Jim Croce - Facets (1966)

As I said in another Jim Croce post, Croce's music career goes much further back than most people realize. Croce emerged from obscurity to become a musical star in 1972. He had three hit albums that year and in 1973 before dying in a plane crash towards the end of 1973. His 1972 album "You Don't Mess Around with Jim" was commonly thought to be his debut album, but it wasn't. His real debut album is this one, released all the way back in 1966.

In my opinion, the music on this album is merely good. His musical talents weren't fully developed yet, and his 1972 and 1973 albums would be much better. But I've noticed that his pre-1972 output is little known and very hard to find (with the exception of one archival album, "Home Recordings - Americana"), so I've decided to post it all (except for the "Americana" album) to give it more exposure. 

There's an interesting story behind this album. Croce's parents loved music, and he built his musical knowledge off their record collection. But, like many parents, they wanted him to have a safe and dependable career so they were against him becoming a professional musician. In 1966, Jim Croce married Ingrid, who would remain his wife until his death. Apparently trying some reverse psychology, his parents gave them $500 as a wedding gift, with the stipulation that they had to use it to record an album. It seems they thought the album would fail to sell and Croce would be so discouraged that he would give up his plans for a music career. But what actually happened was he recorded the album presented here, printed up 500 copies, and then sold them for $5 each. The printing sold out due to him promoting it with concerts in clubs and he made a fair amount of money on it. So the wedding gift scheme backfired and only increased his desire to be a professional musician.

Unfortunately, this was a DIY (do it yourself) project recorded on the cheap without a proper producer, so the sound isn't great. It was officially rereleased many years after his death, but I guess there wasn't much they could do to improve the sound. It's not bad by any means, but don't expect the high fidelity typical of studio albums.

Croce began publicly performing music in the early 1960s while he was a college student. I'm not aware of any good publicly available live recordings of him prior to 1972... except for a short one all the way back in 1964! I have no idea how he was recorded well that far back, but one archival release does have a few songs from that 1964 concert. A couple of those songs didn't sound good to me, mainly because of too much audience noise drowning out the music, but I've added three of those 1964 songs to the end of this album.

Note that in these early years, Croce was only beginning to become a talented songwriter. Just two of the songs, "Texas Rodeo" and "Sun Came Up," are originals. Plus, for "The Ballad of Gunga Din," he took the lyrics from a poem by Rudyard Kipling and added his own music to it.

This is a short album. The actual album is only 27 minutes long. Since I added three songs at the end, the total is 33 minutes long.

01 Steel Rail Blues (Jim Croce)
02 Coal Tattoo (Jim Croce)
03 Texas Rodeo (Jim Croce)
04 Charley Green, Play That Slide Trombone (Jim Croce)
05 The Ballad of Gunga Din (Jim Croce)
06 Hard Hearted Hannah [The Vamp from Savannah] (Jim Croce)
07 Sun Come Up (Jim Croce)
08 The Blizzard (Jim Croce)
09 Running Maggie (Jim Croce)
10 Big Fat Woman (Jim Croce)
11 Until It's Time for Me to Go (Jim Croce)
12 San Francisco Bay Blues (Jim Croce)
13 Washington at Valley Forge (Jim Croce)
14 La Bamba (Jim Croce)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vFiukgBd

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/goYo38tB4HOkXgu/file

The original album cover for this album is awful, quite possibly the worst I've ever seen! It basically looks like someone stuck a Post-It note to a plain background and called that the cover. No doubt that wasn't some ironically simple statement, but just a reflection of the cheap DIY way the album was made.

Rather than use that one, I decided to come up with one myself. I found a photo of Croce that looked to be from the late 1960s, though I don't know the year. It was of him and his wife Ingrid, and she had a hand on one of his shoulders. I cropped her out of the picture and removed the hand in Photoshop so the focus would be entirely on him. That's the album cover at the top.

After I did that, I found out that when the album was officially rereleased decades later, it was given a different cover that was much better than the original. I've included that mostly black one here too, for those who prefer that one.

In February 2025, I improved the original cover with the help of the Krea AI program.

Larkin Poe - Yet Even Still More Further Tip O' the Hat - Various Cover Versions (2020)

Running the blog, one of the very favorite album series I've put together is this one. Since 2017, the roots rock duo Larkin Poe has been periodically releasing acoustic cover versions of songs they like on YouTube. I've been gathering them as they come out and compiling them into albums. This is the sixth one so far. If you haven't given any of these a listen yet, why not get started with this one? 

As with past albums in this series, Larkin Poe has chosen an interesting mix of famous songs and lesser known gems and given them their talented acoustic treatment. Compared to previous albums though, I'd say there are more lesser known gems. I prefer that, as it helps me discover some good songs I sometimes overlooked.

By the way, Larkin Poe has stopped calling these performances their "Tip O' the Hat" series. Instead, they just call it their "Cover Channel." But it will always be the "Tip O' the Hat" to me, so I plan on keep calling it that. ;) 

Also by the way, the three Christmas themed songs near the end actually aren't a part of the series, but come from a video the duo did for "Fender Play Live" in December 2020. Since they're acoustic cover versions and I didn't have a better spot for them, I've included them here.

One final note. I naturally called the first album in this series "Tip O' the Hat," then the second one "More Tip O' the Hat." From there, I kept expanding the album titles until they're grown comically long and unwieldy. But I'm having fun with it. If anyone has suggestions on what I should call the next one, please let me know. It's getting harder to expand the titles without breaking grammar rules. ;)

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

01 Who Do You Love - Bo Diddley
02 If I Needed You - Townes Van Zandt
03 Born to Be Wild -  Steppenwolf
04 Lovin' in My Baby's Eyes - Taj Mahal
05 Angie - Rolling Stones
06 Nothing Breaks like a Heart - Mark Ronson with Miley Cyrus
07 In My Life - Beatles
08 Gasoline Alley - Rod Stewart
09 White Lightning - George Jones
10 These Dreams -  Heart
11 Crocodile Rock - Elton John
12 Hellhound on My Trail - Robert Johnson
13 Kiss from a Rose - Seal
14 The Christmas Song [Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire] - Mel Torme / Nat King Cole
15 Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree - Brenda Lee
16 Santa Baby - Eartha Kitt
17 Church Street Blues - Tony Rice

And here's the usual song list:

01 Who Do You Love (Larkin Poe)
02 If I Needed You (Larkin Poe)
03 Born to Be Wild (Larkin Poe)
04 Lovin' in My Baby's Eyes (Larkin Poe)
05 Angie (Larkin Poe)
06 Nothing Breaks like a Heart (Larkin Poe)
07 In My Life (Larkin Poe)
08 Gasoline Alley (Larkin Poe)
09 White Lightning (Larkin Poe)
10 These Dreams (Larkin Poe)
11 Crocodile Rock (Larkin Poe)
12 Hellhound on My Trail (Larkin Poe)
13 Kiss from a Rose (Larkin Poe)
14 The Christmas Song [Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire] (Larkin Poe)
15 Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree (Larkin Poe)
16 Santa Baby (Larkin Poe)
17 Church Street Blues (Larkin Poe)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693455/LARKNPO2020e_YetEvnStillMreFrtherTpOtheHt_atse.zip.html

I found the cover art photo from the duo's Facebook page. It dates to November 2020.

Brinsley Schwarz - A. O. R., Tilburg, Netherlands, 5-18-1974

Brinsley Schwarz were one of the best and best known "pub rock" bands in the early 1970s. Their main singer and songwriter Nick Lowe would go on to greater fame with Rockpile and his solo career. (Strangely, Brinsley Schwarz was the name of one of the band members as well as the band as a whole.) I think they're very underappreciated. They wrote a lot of fun originals, and also had a habit of playing unjustly obscure songs.

I plan on posting a lot more from this band soon. But while I getting some other things ready, I decided to post this concert because I feel it's the best live recording of the band. There's one official live album called "Live Favorites," but this one is better, even though it's a bootleg. The sound quality is excellent, and it's a full show that's slightly shorter than two hours long. ("Live Favorites" by contrast is also from a single concert, but it's only 45 minutes long.)

I didn't have to do much to improve this recording, but I did do a couple of things. The main thing was that I broke the banter between songs into separate tracks and then boosted the volume of that banter. (Lowe does nearly all the talking.) Also, the last fifteen seconds or so of the song "(It's Gonna Be A) Bring Down" was missing. I restored much of that from a similar musical section earlier in the song, then finished it off with a bit of the same song from a bootleg of another concert. I also made a couple other fixes here and there, for instance getting rid of a squall of feedback in the middle of a song by patching in a bit of another part of the song.

This band was in its natural element playing live. The very name of the genre they're closely associated with, pub rock, is all about playing in pubs and other small clubs. If you've never heard this band before, this is a good place to start.

