Richard & Linda Thompson - BBC Sessions, Volume 4: 1981-1982

Here's the fourth and final album in my album series of Richard and Linda Thompson performing for the BBC. If you liked any of the first three, this is more of the same good stuff.

The only album this duo released in 1981 or 1982 is the great album "Shoot Out the Lights" in 1982. So you might expect to see a lot of songs from that. In fact, only three songs come from it ("Just the Motion," "Shoot Out the Lights," and "A Man in Need"). Instead, the songs are from all points in their musical careers, even including a song from when Richard Thompson was in Fairport Convention ("Sloth").

Technically, only one of the songs is officially unreleased, but that depends on what you think of a DVD release. Eight of the 12 songs come from an officially released DVD, but I had to convert them to mp3 format. The vast majority of the songs were broadcast on the BBC, though the last one was broadcast on a US radio station. All of the songs have excellent sound. As with the rest of this series, I stripped the audience applause at the end. And, like the rest of the series, I doubt you'd even notice these came from a concert with an audience if I didn't mention it, because the audience stayed so quiet during the songs and the sound is so good.

01 Just the Motion (Richard & Linda Thompson)
02 Night Comes In (Richard & Linda Thompson)
03 I'm a Dreamer (Richard & Linda Thompson)
04 I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (Richard & Linda Thompson)
05 Shoot Out the Lights (Richard & Linda Thompson)
06 You're Going to Need Somebody (Richard & Linda Thompson)
07 Dargai [Instrumental] (Richard & Linda Thompson)
08 Dimming of the Day (Richard & Linda Thompson)
09 Time to Ring Some Changes (Richard & Linda Thompson)
10 A Man in Need (Richard & Linda Thompson)
11 Withered and Died (Richard & Linda Thompson)
12 Sloth (Richard & Linda Thompson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/V3mdpqAy

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/2rTHIZaNbKrmMcY/file

For the album cover, I took a couple of screenshots from the DVD mentioned above. One was of Richard and the other was of Linda. In Photoshop, I adjusted things so they would be close to each other (instead of widely separated on stage as they actually were).  The odd coloring is due to colored stage lights. Note that I later improved the photo with the Krea AI program.

Morgan James - Valentine's Day Love Songs, Home Concert, New York City, 2-14-2021

As I write this, the coronavirus pandemic situation is improving, but it's far from over. In terms of music, some artists have resumed performing concerts, presumably with social distancing precautions in place,  but many have not. So the home concert trend continues. There aren't nearly as many as there were in the middle of 2020, but much of that is because the musicians who got serious about doing them decided to monetize them, offering pay to listen/view performances in lieu of having traditional concerts in front of audiences.

Morgan James is a case in point. She posted a lot of free material on YouTube in the first months of the pandemic (which I haven't gotten around to posting here yet, but I will). Then she switched to posting one concert a week that one has to pay for through StageIt, with each one having a different musical theme. I don't want to hinder an artist's effort to make a living through such things, so I won't be posting any of those (except perhaps way afterwards, when they've long stopped being offered for money). However, two days ago she posted one of her weekly shows for free on YouTube, so I consider that fair game.

This show took place on Valentine's Day, so it has a love songs theme. There's not much else to say, except that the sound quality is excellent, and all the songs are performed with just the voices of Morgan James and sometimes her husband Doug Wamble, plus a single acoustic guitar played by Wamble. I included all the music, but I cut out a few minutes of the banter between songs. I removed bits that I didn't think would have replay value, such as a complaint about a spammer or some thanks to specific people who donated some money while listening.

This album is 54 minutes long.

Here's a list of the original artists that made these songs well known:

01 L-O-V-E [L Is for the Way You Look at Me] - Nat King Cole
03 Let's Stay Together - Al Green
05 Feel like Makin' Love - Roberta Flack
07 Your Song - Elton John
09 Make You Feel My Love - Bob Dylan
11 Knocks Me Off My Feet - Stevie Wonder
13 I Will - Beatles
15 The Very Thought of You - Ray Noble with Al Bowlly
16 The Nearness of You - Glenn Miller with Ray Eberle
18 Love Is Here to Stay - George & Ira Gershwin / Gene Kelly
20 My Funny Valentine - Rodgers & Hart / Chet Baker
22 Oh Me, Oh My [I'm a Fool for You Baby] - Lulu / Aretha Franklin
24 Sara Smile - Hall & Oates
26 God Only Knows - Beach Boys
28 Love Will Keep Us Alive - Eagles

And here's the usual song list:

01 L-O-V-E [L Is for the Way You Look at Me] (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
02 talk (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
03 Let's Stay Together (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
04 talk (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
05 Feel like Makin' Love (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
06 talk (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
07 Your Song (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
08 talk (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
09 Make You Feel My Love (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
10 talk (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
11 Knocks Me Off My Feet (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
12 talk (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
13 I Will (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
14 talk (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
15 The Very Thought of You (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
16 The Nearness of You (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
17 talk (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
18 Love Is Here to Stay (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
19 talk (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
20 My Funny Valentine (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
21 talk (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
22 Oh Me, Oh My [I'm a Fool for You Baby] (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
23 talk (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
24 Sara Smile (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
25 talk (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
26 God Only Knows (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
27 talk (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
28 Love Will Keep Us Alive (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)
29 talk (Morgan James with Doug Wamble)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15181984/MorganJ_2021_ValntinesDayLveSongsHomeConcrtNYC__2-14-2021_atse.zip.html

I made the cover from a screenshot of the YouTube video of this concert.

Bob Seger - Back in '72 (1973)

Here's something else from Bob Seger while I'm at it. As I mentioned previously, all of Seger's albums through 1973 remain officially out of print. I got a request from my musical associate Lil Panda to post all of one of them, "Back in '72" from 1973. He thinks it's a particularly strong album, so if you only get one of the out of print albums, it should be the one. Indeed, if you look at the crowd sourced ratings of all his albums at rateyourmusic.com, this album gets the third highest rating of all his studio albums, behind only "Night Moves" from 1976 and "Stranger in Town" from 1978.

Lil Panda sent me his version of the album, which is the best quality version he could find. So that's what I'm sharing here. 

By the way, I have four of the songs here on the second early best of album that I just posted: "Rosalie," "Back in '72," "I've Been Working," and "Turn the Page."

This album is 35 minutes long.

01 Midnight Rider (Bob Seger)
02 So I Wrote You A Song (Bob Seger)
03 Stealer (Bob Seger)
04 Rosalie (Bob Seger)
05 Turn the Page (Bob Seger)
06 Back in '72 (Bob Seger)
07 Neon Sky (Bob Seger)
08 I've Been Working (Bob Seger)
09 I've Got Time (Bob Seger)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15174951/BobSgr_1972_Bckin72_atse.zip.html

The cover is the exact same as the original without any changes.

Bob Seger - Best of the Early Years, Volume 2 (1971-1973)

A couple of days ago, I posted the Volume 1 to this blog. My explanation from that remains the same here. Bob Seger wasn't well known outside of his home town of Detroit until he hit it big around 1975. Later, after he became a rock superstar, he decided he didn't like his early albums and let all of them from 1973 and earlier go out of print. Amazingly, they're still out of print and not well known decades later. So this compiles the second half of what I consider the best songs from his out of print era.

All of the songs come from three albums, except for "Lookin' Back," which was an A-side in 1971. The three albums are: "Brand New Morning" in 1971, "Smokin' OPs" in 1972, and "Back in '72" in 1973. "Brand New Morning" is a solo acoustic album (though against Seger's wishes, as the record company released his demos without his permission), "Smokin' OPs" is a covers album, and "Back in '72" is a more typical rocking album mostly made of originals. 

The songs "If I Were a Carpenter," "Love the One You're With" and "I've Been Working" are covers; the rest are originals. A live version of the last song, "Turn the Page," would become a rock classic when it was released on the album "Live Bullet" in 1976. But this is the original studio version.

By the way, for the time period of album and the previous Best Of, Seger's backing back went under different name, such as Bob Seger and the Last Heard, the Bob Seger System, and Bob Seger and the Borneo Band. His more famous Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band wouldn't be formed until 1974. For simplicity's sake, I just label everything as "Bob Seger."

