a soundboard. However, sometimes audience recordings can sound as good as soundboards, and this is one of those times. Keep in mind this concert took place in a club of only a couple hundred people, if it was full. It was an appreciative audience that was dead silent during the songs, so there probably wasn't much difference from a soundboard if it was recorded well, which it was. One minor snag was that the banter between songs was a bit quiet and the audience applause at the end of each song was a bit loud, but I've made adjustments to fix that.

This concert is an hour and 18 minutes long.

01 talk (Sam Phillips)
02 I Want to Be You (Sam Phillips)
03 World on Sticks (Sam Phillips)
04 Continuous Limit (Sam Phillips)
05 talk (Sam Phillips)
06 Plastic Is Forever (Sam Phillips)
07 talk (Sam Phillips)
08 How Much Is Enough (Sam Phillips)
09 talk (Sam Phillips)
10 Fighting with Fire (Sam Phillips)
11 talk (Sam Phillips)
12 American Landfill Kings (Sam Phillips)
13 talk (Sam Phillips)
14 Same Rain (Sam Phillips)
15 talk (Sam Phillips)
16 Different Shades of Light (Sam Phillips)
17 I Need Love (Sam Phillips)
18 talk (Sam Phillips)
19 She Remembers Everything (Sam Phillips)
20 Edge of the World (Sam Phillips)
21 Candles and Stars (Sam Phillips)
22 What Happens Next (Sam Phillips)
23 talk (Sam Phillips)
24 Reflecting Light (Sam Phillips)
25 Teilhard (Sam Phillips)
26 talk (Sam Phillips)
27 So Glad You're Here (Sam Phillips)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15249591/SamPhps_2019_LrgoLosAnglesCA__6-6-2019_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from a different concert in Los Angeles in 2019, held at the Grammy Museum.

Elton John - BBC Sessions, Volume 6: Hammersmith Odeon, London, Britain, 12-24-1974

I recently posted an Elton John concert from 1973. This is very similar in some ways. Both were played at the Hammersmith Odeon, in London, almost exactly one year apart from each other. (Specifically, they were one year and two days apart.) Both concerts were played live on TV and radio by the BBC. As a result, both sound fantastic. The main difference though is that John had another year to come up with still more classic songs, so there are lots of differences in the set lists. But both concerts are pretty much the peak concert recordings of him from his great early to mid-1970s era, so any fan of his should listen to both.

I'm not entirely sure, but I suspect that John played a bunch of lesser known songs at the start of the concert before the TV and radio audiences joined in. He suggested as much with some comments between songs. I'm guessing that "Funeral for a Friend - Love Lies Bleeding" was the first song played for the TV and radio audiences, since that was a typical concert opener for him. If that's the case, there are seven songs prior to that. 

Regardless of how much was played on the TV and radio at the time, from the medley mentioned above until the end, nearly every song is a classic, with the exception of "Grinsby" and "Grey Seal," plus a couple of covers like "I Saw Her Standing There" and "White Christmas." For "White Christmas," John was joined by Rod Stewart and Gary Glitter. You can hear Stewart talking some before the song begins. (Too bad about Glitter being there too, in light of what we now know of his sex crimes, but at least you can't really hear him.)

One advantage this has over the 1973 BBC concert is that this one is even longer, by half an hour. This concert is two hours and ten minutes long. Because it was recorded professionally by the BBC, there were no sound problems for me to fix, despite the fact that it's still officially unreleased.

I just have one more concert to go before I finish this series of BBC albums from John's peak 1970s years.

01 talk (Elton John)
02 Skyline Pigeon (Elton John)
03 talk (Elton John)
04 I Need You to Turn To (Elton John)
05 Border Song [Holy Moses] (Elton John)
06 Country Comfort (Elton John)
07 talk (Elton John)
08 Holiday Inn (Elton John)
09 talk (Elton John)
10 High Flying Bird (Elton John)
11 Burn Down the Mission (Elton John)
12 Funeral for a Friend - Love Lies Bleeding (Elton John)
13 talk (Elton John)
14 Candle in the Wind (Elton John)
15 talk (Elton John)
16 Grimsby (Elton John)
17 talk (Elton John)
18 Rocket Man [I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time] (Elton John)
19 talk (Elton John)
20 Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (Elton John)
21 talk (Elton John)
22 Daniel (Elton John)
23 talk (Elton John)
24 Grey Seal (Elton John)
25 Bennie and the Jets (Elton John)
26 talk (Elton John)
27 Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (Elton John)
28 talk (Elton John)
29 I Saw Her Standing There (Elton John)
30 talk (Elton John)
31 Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me (Elton John)
32 talk (Elton John)
33 Honky Cat (Elton John)
34 talk (Elton John)
35 Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting (Elton John)
36 talk (Elton John)
37 Crocodile Rock (Elton John)
38 talk (Elton John)
39 The Bitch Is Back (Elton John)
40 talk (Elton John)
41 Your Song (Elton John)
42 talk (Elton John)
43 White Christmas (Elton John with Rod Stewart & Gary Glitter)

https://www.imagenetz.de/dQ82i

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/dHfhbBWU

second alternate:

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

I'm not entirely sure if the cover art  photo here is from this exact concert or not. It looks posed and thus not something from the middle of a concert. But I found another photo of him at the concert wearing the exact same glasses, so I think it is. (I'm assuming he lost the tall hat at some point.) But if anyone has a photo that is absolutely for sure from this concert, please let me know and I'll use that one.

Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren - Sunday Mornings with Elle and Toni, Volume 7: 2019

If you haven't discovered the fun of Elle Cordova and Toni Lindgren playing cover songs, it's never too late to join in. This is yet more of the same good stuff.

As I've mentioned before, this duo has a mellow and sublime charm. A case in point is their cover on this album of Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On." First off, anyone who does a cover of "Ramble On" is okay in my book. :) But it's notable lead vocalist Elle Cordova doesn't even attempt to hit the very high notes of Led Zeppelin's lead singer Robert Plant, nor does she try to imitate his charismatic style. Instead, she sings the song in a low-key, folky way, which also turns out to be very nice. It's like that with everything they do.

As usual, the duo has a nice mix of really famous songs with obscurities that should be better known. For instance, personally, I didn't know the songs here by the Tallest Man on Earth, the Wood Brothers, or the Punch Brothers, and I doubt you know them either. But, if you're the kind of person who likes the music at this blog, chances are you do know more than half of the songs overall. The cover of "Into the Music" is especially sublime.

This album is 44 minutes long.

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

01 The Gardener - Tallest Man on Earth
02 You're Gonna Live Forever in Me - John Mayer
03 Hearts and Bones - Paul Simon
04 Harvest Moon - Neil Young
05 Blue Moon - Billy Eckstine / Marcels
06 Luckiest Man - Wood Brothers
07 Rye Whiskey - Punch Brothers
08 Ramble On - Led Zeppelin
09 Bad, Bad Leroy Brown - Jim Croce
10 [Sittin' On] The Dock of the Bay - Otis Redding
11 Down at the Twist and Shout - Mary Chapin Carpenter
12 Into the Mystic - Van Morrison

Here's the usual song list:

01 The Gardener (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
02 You're Gonna Live Forever in Me (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
03 Hearts and Bones (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren with Ben Abrahamson)
04 Harvest Moon (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren with Josh Turner & Carson McKee)
05 Blue Moon (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
06 Luckiest Man (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
07 Rye Whiskey (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
08 Ramble On (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
09 Bad, Bad Leroy Brown (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
10 [Sittin' On] The Dock of the Bay (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
11 Down at the Twist and Shout (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren)
12 Into the Mystic (Elle Cordova & Toni Lindgren with Sammy Copley)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17363674/ELLECRDVATNILINDRN2019SndyMrnngswthEllTniVlum7_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/q1zZrxTc

For the cover art photo, I took a screenshot of the YouTube video of the duo playing the song "Down at the Twist and Shout."

Sheryl Crow - Be Still My Soul - Non-Album Tracks (2002)

Here's the next in my long series of Sheryl Crow stray tracks albums. 2002 was the year she released her studio album "C'mon C'mon." Yet she performed enough songs to fill up this album, plus a couple more on the next album in this series.

There are a few original songs here, such as "Be Still My Soul," "Let's Get Free," "I Want You," and "You're Not the One." The others are generally covers of very famous, classic songs by the likes of Buffalo Springfield, Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers Band, Patsy Cline, the Rolling Stones, and John Lennon. Three of the songs are duets with Willie Nelson, and she also duets with Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones on "Wild Horses."

The first five songs are officially released. They were B-sides, bonus tracks, or the like. The remaining six songs are all unreleased, and all come from live bootlegs. But the sound quality on those are all excellent, as they come from soundboard recordings or TV shows. 

The one song that doesn't sound as good is the bonus track, "Dead Flowers." It's almost good enough to be included, but the sound quality isn't quite up to snuff.

01 Be Still My Soul (Sheryl Crow)
02 For What It's Worth (Willie Nelson & Sheryl Crow)
03 Let's Get Free (Sheryl Crow)
04 Missing (Sheryl Crow)
05 I Want You (Sheryl Crow)
06 You're Not the One (Sheryl Crow)
07 Good Times, Bad Times (Sheryl Crow)
08 Midnight Rider (Sheryl Crow)
09 You Remain (Willie Nelson & Sheryl Crow)
10 Crazy (Willie Nelson & Sheryl Crow)
11 Wild Horses (Rolling Stones & Sheryl Crow)
12 Happy Xmas [War Is Over] (Sheryl Crow)

Dead Flowers (Sheryl Crow & Bonnie Raitt)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15105030/SherylC_2002_BeStllMySoul_atse.zip.html

I don't remember what the source of this cover art photo is exactly, but it is from 2002.