01 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
02 You Been Cheating (Brinsley Schwarz)
03 Small Town, Big City (Brinsley Schwarz)
04 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
05 I'll Be Doggone (Brinsley Schwarz)
06 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
07 Love Is Gone (Brinsley Schwarz)
08 It's Been So Long (Brinsley Schwarz)
09 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
10 I've Cried My Last Tear (Brinsley Schwarz)
11 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
12 Happy Doing What We're Doing (Brinsley Schwarz)
13 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
14 I'm Ahead If I Can Quit While I'm Behind (Brinsley Schwarz)
15 Don't Lie to Me (Brinsley Schwarz)
16 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
17 Surrender to the Rhythm (Brinsley Schwarz)
18 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
19 Country Girl (Brinsley Schwarz)
20 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
21 Range War (Brinsley Schwarz)
22 [It's Gonna Be A] Bring Down [Edit] (Brinsley Schwarz)
23 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
24 Save the Last Dance for Me (Brinsley Schwarz)
25 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
26 Down in the Dive (Brinsley Schwarz)
27 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
28 Down in Mexico (Brinsley Schwarz)
29 Ju Ju Man (Brinsley Schwarz)
30 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
31 Wonder Woman (Brinsley Schwarz)
32 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
33 Home in My Hand (Brinsley Schwarz)
34 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
35 Run Rudolph Run (Brinsley Schwarz)
36 talk (Brinsley Schwarz)
37 Brown Sugar (Brinsley Schwarz)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15275556/BrinsleyS_1974_AORTilburg__5-18-1974_atse.zip.html

There are very few good color photos of this band, but I managed to find one of them in concert. This comes from an appearance at the Hammersmith Odeon in London in May 1973.

Neil Young - Shots - Non-Album Tracks (1976-1978)

Note that I've posted this Neil Young stray tracks album already. However, I just deleted that post and I'm reposting it with a new mp3 download file, due to the fact that I've just posted another Neil Young stray tracks album, "Ranch Romances," that significantly changed what's on this one. I want to make sure that the people who downloaded that also download the latest version of this.

Neil Young has long had a habit of writing a song and then not releasing it for years afterwards, sometimes waiting decades. For all of these stray tracks albums, I've imagined that he released his songs in the normal fashion, putting them on an album a year or two later at the most.

A majority of the songs here would be released by Young in different versions years later. "Peace of Mind" was released on the "Comes a Time" album in 1978, just two years after the version here. However, I've included it here because this is a rocking full band version that's very different from the 1978 country version. It's a similar situation with "Hold Back the Tears." That was on "American Stars n' Bars" in 1977, but this is a different version that remains unreleased. "Cryin' Eyes" came out in a drastically different version on the "Life" album in 1987. "Lost in Space" and "Captain Kennedy" were both recorded in 1977, but not released until the 1980 album "Hawks and Doves." A different version of "The Ways of Love" was included on the 1989 album "Freedom." A rocking version of "Shots" was included on the 1981 album "Re-act-or," but this is an acoustic version.

That leaves just "Windward Passage" and "Lady Wingshot" as songs that are still unreleased in any form today.  "Lady Wingshot" is a song about the famous female sharpshooter Annie Oakley, by the way. This version of "Windward Passage" sounds great, and comes from a soundboard, but it got cut off before it ended. However, I faded it out at a point where I feel it sounds finished.

There's at least one more unreleased original song from this time period, "Bright Sunny Day." Young only played it one time in concert, in 1978. Unfortunately, the bootleg recording of it sounds terrible, so bad that I couldn't even bear to include it as a bonus track. But if you're curious, you can find it on YouTube. 

Chances are, if and when "Archives, Volume III" is released, we'll find out about other unreleased songs or versions. For instance, it's known the song "Unknown Beauty' was first written around 1978, but wasn't released until the "Harvest Moon" album in 1992.

1978 is not just the chronological end of this album, it was the end of an era for Young. He had two hit albums in 1979, "Rust Never Sleeps" and "Live Rust." But they were recorded in 1978. He didn't play any concerts or do any studio recording in 1979 at all, because he'd given birth to a child with cerebral palsy, and taking care of him would end up taking 15 of more hours of his day, every day, for the next few years. So Young's 1970s flood of songwriting creativity ends in 1978. In my opinion, it would take him a long time to fully get his groove back.

For the bonus track, I've added another version of "Windward Passage." That's because the version I put on the album sounds great since it's from a soundboard bootleg, but is incomplete at about four and a half minutes long. The bonus track version is compete at over eight minutes long, but it comes from an audience bootleg that still sounds decent but doesn't sound as good. Personally, I prefer the shorter version, not only for the sound quality but because I feel the extra four minutes don't do much anyway. Here you can take your choice. (By the way, I tried to merge the two versions together, but I couldn't get that to work, due to different pitches and tempos and so forth. If anyone else can, please let me know.)

01 Shots (Neil Young)
04 Lady Wingshot (Neil Young)
05 Windward Passage [Instrumental] (Neil Young & the Ducks)
06 Cryin' Eyes (Neil Young & the Ducks)
07 Country Home (Neil Young)
07 Lost in Space (Neil Young)
08 Captain Kennedy (Neil Young)
09 Hold Back the Tears (Neil Young)
10 Peace of Mind [Electric Version] (Neil Young)
10 The Ways of Love (Neil Young)

Windward Passage [Instrumental] (Neil Young & the Ducks)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696729/NELYNG1976f-1978_Shts_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from a Crosby, Nash and Young (no Stills!) concert in Santa Cruz in August 1977. I cropped the photo so that Crosby and Nash aren't included.

Neil Young - Ranch Romances - Non-Album Tracks (1976)

I'm finishing sorting out Neil Young's prolific mid-1970s songwriting burst. I just posted "Dume" to gather the rest of his stray tracks from 1974 and 1975. This album gathers most of his 1976 stray tracks. I will follow this with a revised version of "Shots" to collect the rest of 1976, plus songs from 1977 and 1978.

Neil Young wrote so many excellent songs in the mid-1970s that he didn't know what to do with them all. There were numerous "lost albums," meaning albums he considered but ultimately didn't release. "Homegrown" is one such 1975 album that was finally released in 2020. "Hitchhiker" was a proposed 1976 album that was released in 2017. But there were more. Around 1976, "Mediterranean," "Chrome Dreams," and "Ranch Romances" were all titles that were considered. I have no idea what the actual song lists were for any of these. I've simply taken the stray tracks from early to mid-1976 and gathered them here. I could have easily chosen another name, but "Ranch Romances" appealed to me. If anyone knows more about these proposed albums and which songs exactly were supposed to be on them, please let me know.

I've already posted a series of albums in which I maximized the number of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young songs and albums. For these albums, I'm doing the opposite, imagining that Young put out all his songs on his solo albums shortly after he wrote and recorded them. As part of that, I'm acting as if the Stills-Young Band album "Long May You Run" next happened. I've included four songs from that - "Let It Shine," "Midnight on the Bay," "Fountainbleau" and "Ocean Girl" - but only "Ocean Girl" is the exact same version as the one on that album.

I've been able to update my Neil Young stray tracks albums due to the release of the "Archives, Volume II" box set in late 2020. But note there are a number of previously unreleased alternate versions on there that I'm not including on any of these albums. Also, the material from that ends in mid-1976. The impact of that here is that I presume a version of the still unreleased song "Evening Coconut" will appear on "Archives, Volume III," whenever that comes out. For now, we have to make do with this slightly rough bootleg version. It's the exact same situation with "Sad Movies," except the song quality of this bootleg version is excellent.

The song "Campaigner" first appeared on the 1977 best of compilation album "Decade." It turns out that version was the exact same version on "Hitchhiker," except that one verse was edited out. I've used the longer version. 

A couple of the other songs here eventually came out on other releases. A live version of "Stringman" was released on the 1993 album "Unplugged." A new version of "Hitchhiker" first came out on the 2010 album "La Noise," then the original 1976 version came out on the 2017 album also called "Hitchhiker."

01 Campaigner [Long Version] (Neil Young)
02 Let It Shine (Neil Young)
03 Sad Movies (Neil Young)
04 Midnight on the Bay (Neil Young)
05 Stringman (Neil Young)
06 Fontainebleau (Stills-Young Band)
07 Evening Coconut (Stills-Young Band)
08 Ocean Girl (Stills-Young Band)
09 Mediterranean (Neil Young)
10 Hitchhiker (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696718/NELYNG1976a_RnchRmances_atse.zip.html

At the time Young wrote these songs, he owned a ranch and he was having a lot of romantic trouble, breaking up with his romantic partner of several years, Carrie Snodgress, in 1975. So maybe that's why he wanted to call an album "Ranch Romances." But I found out there were a series of pulp novels in the 1970s called "Ranch Romances," and maybe that played into his thinking. For the album title text, I used the exact font taken from the cover of one of the novels. All the novel covers used the exact same font and style.