01 Brand New Morning (Bob Seger)
02 Railroad Days (Bob Seger)
03 Sometimes (Bob Seger)
04 Lookin' Back (Bob Seger)
05 If I Were a Carpenter (Bob Seger)
06 Love the One You're With (Bob Seger)
07 Back in '72 (Bob Seger)
08 I've Been Working (Bob Seger)
09 Rosalie (Bob Seger)
10 Turn the Page (Bob Seger)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15174937/BobSgr_1971-1973_BstofErlyYearsVolume2_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo was taken at a concert in Lakeview High School in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, some point in 1973.

The Small Faces - Small Faces Small Faces Small Faces (1967)

I just posted two Small Faces albums. But, heck, while I'm at it, here's a third. Again, I normally don't like to post officially released albums that are still in print, but again I'll make an exception here to make it easy for people to make sure they have every Small Faces song. It's confusing with different British and American albums, and albums with the same name.

This is the second British album that technically has the name "Small Faces." This was their second album, released in 1967. Their debut album in 1966 had that name too. In an attempt to lessen the confusion, I'm calling this one "Small Faces Small Faces Small Faces," since the band name is written three times on the album cover.

As for the musical content, this album was a creative leap forward for the band. They had been doing soul-based rock, but this has more variety, and has more of a psychedelic sound (since that was all the rage in 1967). There are no hit songs on it, since the British trend was to not put A-sides of singles on albums too, but the songs are solid all the way through, and all of them are originals. In 1992, Paul Weller named the album one of his top ten favorites of all time.

By the way, in the US, this exact album wasn't released. Instead, an album with the name "There Are But Four Small Faces" came out in early 1968 (about nine months later). It removed seven songs and replaced them with recent hits like "Itchycoo Park," "Here Come the Nice," and "Tin Soldier," plus some B-sides.

01 [Tell Me] Have You Ever Seen Me (Small Faces)
02 Something I Want to Tell You (Small Faces)
03 Feeling Lonely (Small Faces)
04 Happy Boys Happy [Instrumental] (Small Faces)
05 Things Are Going to Get Better (Small Faces)
06 My Way of Giving (Small Faces)
07 Green Circles (Small Faces)
08 Become like You (Small Faces)
09 Get Yourself Together (Small Faces)
10 All Our Yesterdays (Small Faces)
11 Talk to You (Small Faces)
12 Show Me the Way (Small Faces)
13 Up the Wooden Hills to Bedfordshire (Small Faces)
14 Eddie's Dreaming (Small Faces)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HBmEvFV8 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/X77NUoWy1akdb8m/file

The album cover is exactly the same as originally released.

The Small Faces - Itchycoo Park - Non-Album Tracks (1967)

Here's the next stray tracks album for the Small Faces. I think this one is particularly excellent, mainly due to the inclusion of four of their best hit singles.

In Britain around this time, it was the usual custom to not put out the same songs on singles and albums, though there were some exceptions. This is because Britain was still recovering economically from World War II, and it was considered unfair to have someone pay for the same song twice. So the studio album the Small Faces put out in 1967 (called "Small Faces," the second album they put out with that name) didn't have any hit singles on it. Thus all those hits are here. (However, one of the B-Sides, "Talk to You," was included on the album, so I didn't put it here too.)

And what hits they are! "I Can't Make It," "Here Come the Nice," "Itchycoo Park," and "Tin Soldier" are all great songs. But I especially love "Itchcoo Park." If I had to make an album of my favorite songs on all time, I think that would be on it.

The rest of the album is made up of B-sides and rarities. Note that "Call It Something Nice" is often considered a later song, due to it being included on the 1969 album "The Autumn Stone," but it actually was recorded in 1967. Note that I used versions from the box set "Here Come the Nice" whenever I could, since they have superior sound. But in some cases they also have slightly different mixes than the originals.

I end this album with three songs that technically aren't by the Small Faces. P. P. Arnold was an American female soul singer who wound up in Britain in the late 1960s and got closely tied to the Small Faces, in part due to the fact that they were both on the same record label. She sang backing vocals on a lot of their songs, including "Itchycoo Park" and "Tin Soldier." I've included "(If You Think You're) Groovy" here because it was written by the main Small Faces songwriting team of Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane, and it's performed by her and the Small Faces.

The last couple of songs are a less obvious inclusion. Jimmy Winston was a member of the Small Faces for most of 1965. He left and/or quit the band for various reasons, including the fact that he switched to an acting career. But he did release a couple of singles before leaving his music career behind. I've included a 1966 single on the last stray tracks album, and I'm including his 1967 single here. In both cases, I'm including them because I consider the A- and B-Sides very good songs, and also because they're very much in the Small Faces style. Jimmy Winston even made the same transition to a more psychedelic sound at the same time the band did.

01 I Can't Make It (Small Faces)
02 Just Passing (Small Faces)
03 Here Come the Nice (Small Faces)
04 Don't Burst My Bubble (Small Faces)
05 Itchycoo Park (Small Faces)
06 I'm Only Dreaming (Small Faces)
07 Picaninny [Instrumental] (Small Faces)
08 Tin Soldier (Small Faces)
09 I Feel Much Better (Small Faces)
10 Call It Something Nice (Small Faces)
11 Take My Time [Instrumental] (Small Faces)
12 [If You Think You're] Groovy (P. P. Arnold & the Small Faces)
13 Real Crazy Apartment (Jimmy Winston & Winston's Fumbs)
14 Snow White (Jimmy Winston & Winston's Fumbs)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UUKZAXsn

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ap7Fz7lQo6VRCnd/file 

The album cover is mostly based on the cover of the "Itchycoo Park" single. But that single had the A-side name at the top and the B-side name at the bottom. I replaced the B-side name and repeated the A-side name instead. I also removed a big record company logo that was put on their singles and replaced it with a smaller one that was put on their albums.

The Small Faces - Small Faces (1966)

Normally, I don't post unchanged albums that aren't out of print. But I'm going to make an exception for a couple of Small Faces albums because their discography is confusing. I want to set things straight so you can gather up all their stuff without any duplication.

One problem is that there were different American and British albums for the first part of their career. I generally consider the British albums the definitive ones for 1960s bands, and that's the case here. To add to the confusion, the first album the band released in Britain was called "Small Faces," released in mid-1966. Then, in 1967, the second album they released in Britain in 1967 was called... "Small Faces." I think that was an idiotic move to give two albums the exact same name, and such a generic name on top of it. 

Here's the 1966 "Small Faces." It contains the band's first two hit singles in Britain, "Sha-La-La-La-Lee" and "Whatcha Gonna Do about It." It also contains five covers, including the two hits. Although I don't know if that's really the right word, because most of those were songs written by professional songwriters for the band, so nobody else had done them before (except for "Shake" by Sam Cooke). But after this album, nearly all of the band's songs, including the other hits, would be self written.

By the way, the song "You Need Love" is credited as one of the originals, under the name "You Need Loving," but that's not right. It really is a Willie Dixon song with only some minor changes, first performed by Muddy Waters in 1963. Interestingly, the Small Faces version of this song was copied by Led Zeppelin and morphed into their huge 1969 hit "Whole Lotta Love." Both Jimmy Page and Robert Plant went to many Small Faces concerts, so they definitely were very familiar with the song. Plant later apologized to Small Faces lead singer Steve Marriott for copying the Small Faces arrangement so closely without credit. And eventually a lawsuit resulted in Willie Dixon being added as a cowriter to "Whole Lotta Love."

01 Shake (Small Faces)
02 Come On Children (Small Faces)
03 You Better Believe It (Small Faces)
04 It's Too Late (Small Faces)
05 One Night Stand (Small Faces)
06 Whatcha Gonna Do about It (Small Faces)
07 Sorry She's Mine (Small Faces)
08 Own Up Time (Small Faces)
09 You Need Love (Small Faces)
10 Don't Stop What You Are Doing (Small Faces)
11 E Too D (Small Faces)
12 Sha-La-La-La-Lee (Small Faces)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/htqKTStW

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/GwFagKHuxormYIr/file 

The cover is the official cover. Originally, I posted it without any changes. However, in 2025, I decided the colors were a bit unnatural and oversaturated. So I made some fixes, using Photoshop and Krea AI.

Richard & Linda Thompson - BBC Sessions, Volume 3: 1978-1981

Here's the third out of four albums of Richard and Linda Thompson at the BBC.

