Rod Stewart - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: BBC Rock Hour, Olympia Exhibition Hall, London, Britain, 12-24-1976

Some months ago, in my insatiable question for material for my big BBC project here, I came across a recording of this Rod Stewart concert. But I decided it wasn't worth posting here, due to poor sound quality. Then, last week (as I write this in May 2023), I came across the editing work of Captain Acid, and found a bunch of concert recordings that he made sound better. For this one, his version sounded so much better that I think he worked from a different source than the one I had. This now sounds great.

One reason I think Captain Acid worked from a different source is because this one had a flaw that mine did not, in that all the songs faded in at their starts and faded out at their ends. Luckily, this didn't seem to hinder the music or any of the banter between songs. Also, there was a decent amount of applause after the music ended and before the fade-outs began. So I simply cut out the fade-ins and fade-outs, and made sure the applause levels matched. 

This also had the problem of the lead vocals being too low in the mix. But I fixed that with the audio editing program UVR5.

One problem that I couldn't fix though is that sometimes, when Stewart talked between songs, his voice is hard to understand. He had tons of reverb on the microphone, which didn't help. If he talks while the crowd was roaring, it sounds bad. But if he talks when the crowd was quiet, it's pretty decent. His voice is perfectly fine during the actual songs; it's just the banter that sound muddy at times.

In my opinion, Stewart's music was great in the late 1960s and early 1970s, especially when he was part of the Faces, but then it went downhill as the 1970s went on. By the end of the 1970s, his reputation nosedived because he went all in with disco (with songs like "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy"), and then disco soon went way out of fashion. But at the time of this concert in 1976, during his first tour as a solo artist, he still was releasing great songs like "Tonight's the Night (Gonna Be Alright)," "I Don't Want to Talk about It," "The Killing of Georgie (Part I and II)," and "Sailing," all of which are performed here. So this still had that classic rock early 1970s sound all the way through.

This album is an hour and 27 minutes long. Note that a portion of this concert was also broadcast on the "Old Grey Whistle Test" BBC TV show.

01 Three Time Loser (Rod Stewart)
02 You Wear It Well (Rod Stewart)
03 talk (Rod Stewart)
04 Big Bayou (Rod Stewart)
05 Tonight's the Night [Gonna Be Alright] (Rod Stewart)
06 talk (Rod Stewart)
07 The Wild Side of Life (Rod Stewart)
08 This Old Heart of Mine [Is Weak for You] (Rod Stewart)
09 Sweet Little Rock and Roller (Rod Stewart)
10 talk (Rod Stewart)
11 I Don't Want to Talk about It (Rod Stewart)
12 The Killing of Georgie [Part I and II] (Rod Stewart)
13 Maggie May (Rod Stewart)
14 Get Back (Rod Stewart)
15 talk (Rod Stewart)
16 [I Know] I'm Losing You (Rod Stewart)
17 Sailing (Rod Stewart)
18 Stay with Me (Rod Stewart)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15226569/RodStwrt_1976_BBSessionsVolum1RckHourOlympiaExhbitionHllLondnBritain__12-24-1976.zip.html

The cover photo comes from a concert in Los Angeles in November 1976.

Cliff Bennett - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1966-1967

Here's the second of four albums of Cliff Bennett at the BBC.

As I mentioned with Volume 1, Bennett may not be well known in the US - I'm American, and I'd never heard of him until recently - but he was a soul star in Britain. He'd had a few hits during the time period covered for Volume 1. Then, during the time period of this album, he had a lucky break due to having Brian Epstein as his manager, who also managed the Beatles. Thanks to that, he was able to hear an early version of the Beatles song "Got to Get You into My Life" before it came out on the album "Revolver" in 1966. The Beatles didn't release it as a single, but Bennett did, and it was the biggest hit of his career, going all the way to Number 6 in Britain.

Not surprisingly, he did a version of that for the BBC. That song was a Beatles homage to the soulful Motown sound. Many of the other songs here are in a similar vein. He was into other soul sounds as well. In particular, he seems to have been influenced by the duo Sam and Dave, covering three songs made famous by them ("Hold On, I'm Coming," "You Don't Know like I Know," and "I Take What I Want").

As with Volume 1, all the performances here are officially unreleased. The sound quality is excellent throughout, since everything is sourced from pristine BBC reels. The songs with "[Edit]" in their names had BBC DJs talking over some of the music, but I used audio editing software to wipe the talking and keep the underlying music.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Need Your Loving Tonight [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
02 You Can't Love Em All (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
03 Whole Lotta Woman [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
04 See Saw [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
05 Ain't Love Good, Ain't Love Proud (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
06 Close the Door (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
07 Stop Her on Sight [S. O. S.] [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
08 Hold On, I'm Coming (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
09 See See Rider [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
10 Stop, Look and Listen (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
11 Got to Get You into My Life (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
12 Barefootin' (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
13 Never Knew Lovin' Could Be So Doggone Good (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
14 It's a Wonder (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
15 You Don't Know like I Know [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
16 Ease Me Baby [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
17 I Take What I Want [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
18 I'll Take Good Care of You (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15226552/CliffBen_1966-1967_BBSessionsVolum2_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from 1966. It was in black and white, but I used the program Palette to colorize it.

 

The Soft Boys - Dingwalls, London, Britain, 12-7-1980

I recently said that I haven't posted enough music from Robyn Hitchcock's first band, the Soft Boys. I posted a 1978 concert album then, and now here's one from 1980. There aren't many Soft Boys live recordings that sound excellent. This one hadn't, but I made some edits to make it a great listen.

This concert comes from near the tail end of the existence of the Soft Boys, not counting occasional later reunions. Crucially, it happened about six months after the release of the classic album "Underwater Moonlight," so it naturally has a bunch of songs from that. But it even has some songs that presumably would have been on the band's next album, had they stayed together long enough to make another album ("City of Shame," "I Watch the Cars," and "The Lizard," plus, arguably, "Black Snake Diamond Rock").

More and more, I'm realizing that a lot of recordings, especially bootlegs, have the problem of the lead vocals being too low in the mix. I can use the "one weird trick" of boosting the vocals to make everything sound a lot better . That's what I did here, using the audio editing program UVR5. This entire concert happened to have been filmed. The film has never been released, but you can find it on YouTube. Probably, that's why this recording sounds much better than virtually all other Soft Boys live bootlegs, which usually come from audience tapings.

Oh, and one other key factor is that, before I posted this, I passed it on to my music friend MZ. He did his usual thing, fixing the EQ and such, to make it sound that much better. Thanks again, MZ. 

One other problem this recording had was that there was a strange buzz at times. Oddly, it mostly happened between songs. I'm guessing maybe it was an electric guitar that was making a noise whenever it wasn't being played. I was able to use noise reduction to greatly reduce that, and MZ's fixes helped too. Note that, as usual, I only used noise reduction for the stuff between the songs, not the actual music. There's still some buzzing here and there, but it's not nearly as bad as before.

There was one other significant problem with this recording: the very tail end of the Pink Floyd cover song "Astronomy Domine" was missing, as well as maybe a minute and a half of the start of the next song, "Underwater Moonlight." So I used versions from another concert bootleg (Hope and Anchor, London, Britain, 3-28-1980), to patch in those missing parts.

This bootleg probably didn't get around much until now due to both the buzz problem and the low vocals problem. Now that those have been fixed, it can take its place as one of the best Soft Boys live recordings, either officially released or not.

The band was really rocking here, with barely any pause between songs. Note that they played the song "Only the Stones Remain" twice.

The concert is 53 minutes long.

01 City of Shame (Soft Boys)
02 Only the Stones Remain (Soft Boys)
03 Strange (Soft Boys)
04 I Wanna Destroy You (Soft Boys)
05 Queen of Eyes (Soft Boys)
05 talk (Soft Boys)
06 I Watch the Cars (Soft Boys)
07 Kingdom of Love (Soft Boys)
08 Leppo and the Jooves (Soft Boys)
09 The Lizard (Soft Boys)
10 Black Snake Diamond Rock (Soft Boys)
11 Insanely Jealous (Soft Boys)
12 Astronomy Domine [Edit] (Soft Boys)
13 Underwater Moonlight [Edit] (Soft Boys)
14 Only the Stones Remain (Soft Boys)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15222438/TSoftBys_1980c_DingwllsLondnBritain__12-7-1980_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from the video of this exact concert. It's rather low-res and blurry, unfortunately. That's Robyn Hitchcock singing into the microphone and Kimberley Rew to the side.