As for the cover photo, I found it with a Rolling Stone magazine article about the "Archives, Volume II" box set. It looks like it dates from that time period, but I don't know the exact details.

Neil Young - Dume - Non-Album Tracks (1974-1975)

In 1974 and 1975, Neil Young arguably hit his peak as a songwriter. It wasn't just that the songs he wrote were so good; it's that there were so many of them as well. In 1975, he released the studio albums "Tonight's the Night" and "Zuma." We can discount "Tonight's the Night" because it actually was recorded in 1973. But there was another excellent 1975 album that he sat on until 2020: "Homegrown." On top of that, I've posted another album of excellent songs that could have been released in early 1975: "Homefires." Then, on top of that, there's this album, which mainly consist of outtakes from the "Zuma" sessions. So even with "Tonight's the Night" put aside, that's the equal of four studio albums of excellent songs all from the same year!

A year or two ago, I had already posted a couple of albums of his mid-1970s, which I called "Deep Forbidden Lake" and "Let It Shine." I'm deleting both of those today because they're being replaced by four albums: "Last Dance," "Homefires," "Dume," and "Ranch Romances." If you've downloaded those in the past, I highly recommend you get rid of those. They're obsolete thanks to "Archives, Volume II" released in late 2020, with many previously unreleased songs and versions.  

One thing you may notice about the song list below is that many of the songs here have already been released elsewhere by now. For instance, "Deep Forbidden Lake" came out on the "Decade" compilation in 1977. This exact version of "The Old Homestead" came out on the 1980 album "Hawks and Doves." "Bad News Comes to Town" was done in a drastically different big band version on tour in 1988, and then that version was included in the archival release "Bluenote Cafe" in 2015. A different version of "Too Far Gone" appeared on "Freedom" in 1989. A different version of "Hawaii" came out on the archival release "Hitchhiker" in 2017. Finally, different versions of "Ride My Llama," "Powerfinger" and "Pocahontas" were included on "Rust Never Sleeps" in 1979.

The thing is though, all of those later releases could and should have been released in 1975. But there also are a few songs that appear here for the first time, thanks to "Archives, Volume II," such as "Changing Highways," "Daughters," and "Born to Run."

The first five songs here are still from late 1974 recording sessions. The rest were recorded in the May and June 1975 recording sessions that resulted in the "Zuma" album. The "Archives, Volume II" box set calls the disc with these sessions on it "Dume," so that's the name I've given it as well. This is because most of the songs were recorded at a studio in Point Dume, California, near Malibu. (Similarly, "Zuma" is the name of a beach near Malibu.)

By the way, there was one song, "Love-Art Blues," that I had planned to include on this album. But at the last minute, I decided there was room to include it on the previous album in this series, "Homefires." So please redownload that album or you'll miss that song. Sorry 'bout that. Here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/12/neil-young-homefires-various-songs-1974.html

01 Bad News Comes to Town (Neil Young)
02 Changing Highways (Neil Young)
03 Daughters (Neil Young)
04 The Old Homestead (Neil Young)
05 Deep Forbidden Lake (Neil Young)
06 Born to Run (Neil Young)
07 Hawaii (Neil Young)
08 No One Seems to Know (Neil Young)
09 Too Far Gone (Neil Young)
10 Ride My Llama (Neil Young)
11 Powderfinger (Neil Young)
12 Pocahontas (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696723/NELYNG1974d-1975_Dme_atse.zip.html

This album essentially is a companion album to "Zuma," so I wanted an album cover to reflect that. At the Steve Hoffman music forum, I saw someone took some of the extra artwork from the "Zuma" album, inverted the light and dark, and used that as a cover. I don't remember who that way, sorry, but I liked the idea and decided to do the same. I used one main drawing from the "Zuma" booklet, overlaid on the official "Zuma" cover, then added bits and pieces from a couple other drawings. I added Neil Young's name to the upper left corner.

Various Artists - Covered: Graham Gouldman. Volume 2: 1967-1971

A few days ago, I posted the first album in this "Covered" series celebrating the songwriting of Graham Gouldman. Here's the second, and there's one more to come.

That first album largely covered Gouldman's big successes in the mid-1960s, when he wrote some big, classic hits for different artists. The first half has some more in that vein, still with some success. For instance, "Tallyman" was a hit for Jeff Beck in 1967. However, in 1967 and 1968, music trends were changing rapidly and drastically. Gouldman's pop style fell out of favor as music grew increasingly "heavy" and serious towards the end of the 1960s. Note how many of the bands here like the Herman's Hermits, Wayne Fontana, the Mindbenders, and so on went from often being near the top of the charts to dropping off the charts altogether.

As a result, Gouldman spent a few years more or less in the music wilderness. But during that time, he increasingly linked up with the three other songwriters in 10cc. They finally went by the 10cc in 1972, and soon had a series of hits on their own. Yet during this time, Gouldman never lost his knack for writing catchy and good songs, as you'll see here.

Note that, once again, these are all songs without Gouldman singing lead on them. While he continued to write for others during this period, he often sang and wrote songs for himself, though under a variety of names. I will be compiling the best of those on a different album in the future.

01 Schoolgirl (Hollies)
02 Ooh She's Done It Again (Herman's Hermits)
03 Naughty Nippon Nights (Shadows)
04 Tallyman (Jeff Beck)
05 Upstairs, Downstairs (Herman's Hermits)
06 The Impossible Years (Wayne Fontana)
07 The Love Was in My Eyes (Applejacks)
08 My Father (Jonah Jones)
09 The World Is for the Young (Herman's Hermits with Stanley Holloway)
10 Uncle Joe, the Ice Cream Man (Mindbenders)
11 It's Nice to Be Out in the Morning (Herman's Hermits)
12 Some People (Chords Five)
13 It's Alright Now (Herman's Hermits)
14 Crickets (Peter Cowap)
15 Come On Plane (Silver Fleet)
16 Because You're There (Peter Noone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/i8VjjSCe

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/vapS0com9NKlFy2/file

I'm not exactly sure when or where this cover art photo is from, but I'm guessing it's the late 1960s or early 1970s. There was a bunch of stuff behind him that I found distracting, so I replaced all that with a blank background.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Oingo Boingo - Remember My Name - Non-Album Tracks (1987-1995)

I've posted quite a few Oingo Boingo stray tracks albums, which is rather surprising in my opinion considering that the band wasn't active that long. But for whatever reason, they had a habit of leaving lots of good songs off their albums. Here's the fifth and last. It's the last because the band folded in 1995.

Personally, my favorite period for the band is the first half of the 1980s. It was led by Danny Elfman, who was the lead vocalist and main songwriter. In 1985, he scored the music to a major motion picture, and from that point on he stayed very busy writing scores to dozens of movies. With each passing year, it seemed his interest in Oingo Boingo lessened until he disbanded the band altogether in 1995, after a farewell tour. 

This album deals with the years the band was slowing fading due to Elfman's changing interests. The band's musical style was changing too, growing more serious as Elfman aged and developed. But although I prefer the earlier style, in my opinion pretty much everything the band did was good. In fact, I would argue that many of the rare or unreleased songs here are as good or better than the songs on the band's albums.

Six of the songs here are unreleased. Most of those are studio outtakes and the sound quality is very good. "Minne the Moocher," a cover of the classic 1930s song, is the only one from a concert bootleg, and the sound quality of that one is a bit lower. Also, note that a different version of "Cindarella Undercover" did appear on the band's live in the studio album "Boingo Alive." Plus, the song was actually written in the late 1970s, and I posted a 1981 version on the stray tracks album "I Was a Teenage Monster."

By the way, "This Time" isn't an Oingo Boingo track at all, but a Danny Elfman solo one. It was actually done as a bonus track for the soundtrack to "Nightmare Before Christmas" in 1994. I included it because it has Elfman on lead vocals, something he almost never did for any of his soundtrack scores, and it was done while Oingo Boingo was still together.

This album is 59 minutes long.

01 Cinderella Undercover (Oingo Boingo)
02 Happy (Oingo Boingo)
03 Mama (Oingo Boingo)
04 Find You (Oingo Boingo)
05 Inside (Oingo Boingo)
06 Remember My Name (Oingo Boingo)
07 Try to Believe [Soundtrack Version] (Oingo Boingo)
08 Minnie the Moocher (Oingo Boingo)
09 Helpless (Oingo Boingo)
10 Water (Oingo Boingo)
11 This Time (Danny Elfman)
12 Piggies (Oingo Boingo)
13 Change (Oingo Boingo)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15264849/OingBo_1987-1995_RemembrMyNme_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I found a nice graphic with the band's name in it on the Internet. I don't know where or when it's from, but I thought it looked cool. All I did was add the black background and the album title at the bottom.