For the previous two volumes, virtually all of the performances were officially released. But for this one, all but one of the performances are still unreleased. The 2020 box set "Hard Luck Stories" has a big gap in the BBC and/or live material from this time period. Luckily though, there were a couple of concerts, one from 1978 and the other from 1980, that were recorded live for the BBC. The vast majority of the songs here come from those two concerts.

Despite the fact that this is mostly unreleased, the sound quality is still excellent. The BBC always did a bang up job with the quality of their recorded concerts. As I often do, I've eliminated the crowd response after each song. For all the live songs here, the audience was quiet and respectful during songs, so it would be easy to believe these are studio versions with no audience at all

01 House of Cards (Richard & Linda Thompson)
02 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
03 Genesis Hall (Richard & Linda Thompson)
04 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
05 Restless Highway (Richard & Linda Thompson)
06 Things You Gave Me (Richard & Linda Thompson)
07 Sweet Surrender (Richard & Linda Thompson)
08 The Wrong Heartbeat (Richard & Linda Thompson)
09 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
10 Speechless Child (Richard & Linda Thompson)
11 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
12 Wall of Death (Richard & Linda Thompson)
13 Backstreet Slide (Richard & Linda Thompson)
14 Modern Woman (Richard & Linda Thompson)
15 Borrowed Time (Richard & Linda Thompson)
16 Pavanne (Richard & Linda Thompson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/U21VWcfz

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3V3ACvrdGR4LcPy/file

The cover art photo is a screenshot I took from the DVD that goes with the "Hard Luck Stories" box set. I forget, but I believe it's from a 1980 or 1981 concert. I thought it would be interesting for once to have a wide view that includes some of the audience in a small club. I believe that's Simon Nicol in the shadows, assisting on guitar. I later improved the photo with the Krea AI program.

Bob Seger - Best of the Early Years, Volume 1 (1966-1970)

Who is the person in this album cover photo? Would you believe it's Bob Seger? Seger is well known for his many hits from the mid-1970s onwards. But what a lot of people don't know is that he had a pretty interesting musical career for about ten years before he became famous around 1975. And a key reason people don't know is because he has made it hard for people to know, due to letting all of his albums prior to 1973 go out of print. 

Personally, I'm not that big of a Bob Seger fan. If I ever hear a horribly overplayed some like "Old Time Rock and Roll" it'll be too soon. As I write this, his early material remains out of print with the exception of the collection "Early Seger Vol. 1," but that only contains six songs that date from his out of print era. So I've put together two albums of what I consider the best songs from that time. 

In the 1960s, the Detroit music scene was known for rocking, with bands like Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, the Stooges, and the MC5. The city kept going with the garage rock sound popular around 1965 and 1966 long after most other bands switched to different styles. Seger was very much in that vein. He put out some excellent singles from 1966 to 1968, including the minor hit "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man." Then he started putting out albums mostly in the same style. 

Seger has consistently been a rocker first and foremost for his entire career, and that's true of his early material. But his early songs aren't as formulaic as his later hits. As a case in point, consider his 1968 A-side "2+2=?" It's a strident protest song against the Vietnam War. It's strange title is a reference to the classic George Orwell book "1984," where people are brainwashed into thinking that two plus two doesn't equal four.

I believe all the songs here are originals, except for "River Deep, Mountain High," originally done by Ike and Tina Turner. And "Sock It to Me Santa" is basically James Brown hit "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" with new lyrics.

01 East Side Story (Bob Seger)
02 Sock It to Me Santa (Bob Seger)
03 Persecution Smith (Bob Seger)
04 Chain Smokin' (Bob Seger)
05 Vagrant Winter (Bob Seger)
06 Heavy Music, Part 1 (Bob Seger)
07 2+2=? (Bob Seger)
08 Ramblin' Gamblin' Man (Bob Seger)
09 Tales of Lucy Blue (Bob Seger)
10 Innervenus Eyes (Bob Seger)
11 Lucifer (Bob Seger)
12 Evil Edna (Bob Seger)
13 Highway Child (Bob Seger)
14 River Deep, Mountain High (Bob Seger)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16373063/BOBSGR1966-1970BstofErlyYearsVolum1_atse.zip.html

I don't know what year the cover art photo is from, but I'd guess it's from around 1967. Not long after that, he let his hair grow much longer. Then he started favoring more facial hair, until he had a full beard around the time he started hitting it big in 1974 or 1975.

The Spencer Davis Group - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1966-1967

Here's the second and last album of the Spencer Davids Group performing for the BBC. As I mentioned in the previous post, this basically was Steve Winwood's group right before he formed Traffic. However, their material was much more overtly based on soul music.

Most of what I said in the post for Volume 1 holds here for Volume 2. Once again, the sound quality is excellent, even though it's a mix of released and unreleased material. In fact, this volume has more unreleased performances than released ones. 

And, once again, many of these songs had BBC DJs talking over the intros. There were eight cases of that here, which I have fixed. Using the audio editing program X-Minus, I wiped out the talking while keeping the underlying music.

Pretty much all of the songs on Volume 1 were songs the band did on albums or singles. But there are some songs the band did on this album that they didn't record elsewhere, as far as I can tell. That includes "Rambling Rose," "Mess Up a Good Thing," "Oh Pretty Woman," and "That's All." Also, note that "Oh Pretty Woman" is a cover of the Albert King song, not the famous Roy Orbison song.

For both this and this first album, I avoided including two versions of the same song. Luckily, there weren't many instances of those. I believe the duplicates were "Mean Woman Blues," "Midnight Train," "It's Gonna Work Out Fine," "Together 'Till the End of Time," and maybe one or two more. (I forget.) It's very fortunate that there's one version of each of their big hits, considering we don't have any instances of any of those being played twice. Also note that probably their best known song, "Gimme Some Lovin'," has some different lyrics for the third verse. (And you can actually understand more of the rest of the lyrics.)

The Spencer Davis Group kept going for many years after Steve Winwood left in early 1967. They played some more at the BBC too. But my interest is with the Winwood years, so this album stops chronologically right when Winwood left. (They did do some good stuff later, but they moved in a different musical direction and pretty much became a different band.)

This album is 48 minutes long.

01 Please Do Something [Edit] (Spencer Davis Group)
02 Rambling Rose (Spencer Davis Group)
03 Somebody Help Me (Spencer Davis Group)
04 Let Me Down Easy [Edit] (Spencer Davis Group)
05 Mess Up a Good Thing [Edit] (Spencer Davis Group)
06 Dust My Blues [Edit] (Spencer Davis Group)
07 I'm Getting Better [Edit] (Spencer Davis Group)
08 Together 'Til the End of Time [Edit] (Spencer Davis Group)
09 When I Come Home (Spencer Davis Group)
10 Mean Woman Blues (Spencer Davis Group)
11 Gimme Some Lovin' (Spencer Davis Group)
12 I Can't Get Enough of It [Edit] (Spencer Davis Group)
13 Oh Pretty Woman (Spencer Davis Group)
14 Neighbour, Neighbour (Spencer Davis Group)
15 I'm a Man (Spencer Davis Group)
16 Take This Hurt Off Me (Spencer Davis Group)
17 That's All [Edit] (Spencer Davis Group)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/nQpLfPs8

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/K39hQv5DtUZbe9V/file

The cover art comes from a 1966 publicity photo.

The Spencer Davis Group - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1964-1965

One thing I've focused on with this blog is to post music recorded by the BBC. I'm especially keen to post BBC sessions from all the important 1960s bands, due to the excellent sound quality from a time when there usually wasn't much recorded well other than the official studio recordings. Some of that has never been officially released. Or, if it has, the BBC DJs talked over the starts to many songs. I have limited sound editing skills, but one thing I can do is fix those in most cases. So here we go with another 1960s band, the Spencer Davis Group.

I feel this band is unjustly neglected. I'm guessing a lot of that has to do with the fact that they were called the Spencer Davis Group when Steve Winwood was the main lead vocalist and star. Basically, if you want to hear Winwood rip through lots of soul music covers and some originals in the same vein, this band is the place to look.