The Velvet Underground - The End of Cole Ave., Dallas, TX, 10-18-1969

I've gotten a good reaction to the Velvet Underground (VU) bootleg concert I posted a few days ago, so I'm posting another one, recorded by the same taper the night before. 

There's good news and bad news. The bad news is there were more problems with this recording than the other one, and I decided that only about half of it is worthy of posting here. But the good news is the band played a few songs they rarely did, and the sound quality for this portion is nearly as good as the concert I recently posted. So if you like that one, I suggest you get this one too. This still has to be one of a handful of the best sounding VU bootlegs out there.

I gave a detailed explanation about how the recording of the next night (October 19, 1969) came to be. I'll quickly sum that up, because most of it applies here too. The VU were playing at the oddly named "The End of Cole Ave." club in Dallas for about a week. On this night, band member Lou Reed noticed an audience member was taping the show from the back of the club. During a break between sets in the middle of the show, Reed found the person and asked to hear a playback. After hearing a sample, he let the taper record in the open, close to the stage, if that person promised to send him a copy of the tape. Then the whole of the next night's show was recorded by that taper in similarly ideal conditions. The taper did send the recordings of both nights to the band, and four of the songs from the next night were released on the live album "1969: The Velvet Underground Live."

That all explains why I'm only posting the second half of this concert, because it was recorded in a much better manner than the first half. I tried to salvage the first half, but the sound quality was too poor for my tastes. Even what I think is the first song of the second set ("I'll Be Your Mirror") didn't sound good enough. Perhaps the taper was still getting into a better position or something like that. But luckily, virtually every song in the first set would be played by the band the next night, and recorded with great sound quality. Whereas a big portion of the songs included here not only weren't done the next night, they were relatively rarely done by the band at all. 

It seems the band was in a mellow mood for the second set, and played a bunch of songs from their relatively mellow 1969 album "The Velvet Underground." Even the usual closing song, "Sister Ray," was done in a relatively mellow manner. Songs like "Jesus" and "The Story of My Life" were only played a handful of times by the band. "I Found a Reason" may only have been played live one other time (according to the setlist.fm database). So, for some songs, these are the best or even the only live recordings that have survived.

By the way, the version of "I Found a Reason" played here is particularly interesting, because it was done in a country style very different from any studio version. This album is worth hearing for that version alone.

This recording has the same history as that of the next night's recording. In short, I found a version modified by a person nicknamed Captain Acid, who significantly improved the sound quality. Then I made further changes using the UVR5 audio editing program, especially boosting the lead vocals in relation to the instruments. 

This bootleg has the same problem as the other one in that the taper stopped the recording between songs, usually only getting a few seconds of applause, and probably losing most of the banter. There was only one song where all of the applause was recorded, "After Hours." Probably that was because the song got an especially big reaction due to being sung by the female drummer, Moe Tucker. (According to the setlist.fm database, this was the first time she sang lead in any VU concert! Maybe that's why she messed up a bit.) So you can listen to that to hear a complete audience response, to get an idea of how big the audience was. For all the other songs, I patched in extra cheering from the next night's recording to fill in the missing bits.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Femme Fatale (Velvet Underground)
02 talk (Velvet Underground)
03 Pale Blue Eyes (Velvet Underground)
04 Candy Says (Velvet Underground)
05 Jesus (Velvet Underground)
06 The Story of My Life (Velvet Underground)
07 I Found a Reason (Velvet Underground)
08 Sunday Morning (Velvet Underground)
09 After Hours (Velvet Underground)
10 Sister Ray (Velvet Underground)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JdWhvxpq 

alternate: 

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

As I mentioned for the October 19th concert, VU played an anti-war protest in Dallas that took place a few days earlier. The cover for the 19th is a screenshot from that concert, due to there being some surviving video footage of it. This cover uses another screenshot from that concert too. Unfortunately, there weren't many good shots of the full band, so I had to resort to a screenshot that doesn't include the drummer, Moe Tucker. Sorry, Moe!

Badfinger - Performance Center, Cambridge, MA, 3-31-1974

This is fun. I've never been able to post both the opening and headlining act from the same concert, but that's what I'm doing here. I just posted the opening act, Big Star. And now here's the headliner, Badfinger. Kudos to the promoter who put the two most influential and even legendary power pop bands on the same bill.

The story behind this recording is almost exactly the same as that of the Big Star recording. They were both recorded by the same taper. But although he only recorded the Big Star early show, he recorded both the early and late shows for Badfinger. 

Both Badfinger sets have nearly the exact same songs in the same order, except for the encores. I took a close look at both and decided the late show was recorded slightly better. Perhaps the taper stood in a better spot near the stage or something like that. Whatever the case, I've only included the late show here. However, the last two songs, "No Matter What" and the song cover song "Only You Know and I Know" are from the early show, because they were only played then. Also, the talk in the first track is from the early show.

Just as the Big Star recording remastered by the person nicknamed Captain Acid, so did the Badfinger recording. But, also like the Big Star recording, the lead vocals were rather low, so I further edited all the songs using the audio editing program UVR5. I think it sounds significantly better. Also, I made additional changes to improve the clarity of the banter between songs.

Speaking of the banter, some of it is extremely strange. Early on, there are a couple of cases where whoever is speaking says a bunch of nonsense words. So it's not that you can't understand due to the recording; it's that there's nothing intelligible to understand. There was a comment made by the emcee during the early show, and not included here, about the band being drunk. So maybe that explains the strange banter. But if they were drunk, I didn't hear it negatively impacting the actual playing of the songs. 

This recording is very welcome due to a severe lack of live Badfinger recordings with worthy sound quality. There are some BBC recordings, which I've posted at this blog. And there's a 1970 concert at Ungano's Club in New York City, which I've also posted here. But that's about it, and they're all from 1970 to 1973. Whereas this is from 1974, with a different set list.

There is one official live album from 1974, but boy is it a mess. It's called "Day After Day - Live," and it comes from a concert given in Cleveland on March 4, 1974. But in the late 1980s, one of the surviving band members, Joey Molland, messed it up. He changed the song order to put his songs at the front. He rerecorded his vocals and guitar parts. He even inserted himself with some banter between songs that wasn't there before. But, worst of all, he replaced the drums with overly loud 1980s-styled drumming. He basically made that album unlistenable, in my opinion.

The good news is, because this concert is from the same month, the set list is nearly the same. Plus, this is twice as long, with more songs. The only song from that messed up live album not here is "The Name of the Game." And the sound quality is good enough so you can easily throw that album away and replace it with this.

Badfinger wasn't particularly known for rocking hard, but they rocked hard at this concert. Especially near the end, some of the songs are seven, eight, or nine minutes long, with lots of jamming. It's different from their carefully produced album versions, but I like it.

This concert is an hour and 21 minutes long. That makes this the only good sounding live recording from the band that I know of that's longer than an hour.

01 talk (Badfinger)
02 Day After Day (Badfinger)
03 talk (Badfinger)
04 Constitution (Badfinger)
05 talk (Badfinger)
06 Baby Blue (Badfinger)
07 talk (Badfinger)
08 I Don't Mind (Badfinger)
09 talk (Badfinger)
10 Perfection (Badfinger)
11 Timeless (Badfinger)
12 Love Is Easy (Badfinger)
13 talk (Badfinger)
14 Blind Owl (Badfinger)
15 Suitcase (Badfinger)
16 I Can't Take It (Badfinger)
17 Give It Up (Badfinger)
18 No Matter What (Badfinger)
19 Only You Know and I Know (Badfinger)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15215640/Badfngr_1974_PerformnceCentrCmbridgeMA__3-31-1974_atse.zip.html

I couldn't find any good photos of Badfinger in concert in 1974. But I found a nice one from 1973. This photo comes from a performance on "The Midnight Special" TV show in February 1973. In the original, there were a bunch of mirrors behind the band. I thought that made the picture look overly crowded and confusing. So I used Photoshop to replace the mirrors with the same dark background elsewhere in the picture.

Big Star - Performance Center, Cambridge, MA, 3-31-1974

I must say, I never expected to post any music from Big Star here. That band has a pretty small discography due to them not being together for long, and I figured everything worthwhile had been officially released. But then I came across a bunch of album edits by the person nicknamed Captain Acid. I discovered he edited this audience bootleg, and made it sound good, almost like a soundboard. In fact, it sounds even better than some of the band's official live releases.