Melissa Etheridge - Neil Diamond Tribute - Home Concert, Los Angeles, CA, 5-7-2020

This is the last Melissa Etheridge home concert album I have to post before her son died in mid-May 2020. After that, she took a long break then resumed doing home concerts, but only for those who paid for a subscription service. Since then, she has posted some stuff for free on YouTube, so I plan on collecting and posting some of that eventually.

It turns out that Etheridge is a big Neil Diamond fan, thanks to her father, who played lots of Diamond's music while she was growing up. Thus, she did an entire home concert playing nothing but Neil Diamond songs. This is a relatively short album at only 36 minutes, and if you remove all her talking between songs its only 23 minutes long. But I figured it was good to keep this together since it holds together thematically.

This follows the same format as the other Etheridge home concerts I've posted. Namely, she plays and sings everything herself, live. But sometimes she sounds like a one-person band, complete with drums and lead guitar solos and such, due to her looping ability. That means she records a sample of some music, such as a drum beat, then plays other instruments on top of it. I've cut out the bits where she made the loop samples and built them up. The songs she does the looping for here are "Cherry, Cherry" and "Holly Holy." Otherwise, it's just her and her acoustic guitar.

As with all her other home concert stuff, the sound quality is excellent, and everything is officially unreleased.

Say what you will about Neil Diamond and his music. Yes, he's often cheesy and uncool. But he wrote a lot of classic songs, and naturally Etheridge chose to play some of his best ones. She also told some interesting stories about him, including her personal interactions with him.

01 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
02 Shiloh (Melissa Etheridge)
03 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
04 Play Me (Melissa Etheridge)
05 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
06 Cherry, Cherry (Melissa Etheridge)
07 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
08 I Am, I Said (Melissa Etheridge)
09 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
10 Holly Holy (Melissa Etheridge)
11 talk (Melissa Etheridge)
12 Sweet Caroline (Melissa Etheridge)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15289683/MelissaE_2020h_NeilDiamndTributeHomeConcrtLsAngelesCA__5-7-2020_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I wanted to use a photo of Etheridge and Diamond together. I'm happy to say I found out. This shows them together at a radio station in New York City in 2014. There was a radio station logo repeated several times on the wall behind them. I found those distracting, so I removed them using Photoshop.

Various Artists - Big Night at the Museum, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Nashville, TN, 10-28-2020

The other day, I was looking for something Lucinda Williams did, and luckily stumbled upon this interesting concert from a couple of weeks ago (as I write this in November 2020). It's kind of an odd duck, but I really like it. Basically, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee put on a concert to help raise funds for them to keep going during the coronavirus pandemic. It's not exactly a home concert, because they got a bunch of famous country musicians to come to their museum and play music inside it. But there was no audience at all. Instead, the musicians went to various exhibits and played on the actual musical instruments played by country music greats like Jimmy Rodgers and Johnny Cash.

The key, for me, since I really like acoustic music, is that all the performances are solo acoustic. That's very rare for country music these days, but very much needed, since IMHO country music has suffered from bad production for a long time now. Stripping these songs way back, you get the raw essence of the music.

The show this came from was an hour and a half long. More than half of it was filled with talking. A lot of that was promoting the museum and asking for donations. A bit of it was more interesting, with the musicians sometimes talking about their influences and their feelings about playing the instruments once played by their musical heroes. But I cut all that out, since I think this has much greater replay value if it's all music and no talking. As a result, it's only 42 minutes long. That's not much for a show that was an hour and an half, but it's a good length for a typical album.

Even if you're not much of a country music fan, I highly recommend you check it out. Due to its all acoustic nature, it's more like a bunch of singer songwriters who all happen to work in the country genre. And by the way, if you want to catch all the talking parts between songs, I recommend you watch the full show, which is available on YouTube.

01 Buckaroo [Instrumental] (Brad Paisley & Dan Tyminski)
02 That's the Way the World Goes 'Round (Miranda Lambert)
03 Lovin' Arms (Keb Mo)
04 Don't Close Your Eyes (Tim McGraw)
05 Love Hurts (Emmylou Harris & Rodnew Crowell)
06 Heavy Traffic Ahead (Ricky Scaggs with Marty Stuart & Alison Brown)
07 Sweet Dreams (Reba McEntire)
08 I Still Miss Someone (Lucinda Williams)
09 Three Wooden Crosses (Kane Brown)
10 She Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Rodney Crowell)
11 You're Lookin' at Country (Ashley McBryde)
12 I Can't Stop Loving You (War and Treaty)
13 Will the Circle Be Unbroken (Carlene Carter & Marty Stuart)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15832939/BigNghtatMseumCountryMsicHallFmeMuseumNshvilleTN__10-28-2020_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I took a screenshot at the start of the YouTube video that showed the name of the concert.

KT Tunstall - Cover Songs, Volume 1: 2005-2006

Some months back, I posted a couple of acoustic home concerts that KT Tunstall did in 2020. I wasn't that big of a fan of hers, but I liked those concerts so much that I've started to get more into her music. One thing I've discovered is that she's done a lot of fun cover versions, and the vast majority haven't been officially released by her. So I've made a series of cover songs albums. This is the first, but I have a total of six currently planned.