The band's BBC recordings have been somewhat neglected. There was one fairly obscure album of those recordings released in 2002, called "Mojo Rhythms & Midnight Blues, Vol. 1." But it missed many songs. Luckily, I was able to find the others with comparable sound quality. I also added three songs that technically were done live in concert: "Kansas City," "Every Little Bit Hurts," and "Stevie's Blues." But these were recorded shockingly well for the year, and sound as good as the others. I suspect they were done in a sound check type situation, because they have virtually no crowd noise. (I edited out a little bit after the songs ended.)

This band was a victim of the problem I mentioned above, BBC DJs talking over the starts of songs. Five songs here had that problem, the ones I've marked with "[Edit]" in the titles. I've used the audio editing program X-Minus to wipe out the talking while keeping the underlying music.

In most instances, the songs here are songs the band did on albums or singles, and the arrangements are basically the same. But still, they do an impressive job playing these songs live. Plus, this album, plus the Volume 2 that will follow, basically make up an excellent "best of" for the band, as it includes all their hits and the songs they enjoyed playing the most.

One song, "Midnight Train" is a bonus track only because I have another version of the song on this album, and I don't like including multiple versions. But the sound quality on the bonus version is as good as the others here.

This album is 47 minutes long.

01 Midnight Train (Spencer Davis Group)
02 It's Gonna Work Out Fine (Spencer Davis Group)
03 Dimples [Edit] (Spencer Davis Group)
04 My Babe [Edit] (Spencer Davis Group)
05 Watch Your Step (Spencer Davis Group)
06 It Hurts Me So (Spencer Davis Group)
07 I Can't Stand It [Edit] (Spencer Davis Group)
08 Kansas City (Spencer Davis Group)
09 Every Little Bit Hurts (Spencer Davis Group)
10 Stevie's Blues (Spencer Davis Group)
11 Strong Love (Spencer Davis Group)
12 This Hammer [Edit] (Spencer Davis Group)
13 She Put the Hurt on Me (Spencer Davis Group)
14 Keep On Running (Spencer Davis Group)
15 Goodbye Stevie [Edit] (Spencer Davis Group)

Midnight Train [Edit] (Spencer Davis Group)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1KKbswV5

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/HwEJPqVM2yGopce/file

The album cover uses a publicity photo from 1965.

Chiristine McVie - I'm on My Way - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1969)

I previously posted the album, "Christine Perfect," a 1970 solo album by future Fleetwood Mac star Christine McVie back when she was a blues singer and keyboardist known by her maiden name, the same as that album title. When I posted that album, I mixed the best songs from it with some other songs she did prior to joining Fleetwood Mac in 1971. But I kept finding more worthy songs, until I decided to split her pre-Fleetwood Mac recordings into two albums.

I still have the "Christine Perfect" album, which can be found here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/05/chiristine-mcvie-christine-perfect.html

But I moved some songs from that to here, so I can have all of her early songs where she sings lead vocals in one place.

Christine McVie (I'm going to call her that, for consistency's sake) became a talented piano player at a young age, and had a natural talent for singing the blues. She started singing as a guest vocalist in clubs for blues bands. So when some musicians she knew started a new blues band called Chicken Shack in 1967, she joined them as a keyboardist and backing vocalist. But her skills were greater than that. From the very beginning, she wrote some songs and occasionally sang lead. In fact, the band's very first single, "It's Okay with Me Baby" was written by her and sung by her.

She stayed with Chicken Shack for two albums. But the band was dominated by Stan Webb's guitar playing and singing. She only had two lead vocal turns on their first album, and four on their second. Then, the band released a single of the Etta James classic "I'd Rather Go Blind," with McVie on lead vocals. It was a big hit in Britain. At that point, it became clear that she had too much talent to stay second fiddle in Chicken Shack, so she left the band and started a solo career.

I've gathered all the Chicken Shack songs where she sings lead and included them here. The songs were billed just to "Chicken Shack" but I've credited them to "Christine McVie & Chicken Shack" just for clarity.

At the end are four songs she did as a solo artist that aren't songs on her 1970 solo album "Christine Perfect." One is an outtake and the last three were played for the BBC.

I've called this album "I'm on My Way," even though that's a song on that solo album that isn't included here. I chose that title because that was the original planned title for her solo album. On top of that, it's a very fitting title for the start of one's career, because these early songs very much did send her on her way to musical success.

Note that the exact same version of her hit single "I'd Rather Go Blind" with Chicken Shack was put on her 1970 solo album. I thought it was important to have it in both places. But I don't like repeating the exact same performance. So for this album I used a performance of the songs she did for the BBC with Chicken Shack instead of the hit single version.

This album is 38 minutes long.

01 It's Okay with Me Baby (Christine McVie & Chicken Shack)
02 You Ain't No Good (Christine McVie & Chicken Shack)
03 When the Train Comes Back (Christine McVie & Chicken Shack)
04 I Wanna See My Baby (Christine McVie & Chicken Shack)
05 Mean Old World (Christine McVie & Chicken Shack)
06 Get like You Used to Be (Christine McVie & Chicken Shack)
07 A Woman Is the Blues (Christine McVie & Chicken Shack)
08 I'd Rather Go Blind (Christine McVie & Chicken Shack)
09 Tell Me You Need Me (Christine McVie)
10 Hey Baby (Christine McVie)
11 It's You I Miss (Christine McVie)
12 Gone into the Sun (Christine McVie)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/MZ3TN3LM

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/pK7E7nGsGBKKvEN/file

I tried but failed to find any good color photos of Christine McVie from 1968 or 1969. Instead, I found a black and white one of her holding an award for the Melody Maker female singer of the year award in 1969. Then I colorized it.

In 2025, I improved the detail of the image with the use of the Krea AI program.

Richard & Linda Thompson - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1975-1977

Here's the second of four albums of Richard and Linda Thompson performing for the BBC.

What sticks out for me on this album is the small number of songs. The previous volume in this series is about the same length as this one, 45 minutes, but that one has 13 songs on it and this one has six. The reason is because the last three songs are long guitar work outs. So if you enjoy Richard Thompson's guitar soloing, you'll love this album.

All of the performances here have been officially released, so the sound quality is fantastic. All but the first one are concert recordings. But as I often do, I removed the crowd noise. The recording is so pristine that it was easy to make that removal, and the songs sound like they were recorded in an empty room.

As I mentioned in my comments for the first album in this series, the only repeated song is "A Heart Needs a Home." I would have included more banter, but there is only one brief comment before one of the songs.

01 A Heart Needs a Home (Richard & Linda Thompson)
02 It'll Be Me (Richard & Linda Thompson)
03 Things You Gave Me (Richard & Linda Thompson)
04 The Calvary Cross (Richard & Linda Thompson)
05 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
06 Night Comes In (Richard & Linda Thompson)
07 Layla (Richard & Linda Thompson) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/STzDJbH6

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/XY3U5abWSHhUsNP/file

I'm not exactly sure where or when the cover art image comes from. It's a screenshot I took from the DVD that comes with the Richard (and sometimes Linda) Thompson album "Live at the BBC." I think it's from 1981, since most of the footage is from that year. I later improved the photo with the Krea AI program.

The Small Faces - All or Nothing - Non-Album Tracks (1966)

I just posted an album of the earliest stray tracks from the Small Faces. As I wrote, that album is more for the serious fans of the band. This album, by contrast, should be for anyone who loves 1960s rock with a strong soul influence, because the music here is excellent.

The Small Faces only formed in 1965, and put out their first album in 1966, simply called "Small Faces." That contained two hit singles, "Whatcha Gonna Do about It" and "Sha-La-La-La-Lee." But the British custom at the time was to usually not include hit singles on albums, so as to not make the customer sometimes buy the same song twice. Thus you might argue these songs are actually a stronger bunch. They're helped greatly by containing three Top 10 British singles, "Hey Girl," "All or Nothing," and "My Mind's Eye." "All or Nothing" was also the band only British number one hit.

Three more songs are the B-sides to those A-sides, plus another A-side, "Patterns." Another five songs come from the album "From the Beginning." At the end of 1966, the band switched record companies and management after realizing they were getting ripped off. Their old record company then put out an album containing the best unreleased material they had at the time. Some of those were relatively old (I've included a few of those on the previous stray tracks album I just posted). But others contained recent songs the band wanted to put on their next album, and they showed the group moving in a more psychedelic direction. You can especially see that on the last two songs here. The album was released in early 1967, but I consider the songs on them to be from 1966, since they were all recorded that year. That's the case also for the unsuccessful single "Patterns."