Nowadays, Big Star is pretty well known, and is considered a highly influential early power pop band. But at the time, they were mired in obscurity and didn't sell many records. As a result, they didn't tour much, and when they did they didn't get bootlegged or officially recorded that often. We're lucky that this one not only exists, but sounds as good as it does.

On this night, Big Star was the opening act for Badfinger. Both of them played an early show and a late show. The taper recorded both Badfinger sets, but only taped the early Big Star set, so that's what this is. Captain Acid later added his magic dust, fixing a phasing issue and making level correction and a new EQ. That improved the sound quality a lot.

But a big problem still remained: the vocals were too low in the mix. I used the audio editing program UVR5 to boost the vocals in relation to the instrumentation. I also cleaned up the sound between songs. I edited out some guitar tuning and dead air. I also was able to reduce the ambient noise and boost the talking voices, so it's a lot easier to hear what was spoken.

This is a short concert, since Big Star was only the opening act. As such, it's interesting that they played several covers: "Baby Strange" by T. Rex, "Candy Says" by the Velvet Underground, "Till the End of the Day" by the Kinks, "Motel Blues" by Loudon Wainwright III, and "Come On Now," again by the Kinks. Live versions of all of those have been officially released, but this is the only known recording of the band performing "Candy Says."

This album is 39 minutes long.

01 talk (Big Star)
02 In the Street (Big Star)
03 Baby Strange (Big Star)
04 talk (Big Star)
05 Mod Lang (Big Star)
06 talk (Big Star)
07 Candy Says (Big Star)
08 talk (Big Star)
09 Till the End of the Day (Big Star)
10 talk (Big Star)
11 O My Soul (Big Star)
12 talk (Big Star)
13 Motel Blues (Big Star)
14 talk (Big Star)
15 Thirteen (Big Star)
16 Way Out West (Big Star)
17 talk (Big Star)
18 September Gurls (Big Star)
19 Come On Now (Big Star)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15215622/BigStr_1974_PerformnceCentrCmbridgeMA__3-31-1974_atse.zip.html

Good photos of Big Star in concert are nearly nonexistent, although I've seen some bad ones. Since this may well end up being my only Big Star post, I decided to do something a bit creative. I'd heard the band name was at least partially inspired by a supermarket chain called "Big Star." So I found a photo of one of their store fronts, luckily in the Memphis, Tennessee area, where the band was based. I then found a photo of the band, and used Photoshop to place them in the foreground, underneath the store name.

The Soft Boys - The Portland Arms, Cambridge, Britain, 11-1-1978

I recently noticed that while I've posted a ton of Robyn Hitchcock solo music - over 70 albums as of May 2023, and more coming - I've posted relatively little from his first band, the Soft Boys. So I'm going to post a few more albums to try to rectify that.

This is a very odd concert, even for Hitchcock. Consider that 1977 was the year of punk rock, and while the Soft Boys weren't a punk band, they were a rocking band influenced by that late 1970s punk rock energy. So, to totally buck the trends of the time, not only was this concert acoustic in format, a good portion of the songs were done acappella style! And furthermore, even though the Soft Boys had plenty of good originals already, most of the songs were covers from the 1950s or earlier, often quite obscure ones. (The only originals are tracks 1, 3, 5, 8, 22, and 24.) In 1978, there wasn't exactly a clamor for songs like "The Deck of Cards" by T. Texas Tyler in 1948 or "That's When Your Heartaches Begin" by Shep Fields Rippling Rhythm in 1937. But that's one thing I like about Hitchcock, that he's so weird.

Most of this concert was officially released at one point, but in a limited way, for a limited time. It came out as "Live at the Portland Arms" in the 1980s on cassette and vinyl, but never on CD or any other format. And that record is long out of print. It also didn't include all the songs, but some extras came out on bootleg with the same high sound quality. Apparently, just one song is missing, the original "Wey Wey Hep Uh Hole," which was the second to last song. However, "Caroline Says" may also have been played.

I'm still puzzled how or why this concert came to be. This is the only Soft Boys concert I know of in the acoustic/ acappella format. According to the Hitchcock database askingtree.com, many of the songs here were only played one time ever by the Soft Boys or Hitchcock solo, such as "My Evaline," "Horns Large Horns," "Wish I Had My Baby," "White Shoe Blues," "In the Mood," and so on. Yet they must have practiced quite a bit to get the acappella harmonies right. Maybe it was all done with the intention of making that limited release live record. But for whatever reason, it's really nice that we have this.

Even though most of this was officially released, I still needed to do a lot of editing to make it sound better. The songs were fine, but the volume of the banter between songs was quite low. Furthermore, it was often obscured by crowd noise. I used the UVR5 audio editing program to add volume and clarity. And by the way, there's a lot of talking. It's interesting to see that even back at the beginning of his music career, Hitchcock had the exact same kind of stream of consciousness surreal banter that he'd been known for in later decades.

By the way, a couple of the songs are songs by other band members than Hitchcock, but I don't have the details on that. Also, there is a claim that the concert actually took place on January 13, 1979. But I haven't been able to confirm that, so I'm sticking with the dates from the official version for now.

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 Give It to the Soft Boys (Soft Boys)
02 talk (Soft Boys)
03 Sandra's Having Her Brain Out (Soft Boys)
04 talk (Soft Boys)
05 Give Me a Spanner, Ralph (Soft Boys)
06 My Evaline (Soft Boys)
07 talk (Soft Boys)
08 Human Music (Soft Boys)
09 talk (Soft Boys)
10 I Like Bananas [Because They Have No Bones] (Soft Boys)
11 talk (Soft Boys)
12 Horns Large Horns (Soft Boys)
13 talk (Soft Boys)
14 Book of Love (Soft Boys)
15 Wish I Had My Baby (Soft Boys)
16 talk (Soft Boys)
17 White Shoe Blues (Soft Boys)
18 In the Mood (Soft Boys)
19 talk (Soft Boys)
20 That's When Your Heartaches Begin (Soft Boys)
21 talk (Soft Boys)
22 Have a Heart, Betty [I'm Not Fireproof] (Soft Boys)
23 talk (Soft Boys)
24 The Duke of Squeeze (Soft Boys)
25 talk (Soft Boys)
26 All Shook Up (Soft Boys)
27 Postman's Knock (Soft Boys)
28 Deck of Cards (Soft Boys)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15215229/TSoftBys_1978_ThPortlndArmsCmbridgeBritain__11-1-1978_atse.zip.html

Good photos of the Soft Boys in concert are few and far between. I couldn't find any that didn't show them playing electric instruments, which doesn't fit this concert. So instead I went with a photo of the venue. The small size of the place helps show what an intimate performance it must have been.

The Velvet Underground - The End of Cole Ave., Dallas, TX, 10-19-1969

I'm thrilled to be posting this album. I recently discovered this great sounding concert recording, then I made some changes to make it sound even better. I dare say this album now is the best sounding live recording of the Velvet Underground (VU), official or bootleg. If you're a fan of the band at all, you need to hear this!

Here's a little history behind this unique recording. In October 1969, the Velvet Underground spent about two weeks in Texas. It was their only time in Texas while singer-songwriter Lou Reed was still in the band. They played from the 14th to 19th at a Dallas night club with the odd name "The End of Cole Ave." They also played at a anti-war protest in Dallas on the 15th. (That's what the cover photo is from.)

Here's some further information from Jeff Leegood, the person who taped the concert. "On October 18, 1969, when I recorded the VU at the End of Cole I was sitting in the back of the place. When they took a break, Hans the roadie asked me to come to the back room, the band wanted to hear the tape. The recorder I was using (a Wollensak by 3M) had speakers (it was a stereo no less) built in so I could play the tape. I played some of what I had. So then Lou [Reed] said to me I could move up front and record them if I was willing to send a tape copy of their performance to their manager, of course, that was fine with me. I kept my word, and off they went."

Understand that Leegood recorded two nights, the 18th and the 19th. The recording from the 18th doesn't sound so good because much or all of it was recorded from the back of the club. But the recording from the 19th - the one here - was recorded in ideal conditions, right on stage.

In 1974, the official double live album "1969: The Velvet Underground Live" was released. It was mostly made up of songs recorded at the Matrix in San Francisco. But four of the songs - "I'm Waiting for the Man," "Femme Fatale," "Pale Blue Eyes," and "I'll Be Your Mirror," come from this exact show.

I will next share a comment from the Allmusic.com website about the bootleg version of this show: "Sometimes archival material which first appeared on a bootleg album will later find authorized release with improved sound quality, but [this] is a rare example of this process working in reverse. ... By the time Mercury Records got their hands on the Dallas recordings, they were several generations removed from the original source material. ... [On the bootleg version] the absence of the blanket of hiss which has usually hovered over these performances is more than welcome."