Tunstall has a wide range of musical tastes. This can be seen symbolically with the first two songs here: "Get Ur Freak On" - a hip hop hit from 2001 with Indian elements in it, and "Ain't Misbehavin'" - a Fats Waller jazz or swing song from the 1920s! She takes all these different styles and adds her own stamp to it. 

Most of the songs on this album (and in this series) are done with a full band, though she occasionally does a solo acoustic version.

Seven of the songs here have been officially released, and five have not. The officially released ones generally are from obscure releases. Only one, the cover of "Golden Age," appears on one of her albums ("Acoustic Extravaganza"). The sound quality is excellent for all the songs, whether they're officially released or not.

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

01 Get Ur Freak On - Missy Elliott
02 Ain't Misbehavin' - Fats Waller
03 Simple Twist of Fate - Bob Dylan
04 This Wheel's on Fire - Bob Dylan
05 Tangled Up in Blue - Bob Dylan
06 Teenage Kicks - Undertones
07 My Doorbell - White Stripes
08 You to Me Are Everything - Real Thing
09 Fake Plastic Trees - Radiohead
10 Darkness on the Face of the Earth - Willie Nelson
11 Lazarus - Sophie Solomon
12 Golden Age - Beck

Here's the usual song list:

01 Get Ur Freak On (KT Tunstall)
02 Ain't Misbehavin' (KT Tunstall with Jools Holland)
03 Simple Twist of Fate (KT Tunstall)
04 This Wheel's on Fire (KT Tunstall & Billy Bragg)
05 Tangled Up in Blue (KT Tunstall)
06 Teenage Kicks (KT Tunstall)
07 My Doorbell (KT Tunstall)
08 You to Me Are Everything (KT Tunstall)
09 Fake Plastic Trees (KT Tunstall)
10 Darkness on the Face of the Earth (KT Tunstall with Jools Holland)
11 Lazarus (Sophie Solomon & KT Tunstall)
12 Golden Age (KT Tunstall)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15603012/KTTnstl_2005-2006_CovrSngsVol1_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo was taken at a concert in 2005.

Morgan James - Acoustic Cover Songs, Volume 4, 2017-2018

Here's a quick summary if you've missed or overlooked my previous Morgan James posts. James has a great voice, the kind that sing Aretha Franklin songs or even opera. But she also has an affinity for performing songs where she's only backed by an acoustic guitar. She also has good taste in cover songs. So this is another out of many more albums of acoustic covers from her that I plan on posting.

As I've mentioned in the past, one thing I like about James's covers is that her taste in music isn't the same as mine, and she often "rescues" songs that I otherwise probably wouldn't hear or wouldn't like. In particular, she sometimes does modern pop songs that I avoid because of the usual bad modern production. It's often revelatory to hear those kinds of songs performed in the solo acoustic format. There are some examples of that here, for instance "Weak" by SWV and "Take Me to Church" by Hozier.

As usual with this series, all the songs are officially unreleased. Also as usual, the sound quality is consistently very good.

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

01 Blue Christmas - Elvis Presley
02 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man - Aretha Franklin
03 Waiting in Vain - Bob Marley
04 I Knew You Were Waiting [For Me] - Aretha Franklin & George Michael
05 Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’ - Journey
06 Little Green - Joni Mitchell
07 Angel from Montgomery - John Prine
08 Weak - SWV
09 Take Me to Church - Hozier
10 Sweet Child o' Mine - Guns n' Roses
11 Who Wants to Live Forever - Queen

This is the usual song list:

01 Blue Christmas (Morgan James & Doug Wamble)
02 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (Morgan James & Marc Broussard)
03 Waiting in Vain (Marc Broussard & Morgan James)
04 I Knew You Were Waiting [For Me] (Morgan James)
05 Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’ (Morgan James)
06 Little Green (Morgan James)
07 Angel from Montgomery (Morgan James)
08 Weak (Morgan James)
09 Take Me to Church (Morgan James with Scott Bradlee)
10 Sweet Child o' Mine (Morgan James with Scott Bradlee)
11 Who Wants to Live Forever (Morgan James with Scott Bradlee)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15266924/MorganJ_2017-2018_AcoustcCoverSongsVolume4_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo was taken at a concert in Berlin in 2017. I chose it because I really like how the lighting makes it look like her hair is made out of fire. That's exactly how the original looks; I didn't change a thing.

Richard Thompson - Persuasion - Non-Album Acoustic Tracks (2000-2001)

It's been a while since I've posted any Richard Thompson music, but I still have tons more to share. So here's the next one. As an aside, a few weeks ago, a new box set of Richard and Linda Thompson music was officially released, called "Hard Luck Stories." I highly recommend it.

This is both a stray tracks album and an all-acoustic one. Only three of the performances have been officially released. 