The last two songs are very obscure. "Comin' Home Baby" is a BBC performance that didn't make it onto the band's official BBC compilation, but did make it to another archival release. And "Strange" comes from an obscure album that has only been included with copies of a French book about the band. (I've described that in the previous post.) I only have this one song because someone posted it onto YouTube. It's a cover of a Larry Williams song.

01 Hey Girl (Small Faces)
02 Almost Grown (Small Faces)
03 Strange (Small Faces)
04 Comin' Home Baby [Instrumental] (Small Faces)
05 Patterns (Small Faces)
06 You've Really Got a Hold on Me (Small Faces)
07 Plum Nellie [Instrumental] (Small Faces)
08 All or Nothing (Small Faces)
09 Understanding (Small Faces)
10 Take This Hurt Off Me (Small Faces)
11 My Mind's Eye (Small Faces)
12 I Can't Dance with You (Small Faces)
13 Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (Small Faces)
14 That Man (Small Faces)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/RgzJXssE

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/7F5b1bX0tNQWtLS/file 

The album cover uses a promo photo from 1966. I added the record company logo since that what the band albums did at the time.

The Small Faces - Grow Your Own - Non-Album Tracks (1964-1966)

There are lots of great musical artists I haven't begun to address on this blog. Here's one I'm just starting to deal with: the Small Faces. I think they're still underrated. That's especially true in the US, because they only had one hit there, "Itchycoo Park." (Allmusic.com has called them "the best British band never to make it big in America.") But if you like soulful rock, similar to the Yardbirds, the mid-1960s Rolling Stones, and the mid-1960s Who, you really should check them out. 

However, you probably don't want to start with this album. This is more for the serious fans, as it contains deep cuts and no hits. If you're not that familiar with the band, I suggest you start with the next couple of their albums I'll be posting, Then, if you like them, work your way back to this one.

The Small Faces got started in 1965. I see the band mainly as a union of two great talents: the singer-songwriter Steve Marriott, and the singer-songwriter Ronnie Lane. They formed a songwriting team and wrote many hits and other fine songs together. They didn't do much musically before forming the Small Faces together, but they did have some. In fact, the first seven songs here are all from either Marriott or Lane in the year prior to that formation. They're very rare, and I suspect even most die-hard Small Faces fans haven't heard them. But if you're such a fan, I'm pretty sure you'll like them because they're very much in the spirit of the band. The only snag is that, on a couple of the songs, Marriott hadn't fully developed his distinctive voice.

These pre-Small Faces come from obscure sources, and I couldn't find much information on them. I don't know which ones are originals and which are covers, though "You Really Got Me" obviously is a cover of the Kinks hit. I'm pretty sure the two Lane songs, "Don't Talk to Me of Love," and "That's What I Want," are originals. You can read the interesting story behind these unreleased songs here:

https://www.ronnielane.com/ronnie-lane-and-the-outcasts.html

According to that, Lane's band at the time, the Moments, essentially was an early version of the Small Faces, containing Marriott and all the future members of that band except for one. 

Note that I also end this album with a couple of songs by a band other than the Small Faces. That's because the leader of that band, Jimmy Winston, was a member of the Small Faces for much of 1965. He left the band due to personality conflicts, possibly involving the manager. He sings lead on two of the Small Faces tracks here, "Jump Back" and "Baby Don't You Do It." He only released a couple of singles before getting into acting instead. But I like them, which is why I'm including them. Plus, they have that same Small Faces sound.

The actual Small Faces songs here are fairly obscure. There's only one A-side, "I've Got Mine," but that was a failed single. Two others are B-sides, and the remaining three only came out on archival releases many years later. A lot of them are covers, including a cover of the big Del Shannon hit "Runaway." (Apparently, the only reason the band did that song was at the insistence of their manager, because he sang the intro part.)

So, like I said, these are mostly deep cuts for the more dedicated Small Faces fan. Stayed tuned for the next album in this series, where the band really hit their stride.

On a final note, I made "Before You Accuse Me" a bonus song only because the sound quality is just okay and the performance of that blues standard is also just okay. There are a couple more songs from the Lane recording mentioned above that I didn't include at all, not even as bonus tracks, due to various issues, such as the song cutting off early. You're not missing much.

01 Give All She's Got (Steve Marriott)
02 Money, Money (Steve Marriott & the Moments)
03 You Really Got Me (Steve Marriott & the Moments)
04 Good Morning Blues (Steve Marriott & the Moments)
05 Don't Talk to Me of Love (Ronnie Lane & the Outcasts)
06 That's What I Want (Ronnie Lane & the Outcasts)
07 You'll Never Get Away from Me (Steve Marriott & the Moments)
08 What's a Matter Baby (Small Faces)
09 Jump Back (Small Faces)
10 Baby Don't You Do It [Don't Do It] (Small Faces)
11 I've Got Mine (Small Faces)
12 Grow Your Own (Small Faces)
13 Runaway (Small Faces)
14 Sorry, She's Mine (Jimmy Winston & His Reflections)
15 It's Not What You Do (Jimmy Winston & His Reflections)

Before You Accuse Me (Ronnie Lane & the Outcasts)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/CQdvkSUo 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/PrJ1YuAPUhTDYXa/file

I made the album cover using a 1965 promo photo. I added in the logo of their British record company at the time, because it was on the cover of their debut 1966 album, "Small Faces."

Richard & Linda Thompson - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1973-1975

I've been posting a bunch of Richard and Linda Thompson albums. Here's the start of a four album series, featuring the duo performing for the BBC. 

In 2011, a Richard Thompson album named "Live at the BBC" was released. It's made up of three discs, and the first one contained all Richard and Linda Thompson performances. So one might think that's all there is. But it turns out this was just the tip of the iceberg. In late 2020, a box set of the duo called "Hard Luck Stories" was released. It contained many more BBC performances. However, in a surprise twist, most of them are not labeled as such. It turns out nearly all of the live material on that box set come from concerts or sessions recorded for and played on the BBC. 

For this series, I've gathered up all that material, and added some more. But there are a couple of exceptions. For one, if there's a rare song where the only good version is from a BBC performance, I've put that on one of the stray tracks albums I've made, and I don't want to repeat that exact performance in this series. And two, I've tried not to repeat the same song twice in the series. Luckily, there are very few instances of such duplicates. 

Mostly, I had a problem with the song "A Heart Needs a Home." I bent a little bit and have included a version of that on this album and another one on the next one in the series. This one is fully acoustic while the next one has a light band backing. But I balked at including a third version (from the "Watching the Dark" box set) that's from the same year, since it's not much different from either of the versions I did include. 

Everything on this volume has been officially released, so it all sounds great. The last four songs come from a concert in front of an audience. As I often do, I edited out the audience applause so these songs will fit in with the rest. I could do that because the recording of those is good enough to sound like a studio performance.

This album is 46 minutes long. The other albums in this series have comparable lengths.

01 The Little Beggar Girl (Richard & Linda Thompson)
02 The Great Valerio (Richard & Linda Thompson)
03 I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (Richard & Linda Thompson)
04 Hokey Pokey [The Ice Cream Song] (Richard & Linda Thompson)
05 Georgie on a Spree (Richard & Linda Thompson)
06 I'll Regret It All in the Morning (Richard & Linda Thompson)
07 A Heart Needs a Home (Richard & Linda Thompson)
08 Jet Plane in a Rocking Chair (Richard & Linda Thompson)
09 A Heart Needs a Home (Richard & Linda Thompson)
10 The Dark End of The Street (Richard & Linda Thompson)
11 Beat the Retreat (Richard & Linda Thompson)
12 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
13 The Sun Never Shines on the Poor (Richard & Linda Thompson)
14 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
15 Never Again (Richard & Linda Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15849830/RichnLinT_1973-1975_BBSessionsVolum1_atse.zip.html

I've complained about this before, and I'm likely to complain again: it's really hard to find good color photos of Richard and Linda Thompson! I've used up pretty much all the good ones I could find, at least for this time period, so I've had to colorize this one. It comes from a concert at the Imperial College in London in March 1973.