Then, in 2013, a complete "official version" of both shows was released, under the names "Live at the End of Cole Ave: The First Night" and ""Live at the End of Cole Ave: The Second Night." But, as Leegood has noted, these appear to be "grey market" versions that he had no involvement in, and the band members certainly aren't getting royalties for. Someone simply mass produced and sold the bootleg version that was already available for free on the Internet.

Then, in 2021, a person with the nickname Captain Acid made improvements. He said he did phase, level, and speed correction, and new EQ. That's the version I found. I was stunned at how good it sounded. I had assumed the versions on the official "1969" album were as good as the recording got, but boy was that wrong. 

However, there still was a big problem: the vocals were low in the mix. I suppose in 2021, Captain Acid didn't know about the new computer programs like X-Minus becoming available that allows one to break a recording into different instruments and then drastically change the volume levels on each one, or maybe he's a purist and doesn't like to make changes like that. But I have no qualms. Using the program UVR5, I've boosted the lead vocals for all the songs. It's a huge improvement, in my opinion.

But that's not all. There were three more problems with the Captain Acid version. One was that the banter between songs was often very low. In some cases, it was so low that I wasn't even sure at first listen if someone on stage was talking or not. But when I boosted the volume of those parts drastically, the speaking came through with surprising clarity, and very little hiss. So I did that for all the banter.

The second problem was that the applause after each song was cut off after a couple of seconds in nearly all cases. This was a common problem back in the days of strictly analog recording, because tapers often only had one tape and were trying to save space so they'd be able to record the entire show. (Chances are that some banter was lost as well.) However, there were a couple of songs where all of the applause was recorded. One of those was "I'm Set Free," where the cheering was surprisingly long and loud. Probably, they were reacting positively to the female drummer, Moe Tucker, taking a rare turn in singing lead. I checked the setlist.fm database, and this may well have been only the second time she sang lead in any VU concert, with the first being the night before. (She also sang the next song, "After Hours.") Based on the amount of cheering that survived for such songs, I used those bits to fill in the cheering for all the other songs. I even pasted in extra "woo hoo" noises at random times.

So that left the third problem. You know how I said tapers often turned their tape recorders off between songs to try to save tape? Well, in this case, it seems they didn't have enough tape, because the last song, "Sister Ray," faded out after fifteen minutes. Based on the similar highs and lows of the complete version recorded the night before, which is 17 minutes long, it was close to the end. So I took the last couple minutes from the October 18th version and used it to finish off this version. That's why "Sister Ray" has "[Edit]" in its title. All of the songs here have been heavily edited, but in a consistent manner. Only "Sister Ray" has that extra and even more drastic edit.

There was some jamming after the concert that also got recorded by Leegood. However, I haven't included any of that. For one thing, it doesn't sound like the rest of the concert. For instance, there's no crowd noise. But also, I did some research on this, and it seems it was only band member Doug Yule playing with either roadies or locals, or both. So it's not fully Velvet Underground music, in my opinion.

Anyway, that's a long explanation. But the LR:DR is that this concert now sounds fantastic, at least compared to live recordings of the time, and it sounds like a complete concert without any missing pieces for the first time. 

I've spent so much time talking about the details of the recording that I haven't mentioned the actual performance. Suffice to say the band kicked ass. Note that many of the songs were unreleased at the time, and a few have different lead vocalists than the album versions. This is definitely going to be my favorite Velvet Underground live recording from now on.

This concert is an hour and 22 minutes long.

I just discovered this concert a couple of days ago. I may soon try to improve the October 18th concert. But I've listened to some of it, and at least the first half sounds much rougher than this, due to the circumstances discussed above. So I might just post the better part of it. I'm not sure yet.

01 talk (Velvet Underground)
02 I'm Waiting for the Man (Velvet Underground)
03 talk (Velvet Underground)
04 It's Just Too Much (Velvet Underground)
05 I'll Be Your Mirror (Velvet Underground)
06 talk (Velvet Underground)
07 Some Kinda Love (Velvet Underground)
08 talk (Velvet Underground)
09 Femme Fatale (Velvet Underground)
10 Beginning to See the Light (Velvet Underground)
11 talk (Velvet Underground)
12 I'm Set Free (Velvet Underground)
13 After Hours (Velvet Underground)
14 I'm Sticking with You (Velvet Underground)
15 One of These Days (Velvet Underground)
16 talk (Velvet Underground)
17 Pale Blue Eyes (Velvet Underground)
18 Ocean (Velvet Underground)
19 What Goes On (Velvet Underground)
20 talk (Velvet Underground)
21 Heroin (Velvet Underground)
22 Sister Ray [Edit] (Velvet Underground)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15213233/TVelvtUnd_1969_ThEndColeAveDallsTX__10-19-1969_atse.zip.html

Not only am I psyched about how well the music sounds, I'm psyched about the cover photo. Good color photos of the Velvet Underground in concert back in the 1960s are rarer than hen's teeth. This one isn't from the exact concert, but it's surprisingly close. I mentioned above that the band performed for an anti-war protest in Dallas on October 15th, a mere four days before this concert. In 2019, a few minutes of color video footage of that performance appeared on YouTube. I think it's the only color footage of them in concert, period. (You can find versions still on YouTube, if you're interested in watching it.)

I took a screenshot from that video, then made a few improvements to it in Photoshop. The main improvement has to do with Moe Tucker. She's the one in the middle with sunglasses on and a white sweatshirt, sitting while playing the drums. 

(One unexpected thing I learned from putting this album together is that members of the Velvet Underground were professional football fans. Tucker was wearing a New York Jets sweatshirt in the video. And at the start of the concert included here, Lou Reed commented to the audience that he'd recently watched the Dallas Cowboys play the Philadelphia Eagles, and he was disappointed at how the game was a blowout.)

Anyway, in the screenshot, Tucker was overexposed, and she pretty much looked like a white blob. So I took another screenshot from the same video where the lighting on her was better, and pasted in that version of her instead.

Belle & Sebastian - BBC Sessions, Volume 14: 2017-2022

Finally, here is the last album of Belle and Sebastian performing for the BBC. Or at least it's the last for now, as I'm all caught up to 2023. I read that the band's main lead singer Stuart Murdoch is having some health issues, but is planning on having the band tour again in 2024.

It's almost false advertising to call this a BBC album though. Only the first two songs actually come from a BBC session. But the rest all come from radio station sessions that sound just like BBC sessions. It would be more accurate to call this a collection of radio stations in general, but I figure I can take a little creative license after so many BBC albums in this series.

More specifically, the first two songs are from a 2017 BBC concert. I only posted two unique songs (including a fun cover of "Christmas Wrapping" by the Waitresses) because most of the concert is similar to the 2017 BBC concert I posted as "Volume 13" in this series. Tracks 3 through 7 are from a 2018 concert in Germany that was broadcast on the radio there. Then there's a big chronological gap, due to the Covid pandemic. Tracks 8 through 12 are from a Seattle radio station, and tracks 13 to 16 are from an NPR "Tiny Desk" concert in Washington, DC.

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 Are You Coming Over for Christmas (Belle & Sebastian)
02 Christmas Wrapping (Belle & Sebastian)
03 Show Me the Sun (Belle & Sebastian)
04 If She Wants Me (Belle & Sebastian)
05 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
06 Piazza, New York Catcher (Belle & Sebastian)
07 Poor Boy (Belle & Sebastian)
08 String Bean Jean (Belle & Sebastian)
09 If They're Shooting at You (Belle & Sebastian)
10 She's Losing It (Belle & Sebastian)
11 Unnecessary Drama (Belle & Sebastian)
12 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
13 Working Boy in New York City (Belle & Sebastian)
14 Reclaim the Night (Belle & Sebastian)
15 talk (Belle & Sebastian)
16 Judy and the Dream of Horses (Belle & Sebastian)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15208526/BellenS_2017-2022_BBSessionsVolum14_atse.zip.html

I found the cover photo with a 2023 Rolling Stone article. I assume it's from 2023 or at least 2022.

Cliff Bennett - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1964-1965

I must admit that before I started working on my big BBC project, I'd never heard of Cliff Bennett, so don't feel bad if you haven't heard of him either. But the BBC loved him: this is the first of four albums of BBC studio sessions he did. 