Jorma Kaukonen - Home Concerts 3, Fur Peace Ranch, Pomeroy, OH, 5-2-2020 to 5-16-2020

It's already 2021 as I write this, but I still have some 2020 home concerts to post. So here's another from Jorma Kaukonen of both Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna fame. Since the pandemic began, he's been holding a concert at his home once a week, sometimes solo and sometimes as part of Hot Tuna. He continues to do that most weeks.

I think Kaukonen is underrated as a songwriter. I also think he relies too much on a small number of blues songs by others that he plays over and over again, especially those by Rev. Gary Davis. So this contains the songs he hadn't played in previous home concerts up till this point, minus those overplayed blues covers. The result is mostly originals, though there are a few covers here, such as "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" and "Nine Pound Hammer."

Also, note that his home concerts have often had as much talking as music. Typically, his wife has asked him questions from fans, and he would answer them at length. I've removed pretty much all of that. However, I've kept the comments he made that are relevant to the songs he's playing, so there's still a decent amount of between song banter.

I think the songs here are particularly interesting, because the songs he plays the most generally appeared on the first two albums in this series. These are the lesser known ones. But in my opinion they're generally very good just the same.

01 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
02 Letter to the North Star (Jorma Kaukonen)
03 Do Not Go Gentle [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
04 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
05 From the Land of Heroes (Jorma Kaukonen)
06 Mann's Fate [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
07 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
08 Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out (Jorma Kaukonen)
09 In My Dreams (Jorma Kaukonen)
10 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
11 River of Time (Jorma Kaukonen)
12 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
13 Living Just for You (Jorma Kaukonen)
14 Song for the High Mountain (Jorma Kaukonen)
15 Trial by Fire (Jorma Kaukonen)
16 Song for the North Star (Jorma Kaukonen)
17 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
18 Another Man Done a Full Go Round (Jorma Kaukonen)
19 A Life Well Lived (Jorma Kaukonen)
20 Day to Day Out the Window Blues (Jorma Kaukonen)
21 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
22 I'll Let You Know Before I Leave [Instrumental] (Jorma Kaukonen)
23 talk (Jorma Kaukonen)
24 Hamar Promenade (Jorma Kaukonen)
25 Nine Pound Hammer (Jorma Kaukonen)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2TCnjbPW

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/1tlDTZ7HA2zmJwG/file

The cover art is a screenshot taken from one of the YouTube videos of the songs on this album.

Morgan James - Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James (2014-2018)

Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox is a musical collective with an interesting conceit: they take popular songs from the last few decades and recast them in drastically different arrangements, turning slick pop hits into ragtime jazz, 1960s modern, 1940s swing, and the like. In my opinion, it's a very hit and miss approach. Sometimes it works great and makes you appreciate a song in a new way. Other times, it's more like a failed experiment. But their versions are definitely interesting, which is why all their songs combined have received more than a billion views on YouTube. You can read more about this collective at Wikipedia:

Postmodern Jukebox - Wikipedia

One aspect of this collective is that there's a rotating cast of lead vocalists, with no one singer dominating. But of all the vocalists they've used, Morgan James at least ties for being the most prominent. That makes perfect sense to me, since she's very vocally gifted and has an attractive appearance that helps get more YouTube views. I've posted a number of albums of her acoustic cover versions, and I plan on posting a lot more. I've also compiled all her lead vocal turns with Postmodern Jukebox. Luckily, there are just enough songs for an album.

The vast majority of the performances here come from Postmodern Jukebox studio albums, which basically just repackage their popular YouTube videos. But two of the performances are unreleased ("All About that Bass" and "Sweet Child o' Mine"). Don't worry though, the sound quality of those are just as excellent as the others. And note that unlilke most of the other Morgan James music I've been posting, which is acoustic, these are generally full band performances.

This includes James's version of "Dream On" by Aerosmith. The video of it has gotten over 20 million views on YouTube, and for good reason, because she blows the song out of the water. 

I was torn over whether to include "Barbie Girl" or not. I consider the original by Aqua to be a truly vile song that is best totally forgotten. But this version is different enough (done in a vintage Beach Boys style) to make it at least bearable. If you have issues with the song like I do, you can always just delete that one.

This album is 43 minutes long. James apparently hasn't performed as part of the Postmodern Jukebox collective since 2018. But if she ever does more with them, I'll consider adding that here.

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

01 Maps - Maroon 5
02 Really Don't Care - Demi Lovato
03 Break Free - Ariana Grande
04 All About That Bass - Meghan Trainor
05 Barbie Girl - Aqua
06 Take Me to Church - Hozier
07 Jealous - Nick Jonas
08 Dream On - Aerosmith
09 Who Wants to Live Forever - Queen
10 It's a Man's Man's Man's World - James Brown
11 Sweet Child o' Mine - Guns N' Roses

And here's the usual song list:

01 Maps (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
02 Really Don't Care (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
03 Break Free (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
04 All About That Bass (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Haley Reinhart, Morgan James & Ariana Savalas)
05 Barbie Girl (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
06 Take Me to Church (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
07 Jealous (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
08 Dream On (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
09 Who Wants to Live Forever (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
10 It's a Man's Man's Man's World (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)
11 Sweet Child o' Mine (Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox with Morgan James)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/pYSDTvBq

Thanks again to PJ of his "Albums I Wish Existed" blog, who put the cover together while I was having computer trouble a couple of weeks ago. I selected the image, which is a screenshot from one of her YouTube videos.

Etta James - Miss Pitiful - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1969)

I have to admit that I find Etta James' music hit or miss. She's had lots of really great songs, but plenty of duds too. I mostly like her at the box set level. A problem is that her personal like was messed up for much of her career, including pretty much all of the first half. She had lots of problems with drugs and dealings with shady people who brought her down. On top of that, she often got saddled with subpar production and mediocre songs.

Despite all that, there were times when she was firing on all cylinders and consistently came up with excellent performances. One of those times was in 1968 and 1969. James' career had been on the decline, with only a few minor hits in the previous few years. In my opinion, her turnaround in 1968 was inadvertently due to Aretha Franklin. Franklin was hugely talented, but her career had been foundering, due to a record company that misunderstood her and saddled her with the wrong production and songs (similar to James's problems at the time). But in early 1967, she got a new record company and a new producer who tried a new approach. They paired her up with a soulful backing back in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and basically let her be soulful instead of trying to push a more mainstream sound on her. The result was a bunch of hits that immediately turned Franklin into a big star.

Perhaps not surprisingly, James's record company tried to duplicate Franklin's model for success. They took her to Muscle Shoals and had her work with that exact same group of musicians, who by the way went on to play on tons of other classic records. (They're celebrated as "the Swampers" in the lyrics to Lynyrd Skynrd's song "Sweet Home Alabama.") Exactly like Franklin, James' soulfulness was unleashed. The result was a hit song in 1968, "Tell Mama," and an acclaimed album by the same name. If you don't have that album, I suggest you get it, because it's solid all the way through.

So, finally, we get to this album. It turns out the songs for the "Tell Mama" album weren't the only songs James performed with the Swampers in Alabama. After finishing that album in 1967, she went back there for a number of sessions in 1968 and early 1969. It had the same high level of quality, due to the sympathetic backing and letting her be more soulful. But for whatever reason, these songs weren't put on an album. Instead, her next album, called "Funk" and released in 1969, would come from other sessions recorded elsewhere, and she wouldn't play with the Swampers again.

What I've done is simply gather up all the other songs James played with the Swampers. That makes up 36 minutes of music, which was a typical album length at the time. (The "Tell Mama" album actually is even shorter, only 29 minutes long.) Some of the songs came out as A- and B-sides at the time, and one, "Miss Pitiful" was a minor hit and popular enough to make it on most of her best of collections, so that's why I've titled the album after it. But about half of them remained unreleased until coming out on archival releases decades later.

01 I Got You Babe (Etta James)
02 I Worship the Ground You Walk On (Etta James)
03 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (Etta James)
04 You Got It (Etta James)
05 Fire (Etta James)
06 Almost Persuaded (Etta James)
07 You Took It (Etta James)
08 I've Gone Too Far (Etta James)
09 Misty (Etta James)
10 Miss Pitiful (Etta James)
11 Slow and Easy (Etta James)
12 Light My Fire (Etta James)
13 The Soul of a Man (Etta James)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15260262/EttaJms_1968-1969_MssPitiful_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from the "Tell Mama" recording sessions at Muscle Shoals in 1967. To make it look more authentic, I added the same "stereo" and record company logos as on the "Tell Mama" album.

KT Tunstall - Cover Songs, Volume 4: 2011-2016

Here's the next in my series of KT Tunstall cover songs albums. As with the others, the sound quality is excellent, and she has fun with songs from a wide variety of artists and genres.