The first three songs are all humorous in nature. (Someday, I'd like to post an album of all his comedy songs, if I can find enough. If people have suggestions on which songs to include for that, please let me know.) The first song, "I Agree with Pat Metheny," It's Thompson's take on an essay famous jazz musician Pat Metheny wrote about another famous jazz musician, Kenny G. You can read that here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20080205170757/http://www.jazzoasis.com/methenyonkennyg.htm

Another song of note here is "Persuasion." Thompson originally wrote this as an instrumental. That version was released on a movie soundtrack in 1991. But for some reason Tim Finn of Crowded House decided he liked it and wrote lyrics for it. He put his version of that on his 1993 solo album. Thompson finally released his version with Finn's lyrics added for a 2000 greatest hits album. Since then, he's performed it often and it has become one of his best known songs.

"Eight Miles High" is a cover of the famous Byrds song, with Roger McGuinn of the Byrds helping out. "She Belongs to Me" is by Bob Dylan. "Hamlet (Dog Eat Dog in Denmark)" is also a cover, which I believe is from a 1940s musical.

The album is rather short at only 35 minutes if you don't include the bonus track, but that's how things clustered together chronologically. 

Besides, I figure most people will enjoy the bonus track and keep it It's a version of possibly his most famous song, "1952 Vincent Black Lightning." But this is a special version in that he sang some extra verses I think for this one performance only. If I recall from the bootleg, he was inspired to do that because an actual 1952 Vincent Black Lightning motorcycle was on stage for the show. The only reason the song is a bonus track is because the song quality isn't as good as the rest of the songs. But it's still decent.

01 I Agree with Pat Metheny (Richard Thompson)
02 Hamlet [Dog Eat Dog in Denmark] (Richard Thompson)
03 My Daddy Is a Mummy (Richard Thompson)
04 Eight Miles High (Richard Thompson & Roger McGuinn)
05 Mr. Rebound (Richard Thompson)
06 She Belongs to Me (Richard Thompson)
07 Gethsemane (Richard Thompson)
08 Outside of the Inside (Richard Thompson)
09 Persuasion (Richard Thompson)

1952 Vincent Black Lightning [Extra Verses Version] (Richard Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15270960/RichrdT_2000-2001_PrsuasionAcoustc_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo of Thompson comes from his appearance at a tribute concert to Joni Mitchell in 2000.

Joni Mitchell - Girl from the North Country - On TV and Radio (1969-1970)

A few days ago, a box set of early Joni Mitchell rarities called "Archives, Volume 1" was released. It's really great. I think it's one of the best box sets in years. If you're a Joni Mitchell fan, you should definitely check it out. 

To celebrate that release, I want to post something by Mitchell. So here's the next in my "On TV and Radio" series. This is much like my BBC albums I've done for various musicians, except there isn't much from the BBC, so I've given it a different name. But the general idea is to scoop up all the TV and radio performances she did that have excellent sound quality. 

I've focused on rare songs and tried to avoid repeating the same song twice. All but three of the performances here are officially unreleased, although I hope that the next "Archives" volume will include some or all of these. The first three songs are from the Dick Cavett TV show. The next two songs are from the Big Sur Folk Festival in 1969, which was professionally filmed and turned into a documentary movie. That includes a rare cover of "Let's Get Together," in which she was backed by Crosby, Stills and Nash as well as John Sebastian. The next three songs are from the Johnny Cash Show. That includes "Girl from the North Country," a cover song duet she did with Johnny Cash.

The next song, "That Song about the Midway," comes from the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. All of Mitchell's performance has been released on DVD, but not on album. I've only included one song from it, as it was a song she rarely did at the time. 

The next song, "All I Want," is from an appearance on the BBC in September 1970. She did another appearance at the BBC just one month later. I've posted that entire show here. It's very interesting, because she and James Taylor played the show together. (They were in a relationship for part of that year.) The whole September 1970 BBC show is available in good sound, but again I only included one song because it was rare. This version of "All I Want" is interesting because she said it was unfinished, and the lyrics are significantly different than the final version released on album.

The last two songs come from a benefit concert that helped start the Greenpeace environmental group. "Bony Maroney" is a cover that was part of a medley, but I separated it from the medley. "Hunter (The Good Samaritan)" was a rare original at the time that didn't get officially released.

01 Chelsea Morning (Joni Mitchell)
02 talk (Joni Mitchell)
03 Willy (Joni Mitchell)
04 talk (Joni Mitchell)
05 [He Played Real Good] For Free (Joni Mitchell)
06 talk (Joni Mitchell)
07 Woodstock (Joni Mitchell)
08 Let's Get Together (Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills & Nash & John Sebastian)
09 Girl from the North Country (Joni Mitchell & Johnny Cash)
10 California (Joni Mitchell)
11 My Old Man (Joni Mitchell)
12 talk (Joni Mitchell)
13 That Song about the Midway (Joni Mitchell)
14 talk (Joni Mitchell)
15 All I Want (Joni Mitchell)
16 Bony Maroney (Joni Mitchell)
17 Hunter [The Good Samaritan] (Joni Mitchell)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15256328/JoniMchl_1969-1970_GrlfromtheNrthCountry_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from the duet she did with Johnny Cash that's included in the album. I took it from a screenshot of a video, and it's more blurry than I would like. If anyone has a better photo of them together, please let me know.