I'm American. I suppose the odds of knowing about Bennett is much better if you're British. In the 1960s, the British music industry had a problem. The British public discovered soul music around 1964, and fell for it in a big way. Suddenly, it seemed every British band was doing soul covers. But very few vocalists had an authentic sounding, talented soul voice. Steve Winwood was one. Cliff Bennett was another. As such, he caught the attention of Brian Epstein, the manager for the Beatles, who also became the manager for him and his group, the Rebel Rousers, in 1964. He soon had a Top Ten hit in Britain, "One Way Love." But that was the only big hit he had for the time period of this album, though he had a couple more minor ones.

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

Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers - Wikipedia

The vast majority of songs here are soul covers. What I like is that he avoided most of the usual suspects, the songs that it seemed practically every British band was doing at the time. It's also interesting that he was flexible enough to cover a Bob Dylan song, "Maggie's Farm." But, as far as I know, he and his band didn't really do originals at this point.

Nothing here has been officially released, but everything sounds great due to BBC transcription reels surviving in pristine condition. Typical of the era, lots of the songs had BBC DJs talking over the music. That's why so many of the songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. But I did the usual thing of using an audio editing program to wipe the talking while keeping the music.

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 Don't Put Me Down like This (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
02 One Way Love (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
03 You Make Me Happy [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
04 I'll Take You Home (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
05 Getting Mighty Crowded (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
06 I Can't Stand It (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
07 Do You Love Him [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
08 Ain't That Loving You Baby (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
09 [Ain't That] Good News [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
10 Three Rooms with Running Water (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
11 Baby, Baby, Baby (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
12 Try It Baby (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
13 Crazy 'bout My Baby [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
15 Do the Boomerang (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
16 I Have Cried My Last Tear (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
17 Maggie's Farm [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
18 Out of Sight (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
19 Waiting at the Station (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
20 My Sweet Woman [Edit] (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
21 Shake and Fingerpop (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)
22 Who's Cheatin' Who (Cliff Bennett & the Rebel Rousers)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15206079/CliffBen_1964-1965_BBSessionsVolum1_atse.zip.html

It seems Bennett isn't that well remembered today, even in Britain, because I didn't find many good photos of him. This was the best I could come up with, from 1964. However, most of the guys in it had their eyes closed or were not looking at the camera. Bennett, in the middle of the bottom row, had his eyes closed. I found another photo of him with his eyes open and pasted that in, using Photoshop. I also used Photoshop to make the two guys on the left look at the camera. That left the guy on the bottom right with his eyes closed. I decided to let him be.

Bettye LaVette - Change Is Gonna Come - Expanded Version (2003-2009)

I posted a couple of albums of Bettye LaVette's music, back in 2021. But those were from the 1960s, the start of her music career. She had a little success then, but then faded into obscurity for several decades. As her Wikipedia entry says, she "achieved only intermittent fame until 2005, when her album 'I've Got My Own Hell to Raise' was released to widespread critical acclaim, and was named on many critics' 'Best of 2005' lists." Since then, her career rebirth has continued going strong, all the way until the current day (as I write this in 2023), with her planning to release another new album soon, despite being 77 years old.

She didn't record much during her lost decades, so there isn't material there for stray track albums. But I plan on posting some more stray track albums from her career rebirth, starting with this one.

The bulk of this album is an EP released in 2009 called "Change Is Gonna Come Sessions." By 2009, she still wasn't that well known. But in January 2009, she sang of duet of the Sam Cooke classic "A Change Is Gonna Come" with Jon Bon Jovi at the presidential inauguration celebration for Barack Obama. Her performance was considered a highlight and got a lot of attention. It led to this EP, which naturally contained a studio version of "A Change Is Gonna Come" (without Bon Jovi this time). The rest of the EP (tracks 5 through 10) consisted of more covers of classic songs.

That EP is only 24 minutes long. But prior to that, she performed four more covers for various tribute albums, from 2003 to 2007. So those make up four of the first five songs here. The other one is "Laughter Ever After," in which she sang the lead vocals for a song on an album by Andy Lewis.

I enjoy LaVette's covers, because she does the songs in her own gruff-voiced, soulful style, rather than trying to be like the originals. That's definitely the case here.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 Real Real Gone (Bettye LaVette)
02 Laughter Ever After (Andy Lewis & Bettye LaVette)
03 Night Time Is the Right Time (Bettye LaVette, Andre Williams & Nathaniel Mayer)
04 What's Happening Brother (Dirty Dozen Brass Band with Bettye LaVette)
05 Streets of Philadelphia (Bettye LaVette)
06 A Change Is Gonna Come (Bettye LaVette)
07 'Round Midnight (Bettye LaVette)
08 God Bless the Child (Bettye LaVette)
09 Ain't No Sunshine (Bettye LaVette)
10 Ain't That Lovin' You (Bettye LaVette)
11 Lush Life (Bettye LaVette)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/cHhJEhkT

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/5ISorDbeK7SFgTW/file

 The cover is exactly the same as the original EP, except I removed the word "Sessions."

Moby Grape - Live 1967

Moby Grape was a great American rock band in the 1960s, but they also seemed to be cursed. They were exceptionally talented, with all five band members able to sing lead vocals and write songs. They managed one great album, their 1967 debut album "Moby Grape." Rolling Stone Magazine has put it high in their top 500 albums of all time list, and it's made other such lists. 

One music critic is quoted about the album in the Moby Grape Wikipedia page: "'Moby Grape' is as refreshing today as it was upon first release, and if fate prevented the group from making a follow-up that was as consistently strong, for one brief shining moment Moby Grape proved to the world they were one of America's great bands. While history remembers the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane as being more important, the truth is neither group ever made an album quite this good."

But, as I mentioned, the band seemed to be cursed. Their manager (Matthew Katz) was about as terrible as a manager could be. They fired him in 1967, but he'd got them in legal troubles that would bedevil them for decades before they finally beat him in court. One band member, Skip Spence, lost his mind in 1968 and had to be institutionalized. Another, Bob Mosley, strangely joined the Marines in 1969. Bad things kept happening that stopped the group from reaching their full potential. But for a brief time in early and mid-1967, everything was working and they were great.

This album attempts to collect the best live recordings from that special time. Note that I had prepared this album long ago, and it was sitting in my pile of hundreds of albums to be posted at this blog someday. But last month (April 2023), Prof. Stoned posted an album that is very similar to what I intended to post. You can find it here:

http://www.profstoned.com/2023/04/moby-grape-grape-live-unreleased-1968.html

Prof. Stoned is doing great things at his blog, remixing music to improve the sound quality. So I've used his versions for much of this, so this can have the best sound quality as well. 

It starts out with Moby Grape's live performance at the legendary Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967. Most musical acts at the festival played short sets, and that was the case for this band too. Four of the songs they played have been officially released on the box set for the whole festival. But a fifth, "Hey Grandma," was filmed and only appeared on a DVD. Prof. Stoned converted that and made it sound good. But it turns out they also played a sixth song, "Fall on You." Unfortunately, no version of this is publicly available. I also couldn't find any other decent live version from 1967. So I used a version from a 1968 concert bootleg to give an idea of what the entire Monterey Pop set sounded like.

The next three songs, tracks 8 through 10, are unreleased. But they come from a soundboard bootleg of a concert at an unknown date in January 1967. It's a shame this source only has three songs, but it's better than nothing. 

The remainder of the album comes from another January 1967 concert. These have been officially released, on an album called "Live (Historic Live Moby Grape Performances 1966-1969)." Prof. Stoned also included them on his album. So, like the Monterey Pop versions, I've used his versions here.

It's a shame that there's so little high quality live recordings of Moby Grape from 1967 compared to other similar bands like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. But if you put them all together as I did here, it shows an exciting and talented band, with three lead guitarists and five vocalists singing harmonies. Perhaps it was inevitable that a band with five singer-songwriters couldn't hold together for very long. But at least they had their "brief shining moment," and we have some recordings of it. 

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 talk by Tommy Smothers (Moby Grape)
02 Hey Grandma (Moby Grape)
03 Indifference (Moby Grape)
04 Mr. Blues (Moby Grape)
05 Sitting by the Window (Moby Grape)
06 Omaha (Moby Grape)
07 Fall on You (Moby Grape)
08 It Depends on You (Moby Grape)
09 Changes (Moby Grape)
10 Leavin' (Moby Grape)
11 Ain't No Use (Moby Grape)
12 Rounder (Moby Grape)
13 Looper (Moby Grape)
14 Bitter Wind (Moby Grape)
15 Changes (Moby Grape)
16 Indifference (Moby Grape)
17 Someday (Moby Grape)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/pSPTVtiz

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/s1XnN8VvPQ0i8Ga/file

The cover is a screenshot I made from the DVD performance of "Hey Grandma" at the Monterey Pop Festival. I took the band name at the top from a concert poster. I added the text at the bottom in a similar style.