As I've mentioned with previous albums in this series, Tunstall grew up on the music of the 1980s and 90s, so she often favors music from those decades over the 1960s and 70s, which is more common for many of the other cover album collections I've posted by other artists. There's an especially big emphasis on the 1980s here, with seven of the 11 songs from that decade. But as a sign of her range, she does songs from as early as 1932 ("Night and Day") and as late as 2003 ("Seven Nation Army").

Six of the 11 songs are officially unreleased. But don't worry, because most of those are from radio or TV appearances, and they sound just as great as the rest.

Even the bonus track songs excellent this time. The only reason I've put "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree - Seven Nation Army" is because it only partially qualifies for being a cover song. Most of it is KT Tunstall's great original hit "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree," with about a minute of "Seven Nation Army" by the White Stripe near the end. So it's more of an original than a cover, in my opinion. But I figure it's interesting enough to include as a bonus track anyway.

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

01 Landslide - Fleetwood Mac
02 Merry Christmas Everyone - Shakin' Stevens
03 Sweet Dreams [Are Made of This] - Eurythmics
04 Sledgehammer - Peter Gabriel
05 The Boys of Summer - Don Henley
06 Deportee [Plane Wreck at Los Gatos] - Woody Guthrie
07 Night and Day - Cole Porter / Fred Astaire
08 Should I Stay or Should I Go - Clash
09 Promised You a Miracle - Simple Minds
10 Writing to Reach You - Travis
11 State Trooper- Bruce Springsteen
Seven Nation Army - White Stripes

Here's the usual song list:

01 Landslide (KT Tunstall)
02 Merry Christmas Everyone (KT Tunstall)
03 Sweet Dreams [Are Made of This] (KT Tunstall with Dave Stewart, Vanessa Haynes & Candy Dulfer)
04 Sledgehammer (KT Tunstall)
05 The Boys of Summer (KT Tunstall)
06 Deportee [Plane Wreck at Los Gatos] (KT Tunstall)
07 Night and Day (KT Tunstall with Jools Holland)
08 Should I Stay or Should I Go (KT Tunstall)
09 Promised You a Miracle (Simple Minds & KT Tunstall)
10 Writing to Reach You (KT Tunstall)
11 State Trooper (KT Tunstall & Julie Fowlis)

Black Horse and the Cherry Tree - Seven Nation Army (KT Tunstall)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15847871/KTTnstl_2011-2016_CovrSngsVol4_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo comes from a concert in Scotland in 2013.

Cat Stevens - KCET Studios, Los Angeles, CA, 6-8-1971

I'm a very big fan of Cat Stevens' early 1970s music, which was his commercial and critical success. In terms of live recordings, 1971 seems to be the best. By chance, there's very little that's recorded well from 1970 or 1972 (although I've posted a very good 1970 recording here recently), and by 1973 his music changed and he played with a full band. That leaves 1971. Luckily, he played a few concerts that were recorded very well. 

This one has excellent sound because it was broadcast on PBS. This concert hasn't been officially released in full, though I think a track here and there has been included as bonus tracks on archival releases. The one snag with it is that it's relatively short. The portion of this album from the KCET Studios show broadcast on PBS is only 30 minutes long.

I wanted it longer. So I found another concert he played later that month in Berkeley, California, and added in just the songs from it that weren't on the PBS recording. That added another 15 minutes, making the whole thing 45 minutes long. As you'll probably notice when listening to this, the sound quality isn't as good. It still is fairly good, but there's some boomy echo. 

The only problem with the PBS portion is that it got cut off in the middle of the song "Hard Headed Woman." I surmise the TV show just played what they could until time ran out. (That makes me wonder if the rest of the concert was recorded at that same excellent quality, and if we'll ever be able to hear the whole thing.) I edited the song so the first half is from the PBS recording and the second half is from the Berkeley recording. Again, you'll probably notice the change, but I figure that's better than not including the song at all.

01 Moonshadow (Cat Stevens)
02 talk (Cat Stevens)
03 On the Road to Find Out (Cat Stevens)
04 Where Do the Children Play (Cat Stevens)
05 talk (Cat Stevens)
06 Wild World (Cat Stevens)
07 talk (Cat Stevens)
08 Miles from Nowhere (Cat Stevens)
09 talk (Cat Stevens)
10 Longer Boats (Cat Stevens)
11 talk (Cat Stevens)
12 Father and Son (Cat Stevens)
13 talk (Cat Stevens)
14 Hard Headed Woman [Edit] (Cat Stevens)
15 Time (Cat Stevens)
16 Fill My Eyes (Cat Stevens)
17 talk (Cat Stevens)
18 Peace Train (Cat Stevens)
19 talk (Cat Stevens)
20 On the Road to Find Out (Cat Stevens)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687686/CATSTVNS1971b_KCETStdiosLosAnglesCA__6-8-1971_atse.zip.html

I was surprised that I could find any really excellent concert photos in color from 1971. So I used a black and white one and colorized it using the Pixbim program. This photo was taken in London in September 1971.

Jim Croce - Which Way Are You Goin' - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1973)

Jim Croce became a big star in 1972 seemingly out of nowhere, with a hit "debut" album and a couple of hit singles. However, he spent years toiling in obscurity as a folk musician and songwriter before his success. Unfortunately, his time in the spotlight was short, because he died in a plane crash in 1973. This album gathers up all his stray tracks from 1970 until the end of his career to 1973. I will have more to post of his music before 1970, but that's for another time.

Croce put out an obscure album in 1969 that was performed as a duet with his wife Ingrid Croce. Then he didn't release any new music until the hit 1972 album mentioned above, "You Don't Mess Around with Jim." It turns out he had a bunch of songs that he wrote and recorded in 1970 and 1971 that didn't get released at the time. Those comprise the first eight songs. I think all of them are originals, and all of them were only released posthumously. 

The remainder of the songs are cover versions that he did in his years of fame, 1972 and 1973. Two of those, "Chain Gang Medley" and "Ol' Man River" were the A- and B-sides of a 1972 single. The rest were performed in concert. I did my best to strip those of audience noise to make them sound like the other studio tracks. Luckily, the sound quality is so high on these that I think they come fairly close to sounding as good, even though a couple of them are from bootlegs.

Note that if you're easily offended, the song "Ball of Kerrymuir" probably is not for you. This seems to be a traditional Irish song that Croce played in concert for laughs. The lyrics are wild and X-rated, with each verse describing an outrageous sex act. I didn't include the long introduction he always gave to explain this strange song, but you can hear that on his official live album "The Final Tour." This version is longer and has some extra verses.

The songs are in rough chronological order by the year they were recorded. But I put "Ol' Man River" at the end even though it's from 1972 instead of 1973 since I find it a fitting final song.

This album is 40 minutes long. I wouldn't say it's as good as the three hit albums from 1972 and 1973 that he's best known for, but if you like those you should like this, since it's very much in the same vein.

01 [And] I Remember Her (Jim Croce)
02 Cotton Mouth River (Jim Croce)
03 More than That Tomorrow (Jim Croce)
04 The Migrant Worker (Jim Croce)
05 Stone Walls (Jim Croce)
06 King's Song (Jim Croce)
07 Mississippi Lady (Jim Croce)
08 Which Way Are You Goin' (Jim Croce)
09 Chain Gang Medley [Chain Gang - He Don't Love You - Searchin' - Chain Gang] (Jim Croce)
10 Framed (Jim Croce)
11 He's Got a Way with Women (Jim Croce)
12 Ball of Kerrymuir [Edit] (Jim Croce)
13 Shopping for Clothes (Jim Croce)
14 Ol' Man River (Jim Croce)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Ahp6T2BS

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/axc2ngOOr4hgQb8/file

PJ of his "Albums I Wish Existed" blog originally did the album cover. But then I realized I had to redo it after I discovered the exact version of the song I wanted as the title song was in fact on Croce's "Americana" album already. So I redid it with a new title. I'm not sure where or when the photo is from. I added the same record company logo that was on his 1972 and 1973 albums.

In February 2025, I sharpened the image with the Krea AI program.

I'm back on Soulseek

As I explained previously in this blog, in mid-December 2020 I had a computer hard drive fail on me. Luckily, my music collection wasn't affected, but I had to get a new computer. As part of that, I also lost my SoulseekQT account. But in the past few days, I've managed to put all the albums I've shared here back on Soulseek. My user name is the same as before: albumsthatshouldexist. So if you have trouble with Zippyshare or just want a better and/or different way to access my music, I highly recommend doing so through Soulseek.

My computer trouble, plus the trouble PJ at his Albums I Wish Existed blog around the same time did have a silver lining. When PJ's blog was unexpectedly and suddenly taken down, he resumed it at a new URL (check my list of links for that). But he also decided to share his files through Soulseek. To help people find his files there, he renamed all of the folders he was sharing, adding "aiwe" to them (for "Albums I Wish Existed"). 