Phew!

The US presidential election was much too close, and the results were a mixed bag. It's deeply disturbing to me that so many people are willing to vote for Trump and the Republicans after he and they have shown exactly who they are. But hey, the main thing is that Trump lost and the American drift into authoritarian dictatorship has been halted, at least for now. Congrats to Joe Biden, America's new president-elect!

Now, back to the music.

Please Vote!

I've said in the past that I'm a very politically progressive person. I've tried hard to keep this blog just on music, and that is my general intention. But as I write this, it's just one day to presidential election day in the US. If you're a US citizen and you haven't voted yet, I can't resist encouraging you to vote, and especially to vote Donald Trump out of office!

I probably would have said more and posted more about this election except for the fact that Joe Biden has had a steady and clear lead in the polls, and nearly everyone has made up their minds anyway. That said, it really does matter if you vote. Did you know that in 2017, whether the Virginia state senate went Democratic or Republican came down to a single vote in a single local election? It's true. And that had big implications about the laws that could or couldn't get passed for the next year or two.

But more than that, there's the "people like you" theory. Basically, if you bother to vote, that means it's likely that people like you also will vote, and thus your interests will be represented. But if you don't, then people like you probably also won't bother, so your interests won't be represented.  Besides, I don't think you have grounds to complain about anything in US politics for the next four years if you don't bother to take half an hour out of your life to cast a vote.

Anyway, I encourage everyone to vote, no matter who you vote for. It's a basic civic duty, and the amount of time and effort involved is trivial compared to how important it is. But if you do vote, I strongly encourage you to choose Biden over Trump. I believe the fate of the country and even the world depends on this election. I think most people of both major political parties can at least agree on that much. That's why this election is on target to have a record turnout.

Okay, enough said. Back to the music.

Oh, one last thing. If you want the ideal music to listen to while Trump is hopefully voted out of office, please don't forget my compilation "Rock Trump Out." You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/10/various-artists-rock-trump-out-volumes_24.html

Norah Jones - Home Concerts 12, New York City, 10-1-2020 to 10-15-2020

As I promised, here's the next in my rush release of Norah Jones's home concerts. This gets me almost caught up to the current day. I only have one more to go after this. So I can post other things for a while before I get back to her.

I must admit, part of my motivation in posting this particular album on this particular day is to display the album cover that shows Norah Jones encouraging people to vote in the upcoming US presidential election. Please vote! Your vote really does matter.

Getting back to the music, this is pretty much just like the other albums in this series. On some other albums she's played guitar sometimes, but she's on piano the whole time here. 

As usual, most of the performances are solo versions of songs from her albums. But "Borderline" is Joni Mitchell tune "Dear John" is by Ryan Adams, and "What Would I Do without You" was done by Ray Charles.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Borderline (Norah Jones)
02 talk (Norah Jones)
03 Dear John (Norah Jones)
04 You’ve Ruined Me (Norah Jones)
05 Sleeping Wild (Norah Jones)
06 Burn (Norah Jones)
07 4 Broken Hearts (Norah Jones)
08 Light as a Feather (Norah Jones)
09 What Would I Do without You (Norah Jones)
10 Seven Years (Norah Jones)
11 Uh Oh (Norah Jones)
12 Broken (Norah Jones)
13 The Story (Norah Jones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15634409/NorahJ_2020_HomeCncerts12__10-1-2020_to_10-15-2020_atse.zip.html

I took the cover art photo from Norah Jones's Instagram page. If you're a US citizen, please do vote!

Lucinda Williams - Salt of the Earth - Non-Album Tracks (2011)

Here's the next in my series of stray tracks albums for Lucinda Williams. If you like the other ones, you'll be sure to like this one too, because it's a particularly strong one, in my opinion.

Unlike the last album in this series, there aren't many covers of famous songs. The exceptions are "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" by Bob Dylan,"Dedicated to the One I Love" by the Five Royales, the Mamas and the Papas and many others, "If We Make It through December" by Merle Haggard, and "Salt of the Earth" by the Rolling Stones. "When I Get like This" is another Five Royales cover, but much less well known. Frankly, I'm not sure how many of the others are covers or originals. If you know, please let me know.

Nearly all of the songs have been officially released, usually on various artists compilations or from Williams dueting on other people's albums. The only two unreleased songs are the last two. Both of them are taken from a soundcheck before a concert, so they sound very good and don't have any crowd noise.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 When I Get like This (Lucinda Williams with Steve Cropper)
02 Dedicated to the One I Love (Lucinda Williams with Steve Cropper & Steve Winwood)
03 Undamned (Over the Rhine with Lucinda Williams)
04 I'm So Happy I Found You (Lucinda Williams)
05 Clear Blue Eyes (Amos Lee & Lucinda Williams)
06 If I Can't Have You (Blackie & the Rodeo Kings & Lucinda Williams)
07 Moment of Fame (Lucinda Williams & Son of the Velvet Rat)
08 White Patch of Canvas (Lucinda Williams & Son of the Velvet Rat)
09 A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (Tom Russell & Lucinda Williams)
10 If We Make It through December (Lucinda Williams)
11 Salt of the Earth (Lucinda Williams)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15191537/LucndaWllms_2011_SltoftheErth_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo was taken at a concert in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2011.