Paul McCartney - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: In Concert, King's Dock, Liverpool, Britain, 6-28-1990

Curiously, Paul McCartney doesn't seem to have performed much for the BBC during his long career until the 2000s. Perhaps he figured he was so famous that he didn't need the extra publicity. But there is one exception in the 1990s, which is the concert. It was an important concert for him because he was taking part in his first concert tour since the end of the 1970s, and Liverpool was his home town. 

Before I say more, I want to share a couple of quotes about it I happened to find at the website the Paul McCartney Project. The first is from Paul's wife Linda McCartney:

"Of all the gigs I’ve played that was the greatest because of the audience. I’ve never been in a concert like it. I could feel every single human being there was totally focused and it lifted all of our lives up. Hearing Paul sing those John songs, it was magic. I love it when people are there for the thrill, the experience, the memory, nothing cynical in their attitude at all."

And the second is from Paul:

"It was the best moment of the tour for me. A homecoming which led to a lot of nerves particularly for the band, which I hadn’t even thought of till we got there. But they were all thinking, 'This guy was in The Beatles. We're not The Beatles. Where does that leave us?' Standing on the stage all day, you could see this beautiful weather coming towards us, blue sky, a lovely sunset. Great balmy evening and a crowd of 50,000. We played pretty good and the high-spot was when we played the medley tribute to John, finishing off with 'Give Peace a Chance.' We finished — and the crowd didn't. They just kept the 'All we are saying' chant going. That brought a lump to the throat. They sang it over and over. It just came looming up to us from the back until we had to kick back into it — that was one of the greatest moments of my career. It’s moments like that that make you go, God, this is it! This is why I like it!"

I thought those were interesting, and made me more excited to hear the recording. Now, as for the recording, what there is sounds excellent, as you'd expect from the BBC. But unfortunately, it's only part of the concert. Here are the songs that weren't included: "Figure of Eight," "Jet," "Band on the Run," "Let 'Em In," "Good Day Sunshine," "This One," "My Brave Face," "Live and Let Die," and "Yesterday." There is a bootleg of the full concert, but it's an audience boot with much worse sound quality. Hopefully, someday the whole thing will be made public with worthy sound quality.

Even without all those extra songs, this concert recording is still an hour and 17 minutes long, which is around the typical length for most concerts. 

The John Lennon medley ("Strawberry Fields Forever - Help - Give Peace a Chance") from this show was released as a B-side to the 1990 single "All My Trials." But everything else remains unreleased.

UPDATE: On February 19, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I changed the album name after discovering an earlier BBC concert I'd missed. I then changed the album cover and mp3 tags to match.

01 talk (Paul McCartney)
02 Got to Get You into My Life (Paul McCartney)
03 talk (Paul McCartney)
04 We Got Married (Paul McCartney)
05 talk (Paul McCartney)
06 The Long and Winding Road (Paul McCartney)
07 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Reprise (Paul McCartney)
08 talk (Paul McCartney)
09 Can't Buy Me Love (Paul McCartney)
10 Put It There (Paul McCartney)
11 Things We Said Today - Instrumental (Paul McCartney)
12 Eleanor Rigby (Paul McCartney)
13 Back in the U. S. S. R. (Paul McCartney)
14 I Saw Her Standing There (Paul McCartney)
15 Coming Up (Paul McCartney)
16 talk (Paul McCartney)
17 Let It Be (Paul McCartney)
18 talk (Paul McCartney)
19 Strawberry Fields Forever - Help - Give Peace a Chance (Paul McCartney)
20 Hey Jude (Paul McCartney)
21 Get Back (Paul McCartney)
22 Golden Slumbers - Carry That Weight - The End (Paul McCartney)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/pAimdCky

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/5uAbxAllM0ZOHwW/file

The cover is a combination of things. I found an advertisement for this concert that had a black and white photo of McCartney on a yellow background. But I also found a color version of that exact same photo. So I pasted the color version in over the exact same spot as the black and white one. Then I included some of the exact lettering and coloring at the top, but moved around and resized, and added my own text at the bottom. 

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

Joan Osborne - Pull My String - Non-Album Tracks (2013-2015)

Here's the next stray tracks album from Joan Osborne.

This one has something special. A kind person who wishes to remain anonymous sent me a couple of songs that are outtakes from a 2015 recording session: "Pull My String" and "Fingerprints." I'm pretty sure they've never been publicly available anywhere before, until here and now. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing they're originals, since I don't recognize them as covers. They're pretty good songs, so it's a mystery why they were never put on one of her albums.

Most of the other songs here are also unreleased, but they're generally covers of well known songs. Three of the songs have been released, and come from tribute albums: "Baby Don't You Do It (Don't Do It)," "Late for the Sky," and "Glory Days." All the others have excellent sound quality, even though some of them are from concert bootlegs.

There are three bonus tracks, which also come from concert bootlegs. The first couple of years of this blog, I probably would have included them, because their sound quality is decent. But I think I've raised my standards a bit since then, and they don't quite make the cut.

This album is 42 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks.

01 That's Where It's At (Joan Osborne & the Holmes Brothers)
02 Baby Don't You Do It [Don't Do It] (David Bromberg & Joan Osborne)
03 [Just Like] Starting Over (Joan Osborne)
04 Late for the Sky (Joan Osborne)
05 My Word Is My Bond (Joan Osborne & the Holmes Brothers)
06 Tomorrow Never Knows (Joan Osborne)
07 Pull My String (Joan Osborne)
08 Glory Days (Waybacks with Joan Osborne)
09 Fingerprints (Joan Osborne)

Let It Be Me [Edit] (Joan Osborne & Richard Thompson)
Respect Yourself (Joan Osborne & Shovels & Rope)
Tracks of My Tears (Joan Osborne & Keb Mo)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15202830/JoanO_2013-2015_PllMyStrng_atse.zip.html

The cover photo was taken at the Santa Anita Park Racetrack in Arcadia, California, on November 2, 2013. Originally, there was a microphone to the side of her head, but I used Photoshop to erase it.

King Crimson - BBC Sessions (1969-1972)

For most musical artists I post about, the problem is that not enough of their music has been officially released. For King Crimson though, the problem is the opposite. Hundreds of concerts have been officially released, so much so that it's hard to tell the good from the bad. So I'm going to post a couple of albums from 1969 that have excellent sound amidst a sea of poor sounding recordings.

This album also neatly fits into my larger BBC project, because most of it are BBC recordings. The band did two BBC studio sessions in 1969. The first three are from one and the next two are from the other. 

But, surprisingly, that's about it. I couldn't find any other BBC material for many years after that. However, I did include one more song, the last one. This one comes from an appearance on the German TV show "Beat Club" in 1972. I consider that program kind of a cousin of the BBC, because a lot of good live performances have survived thanks to that show.

The first four songs are originals that first appeared on the 1969 album "In the Court of the Crimson King." The fifth song, however, is originally by Donovan. The sixth and last song would first appear on the band's 1973 album "Larks' Tongues in Aspic."

This album is 37 minutes long.

01 21st Century Schizoid Man (King Crimson)
02 The Court of the Crimson King (King Crimson)
03 I Talk to the Wind (King Crimson)
04 Epitaph (King Crimson)
05 Get Thy Bearings (King Crimson)
06 Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part I [Instrumental] (King Crimson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15194496/KingCrm_1969-1972_BBSessions_atse.zip.html

Boy, it is surprisingly hard to find any good photos of King Crimson in 1969. And you'd think color photography hadn't been invented yet, because they're all in black and white. I eventually found this one, of band members Greg Lake (in back) and Robert Fripp (with glasses). It was in black and white, but I used the Palatte program to colorize it.

Progress: All Zippyshare Links Have Been Replaced!

I'm very happy to announce that I've finally fixed all the ZippyShare links that died at the start of April 2023. This blog is a labor of love, and boy, was that a labor. It sucked up most of my free time for a whole month. But now it's all done. Phew!

Previously, I never knew exactly how many albums I'd posted at any given time. ZippyShare gave me a rough idea, but some links expired and others just mysteriously died for no reason. Now, though, I know for sure that I have 2,091 albums posted here. I glad to have it confirmed that I've passed that 2,000 album threshold. As an aside, for the last year or two, I've been putting an emphasis on posting BBC material. It looks like I'm just short of posting 400 BBC related albums.