Roberta Flack - Freedom Song - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1974)

Up until recently, I wasn't a fan of Roberta Flack's music. I'd gotten the impression that most of it was smooth, cheesy, generic pop. I only liked a few of her big hits, like "Killing Me Softly," that were good enough to rise above production issues. But then I discovered her first few albums were different. Her first album came out in 1969, and she only went all in on "adult contemporary" pop around 1973. Her first album, "First Take," is particularly acclaimed. 

In this, I shouldn't be too surprised, because it fits with larger musical trends. The late 60s and early 70s were a musical high water mark, in my opinion. Soul music in particular went drastically downhill as the 1970s went on, especially thanks to disco. Look at many other soul greats who had great music at the start of the 1970s but then struggled from the mid-1970s onward, like Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, and many more.

In any case, now that I've come to appreciate at least the early phase of Roberta Flack's career, I've discovered that she did a lot of songs in concert in those years that she never put on her albums. I found enough for a nice stray tracks collection. Furthermore, I plan on posting an early concert of hers that has even more.

Flack is a song interpreter, not a songwriter, so all of these songs are covers. The third and fourth songs are duets from a Les McCann album. Four more songs, "Freedom Song" plus the last three, come from soundtracks or a guest appearance on another album. The rest are taken from concert bootlegs. Luckily, those are of high sound quality. I've removed the audience noise so those songs will fit in with the studio tracks.

This album is 57 minutes long.

UPDATE: On July 2, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file. I added the song "Let's Stay Together," which I'd previously missed.

Here are the original artists for each song:

01 Save the Country - Laura Nyro / 5th Dimension
02 Let It Be - Beatles
03 How Many Broken Wings - Les McCann
04 Baby, Baby - Les McCann & Roberta Flack
05 Freedom Song - unknown
06 Ain't No Mountain High Enough - Marvin Gaye - Tammi Terrell
07 Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer - Stevie Wonder
08 Ooh Child - Five Stairsteps
09 God Bless the Child -  Billie Holliday
10 When You're Smiling [The Whole World Smiles with You] - Seger Ellis / Louis Armstrong
11 Let’s Stay Together -Al Green
12 Trade Winds - Three Degrees
13 On a Clear Day [You Can See Forever] - Killer Joe - Barbra Streisand
14 Freedom - Sherman Brothers

Here's the usual song list:

01 Save the Country (Roberta Flack)
02 Let It Be (Roberta Flack)
03 How Many Broken Wings (Les McCann & Roberta Flack)
04 Baby, Baby (Les McCann & Roberta Flack)
05 Freedom Song (Roberta Flack)
06 Ain't No Mountain High Enough (Roberta Flack)
07 Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer (Roberta Flack)
08 Ooh Child (Roberta Flack)
09 God Bless the Child (Roberta Flack)
10 When You're Smiling [The Whole World Smiles with You] (Roberta Flack with Quincy Jones)
11 Let’s Stay Together (Roberta Flack)
12 Trade Winds (Roberta Flack)
13 On a Clear Day [You Can See Forever] - Killer Joe (Roberta Flack)
14 Freedom (Roberta Flack)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15405538/RobertaFl_1970-1974_FreedmSong_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is from the Newport Jazz Festival in July 1971.

Kris Kristofferson - Boboquivari, KCET-TV Studio, Los Angeles, CA, 1970

The musical career of country singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson has had its up and downs. But in terms of albums, he peaked early. His 1970 album, "Kris Kristofferson," and his 1971 one, "The Silver Tongued Devil and I," are his most critically acclaimed. Around that time, many other musicians discovered his songwriting talent. There was a rash of covers of his songs that became big hits, including Ray Price with "For the Good Times," Johnny Cash with "Sunday Morning Coming Down," Gladys Knight and the Pips with "Help Me Make It through the Night," and Janis Joplin with "Me and Bobby McGee."

As a result, my interest in his music is the highest around this time, when he shook up the whole country music world with his songwriting style. So I was very delighted and surprised when I randomly found this recording from 1970 on YouTube the other day. 

There are two things about it I really like. One, the sound quality is absolutely fantastic. It was recorded for a short-lived public TV program with the odd name "Boboquivari." If you track down the video on YouTube, you can see there were a couple dozen people in the audience at most. They were totally silent during the songs, so it's not far from a concert in a studio. 

The second great thing is that the performance was acoustic. Kristofferson played acoustic guitar, and he was backed up by a bassist and keyboardist. No drums. If you've been following this blog, you probably have noticed I have a special love for acoustic performances, so this is right up my alley.

The one downside is that the concert is relatively short, at only 30 minutes. But it is what it is. I thought about augmenting it with some other live versions from that time, but the only ones I could find were with a full band. I think it's better to keep the acoustic vibe.

By the way, this concert aired in August 1971, but apparently it was recorded some time in 1970. If anyone knows the exact recording date, please let me know so I can update that information.

UPDATE: On February 18, 2021, I updated the mp3 download file. I stumbled upon a solo acoustic BBC session Kristofferson did around the same time. There was some overlap with the songs, but I added the four that were different. Luckily, these include two songs he wrote that became big hits for others, "Me and Bobby McGee" and "Help Me Make It through the Night."

01 Billy Dee - The Law Is for the Protection of the People (Kris Kristofferson)
02 talk (Kris Kristofferson)
03 Jody and the Kid (Kris Kristofferson)
04 talk (Kris Kristofferson)
05 Loving Her Was Easier [Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again] (Kris Kristofferson)
06 talk (Kris Kristofferson)
07 The Pilgrim, Chapter 33 (Kris Kristofferson)
08 For the Good Times (Kris Kristofferson)
09 talk (Kris Kristofferson)
10 Casey's Last Ride (Kris Kristofferson)
11 The Lady's Not for Sale (Kris Kristofferson)
12 Sunday Morning Coming Down (Kris Kristofferson)
13 Me and Bobby McGee (Kris Kristofferson)
14 To Beat the Devil (Kris Kristofferson)
15 Darby's Castle (Kris Kristofferson)
16 talk (Kris Kristofferson)
17 Help Me Make It through the Night (Kris Kristofferson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376570/KRISKRSTFFSN1970BobquivariKCETTVStudio__1970_atse.zip.html

The cover art is a screenshot taken from the video of the exact concert featured here.

Joni Mitchell - Eastern Rain - Non-Album Tracks (1966-1967)

About two years ago as I write this, I made two stray tracks for Joni Mitchell's early songs, the vast majority of them unreleased originals. In late 2020, the box set "Archives, Volume 1" was released, allowing most of these songs to be officially released for the first time. That contained a bunch of songs that had never even been bootlegged before, so many of them that I was able to turn those two stray tracks albums into three. Technically, this is the new one, but if you're interested in this material, you really need to get the revised versions of the other two. The songs I had on them have been jumbled around and mixed in with new songs and new versions of songs on all three albums.

Here's the link to the other two:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/05/joni-mitchell-urge-for-going-various.html

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/05/joni-mitchell-come-to-sunshine-various.html

Furthermore, I have an album called "Born to Take the Highway - On TV and Radio." It consists of TV and radio appearances from the same time period as these three stray tracks albums. That changed drastically as well due to the box set, so you should get the revised version of that one too:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/02/joni-mitchell-born-to-take-highway-on.html

All the songs are originals, with the exception of "Sugar Mountain" by Neil Young. The fact that Mitchell covered this song is surprising because Young wasn't well known in 1967, and "Sugar Mountain" wasn't even released yet. It would only come out as an obscure B-side in 1968, and not get on an album until the "Decade" retrospective in 1977. But Young played it for her and she liked it so much that she was inspired to write "Both Sides Now" to continue with the themes expressed in his song.

All but one of the songs here were taken from the box set. The exception, "Blue on Blue," is included on the box set, but I prefer a concert bootleg version of equal sound quality. I edited the song "Born to Take the Highway" because this version is from a concert, and she had some spoken asides in the middle of the song in an attempt to get the audience to sing along. I edited out those spoken bits.

The bonus track "The Wizard of Is" remains unreleased, and I have to say I very much understand why it wasn't included on the box set. It would be a nice song, until you realize how similar it is to "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen. She certainly would have been familiar with that classic song. Heck, she even got to be friends with Cohen in 1967. I'm guessing "Suzanne" sank into her subconscious and she didn't realize how much she was copying it when she wrote "The Wizard of Is." I consider it a song best forgotten due to the embarrassing similarity, but I'm including it here for the sake of completeness.