I realized this was a good idea. Since I had to reshare all my folders for Soulseek anyway, I also have added something to each folder to help people find the files. In my case, I chose "atse," which naturally is short for "Albums That Should Exist." You probably can find the files anyway, but this should make it easier. Soulseek can be a bit erratic. 

For one thing, I have to be online and with the Soulseek program open for the files to be shared. But also, sometimes if you search for a specific thing, you might or might not find it depending on the search terms you use. For example, I recently posted the album "Acoustic Demos" by Jim Croce. Maybe if you search for "acoustic demos" and "jim croce" the album will come up, but if you search for "acoustic demos" and just "croce" it won't, or vice versa. It's hard to tell, because Soulseek can be erratic, as I said. But adding in "atse" to your searches from now on should help a lot. PJ had noticed much more success with people finding the albums they're looking for since he's done that.

Oh, one final point. Make sure you're using the program "SoulseekQT" and not just "Soulseek." (I just call it "Soulseek" most of the time because it's easier.) I don't know why there are two programs with such similar names, especially since Wikipedia says they're run by the same management, but "SoulseekQT" is used by way more people and has at least five times the number of shared files, so that's what I use. 

By the way, the program is free and awesome. If you're not using it already, you really should. Here's the Wikipedia entry on it. You can find the link to download it there:

Soulseek - Wikipedia

Beck - Gimme - Non-Album Tracks (2013)

Here's the next in my long series of stray tracks albums for Beck. Despite being a prolific songwriter, he didn't release a studio album between 2008 and 2014. However, he remained busy. In 2013 alone, he performed enough new and unique songs for me to be able to compile this album. In that same year, he also did his very unusual "Song Reader" project, but I'll deal with that in a different post. None of the songs here were a part of that project.

The songs here are a grab bag of different things. Four of the songs are A-sides to singles, and another is a B-side. All those are originals. "Evil Things" is also an original, but that comes from a concert bootleg. "I Am the Cosmos" and "Sound and Vision" are covers played in concert, and were originally done by Chris Bell of the band Big Star, and David Bowie, respectively. I also included the medley of Beck's hits "Devil's Haircut" and "Where It's At" because it's a very rare acoustic version that I like.

My version of the song "Gimme" is unique. Beck put out an A-side version of that song that's only about two and a half minutes long. He also put out another version that is split in two and totals over 20 minutes long. I thought the short version is too short and the long version is way too long. So instead I made my own edit of the first half of the long version that's about six minutes long.

The bonus track, "Heaven Can Wait," is a duet between Beck and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who is the daughter of Serge Gainsbourg, one of Beck's musical heroes. In 2009, she released the album "IRM" with all the songs either written or co-written by Beck. He also produced the album. Beck generally has never played these songs himself, but in 2013 he played a concert in Paris where Charlotte Gainsbourg lives, and that's why they played a duet of this song on stage. But unfortunately the sound quality of the bootleg recording is just okay, so it only merits being a bonus track.

01 Defriended (Beck)
02 I Won't Be Long (Beck)
03 Evil Things (Beck)
04 Gimme, Part 1 [Edit] (Beck)
05 Back to You (Beck)
06 I Am the Cosmos (Beck)
07 Devil's Haircut - Where It's At [Live Acoustic] (Beck)
09 I Just Started Hating Some People Today (Beck with Jack White)
09 Blue Randy (Beck with Jack White)
10 Sound and Vision (Beck)

Heaven Can Wait (Beck & Charlotte Gainsbourg)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Eib7BJgv

The album cover is heavily based on the cover to Beck's "Gimme" single. However, to distinguish it from that, I increased the size of the text at the top, and also increased the size of the main painting. What that replaced was merely white space.
 

David Bowie - Toy (2001)

One well known "lost album" is "Toy" by David Bowie. Around 2000, Bowie had what I consider to be the excellent idea of revisiting some of his little-known songs from the very start of his career. He performed all new versions of these songs with drastically different arrangements, as well as three brand new songs. He was ready to release this as his next album in 2001, but there were problems with his record company, which wouldn't let him release the album. So instead a number of the songs dribbled out as B-sides and on compilations. Then, in 2011, the entire album as it was originally conceived was released onto the Internet. It is widely speculated that Bowie himself did this.

There are two different versions, but with the same song order. The versions differ slightly with the productions of the songs. I've chosen the less well known version, if only to help spread it around a little more. Both are equally good, in my opinion.

I could say a lot more, but for once I don't have to, since there's a Wikipedia entry that explains it all quite well. That can be found here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_(David_Bowie_album)

That lists where the original versions can be found, and where some of the revised versions can be found. Two of the songs, "Uncle Floyd" (also known as "Slip Away") and "Afraid" appeared on his next studio album, "Heathen."

The album is fairly long, being exactly an hour in length. Perhaps some of the songs would have been cut had it actually been released in 2001.

UPDATE: On November 29, 2021, I drastically updated the mp3 download file. Earlier that month, an official version of the album was finally released, as part of the "Brilliant Adventure" box set. However, only 12 of the 16 songs were included. So I've posted those twelve, plus the extra four at the end. 

01 I Dig Everything (David Bowie)
02 You've Got a Habit of Leaving (David Bowie)
03 The London Boys (David Bowie)
04 Karma Man (David Bowie)
05 Conversation Piece (David Bowie)
06 Shadow Man (David Bowie)
07 Let Me Sleep Beside You (David Bowie)
08 Hole in the Ground (David Bowie)
09 Baby Loves That Way (David Bowie)
10 Can't Help Thinking about Me (David Bowie)
11 Silly Boy Blue (David Bowie)
12 Toy [Your Turn to Drive] (David Bowie)
13 Uncle Floyd [Slip Away] (David Bowie)
14 Afraid (David Bowie)
15 Liza Jane (David Bowie)
16 In the Heat of the Morning (David Bowie)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15129408/DavidB_2001_Ty_atse.zip.html

When I searched the Internet for a good cover art photo, I was surprised to find many fan-made versions already existed. I don't know of any cover that was approved to be the real one back in 2001. So instead I just picked the one out of those that I liked the best. I like this one because it's based on the cover of his 1967 album, simply called "David Bowie," except it has different text and uses a photo of him from around 2001.

Various Artists - Covered: Graham Gouldman, Volume 1: 1964-1967

It's been months, but I'm very glad to announce that my "Covered" series is back! For this series, I've highlighted the best songs of the most famous and talented songwriters. So far, I've mostly focused on those who got started in the 1950s. But I'm starting to move to those who made it in the 1960s.

Graham Gouldman is one of my favorite songwriters. He's known for some great 1960s classics such as "Bus Stop" by the Hollies, "No Milk Today" by the Herman's Hermits, and "For Your Love" by the Yardbirds. Then in the 1970s he was part of the band 10cc, and co-wrote most of their big hits, such as "The Things I Do for Love" and "Dreadlock Holiday." You can read more about his long career, with his still leading 10cc at 74 years old as I write this, at his Wikipedia entry:

Graham Gouldman - Wikipedia

What I like about Gouldman's songwriting is that he writes very catchy pop songs, yet he uses unusual chord changes, especially utilizing minor chords, to separate his songs from the pack. Although lots of different artists are featured on this album, in my opinion there is some sort of musical continuity that identifies them all as Gouldman songs. 

He has so many excellent songs that I've created three albums for him in this series. However, he differs from many songwriters in that he was a very capable singer and performer, and has put out a lot of his own material. This series avoids all of that, including everything he did with 10cc. This series is contains his songs, but performed by others. Later, I plan on posting some other album collections of his best songs outside of 10cc where he was the lead vocalist.

This album has a lot of songs on it, but they're generally short, so the total length of the album is only 44 minutes.

01 For Your Love (Yardbirds)
02 I'm Gonna Take You There (Dave Berry)
03 Evil Hearted You (Yardbirds)
04 Behind the Door (St. Louis Union)
05 Heart Full of Soul (Yardbirds)
06 The Cost of Living (Downliners Sect)
07 Look through Any Window (Hollies)
08 East West (Herman's Hermits)
09 People Passing By (High Society)
10 I'm 28 (Toni Basil)
11 You Stole My Love (Mike Furber & the Bowery Boys)
12 Listen People (Herman's Hermits)
13 Bus Stop (Hollies)
14 Pamela, Pamela (Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders)
15 No Milk Today (Herman's Hermits)
16 Star of Eastern Street (High Society)
17 London Look (Hifis)
18 Going Home (Normie Rowe & the Playboys)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jjQwUqC5

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/PEMrlt0qeHOqtTb/file

I'm not sure when or where the cover art photo is from, but clearly it looks to be from 1964 or 1965. It was black and white, but I colorized it.

UPDATE: On September 30, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Norah Jones - Home Concerts 13, New York City, 10-22-2020 to 11-5-2020

Here's another in a long line of Norah Jones home concert albums. I waited a little bit to see how things would shake out for the next album or two. She has slowed down a lot, for the first time, for the Christmas holidays. But she's promised to post more in the new year.