I was not happy to have to fix all those links. However, the blog will be better off as a result. ZippyShare was banned in some countries, and it had annoying pop-up ads and other problems. Also, I was fighting a constant battle with expiring links. Now, hopefully, all the links will be working all the time. :)

By the way, when I was fixing the 50 or so albums in the "Covered" series, I updated a majority of the album covers. Many of those were colorized black and white photos. I think at that time I got a little excited and made the colors too vivid in some cases, so I toned those down. Also, I replaced more of the backgrounds with light blue backgrounds, to give more of a consistent look.

Anyway, thanks for your patience through this month-long process. If you see any links that are still broken or misdirected, please make sure to let me know.

Gordon Lightfoot - The Skip Weshner Show, KRHM Radio Studio, Los Angeles, CA, 1968-1970

Sadly, famous musician keep dying. Earlier today, I posted an album to mark the recent death of Burt Bacharach. Two days ago (as I write this in May 2023), Canadian singer-songwiter Gordon Lightfoot passed away at the age of 84.

I wanted to post something from him to pay tribute to his musical legacy. I looked around at what is out there that I hadn't posted yet, and came up with this. 

There's a bootleg that's been circulating for many years of Lightfoot performing for the Skip Weshner Show, a radio show in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, in my opinion, most of this isn't very good. A lot of it consists of Lightfoot talking with the DJ Skip Weshner, which doesn't have much relistening value, especially since the DJ did most of the talking. There's also a big chunk of it that apparently took place at a party at Weshner's house. Most of that was unintelligible crowd noise. When Lightfoot did play some music, it tended to be songs that only lasted a minute or less, and were marred by party sounds. Some other sounds just had poor sound quality.

That said, there were some real gems in there too. I trimmed away most of the bootleg, cutting it down to just the full songs done with excellent sound quality. Most of these come from in-person acoustic performances on Weshner's show, with only a couple of songs from the party. The mix was way off, but I did some audio editing to improve that. One song, "The Seabird Song," appears to get cut off before it finished.

Additionally, there are a few songs come from an unknown radio show. Again it's acoustic, though Lightfoot it sounds like is backed by a bassist and second guitarist. I have no idea where these are from. If anyone knows, please tell me. However, based on the song selection, it's highly likely it comes from 1970.

There is one bonus song, "Your Song," the classic hit by Elton John. This is a real treat, since there's no official recording of Lightfoot doing this. Unfortunately though, the sound quality is significantly worse than the others, so I had to relegate it to bonus track status. It also is not complete. However, in this case, I'm guessing he stopped because that's as much of the song as he could remember.

This album is 46 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

01 Bitter Green (Gordon Lightfoot)
02 Take It or Leave It (Gordon Lightfoot)
03 Pleasures of the Night (Gordon Lightfoot)
04 The Auctioneer (Gordon Lightfoot)
05 Minstrel of the Dawn (Gordon Lightfoot)
06 Looking at the Rain (Gordon Lightfoot)
07 Sit Down Young Stranger (Gordon Lightfoot)
08 Cobwebs and Dust (Gordon Lightfoot)
09 Me and Bobby McGee (Gordon Lightfoot)
10 The Last Time I Saw Her (Gordon Lightfoot)
11 The Seabird Song (Gordon Lightfoot)
12 Talking in Your Sleep (Gordon Lightfoot)
13 If You Could Read My Mind (Gordon Lightfoot)
14 Approaching Lavender (Gordon Lightfoot)

Your Song (Gordon Lightfoot)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15193717/GordnLft_1968-1970_SkipWeshnrShowKRHMLosAnglesCA__19681970_atse.zip.html

The cover is a photo of Lightfoot in concert in 1971. I didn't see any really good photos from 1970. The lettering of his name at the top comes from one of his albums. 

The Doobie Brothers - WLIR Ultrasonic Concert Series, Ultrasonic Recording Studios, West Hempstead, NY, 5-31-1973

The Doobie Brothers have gone through some significant musical shifts during their long musical career. Most of their success came in the 1970s, when they were popular for most of the decade. But in the early 1970s they were more of a rocking band, with Tom Johnston their main singer and songwriter. But he had health issues as the decade went on, and was increasingly sidelined, to the point that he quit the band in 1977. He was gradually replaced by Michael McDonald, who led the band in more of a soft rock and soul direction.

Personally, I'm not a fan of McDonald's music. When I think of him, I think cheesy "yacht rock." I much prefer the band's sound before he took the band over. Therefore, when it comes to looking for a concert bootleg of the band from the 1970s, I'd want something from, oh, about 1973 to 1975, after the band had some hits but before Johnston was sidelined by McDonald. But for whatever reason, there's slim pickings when it comes to bootlegs from that time period. It turns out there's really just one recording that fits the bill with excellent sound quality, and that's this one.

This show sounds pretty good because it was broadcast live on the radio at the time. I've posted a few other shows from this same "Ultrasonic" series. That said, I could tell there were some problems, especially with the bass sounding way too loud. So I sent the recording to musical associate MZ. He told me that the recording "was missing frequencies 15000-17000 Hz, and boosting volume on these frequencies made the sound clearly and not so bass-heavy." He also added some more stereo image. I think it sounds significantly better now.

There still is one other problem. The tape ran out while recording the song "Without You." Whoever bootlegged it adjusted it so it fades out instead of coming to a sudden halt. Luckily, the song had been going seven minutes at that point, so I think nearly all of it was recorded. It's possible there were more songs after that, but maybe not because one would think they would want to end on a high note, and they played all their hits by that point in the show.

At this point, the Doobie Brothers were more rocking than they would be later. You might be surprised.

This album is 50 minutes long. 

UPDATE: On September 12, 2025, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same. But I changed the title and the cover art to be consistent with other albums from this same Ultrasonic radio show.

01 talk (Doobie Brothers)
02 South City Midnight Lady (Doobie Brothers)
03 talk (Doobie Brothers)
04 Clear as the Driven Snow (Doobie Brothers)
05 talk (Doobie Brothers)
06 Long Train Running (Doobie Brothers)
07 talk (Doobie Brothers)
08 Listen to the Music (Doobie Brothers)
09 talk (Doobie Brothers)
10 China Grove (Doobie Brothers)
11 Rockin' Down the Highway (Doobie Brothers)
12 talk (Doobie Brothers)
13 Disciple (Doobie Brothers)
14 Jesus Is Just Alright - Disciple (Doobie Brothers)
15 Without You (Doobie Brothers)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/nPYePnF9

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/sp0W2TocXQrfDCB/file

The cover is a promo photo taken in New York City in April 1973. The lettering of the band name at the top comes from one of their albums.

Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach - The Rainbow Room, New York City, 12-31-1996

Songwriter Burt Bacharach died in February 2023. He was 94 years old. Because he was such a musical giant, along with his songwriting partner Hal David, I wanted to post something from him in tribute. But there are virtually no Bacharach related bootlegs, and I had already posted seven albums of his songs in my Covered series. But finally, a couple of months later, I came up with something that serves as a good tribute, so here it is.

The person best known for singing Bacharach's songs is Dionne Warwick. The two of them occasionally went on tour together, and this concert is from one such tour. I found this because it was released on DVD as "Live from the Rainbow Room." But it seems to be a pretty obscure release, and it was never put out as an album.

Bacharach was a great songwriter, but although he put out many albums under his own name, his vocal abilities were limited. (Most of his solo stuff was instrumental.) He does sing a bit here, but, wisely, the vast majority of the lead vocals were done by Warwick. There are lots of songs here co-written by Bacharach and then made into hits by Warwick, plus a couple that were hits by others ("[They Long to Be] Close to You," "One Less Bell to Answer," and "What the World Needs Now Is Love"). But there are even more hits that they didn't get to. I could be wrong, but I think the only song here Bacharach didn't have a hand in writing is "(Theme From) Valley of the Dolls."

This concert recording is rather strange in two respects. The first is that the vast majority of songs were done in truncated versions in medleys. I guess they really wanted to cram in as many songs are possible in a limited time. It's possible that the actual concert was different but things were edited down for the DVD release. The other strange thing is that there are some voice-overs by Warwick or Bacharach, where they talk about the song during instrumental sections. One can find the video of this concert on YouTube, and it's clear from that that much of the talking didn't take place during the concert. It's not a terrible thing, but I thought I'd point that out.

This concert is 56 minutes long.