Norah Jones - Home Concerts 11, New York City, 9-10-2020 to 9-27-2020

For the past couple of days, I've put Norah Jones on a fast track, posting one of her home concert albums each day. That's so I don't fall more and more behind, since she consistently does a mini-concert every single week. Here's the latest. I'm getting closer to the present day as I write this on November 1, 2020, but I should have another one for tomorrow as well.

Once again, there's not much for me to say. If you've liked the other albums in this series, you should like this one too. She focuses on playing piano this time, and the mix of the piano and her voice is better than last time. As usual, she mostly does original songs from her albums. But she does a nice cover of the all-time classic "Amazing Grace," which I don't think she's ever played in public before.

This time around, the total length is 52 minutes.

01 Toes (Norah Jones)
02 talk (Norah Jones)
03 It’s a Wonderful Time for Love (Norah Jones)
04 talk (Norah Jones)
05 Out on the Road Again (Norah Jones)
06 Lovesick Blues (Norah Jones)
07 Straight Up (Norah Jones)
08 The Sun Doesn’t Like You (Norah Jones)
09 Heartache (Norah Jones)
10 Cold, Cold Heart (Norah Jones)
11 Flame Twin (Norah Jones)
12 Amazing Grace (Norah Jones)
13 Take It Away (Norah Jones)
14 Street Stranger (Norah Jones)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15849019/NorahJ_2020_HomeCncerts11__9-10-2020_to_9-27-2020_atse.zip.html

Once again, I didn't want to have the same ol' same old photo of Jones sitting at her piano for the album cover. I came across a nice photo of her taken recently for the cover of "Downbeat Magazine." So I stripped all the usual magazine headline text from around it and used that.

Various Artists - Tom Petty's 70th Birthday Bash, 10-23-2020

Here's something that I think is great if you're a fan of Tom Petty's music at all. And who isn't a fan of Tom Petty's music? Petty died in 2017. Had he lived, he would have turned 70 on October 20, 2020. There has been a yearly tribute concert in his hometown of Gainsville, Florida, on his birthday each year since his death. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, a normal concert wasn't possible, so a virtual home concert was held instead, with different artists sending in their cover versions of Petty songs from their homes. The entire concert was well over five hours long. I've cut that down to three hours to make a really strong concert.

Somewhat strangely, this concert was broken into three different parts. The first two parts were only played on SiriusXM satellite radio. The first part consisted mostly of performances by Gainsville musicians. Most of those musicians are obscure, with no officially recorded music whatsoever. In cutting this concert from five hours down to three, I mostly cut from the first part. There are a lot of generic and unremarkable covers of Petty songs by bands you've never heard of, such as the Arts in Medicine Hospital Band and Jeff Slate's Weekend Wilburys. But there were some excellent performances by some unknowns, so I've included those. There are were a few songs by more famous artists sprinkled in early, such as one of my favorites, Larkin Poe, doing a song with Steve Ferrone of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on drums. Another Heartbreaker, guitarist Mike Campbell, also helped with a song by Starcrawler.

For the second part of the concert, a different SiriusXM DJ took over. The focus on Gainsville musicians ended. Instead, more famous musicians from all over were featured, starting with Eddie Vedder, lead vocalist of Pearl Jam. This section continued through the performance by the Raconteurs.

The final and longest section tended to feature the most famous names, though a few lesser knowns are scattered in as well. This last second was made available on video at Tom Petty's official website and other places. You can find all of it on YouTube if you want to watch and not just listen. Since this section is much more widely available, most press accounts mistakenly asserted that was the entire concert. But in fact it was only about half.

Now, let me explain some more about what I chose not to include. There were five songs performed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers scattered through the concert. Judging by appearances, they're from different years of Petty's long careers. I didn't include any of those because I felt they didn't fit the rest of the concert. They were typical versions of his famous songs, like "Refugee" and "I Need to Know." Most of the songs were done by other musicians in the concert, so including them would have increased the repetition of songs a lot.

There also were a lot of spoken word sections. I removed nearly all of those. They're nice to hear once or twice, but they don't have much replay value after that, in my opinion. I've only included the between song banter by Mike Campbell & Benmont Tench, the lead guitarist and pianist, respectively, of Tom Petty's band the Heartbreakers. They did a mini-set of three songs, and the banter between the songs was an important part of that, in my opinion. Nearly all the talking was in the last section of the concert. If you watch that on YouTube, you'll hear nice spoken tributes to Petty by his wife Dana, his daughter Adria, Stevie Nicks, a poem by George Harrison's wife Olivia, and more.