Hopefully by now I don't need to explain much. If you've listened to any of the previous home concerts in this series, you should know the drill. This is about 45 minutes of her playing songs solo from her home in her unique style.

Perhaps the most notable thing about this particular album is the cover. This is a compilation of three performances of four songs each. (I didn't include any songs that she played in previous home concerts, and I think there was one or two of those here.) The middle performance took place very close to Halloween. So for that she dressed up in a Halloween costume, as the Hamburglar from the McDonalds fast food chain. Note also in the back two kids in their own costumes. I'm assuming those are her kids. They came out and danced around for one of the songs.

01 Picture in a Frame (Norah Jones)
02 talk (Norah Jones)
03 Just a Little Bit (Norah Jones)
04 Blue Bayou (Norah Jones)
05 talk (Norah Jones)
08 My Dear Country (Norah Jones)
09 talk (Norah Jones)
10 Wake Me Up (Norah Jones)
11 talk (Norah Jones)
12 Man of the Hour (Norah Jones)
13 Down by the River (Norah Jones)
14 talk (Norah Jones)
15 Rosie's Lullaby (Norah Jones)
16 Sleep Won't Come (Norah Jones)
17 talk (Norah Jones)
18 Hands on the Wheel (Norah Jones) 

https://www.upload.ee/files/15634401/NorahJ_2020_HomeCncerts13__10-22-2020_to_11-5-2020_atse.zip.html

I discussed the album cover above. It comes from a screenshot I took. I couldn't find an ideal screenshot clearly featuring both children. But you can see the head of one (in an alien mask) on one side of her, and part of the body of the other one on her other side.

Colorization

Good news - I have a new computer, finally, and I have Photoshop again. Thanks a ton to PJ at his Albums I Wish Existed blog for making a bunch of album covers in the last couple of weeks while I couldn't. By the way, in case you haven't heard, his blog was taken down due to a copyright takedown notice. He's replicated his blog here:

https://albumsiwishexisted2.blogspot.com/

However, he's taken down all links and instead will share music through SoulseekQT. As an aside, my music files currently are not being shared through Soulseek. However, now that I have my new computer, I plan on bringing them back to Soulseek in the next few days. I'll let you know when that happens.

One plus to working with PJ on album covers these past couple weeks is that he turned me onto a program called Pixbim Color Surprise AI. Basically, it takes black and white images and colorizes them. What's cool is that it uses some analysis to determine what the image is about and then makes intelligent guesses as to what the colors probably are. For instance, if it identifies light colored hair, it'll turn that blonde and if it identifies dark colored hair it'll turn that brown.

Normally, I'm not in favor of colorization because it doesn't look good. But I'm so impressed with this program that I bought it and I plan on using it to colorize the several dozen black and white album covers I have posted here. 

Let me give you an example. Up above is the cover I made for a Neil Young album some months ago. It's from so early in his career (1965 to 1967) that there are no color photos of him, so I took a black and white one and tinted it brown.

Whereas here is the version I just colorized using the Pixbim program a few minutes ago. What do you think? Is it better? Should I colorize more?  Personally, I'm pretty happy with it, and the colorization is mostly automated, so it's easy to do.

By the way, here's the link to the album in question, in case you missed it:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/01/neil-young-folksinger-demos-1964-1967.html

Here's another example, of a Joni Mitchell album cover. The old version is at top and the new version is at the bottom. I think the change is pretty damn amazing.

Here's one more that I feel I have to highlight. For some of the others that I've just done, I did some touch up work, either in the program itself or in Photoshop. But for this below cover of songwriters Bacharach and David I did basically NO touch up work. This is all what the program did on its own. (Note that I'm referring to the main image and not the text, which is a separate thing.) The program decided the shirts should be blue, and the background brown, and all the rest. So I was able to make this change literally in a minute.

Crosby, Stills and Nash - Unplugged in Saratoga (Paul Mason Winery, Saratoga, CA, 6-26-1991)

In the early 1990s, "MTV Unplugged" acoustic concerts were all the rage. Some artists who got started in the 1960s and had lost much of their commercial appeal sold millions upon millions of their "unplugged" albums. For instance, Eric Clapton's "Unplugged" album sold no less than 26 million copies! Crosby, Stills and Nash (CSN) have made many, many boneheaded decisions on what to release or not release. In my opinion, one of their biggest mistakes was to not release an acoustic live album at the peak of the "unplugged" trend. They excelled at the acoustic format, so you'd think they would have been all over that. The only thing they did was release a DVD called "The Acoustic Concert," but it was short and stripped of most of their banter.

So, still in keeping with my mental "alternate universe" in which CSN(Y) released many more albums than they actually did, I've crafted an unplugged album for them that probably would have come out in 1992, which was the same year as many other huge sellers. Nearly all of it comes from a soundboard bootleg of a concert in Saratoga, California. The sound quality of it is stellar, and there's lots of entertaining banter between songs.

I made a few changes or additions. I added "Wasted on the Way" to the start of the concert, because that was their typical first song on all their concerts that year, but it wasn't on the bootleg. Similarly, they typically ended with "Teach Your Children," and that wasn't there either, so I added that too. Also, in the middle, the song "Soldiers of Peace" was played. I really don't like that song. I'm all in favor of peace, but it's just not a good song despite the message of it. Since that was during Graham Nash's solo spot, I replaced it with another Nash song, "These Empty Days."

Luckily, there are a few other soundboard bootlegs from that year, so I was able to take the songs from those. I found a couple more that didn't get played at this particular concert but I thought would improve the concert: "4+20" and "Daylight Again - Find the Cost of Freedom." So I added those to the very end.

I made some minor adjustments, generally boosting the volume of the banter and removing some dead air moments, like guitar tuning. But there wasn't much of that. Also, I generally boosted the volume of the audience applause after each song. One trickier thing was that there were a few singalong moments during a couple of songs, where the audience was supposed to take over the singing for a little while. In those cases, I boosted the audience noise a lot so there wouldn't be a strange mostly silent gap there.

All in all, this is a long concert, at two hours and 32 minutes. Nearly all their classic songs got played, plus some new ones for the time that in my opinion kept up their high standards. I imagine had CSN actually released a live album at this time it wouldn't have been that long, but I don't need to be limited by album lengths.

01 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
02 Wasted on the Way (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
04 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 Blackbird (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
06 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
07 The Lee Shore (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
08 You Don't Have to Cry (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
09 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
10 Just a Song Before I Go (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
11 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
12 Helplessly Hoping (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
13 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
14 Marrakesh Express (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
15 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
16 Long Time Gone (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
17 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
18 Suite- Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
19 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
20 Wind on the Water (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
21 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
22 On the Other Side of Town (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
23 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
24 These Empty Days (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
25 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
26 Thousand Roads (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
27 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
28 Almost Cut My Hair (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
29 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
30 Guinnevere (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
31 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
32 Love the One You're With (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
33 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
34 For What It's Worth (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
35 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
36 Southern Cross (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
39 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
40 Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
41 talk (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
42 Our House (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
43 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
44 4+20 (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
45 Daylight Again - Find the Cost of Freedom (Crosby, Stills & Nash)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/qi9EbmXc

The cover photo comes from a concert in Portland in 1991. I moved Crosby so he'd be closer to the other two.

Jim Croce - Acoustic Demos (1971)

This is my first Jim Croce post, but it won't be the last. I feel that his music is sadly overlooked in this era, in part due to his early death in a 1973 plane crash only about a year after he became a star. 

This collection is something I've never seen gathered together before, and frankly I don't know much about it. In short, these are many of his classic songs in demo form, stripped down to his lead vocals and acoustic guitar. Croce's songs are generally acoustic sounding, but the studio versions often had strings, drums, and other instruments added. I love acoustic versions, so I really enjoy these versions.

I only recently came across this material as I was digging deeper into his music. Most of these songs are officially released, but on rather obscure releases, and spread out here and there. What little I know about the backstory comes from the liner notes to one of his collections ("The Studio Album Collection"), and goes like this. In 1969, Croce released an album that was performed with his wife Ingrid, and is known as either "Croce" or "Jim and Ingrid Croce." It didn't sell well at all, and his record company dropped him. Around that time, Ingrid got pregnant. He and she stopped touring and focused on their new baby and making enough money to get by. But staying at home, Croce had lots of time to write new songs. 

In February 1971, he recorded acoustic demos for a bunch of new songs, and this new material was so strong that he got a new record contract. That resulted in the album "You Don't Mess Around with Jim," released in April 1972. It was a surprise hit, with two hit songs, "You Don't Mess Around with Jim" and "Operator (That's Not the Way It Feels)." Plus, after his death, the song "Time in a Bottle" was released from the album and went to number one.