01 talk (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
02 Don't Make Me Over - Walk on By (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
03 I Say a Little Prayer - Do You Know the Way to San Jose (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
04 talk (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
05 [They Long to Be] Close to You (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
06 I'll Never Fall in Love Again (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
07 [There's] Always Something There to Remind Me (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
08 One Less Bell to Answer (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
09 Anyone Who Had a Heart (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
10 talk (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
11 Make It Easy on Yourself (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
12 I'll Never Love This Way Again (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
13 talk (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
14 Here I Am - The April Fools (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
15 Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
16 Arthur's Theme [The Best That You Can Do] - What's New Pussycat (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
17 [Theme From] Valley of the Dolls (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
18 The Look of Love (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
19 A House Is Not a Home (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
20 What the World Needs Now Is Love (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
21 Alfie (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
22 talk (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)
23 That's What Friends Are For (Dionne Warwick & Burt Bacharach)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15192198/DionneW_1996_RainbwRoomNYC__12-31-1996_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London in June 2000.

Jackson Browne - Rockpalast, Grugahalle, Essen, Germany, 3-15-1986

I've posted three Jackson Browne BBC albums, all from the 1970s. As far as I know, he didn't perform for the BBC in the 1980s. But I have this concert done for the German TV show "Rockpalast" that nicely fills that gap. 

The 1980s weren't a great decade for Jackson Browne albums, especially compared to the 1970s. He fell victim to the same problem that hit many musical artists from his earlier era, namely, succumbing to the production trends of the time, such as over use of synthesizers and overly loud drumming. But it often happens that those choices were pushed by the producer and/or record company, so they didn't show up nearly as much in concert. That's the case here. Browne obviously was trying for a more lively, rocking sound, and one can definitely hear that. But there's a more organic sound that has weathered the test of time then some of his album versions.

The concert is unreleased, but the sound quality is excellent. And unlike his BBC performances I've posted, this is a full concert. His 1986 album "Lives in the Balance" had been released the month before, and he naturally played seven out of the eight songs from that. But he mixed in a good number of songs from the earlier parts of his career.

Normally, I have a particular fondness for songs done in an acoustic format. But with Browne, that gets to be a bit samey after a while. I think I actually prefer it when he rocks out like this. He's never released a normal live album (although he has released two live albums of acoustic versions). If he ever does release one, I think it would be hard to top this.

This album is an hour and 30 minutes long.

01 talk (Jackson Browne)
02 Boulevard (Jackson Browne)
03 Tender Is the Night (Jackson Browne)
04 In the Shape of a Heart (Jackson Browne)
05 Candy (Jackson Browne)
06 talk (Jackson Browne)
07 Downtown (Jackson Browne)
08 For Everyman (Jackson Browne)
09 talk (Jackson Browne)
10 Lawyers in Love (Jackson Browne)
11 talk (Jackson Browne)
12 Soldiers of Plenty (Jackson Browne)
13 talk (Jackson Browne)
14 Black and White (Jackson Browne)
15 Late for the Sky (Jackson Browne)
16 Lives in the Balance (Jackson Browne)
17 talk (Jackson Browne)
18 Lawless Avenues (Jackson Browne)
19 talk (Jackson Browne)
20 For America (Jackson Browne)
21 The Pretender (Jackson Browne)
22 talk (Jackson Browne)
23 Running on Empty (Jackson Browne)
24 Doctor My Eyes (Jackson Browne)
25 For a Rocker (Jackson Browne)

https://www.imagenetz.de/ic7o7

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6qA9xErS

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/nrs9hHa7ofB8mMA/file 

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. For his name at the top, I used the lettering from his "Late for the Sky" album.

Paul McCartney - Apollo Theatre, Glasgow, Britain, 12-17-1979

This is a pretty key album when it comes to live Paul McCartney material. In the early 1970s, he toured a lot, and I've captured just about every song he played live then on the "Wings Over Europe" album I've posted. In 1975 and 1976, he had one huge tour, which is well documented on the official live album "Wings Over America." Then he didn't go on tour again until 1979. The best full concert recording from that tour, by far, is this one.

I had to double and triple check this hadn't been officially released in some format yet. It was the last night of the tour, and it was professionally recorded with the intention of releasing it as a live album. But McCartney didn't feel satisfied with the tour, so it's not too surprising he didn't approve the live album idea. In fact, his band, Wings, only played one more concert after this. (It was at the end of the month, as part of the "Concert for Kampuchea.") This concert has often been named "Last Flight" on bootlegs, since it was the second to last show for Wings.

A few songs from this concert have been officially released. He played one song that was unreleased at the time, "Coming Up." That would be his big hit on his next album, "McCartney II." In Britain, the studio version was released as the A-side, and an edited version of the live version from this concert was released on the B-side. But in the US, the live version was the A-side, and went all the way to Number One. Then nothing else was released from the concert for a long time until a deluxe edition of his 1970 album came out, which had "Every Night," "Hot as Sun" and "Maybe I'm Amazed" from this concert added as bonus tracks.

I think what makes this album most interesting to fans is that he played a bunch of songs in it that he never played live before or since, except on this tour. Given the sheer number of classic songs he had by this time, his choices are rather odd. For instance, who would expect a version of "Hot as Sun," a little noticed instrumental from an album released ten years earlier? By the way, his wife Linda McCartney sang "Cook of the House" and band member Denny Laine sang "Go Now."

There were two minor flaws in the recording. There was no applause at the end of "Spin It On," and part of his banter before the start of the next song, "Twenty Flight Rock," appeared to be missing. So I patched that up by adding about ten seconds of banter taken from the "Concert for Kampuchea" concert mentioned above to what banter still remained. I also added in the missing applause. The other flaw was in the last song, "Band on the Run." There was a skip in one line. So I patched that up with the "Concert for Kampuchea" version.

As an aside, I found a comment about the concert from one of the band members, Laurence Juber. So I thought I'd share that:

"The highlight of the tour from a musical point of view was that last Glasgow concert. That was the point on the tour when we were really cooking as a band. It was also a more complete set than Kampuchea. And to be honest, if you listen to the Last Flight bootleg CD, the version we did of 'Let It Be' in Glasgow was even better. I’ll never forget the audience reaction to the bagpipe band marching through the audience that night."

The last comment refers to the performance of the song "Mull of Kintyre." Although it was never a hit in the US, it was one of the biggest hits of all time in Britain when it was released a year before this concert. The song sounds like a classic Scottish tune, complete with bagpipes, so naturally it was especially appreciated in Glasgow, which is part of Scotland. A Scottish pipe band in full kilt and regalia joined in for the song.

This concert is an hour and 35 minutes long.

01 Got to Get You into My Life (Paul McCartney)
02 Getting Closer (Paul McCartney)
03 talk (Paul McCartney)
04 Every Night (Paul McCartney)
05 talk (Paul McCartney)
06 Again and Again and Again (Paul McCartney)
07 talk (Paul McCartney)
08 I've Had Enough (Paul McCartney)
09 talk (Paul McCartney)
10 No Words (Paul McCartney)
11 talk (Paul McCartney)
12 Cook of the House (Paul McCartney)
13 talk (Paul McCartney)
14 Old Siam, Sir (Paul McCartney)
15 talk (Paul McCartney)
16 Maybe I'm Amazed (Paul McCartney)
17 talk (Paul McCartney)
18 The Fool on the Hill (Paul McCartney)
19 talk (Paul McCartney)
20 Let It Be (Paul McCartney)
21 Hot as Sun [Instrumental] (Paul McCartney)
22 talk (Paul McCartney)
23 Spin It On (Paul McCartney)
24 talk [Edit] (Paul McCartney)
25 Twenty Flight Rock (Paul McCartney)
26 Go Now (Paul McCartney)
27 talk (Paul McCartney)
28 Arrow through Me (Paul McCartney)
29 talk (Paul McCartney)
30 Wonderful Christmastime (Paul McCartney)
31 talk (Paul McCartney)
32 Coming Up (Paul McCartney)
33 talk (Paul McCartney)
34 Goodnight Tonight (Paul McCartney)
35 Yesterday (Paul McCartney)
36 talk (Paul McCartney)
37 Mull of Kintyre (Paul McCartney)
38 talk (Paul McCartney)
39 Band on the Run (Paul McCartney)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/sFGRCyS6

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/9IbwZOH3yzMbD73/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/ktuXv

The cover photo comes from a London concert in 1979. I happened to find a good one showing both Paul and Linda McCartney. I thought I'd use that for variety's sake, since I have so many album covers of just Paul.