UPDATE: On January 26, 2026, I updated the mp3 download file. The song list is the same. However, I ran a few of the songs through the MVSEP "denoise" filter, to get rid of hiss. I think they sound better now.

01 Just like Me (Joni Mitchell)
02 Blue on Blue (Joni Mitchell)
03 Brandy Eyes (Joni Mitchell)
04 What's the Story, Mr. Blue (Joni Mitchell)
05 Eastern Rain (Joni Mitchell)
06 Born to Take the Highway [Edit] (Joni Mitchell)
07 Winter Lady (Joni Mitchell)
08 A Melody in Your Name (Joni Mitchell)
09 Strawflower Me (Joni Mitchell)
10 Gemini Twin (Joni Mitchell)
11 Sugar Mountain (Joni Mitchell)
12 Cara's Castle (Joni Mitchell)
13 Jeremy (Joni Mitchell)

The Wizard of Is (Joni Mitchell)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/YLQoW8cn

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/6oaOs4w2roCYPh2/file

For the cover art, I wanted to use a very early photo of her. I could only find one that definitely comes from 1966. Luckily, it's a good one. It was taken at the Riverboat night club in Toronto, Canada, in November 1966. Unfortunately it was in black and white, but I colorized it.

Richard & Linda Thompson - Acoustic Radio Sessions, 1980-1981

Some years ago, someone named "propylaen" posted a Richard and Linda Thompson bootleg called "The Complete Radio Sessions, 1980-1981." It's a great collection of a bunch of acoustic performances they did on various radio shows. This is a slimmed down version of that. 

I've removed a couple of songs that don't appear in good quality elsewhere to put on my stray tracks albums for this era. I also removed any songs played here more than once. Luckily, there were only a couple of those as well.

The songs sound great, since they were recorded for radio broadcast. (One or two sound a little worse than the others. I think "Break My Mind" is one of those, if I recall correctly.) In all cases, they were recorded in front of a very small audience, maybe a couple dozen people, or without any audience at all. To keep things consistent, I removed all the audience noise. Luckily, the various audiences were always respectful of the music, letting the songs' final notes fade out before clapping and not making any sounds during the songs. So, listening to this, it would be very easy to believe there never was an audience at all. But at the same time I was able to keep the banter between songs, and there's a lot of interesting talk.

The songs are presented in chronological order. The last four songs feature Richard Thompson without Linda. He started to do some solo shows in 1981, and this is one of them. They would stay together as a musical duo through a 1982 tour.

I plan on posting a bunch of albums of the duo playing at the BBC. Some of this, maybe half, are from BBC radio shows. But I thought this holds together well as an all acoustic thing, whereas most of the other BBC performances I plan on posting are with a full band. I don't know why there's a bunch of acoustic shows from 1980 and 1981, and few from 1982 or the years before. Perhaps it's just that that person propylaen managed to save them from being lost, because I've looked over a list of all of their performances and there are many radio show appearances that seem to have been lost (meaning they're not available on official records or bootlegs).

This album is an hour and ten minutes long.

01 Pavanne (Richard & Linda Thompson)
02 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
03 Strange Affair (Richard & Linda Thompson)
04 Sunnyvista (Richard & Linda Thompson)
05 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
06 Crying in the Rain (Richard & Linda Thompson)
07 Break My Mind (Richard & Linda Thompson)
08 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
09 Lonely Hearts (Richard & Linda Thompson)
10 Lucky in Life, Unlucky in Love (Richard & Linda Thompson)
11 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
12 Walking on a Wire (Richard & Linda Thompson)
13 Dimming of the Day (Richard & Linda Thompson)
14 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
15 Modern Woman (Richard & Linda Thompson)
16 Jet Plane in a Rocking Chair (Richard & Linda Thompson)
17 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
18 I'm Turning Off a Memory (Richard & Linda Thompson)
19 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
20 Backstreet Slide (Richard & Linda Thompson)
21 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
22 Just the Motion (Richard & Linda Thompson)
23 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
24 talk (Richard Thompson)
25 Banish Misfortune [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
26 talk (Richard Thompson)
27 Honky Tonk Blues (Richard Thompson)
28 talk (Richard Thompson)
29 The Choice Wife [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
30 talk (Richard Thompson)
31 Borrowed Time (Richard Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15852173/RichnLinT_1980-1981_AcoustcRdioSssions_atse.zip.html

It's so damn hard to find good color photos of this duo. To make this album cover, I had to get creative. I found a high quality video recording of them (I forget which one). I took a screenshot of Linda, then another screenshot of Richard. Then I edited them in Photoshop to make it appear that they both were in the same shot at the same time.

Grace Potter - Twilight Hour, Volume 5 - Home Concert, Topanga, CA, 6-8-2020 to 6-15-2020

Here's the next in a series of Grace Potter home concert albums. Even though it's already the second month of 2021 as I write this, I still have a bunch of home concert albums from 2020 that need to be posted. In fact, from Potter alone, after this one, I have four more. So here we go again.

This comes from two concerts, since neither of them had enough material to make up a full album. The first half, up to and including the song "Something in the Air," are mostly covers of famous songs. The only original in that bunch is "The Divide." The remaining songs are originals, and all are versions of songs that first appeared on her "Daylight" album, which was released in 2019.

As with past albums in this series, Potter was generally winging it. So she tried out some songs that didn't work out and usually gave up on them early. I haven't included any of those. Most of these performances are with a small band. The album is 47 minutes long.

There's not much else to say except that if you liked the previous albums in this series, you should like this one too. The sound quality is the same as the others.

01 What the World Needs Now (Grace Potter)
02 Come Together (Grace Potter)
03 Let's Get Together (Grace Potter)
04 One Love (Grace Potter)
05 Pride [In the Name of Love] (Grace Potter)
06 The Divide (Grace Potter)
07 Something in the Air (Grace Potter)
08 Love Is Love (Grace Potter)
09 Back to Me (Grace Potter)
10 Repossession (Grace Potter)
11 Everyday Love (Grace Potter)
12 Desire (Grace Potter)
13 Anyone Who Knows What Love Is [Will Understand] (Grace Potter)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15328374/GraceP_2020_TwilghtHourVolme5HmeConcrtTopangaCA__6-8-2020_to_6-15-2020_atse.zip.html

As with some previous albums in this series, the album cover was created by Grace Potter herself. I like her artistic style. But I didn't like the face of the woman (though I forget why). So I found a photo of her taken at the same angle, and I inserted that into the picture instead.

Robyn Hitchcock - There Goes the Ice - Alternate Version (2012-2013)

Here's the next in my long series of Robyn Hitchcock stray tracks albums. This uses the title of a very obscure album he put out called "There Goes the Ice," but it doesn't have much resemblance to that, sharing only four songs. That actually was a stray tracks collection of sorts, and had some songs going back a few years. I actually have more songs from it, five, on my previous stray tracks album, "Dragonfly Me."

The few songs from that compilation are mixed in with other a couple of cover songs from tribute albums ("There Ain't No Santa Claus on the Evenin' Stage" and "Parasite"). Then there are three unreleased songs at the end. The last one "Something about the IMF," was created on the spot after someone in the audience shouted for Hitchcock to sing "something about the IMF," the world financial organization the International Monetary Fund. 

This is a rather short album, at only 34 minutes. Unfortunately, the amount of stray tracks from him goes down around this time, and has stayed lower than before. I think much of that is due to his growing realization that his concerts were getting bootlegged and he was wary about having things he was testing out or creating spontaneously being recorded for posterity. I've seen some comments he made to that effect, though I forget the details.

01 Twitch for Sam Surfer (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 There Goes the Ice (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 There Ain't No Santa Claus on the Evenin' Stage (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 After the Bullfight (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 I'll See You (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Parasite (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 On Seeing (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Sexy Man (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 Something about the IMF (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15122316/RobynH_2012-2013_ThreGotheIceAlternateV_atse.zip.html

The cover art is the same as on the official release, except that I've added Hitchcock's name to the top.

Richard & Linda Thompson - Acoustic Demos (1972-1980)

I spent the past few days updating my Richard and Linda Thompson music collection, after processing the new material on the recently released "Hard Luck Stories" box set. I want to post the new albums I've made from that over the next few days, while while I did is still fresh in my mind.