Most of the songs sound great. But a few were recorded from homes with poor recording equipment. I rejected a few songs due to sound quality issues. I didn't include a version of "Yer So Bad" by Adam Sandler mostly because it was so poorly recorded. The songs by Beck and Susanna Hoffs also were not recorded well, but I included them because they just barely sounded good enough for my ears, and I particularly like those two artists.

Another problem was that there didn't seem much effort to prevent multiple versions of the same songs. For instance, there were no less than four versions of the song "Wildflowers!" I removed two of them, by the bands Grouplove and the Arts in Medicine Hospital Band, while keeping the versions by Eddie Vedder and Brandi Carlile. The song "Honey Bee" was another problem. There were three versions that I decided to keep, by Larkin Poe, Grace Potter with Reysonator, and the Foo Fighters. There were all good, and all different from each other. I removed some other songs that were done more than once. There are a few other songs with two versions: "American Girl," "Room at the Top," "Runnin' Down a Dream," and "Walls (Circus)." Since the concert is so long at three hours, I figure a few of those are okay.

Almost all musicians played just one song. There are a couple of exceptions though. As mentioned above, Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench did three songs together to end the concert. Norah Jones played two songs. And Margo Price and Lukas Nelson each did one song, but then also did a duet together.

As I mentioned above, this a great concert. All sorts of my favorite musicians were included, and they did excellent versions. Honestly, I could hardly have picked a better line-up myself. If you like Tom Petty at all, please give this a listen!

Another point I want to mention is that the vast majority of the performances were done on or just before the broadcast date, from the musician's homes, but there are a few exceptions. The Gary Clark, Jr. and Jason Isbell performances comes from concerts in 2017. The Killers did their song "American Girl" in concert. I don't know the date or location, but they played that song a bunch of times in concert from 2017 to 2019. Eddie Vedder's version of "Wildflowers" is a solo acoustic version done without an audience, so it sounds much like the others. But it actually was done in 2017 at some point after Petty's death and not made public until this concert.

Oh, and one last thing: as Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench repeatedly said at the very end of the concert, if you're a US citizen, please VOTE in the election on November 3rd!

01 Saving Grace (Andrew Leahey & the Homestead)
02 Anything That's Rock 'N' Roll (Hannah Harber)
03 Ways to Be Wicked (Sunkat)
04 Yer So Bad (Tristen)
05 Kings Highway (Michigan Rattlers)
06 Honey Bee (Larkin Poe with Steve Ferrone & Tyler Bryant)
07 Joe (Hannah Wicklund & the Stepping Stones)
08 The Apartment Song (Miss Tess)
09 Sweet William (Edan Archer)
10 There Goes Angela [Dream Away] (Emma Swift)
11 I Need to Know (Starcrawler with Mike Campbell)
12 Wildflowers (Eddie Vedder)
13 Walls [Circus] (Dawes with Mike Viola)
14 Room at the Top (Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit)
15 Square One (Caamp)
16 Honey Bee (Grace Potter with Resynator)
17 Learning to Fly (Kurt Vile)
18 American Girl (Killers)
19 Runnin' Down a Dream (Raconteurs)
20 Listen to Her Heart (Flaming Lips)
21 Don't Come Around Here No More (Beck)
22 The Waiting (Jackson Browne)
23 Stop Draggin' My Heart Around (Lukas Nelson & Margo Price)
24 Southern Accents (Lukas Nelson)
25 Free Fallin' (Susanna Hoffs)
26 Walls [Circus] (Wesley Schultz of the Lumineers)
27 Breakdown (Spoon)
28 Angel Dream No. 2 (Lady Blackbird)
29 Crawling Back to You (Margo Price)
30 Honey Bee (Foo Fighters)
31 Runnin' Down a Dream (Lucinda Williams)
32 Rockin' Around [With You] (Sabina Sciubba)
33 Good Enough (Gary Clark, Jr.)
34 Love Is a Long Road (Dhani Harrison & Graham Coxon)
35 Room at the Top (Amos Lee)
36 Climb That Hill (Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers)
37 Cabin Down Below (Alison Mosshart)
38 Wildflowers (Brandi Carlile)
39 Don't Fade on Me (Chris Stapleton)
40 Time to Move On (Norah Jones)
41 Only a Broken Heart (Norah Jones)
42 King of the Hill (Roger McGuinn)
43 I Won't Back Down (Stephen Stills with Christopher Stills)
44 It's Good to Be King (Dave Stewart)
45 Alright for Now (Emily King)
46 talk (Mike Campbell & Benmont Tench)
47 American Girl (Mike Campbell & Benmont Tench)
48 Something Good Coming (Mike Campbell & Benmont Tench)
49 talk (Mike Campbell & Benmont Tench)
50 We Want Boogie 'bout Midnight (Mike Campbell & Benmont Tench)
51 talk (Mike Campbell & Benmont Tench)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/yj163rsU

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/niPJPGTDgY0Se4Y/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/cpuNJ

The cover art is the official artwork for the convert. I didn't have to make any changes at all.