I know that lots of these performances are from that demo, but I don't know which ones exactly. I realized that they include every single one of the 12 songs on the "You Don't Mess Around with Jim" album, so I've sorted the first 12 songs to duplicate that album order exactly. I'm guessing that February 1971 tape included most or all of those. But that still leaves another six songs. I've arranged it so the next four songs all come from his subsequent album "Life and Times." The penultimate song "Lover's Cross" comes from his last album, "I Got a Name." That just leaves the final song, "Mississippi Lady." It was first released on "The Faces I've Been," an album released in 1975 that gathered up some stray tracks. I'm pretty sure it was an outtake from the "You Don't Mess Around with Jim" album.

So that's all I know. I'm guessing these are from 1971, but it could well be that some are from 1972 or 1973. If anyone knows more, please let me know. 

Most of the songs here come from three different official collections. But I searched on YouTube and found four additional songs that apparently remain unreleased, or perhaps are from some other official source that I missed. In any case, these four sound just as good as the rest. All the performances are excellent, but note that "Speedball Tucker" is less than a minute long. Since that's one of the officially released ones, I surmise that he hadn't finished the song when he recorded the demo.

01 You Don't Mess Around with Jim (Jim Croce)
02 Tomorrow's Going to Be a Brighter Day (Jim Croce)
03 New York's Not My Home (Jim Croce)
04 Hard Time Losin' Man (Jim Croce)
05 Photographs and Memories (Jim Croce)
06 Walkin' Back to Georgia (Jim Croce)
07 Operator [That's Not the Way It Feels] (Jim Croce)
08 Time in a Bottle (Jim Croce)
09 Rapid Roy [The Stock Car Boy] (Jim Croce)
10 Box No. 10 (Jim Croce)
11 A Long Time Ago (Jim Croce)
12 Hey Tomorrow (Jim Croce)
13 A Good Time Man like Me Ain't Got No Business (Jim Croce)
14 Bad, Bad Leroy Brown (Jim Croce)
15 These Dreams (Jim Croce)
16 Speedball Tucker (Jim Croce)
17 Lover's Cross (Jim Croce)
18 Mississippi Lady (Jim Croce)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15102046/JimCr_1971_AcoustcDemos_atse.zip.html

Yet again, the album cover art was made by PJ of his "Albums I Wish Exist" blog.

The Jeff Beck Group - BBC Sessions (1967-1968)

In the late 1960s, the Jeff Beck Group was known for featuring Jeff Beck on lead guitar and Rod Stewart on lead vocals. This album consists of songs they played for the BBC (with one exception, which I will explain below). There have been so many official albums of BBC material by different artists over the decades that I'm surprised none of these performances have been officially released.

The sound quality is generally very good, but it's variable. Some of the BBC sessions were recorded very well, some not so well, and some weren't recorded at all and apparently have been lost forever. There also have been multiple versions of some songs floating around on bootlegs. I carefully checked all the versions I could find and picked the best ones. There were only a couple of songs performed more than once that made it to bootlegs. I didn't include any duplicates, because the extra versions weren't that different and has poorer sound quality.

One typical problem with BBC recordings is when the BBC DJs talked over the beginnings or endings of songs. Luckily, the DJs seemed to respect the musicianship of the band enough to not talk over the music much. There were only about three cases where I had to make edits to patch over the talking. Those have "[Edit]" in the song titles.

The song "Shapes of Things" was especially tricky. Sometimes, the BBC performances were broadcast overseas in versions without the DJ talking. That was the case here with "Shapes of Things." Furthermore, by chance, the overseas version was recorded with much better quality. But unfortunately, about a minute of Jeff Beck's guitar solo was edited out of that version. So what I did was I edited the guitar solo in from the lower quality version. There were brief pauses in the music at both ends of the cut out section, so it was easy to add back in. Although the quality for that section is noticeably lower, it isn't so bad since there aren't any vocals there.

As I mentioned above, all the songs here are from the BBC, except for one. That one is "Love Is Blue." Apparently, the band only played the song in concert once, even though they released it as a single. The recording of that song comes from a bootleg with excellent quality - except for the vocals, which are terrible. But since this song is an instrumental, that doesn't matter. Due to the great sound quality, and the lack of any audible crowd noise, I figure it fits in well with the other songs here.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Hi Ho Silver Lining (Jeff Beck Group)
02 [I Know] I'm Losing You [Edit] (Jeff Beck Group)
03 Let Me Love You (Jeff Beck Group)
04 Stone Crazy [Edit] (Jeff Beck Group)
05 Rock My Plimsoul [Rock Me Baby] (Jeff Beck Group)
06 The Sun Is Shining [This Morning] [Edit] (Jeff Beck Group)
07 Tallyman (Jeff Beck Group)
08 I Ain't Superstitious (Jeff Beck Group)
09 Beck's Bolero [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck Group)
10 You'll Never Get to Heaven [If You Break My Heart] (Jeff Beck Group)
11 You Shook Me (Jeff Beck Group)
12 Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever (Jeff Beck Group)
13 Love Is Blue [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck Group)
14 Shapes of Things [Edit] (Jeff Beck Group)
15 Sweet Little Angel (Jeff Beck Group)
16 Rice Pudding [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck Group)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16693321/JEFFBCK1967-1968_BBSessons_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is a promotional photo from 1967. Once again, thank to PJ of his "Albums I Wish Existed" blog, who put the cover together for me.

Rod Stewart - Don't You Tell Nobody - Non-Album Tracks (1964-1969)

It used to be that Rod Stewart had a widespread, well-regarded musical reputation. His work with the Jeff Beck Group in the late 1960s was great, and his early 1970s solo and Faces albums were excellent. Then he got too slick and commercial for my tastes, except for a usual good hit song or two per album. So the only reason I've made this collection of his very early stuff is because it's good music, heavily influenced by blues and soul. So if you're into British 1960s rhythm and blues, forget all about that later day Rod Stewart stuff and enjoy this.

Stewart had a long slow start to his musical career. He began singing in public in 1961, if not earlier. In 1963, he saw soul great Otis Redding in concert and became fascinated by soul music. The problem was, for several years, he lacked a steady band or musical identity. As you can see from the credits here, he joined and left various bands while sometimes putting out solo records. Nothing fully clicked until 1967, when he became the leader singer for the Jeff Beck Group and had two hit albums. But even that was temporary since he and Jeff Beck clashed. It wasn't until 1969 when he released his first solo album and also joined the Faces where he really established himself as a major star.

This album contains his various experiments and efforts as he struggled to make a name for himself. There's at least twice the amount of material from this time period, but I cherry picked that for what I thought was the best stuff. Note that I didn't include anything from the Jeff Beck Group. They do have some rarities from the Rod Stewart era, but I'll deal with those at another time.

One song here, "In a Broken Dream," was a big hit, but in a very odd way. It was a song by the band Python Lee Jackson. But their lead vocalist felt he didn't have the right voice for the song, so Stewart was brought in to sing on it plus two other songs, in mid-1969, while he was between bands and working as a session musician. Stewart was paid by being given new seat covers for his car! The song was released in a single in 1970, but went ignored. Then, in 1972, after Stewart was a big star, it was released again. This time, it became a number three hit in Britain.

This album is 51 minutes long. That would have been a stretch for albums of that time, but it would have been possible.

UPDATE: On March 19, 2021, I updated the mp3 download file by removing two songs. Those songs ("Wonderful One" and "Can I Get a Witness") were done by Stewart when he was a part of the band the Steampacket. I got rid of them because I've posted an entire album of music by that band, with those two songs and many more sung by Stewart, so they're no longer needed here.

01 Don't You Tell Nobody (Rod Stewart & Long John Baldry & the Hoochie Coochie Men)
02 Just like I Treat You (Rod Stewart & Long John Baldry & the Hoochie Coochie Men)
03 Good Morning Little Schoolgirl (Rod Stewart)
04 I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town (Rod Stewart)
05 The Day Will Come (Rod Stewart)
06 Why Does It Go On (Rod Stewart)
07 I Just Got Some (Rod Stewart)
08 Come Home Baby (P. P Arnold & Rod Stewart)
09 Stone Crazy (Rod Stewart, Peter Green, Aynsley Dunbar & Jack Bruce)
10 I Could Feel the Whole World Turn Round (Rod Stewart & the Shotgun Express)
11 Little Miss Understood (Rod Stewart)
12 So Much to Say (Rod Stewart)
13 In a Broken Dream (Python Lee Jackson with Rod Stewart)
14 Cloud Nine (Python Lee Jackson with Rod Stewart)
15 How Blue Can You Get (Python Lee Jackson with Rod Stewart)
16 Diamond Joe (Rod Stewart & Quiet Melon)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697083/RODSTWRT1964-1969_DontYuTllNbody_atse.zip.html

Once again, the album cover was made by PJ of his "Albums I Wish Existed" blog. It dates to a TV performance he made to promote his first solo single in 1964.