This is exactly what it says in the title, a collection of acoustic demos. Note that it does NOT contain all of the available acoustic demos. In a few cases, there are demos of songs that don't exist in any other version. I've put all those in the relevant stray track albums. This contains just the demos of songs available elsewhere. Most of them are of songs from studio albums, I believe "Sometimes It Happens" is the only exception. Also, "When Will I Be Loved" is a demo of a cover song by the Bunch, a short-lived group with Richard and Linda Thompson in it. This version is a duet between Linda and famous folk singer Sandy Denny, who also was part of the Bunch.

I must admit I sneaked in a couple of songs here that aren't actually demos. That's because they sound exactly like them, and I didn't have a better place to put them. Two are live acoustic performances with the audience applause edited out, and the other is considered an "alternate version." I didn't include any full band versions, but "Traces of My Love" does have some light drumming on it.

This album is one hour long.

01 Sometimes It Happens (Richard & Linda Thompson)
02 When Will I Be Loved (Bunch)
03 A Heart Needs a Home (Richard & Linda Thompson)
04 Down Where the Drunkards Roll (Richard & Linda Thompson)
05 Never Again [Alternate Version] (Richard & Linda Thompson)
06 Hokey Pokey [The Ice Cream Song] [Live] (Richard & Linda Thompson)
07 The Great Valerio [Live] (Richard & Linda Thompson)
08 First Light (Richard & Linda Thompson)
09 Died for Love (Richard & Linda Thompson)
10 Layla (Richard & Linda Thompson)
11 Strange Affair (Richard & Linda Thompson)
12 Traces of My Love (Richard & Linda Thompson)
13 Just the Motion (Richard & Linda Thompson)
14 Walking on a Wire (Richard & Linda Thompson)
15 Wall of Death (Richard & Linda Thompson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/9fLuwsbA

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/k1ZtanYaKqlpTm8/file

Damn, there are so few good photos I can find of Richard and Linda together. This one is from October 1978. It was in black and white, but I colorized it. I later sharpened the image with the Krea AI program.

Neil Young - Acoustic Demos (1973-1974)

In November 2020, Neil Young released the excellent box set "Archives, Volume II." I've taken all the songs from that not on his previously existing studio albums and added them to various mid-1970s stray tracks albums I've made. There also are lots of alternate versions of songs from his studio albums that I don't plan on doing anything with. But today, a commenter suggested I should do something with all the acoustic demos he did from 1973 and 1974. I thought that was an excellent idea, so I quickly put this together.

A big reason I'm doing this is because in January 2021, Young posted three acoustic demos on his website, neilyoungarchives.com. They're not available in any form unless you can record them streaming there, which is what I did. I've added those to four more acoustic demos from "Archives, Volume II."

Unfortunately, that makes for a very short album. So I tried to think what else I could add that would fit the format, and that I have posted on another album. I came up with a nice version of "Star of Bethlehem" that Young performed on stage during the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young tour in 1974. Luckily, this comes from a soundboard bootleg, and he played it solo acoustic. Once I edited out the crowd noise, it sounds just like the others.

I did the exact same thing to "Homefires." Unfortunately, the bootleg recording of that is good, but it isn't as good as the rest. So I've only included it here as a bonus track.

This album is only 29 minutes long, 32 if you include the bonus track. That's pretty short, but everything here is high quality. Hopefully in the future he'll release more acoustic demos through his website, and I'll be able to add some to this.

On a different note, the same time he posted the acoustic demos to his website, he also posted the song "Barefoot Floors." This is an original that was inexplicably left off the box set. I've added that to the "Homefires" album, since that collects songs from that time period not on any other studio albums. If you want that (and it's an excellent song), you can get it here:

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

01 Come Along and Say You Will (Neil Young)
02 Mellow My Mind (Neil Young)
03 Ambulance Blues (Neil Young)
04 Human Highway (Neil Young)
05 Love-Art Blues (Neil Young)
06 Through My Sails (Neil Young)
07 Pardon My Heart (Neil Young)
08 Star of Bethlehem (Neil Young)
09 Vacancy (Neil Young)

Homefires (Neil Young)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16696717/NELYNG1973-1974_AcoustcDmos_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I really wanted a photo of Neil Young playing acoustic guitar in the studio in 1974. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any such photo. So I decided to create one. I found a photo of him playing acoustic guitar on stage during the 1974 CSNY tour. I used Photoshop to strip out the background. Then I found a totally unreleased photo of a recording studio and put that in as the background. So this is kind of Frankenstein of a photo. I apologize if it doesn't work for you, but I like it.

Linda Thompson - I'll Show You How to Sing - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1972 )

In late 2020, the Richard and Linda Thompson box set "Hard Luck Stories" was released. It contains previously unreleased goodies from all parts of the duet's time together. Because of that, I'm upgrading all the albums from them with minor changes.

It so happens there was a bunch of extra material from the beginning of their musical partnership, which started around 1971 and 1972. I already have an album dealing with this time period, called "Shady Lies." You can find it here:

Richard & Linda Thompson - Shady Lies - Various Songs (1970-1972)

I've drastically changed that album, due to the new material, so I highly recommend you redownload that, if you're interested enough to be reading this. I realized there is a bunch of songs featuring Linda Thompson by herself or with others before she musically linked up with her soon-to-be husband Richard Thompson. So I've spun off all the early Linda Thompson material here. What's left on "Shade Lies" is more stuff with Linda and Richard together.

Linda Thompson was born Linda Pettifer, and changed that to the simpler Linda Peters for her stage name. You can read more about her and her career at her Wikipedia page, here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Thompson_(singer) 

Suffice to say that she put out a single with Paul McNeill in 1968, then another one with him in 1969. I've found three out of those four songs and included them here. I couldn't find "When I Hear Your Name," which is the B-side to the 1969 single. If you have it, let me know and I'll add it to this album.

After that, she did a number of songs that weren't released at the time, but came out on archival releases much later. A couple of those, the ones with Brian Patten, are from the "Hard Luck Stories" box set. Generally speaking, Linda does all the lead vocals, although Paul McNeill does share lead on a couple of their songs together. The songs she did with Elton John are related to the jobs he was doing to earn some extra money before he became famous. I have a whole album of those where he sings lead, which can be found here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/09/elton-john-hits-70-various-songs-1970.html

Anyway, Linda was in demand for these various projects because it was obvious that she had an excellent voice. However, she hadn't tried songwriting yet (she would much later in her career), so these are all covers. Note that I've edited "Get Back," which is the Beatles hit, because in her version she repeated one of the verses, and it seemed entirely unnecessary to me, so I cut that out.

Note that during most of the time period covered by this album, Linda Thompson was known as Linda Peters. But I've only called her "Linda Thompson" for consistency's sake with all of her later material. 

Oh, by the way, on the same day I posted this album, I updated ALL the Richard and Linda Thompson stray tracks albums. Typically, I've added a song or two to each one, mostly thanks to the "Hard Luck Stories" box set.

01 I'll Show You How to Sing (Paul McNeill & Linda Thompson)
02 You Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Paul McNeill & Linda Thompson)
03 You're Taking My Bag (Paul McNeill & Linda Thompson)
04 Story of Isaac (Linda Thompson)
05 Down River (Linda Thompson)
06 Fire and Rain (Linda Thompson)
07 From a City Balcony (Linda Thompson)
08 Get Back [Edit] (Linda Thompson)
09 I Don't Mind (Linda Thompson with Elton John)
10 This Moment (Linda Thompson with Elton John)
11 Pied Piper (Linda Thompson with Elton John)
12 You Get Brighter (Linda Thompson with Elton John)
13 Embroidered Butterflies (Brian Patten with Linda Thompson)
14 After Frost (Brian Patten with Linda Thompson)
15 Sometimes It Happens (Linda Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16687536/LindThmp_1968-1972_IllShwYouHwSing_atse.zip.html

I'm really happy about the cover art photo I found here, because good photos of Richard and/or Linda Thompson from the early years of their time as a duo are very hard to find. I don't know when this photo is from, but I found it paired with one of Richard, and judging by their looks I'd guess it's from around 1973. It was in black and white, but I colorized it.